But what if someone could acquaint you with interesting scientific facts that concern life on a daily basis. That is exactly what the Community Science Centre, established in 1983, has been trying to achieve.

Speaking about its activities, honorary director of the centre M N Naik said, ``The centre was established with an aim to spread scientific knowledge in the community and to develop an interest in students for subjects like mathematics.''

There were instances when students visited the centre during their vacations and went back to school with an added interest for learning the subjects, he claimed.

Explaining the need for such a centre, Naik said,``Though there are various organisations that conduct tours to acquaint people with the city, there are very few institutes who acquaint students with places of scientific value.''

According to Naik, the various programmes undertaken by the centre to inculcate `scientific culture' included, conducting weekend courses, science camps, tours and excursions to science centres.

Besides tours, the centre conducts workshops providing people an insight into varied subjects like automobiles, house-hold electronic devices and even methods of water purification, he said.

Workshops, conducted specially for women, helped them understand all about household appliances, water-borne diseases and even keeping a check over insects in their houses, Naik said, adding that knowledge was imparted through demonstration and models rather than through books.

Students were invited to the centre so that they could have a look at the tree and biology museum there. ``Students were informed about popular scientific topics, including multimedia, and also given a demonstration of laboratory instruments,'' he said.

Officials of the centre also visited schools, conducted classes during the free periods, held talks with students on science and even played innovative science-based games with them, he said.

The centre presently houses a science, maths and computer club. ``Members of the science club are informed about facts related to day to day life through interesting demonstration,'' said Naik.

While members of the maths club are taught on how the subject can be made interesting and easy, in the computer club they are acquainted with the basics of the subject and also imparted informal training, he added.

The centre also proposes to intensify their activities during the weekends so that more people from various cross-section of the society could participate.

The only problem that the centre was facing presently was that it did not have a separate premises. ``If we had a building of our own we could expand our activities,'' said Naik.