Shriniwas L Kelkar is a Reader in Organic Chemistry at University of Pune. After an active research career and publishing work on heterocyclic chemistry, he is now devoting his entire time and attention to propagate the small-scale experiments. On demand, he is available to conduct workshops for training teachers on microscale techniques.

Dilip D Dhavale is a Reader in Organic Chemistry at University of Pune. He is pursuing his research career in carbohydrate chemistry. He had been associated with popularizing microscale chemistry from its inception in India.

Jonathan Swift was in a fantasy world when he wrote the old classic Gulliver’s Travels. Perhaps, he knew that sometime in future, chemists would use the ‘Liliput’ scale for performing laboratory experiments. The Kaurava prince Duryodhana, denying any claims of territory to the Pandavas, categorically declared that he would not yield to them even that grain of dust, settled at the tip of a vibrating needle. Probably he realised that even that little particle could be used for doing many experiments! "Small is beautiful", it is said. "Green is more beautiful" – would be agreed upon more easily. While combining these two ideas in chemistry laboratories of teaching institutes, we recently realised that time has come to replace the regularly conducted chemistry experiments in our educational institutions, strictly to the smallest possible scales.

Read full article (PDF 75Kb)

Address for Correspondence
Shriniwas L Kelkar
Department of Chemistry
University of Pune
Pune 411 007, India.
Email: skelkar@chem.unipune.ernet.in  
skelkar@vsnl.com