Winged Fruit Spinner | Telugu |
Channel: Arvind Gupta
Date: 2015-01-28

Trees give us enormous amount of joy. They give us shade; they give us wood for furniture, for building houses, ships, doors, windows. Trees give us so much but we still seldom acknowledge the contribution of trees. Right now we are sitting under a huge banyan tree. It is very interesting how the name “banyan” came about. India has a very hierarchical caste structure, the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas, the Baniyas and the Shudras. When the British came to India, in every village they saw a lot of merchants sitting under the canopy of a shady tree. The merchants had spread their goods under the cool shade of this tree. On asking “Who were these people?”  the Brits were told these were the Baniyas  - traders and merchants.  And because the traders invariable chose the Ficus bengalinsis a very shady tree it came to be named as BANYAN in English. So, the BANYAN owes its etymology to the Baniya traders. Often the etymology of trees is very interesting. 
I have with me two leaves of banyan tree. Trees not only you get houses, wood, shade and fruits, but you can also make some lovely toys. Here is a small example. Take a leaf and make two slant cuts and discard the top part. This part will almost look like the face of the cat.
Cut the second leaf along its midrib. This part will make the body and the tail of the cat. Now place the face on the body and you the profile of a cat. This toy can be made in a jiffy and you can gift it to your friends while going on a walk. 
Here is a creeper which has grown over a banyan tree and is overhanging and its winged fruits are lying on the ground. The fruits look like as if they were made out of brown paper. If you pick and examine them, you will find that they are like turbine blades. On blowing a little bit they fly off. If I were to poke a needle inside it and hold the needle as the axle and blow in the middle, this whole turbine will spin very fast. 
This is what we have done in this toy. We have put a wire through this and bent the wire at right angles twice and attached it to a straw with a tape. On blowing through this straw, air strikes the vanes, and the wing fruit spins round and round just like a turbine. 
To make this toy you need cello tape, a stiff straw, needle, etc. now this is the winged fruit with 4 blades and it almost looks like a turbine. Take a piece of wire, and there is a natural hole in the winged fruit, weave through it. The right hand loop prevents the fruit from falling off. The fruit must rotate freely on the wire. Then bend the wire at right angles, twice over. You can see two bends. You tape it to the stiff straw. When you blow through the stiff straw and the breeze will strike the 4 vanes of the winged fruit. This is the final toy. I hope you enjoyed this toy made from a winged fruit.  
Look around in nature carefully and pen down how do plants and trees disperse their seeds. This work was supported by IUCAA and Tata Trust. This film was made by Ashok Rupner TATA Trust: Education is one of the key focus areas for Tata Trusts, aiming towards enabling access of quality education to the underprivileged population in India. To facilitate quality in teaching and learning of Science education through workshops, capacity building and resource creation, Tata Trusts have been supporting Muktangan Vigyan Shodhika (MVS), IUCAA's Children’s Science Centre, since inception. To know more about other initiatives of Tata Trusts, please visit www.tatatrusts.org