Hyderabad : A field trip was organised by Pallavi Model School, Alwal Stars under the able guidance of the principal Sunir Nagi to the In- dian Meteorological Department (IMD) in Begumpet, Hyderabad.
The trip commenced with Babu -a member of NGO Stars - who addressed the teachers and the students and briefed them about the meteorological department's partnership with an NGO. He also made students engage in a few concentration games where the rule was "do what I say, don't do what I'll be doing"
A member of the IMD staff dis- cussed the department's impor- tance and work. Students learned about the radar and its signifi- cance. Hyderabad's IMD was es- tablished in 1857, followed by the introduction of satellites and radar in 2002. Conventional radar could only detect stationary objects, but it was around 1945 when Christian Doppler invented Doppler weather radar. It is also called weather surveillance radar, which could also detect moving objects, unlike conventional radar.
Students were also told about the three bands, ie, the S-band, the C-band, and the X-band. S band can cover 250 km of radius (wide coverage) or 500 km of range C-band covers 150 km of the radius or 300 km of range, and X- band covers even less. As the fre- quency increases, the wavelength decreases, increasing resolution.

The students were al- lowed to observe the move- ment of the radar, after which they were introduced to different techniques to measure the weather ele ments. The educational field trip came to an end with a lot of takeaways for the students and they also met the head of the meteorological depart- ment. Dr Naga Ratna.