Visually impaired boy’s astronomy dictionary won TÜBİTAK award

DİYARBAKIR

An 11-year-old visually impaired boy has won an award for an “astronomy dictionary” he created for blind people like him in the secondary school students research projects competition organized by Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK).

Becoming the owner of the encouragement award in the competition held in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır this year, Bager Çalışçı stated that he prepared a dictionary to explain the subject of astronomy to the visually impaired people.

“I am also able to visualize the sky in my mind thanks to this dictionary,” Çalışçı added.

Explaining the starting point of the project, his team friend Melek Şehri Kutlu stated that their teacher asked Çalışçı how he could visualize the shapes and names of celestial bodies in his mind more easily.

“Then, Bager said, ‘If the celestial bodies are portrayed with reliefs and their names are written in Braille underneath, I can visualize them better,’ and we started the project,” she noted.

Çalışçı is also a talented pianist who is an admirer of Beethoven. The student has the ability to define the pitch of a musical tone without using a reference pitch, which is called the “Perfect Ear” in music.

Last year, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan presented an acoustic piano to Çalışçı, who wants to become a well-known pianist.