Clean and clear

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One day eight years ago, a visiting lecturer wrote on the board with a chalk, saw dust flying about and leaving his hands soiled, and became fairly troubled. He took it up as a challenge, and the project brought together a mechanical engineer, a chemical engineer, a chemist, a physicist, ceramic experts and a bureaucrat in the education department.They experimented with ceramics, mixed various formulas, tested wiping materials with various pore sizes and even studied theories of how light is scattered by calcium carbonate particles.Finally, they seem to have invented three solutions (a fourth one is likely to come soon)—a machine to manufacture dust-free chalk, a special duster to make it even less dusty, and a special writing board.The inventors of the machine, which costs around Rs 8.5 lakh for 300 kg worth of chalk-sticks per shift (which will decline by at least 30 per cent with economies of scale), are from the CSIR-funded Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute in Bhavnagar, Gujarat.G R Desale and technical assistant Jignesh Shukla found the right proportion to mix calcium carbonate and other ingredients to make it write clearly, calculated the right length to make the chalk less brittle, and made sure the materials were dense enough so that whatever dust was produced fell vertically and not spread in clouds. They have worked with physicist Narayan Debnath of the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, on theories of light scattering by calcium carbonate particles. And they are working with the Central Glass & Ceramics Research Institute, Kolkata, to develop a superior quality ceramic board, but the work is not complete yet. The chalk and duster are ready—they have been christened "clean write" and "clean wipe" respectively—and the technology has been leased to a firm based in Tamil Nadu. An Indian patent has also been filed.The chalk has been circulated among various institutes for testing "and the general response is that it is very good", said CSMCRI Director Pushpito Ghosh, the lecturer who inspired the product.In an email reply, a chemical engineering professor at the Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Professor Jayasankar E Variyar, spelled out specific positives he found with the chalk. "It does not break easily," he wrote. "The writing is very consistent. Glare on the board is less of an issue, as optically it seems to diffuse the glare."He added, "It is dust free. One of the issues of using chalk in a room with computers has been the dust that is generated and that can harm the machines. Though I have not extensively tested this, I believe this is a better solution to using a whiteboard and marker from a carbon footprint point of view."

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