Bangalore, 24 June 2020: While eight-year-old Shaurya Shenoy was attending online classes conducted by his school Trio world Academy last month, he got to learn about the properties of air and different ways of using it for compression and expansion. During his class, he saw his father rubbing his hands after taking a dab of hand sanitiser. He wanted to come up with a solution for this. That is when he thought that the properties of air like compression and expansion can be used to spray sanitiser in crowded areas or any public place and came up with the idea of a sanitiser capsule using recycled products like toys, bottles, newspaper and biscuit packets to curb COVID-19.

Shaurya told his father this and received a go ahead from him. This Trio World Academy student explains, “My father asked if I can build a prototype and I worked on it. Since I have toys that have motors fixed in it, I dismantled them and started working on the prototype. I also got a few empty and transparent biscuit packets so that the liquid filled in the capsule is visible.”

The entire unit is lightweight and contains an overhead storage tank to store liquid sanitiser and is connected to compress air. Once we switch on the motor, the compressor pushes the air out along with the sanitiser. It can be fixed in a passage and whenever the person walks in, this sanitiser will get sprayed on them. We can use batteries that run on solar energy. In this prototype, he has fixed rechargeable batteries with solar panels making it portable. This can be implemented in places like apartment complexes, schools, shopping malls, theatres and so on.

He further adds, “I have no online classes now and we are on holiday due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But I am good at learning the technical aspects of machines. So, I keep watching videos of how machines work in the industries on different websites. We are working on a multi utility farm machine which can be used for farm transport, cultivation, insecticide sprayer, weed trimmer etc.  Hopefully, I will complete it before my school reopens.”

Since the lockdown began, students have been finding creative ways to continue learning and enhancing their skills at home!