"charging" your minds !

Take Charge !

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

Well, am back after a long gap! I think its high time to start the discussion about one of the magic entity – CHARGE!. Am not sure if I could clearly tell what charge is, but this page isn’t about that, it is about the questions I have about charge and the way I think my mind could explain it. So am sure there are errors in my thinking and I think in science to error is to educate!

 This all happened a year after our rigorous training in mechanics (classical). Time came when my sir had to start the basics of electricity with the chapter “electrostatics”. Being a mechanics lover I thought it was a big leap. Since I thought none of the higher physics (like this one) could be explained through Newtonian mechanics, and as a Newton lover it seemed to be disappointing. So here it begun!

 As it was a custom to start this chapter with the rubbing of silk, he started – “when some objects are rubbed with others it is found that they ‘interact’ with each other after rubbing, this interaction is called static electricity.” Though this seemed to be a loose statement, but it is ‘Ok’ to start with. Mind me he is a person who cares about each and every statement he makes, and mind me again we students are damn cautious to ‘critically review’ (as my sir would say!) every words that vibrates from his mouth. In fact I appreciate his way of introducing this concept in a customary but a careful way, which is, he dint mention about the magic word –charge! I think this is one of the best ways of introducing this chapter!

 And he adds “to explain this phenomenon people thought ‘something’ had moved between those rubbing particles and they named it to be charge”. He said that all bodies have infinite charge to begin with and different bodies have different tendencies to take up charge (why? Well let’s not bother about this at this time, infact this was not answered at beginning when they found this fact! ).So thus when I rub some bodies charge from one body moves to another. Then I thought it was just like the ‘mass’ concept, just like when I transfer some mass from one body to another mass adds up in one and subtracts it self in another. But wait! He then added that these interactions can be repulsive too!. And thus to explain the dual type of interactions they needed to classify charges into two categories that is positive and negative (these are just the nomenclature used to describe them nothing more than that). I think this one is amazing.
 

 Lets now think how this positive and negative makes things easy, or why it amuses me. Let’s take a step back to mechanics. Imagine a body in equilibrium, top of the mind to think about the forces acting on the body, we would say force =0. But carefully observing it is actually the net force that is 0. I mean one could pull the body to the right (applying positive force taking right as positive) and other pull the box to left (negative force taking right as positive) with the same magnitude and still the box remains in equilibrium. So instead of thinking of a number ‘0’ I could think of ‘1 + -1’ or 2 + -2’ or ‘positive + negative’, I think this is a brilliant way of thinking. Introducing a the concept of negative number into real life problems are not usual as even in mechanics we applied sign conventions, but those are just mathematical but now the concept of charge is real and thus this shows the importance of those numbers sitting behind zero!, I always had an uncomfortable feeling when my math teacher started teaching the number line having negative numbers, I was like oh man! that doesn’t make sense , like every time I see a pen I say I have one pen or two or three, not like I am having -1 + 2 pen !. But after this charge concept I turned out like - ah! Now I see these negative numbers. They really do need to show up in daily life. But now this doesn’t amuse me because whenever I see these negative I use this analogy – imagine I have 10 pens and I give all my 10 pens to my friend. Now I can say that he is having 10 pens or I am having -10 pens compared to him (that is 0 pens). Thus here it shows that negative numbers are often used as a comparing methodology.

 Well giving a cleaner observation on this it seems that some data is lost while using the method of negative numbers. When I say am having 10 pens less than what he has, the information we could extract from this fact is that if he id having 10 pens I would have 0 pens or if he is having ‘x’ pens I would have ‘x-10’ pens. So I don’t know how much pen he is having, while in the first case when I say I give 10 pens to him I know he is for sure having 10 pens. So why did they choose the method of ‘negative’ when it does actually reduce transferring information?. Well I think this way of negative may be ineffective in providing information in the places where you have information, but in the situations where you may have to start with initially this works the best. Ok I think you are confused. Let me give another analogy.

 Thus this same way charge could be seen. When I rub two bodies charges get transferred since we don’t know the initial amount of charges present in both of bodies, I would say that one body is having a charge of ‘+ x’(just like box A having +5) while other is having ‘-x’ or lacking ‘x’(just like box B having -5).

 Ok having talked about the use of this type of convention, we need to know a bit more about how ‘science’ or to be clear ‘nature’ works , in order to precede further. will meet you up in my next essay !..

A Journey That Made Me Think- Bunch of unanswered questions (II)

“Thinking doesn’t stop”

…(part I cont.)….This seemed logical so I thought the eq. d(x)/d (t) = v could pour me out some information why cant we define the time as d(x)/d(v)…? This clearly shows out why velocity(relative motion) when there is no relative  motion (dv = 0) time tends to infinity meaning the time interval or the basic time unit (where there is no relative motion) would be infinity or it is like the smallest time difference one can measure in a relative motionless space is infinity. This makes sense. But till now, I still don’t know whether am right or wrong. It seemed to work fine for me. Time from my point of view is defined by this equation – t = d(x)/d(v) ….

This tedious discussion between my brain and my mind (though for me both means the same) made me mentally sick for few days!. After couple of days realized that nothing was quite wrong in my definition. Thank god! A big relief after an intense struggle!.

I couldn’t believe that ‘I’ could think!, rather than saying just think (which all can do) I thought that “intellectual thoughts”  can pop in my mind too! That’s awesome! Then realized these thoughts don’t set me apart from all humans. It’s noting special, one just needs a curious mind and the patience to find answer.

Its sometimes very hard to believe that wired things make people think! And one such thing that gazed my eyes was – a spider eating a fly! Yeah that’s a common thing. Can you imagine a question from that?. In this context I would like to mention about one of the stuff that my physics prof. Mr.Ananthan told me the very first class I went, I really envy these people. They have such an amazing creativity. He said this about science and nature. “The entire nature and we humans are playing an hide and seek game, here we become the seeker. Nature “whispers” its properties (or its presence) to us in a silent way so that those who have the keenness can here it, and among them those who have the patience achieves in discovering the hidden secrets of nature- this game of hide and seek between nature and humans is called ‘SCIENCE’ and those who win the game are called ‘SCIENTISTS’” wow! That’s an awesome piece from the mouth of a genius!

As my prof. said, nature exposes it every secret to us, but it is very few who actually find it. Coming back to that spider eating a fly or a deer eaten up by a lion or a eagle eating a fish, I would say every living thing in this universe has its demon – except “us”, the intelligent creatures! Till the very existence of human race, it us nature and environment that selected the best suited species for its exist.

Let me start off with a simple theory of nature. First a small molecule came off, from which the simplest of living molecule evolved. It grew stages with tough competition and animals popped up. And everything came, bones evolved, eyes came up, the sense of touch came, sense of hearing came, taste came, and finally the Big B “Brain” came. This is where I think the nature opened the wrong door. Till that brain came into play, everything was under the nature’s control and now I think the nature is under our control. From the day the humans formed up, I think there is not a single evidence of genetic evolution. We humans have stopped the process of evolution. From atoms came molecules, from molecules came compounds ,..yeah a long chain. But wait! Let’s see where this game ends! From compounds came cells, from cells came organs from organs came humans and from humans came “?”  Nothing but a question mark! Every species had its own time period to live and its own nature’s clock to exit this universe (to get extinct) but we humans are becoming the unprecedented creatures!. That’s not fair!. Dinosorous lived, polar bear lived and dosen’t live now, while tigers lived and is living but will not live in future (hope so !). But we lived, we are living and we still would live. This is not fair again! I think, if nature follows some rules then it should be our turn to get out of the game and allow our next species to evolve. So my next question is “(4) Are we humans hampering the biological process of natural selection or rather why is the process of evolution stopped within humans ?” is it not the nature’s responsibility to make the selection of what to live? But it is ‘we’ who are selecting it now. Instead of the environment making the most adaptable species exist, we are making or rather modifying the environment to adapt to our needs! There is something major going wrong right?! I still don’t know the answer for this issue!

To say it in short, am just amused by the human intelligence. Its such a miracle that we living creatures are made up of non living things!. That’s the beauty of this nature!. We are nothing more than a complex arrangement of molecules but capable of thinking, or rather we thinkers can create our own universe using our imagination. Wait ! Did I say “imagination”? yes! imagination! That’s the power of humans. While talking about imagination I remember one of the question I had for a very long time“(5) How do we know what others see or imagine?” ok! Can see your eyes blinking. Dint understand it eh?. I’m not sure whether I could communicate this question I have in my mind but still, let me give a try.

Let’s see what I am speaking all about.given a red color and asked "What color is this ?" what would you say?  hmm! A silly one But just answer it !... you will say red.. right?  Have you ever wondered why red looks the way it is?  It is not that simple as you see. Its through basic sense that humans, or rather living things interact with nature. Seeing this red creates a sensation in your brain that makes you see it. But that sensation while seeing red is different form the sensation when you see blue. That seems obvious. Fair enough!. But let’s look at this situation. I see red and that creates a sense lets call it S1 and you see red and that creates a sense in you too and lets call it S2, it is not that obvious that S1 = S2..Or rather, to make it in simple sentence, its not fundamental that we both see the same color. What seems red for me may seem blue for you, but still you call it red because you were trained to recognize it as red when ever you are given that color. Its just a mater of nomenclature you are taught with, that makes you “sense” it as red.

Fine, the above argument seemed like a tough one to imagine right? Often in the physics lectures or discussions I attend, my prof. would say this “students should know what questions are to be asked and what questions not to be asked” this seems simple! But to my knowledge, the worst ever quarrel I have encountered in my mind is to branch up my questions into those two categories that my sir told. Often I end up mismatching those!. One such question I asked my sir the very first year was “(6) what is Energy”. In my good old days the only thing I knew about energy is that it equals mass times the velocity of light squared. Every one knows this!. But it took years for me to understand what exactly that equation given by a strange human mean. Actually came across this stuff when I was browsing one of the book in library named “A fight between energy and mass” I don’t exactly remember the author, but its one of thebrilliant books I have ever read !  Here it goes as I call it,

                                             “Father of the equations”

                                                             E=mc2

Let me take up the scenario we had before this equation was found the present situation. Before this equation was found, for lighting up a city, we needed tons and tons (give a thought about the words I used now, will talk about this in next part! Frame your own question!)of coal, in fact coal used to come in trains every month for the power station to create electrical energy. Now guess what? We just need a small pocket sized container having Uranium atom that would make up all the coal that came in the train! It seems stupid doesn’t it?. Well let me get into some calculations with “real life numbers” with some approximations. Now let’s see what that E and m in the equations represents. E , here refers to the energy, but what energy?, m represents the mass, But what mass?. This equation tells us if a any body of mass ‘m’ is convert fully, by some means, into energy, the energy obtained is equal to the mass time the velocity of light squared!.

For example. Lets take the basic element H2 , let me see what I get when I convert 1 atom of hydrogen into energy. Let me do this simple junior college chemistry. Lets find how much does one atom of hydrogen weights

                                      1 mole of H weights 1.008 g

                                      1 mole = 6.02 x 10^23 particles (Atoms)

                                      Mass of 1 atom = 1.008 g / 6.02 x 10^23 = 1.67 x 10^-24 g

That’s pretty small right? Now lets see what happens when we convert this into energy

                                                  E=mc2

                                                    =(1.67 x 10^-24 g) x (3 x 10^18 ms^-2)^2

                                                    =15.03 x 10^12  Joules

This is an incredible amount of energy! A Joule is not a large unit of energy ... one Joule is about the energy released when you drop a textbook to the floor. But the amount of energy in 30 grams of hydrogen atoms is equivalent to burning hundreds of thousands of gallons of gasoline!

If you consider all the energy in the full kilogram of water, which also contains oxygen atoms, the total energy equivalent is close to 10 million gallons of gasoline!

This is amazing!. often I have heard that “this equation tells us how energy and mass can be inter converted” this makes sense theoretically but does it makes sense in real life situations?. Lets see, in the above example I took, we got 15.03 x 1012  Joules of energy from 1 atom of hydrogen and now to get back that one atom of hydrogen we have to spend 15.03 x 1012  Joules of energy phew! Quite a big number ! isn’t it?. This is where people fail to understand the basic essence of a formula. Though every physicists speaks theoretically, practical reality posts a tough job for them. It is okay to state the equation as every one does, but as far as am concerned I don think it makes any sense. But remember I still dint answer the question what energy is!

Note: discussions about mass and charge would be included in my next part as I still have loads to think about them! Part III will be posted soon. 

R.Santosh Kumar

Physics lover,Tamil nadu,

Chennai,

 India

ph-9884229459

A Journey That Made Me Think- Bunch of unanswered questions (Part-I)

Well, this all started when I used to walk down my way from my coaching class to the railway station, which was few kilo meters away , an easy 20 - 30 mins walk. Each day I get on the same way watching different birds, butterfly, trees etc..

Then one fine day i was so impressed by the bird’s flight. Wow! What a beauty our nature is. Then came the very first questions "(1) How are we living things here? ". i mean this is so very magical , its as if we were dropped down from somewhere, the earth we humans , birds, animals other stuffs. it made me think so because everything around us we see, cat, dog ,rat ,donkey anything for that mater seemed to be so intricately designed and fits the surrounding so well that made me think that we people should have a "creator".

  While I was thinking this, my mind kicked off to one of the very old question I had (hope many had this too! "(2) What is god and why do we need a god?" basically this question drops down to answer the fact what is the purpose of god in scientific terms. If science could answer any question thrown to it then what is the reason for the theory of god!. Then I thought I could answer the reason for that theory. The “creator” I mentioned above could be the “god” that we know now. But I was not sure whether the “creator” theory that came into my mind was rich and support full enough. But my luck! I came to see a biology book of my sis which contained a chapter “Darwin’s theory”. What a brain Darwin had! Jut an awesome theory. That answered my question how we beings are here.

That day, the day I started to think, gave me a very pleasant discomfort in my mind. I started to think! That’s nice!. The question which came on its own into my mind made me search for questions which I didn’t have answer. After a couple of days another interesting question popped up while a stranger asked me the “time”. “(3) What is time?”

I think this is a very absurd question. Why should one think about time when he has his watch rolling in his hand with two hands ticking a 360’ turn? But I did think how time could be defined. First thought that we could say time as the one which flows only in one direction, but wait anything that flows in one direction cannot be time. Then I added which flowed with constant speed oh my god! The realized if Einstein was alive he would have thrown stones on me!. Then what else is time? Maybe can we define it has the one which we can count within a constant or particular time interval. Like the sun raising up and going down. But this would make it too clumsy to handle. Then what else is this bloody time? I got fed up and thought we could define time as the one which has no definition! Wow! So beautiful I thought – “stupidity” replied my brain. But just a second Ya! Now I remember my teachers said about time! A second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom. Phew! This is really bad.! So this is what time is eh? I surely nodded my head and said a NO.

And started again to think about it , I remember my physics sir saying about science “my aim , as a teacher, is to create intellectual discomfort in your mind” excellent lines by my prof. I couldn’t feel free without answering it. But jut then realized every definition I gave had one thing in common, the big word “motion” !.. yes, I thought of defining as a change of any measurable quantity.. Would this do? Nope I redefined it as relative change. That made sense for me. I convinced myself by this thought experiment- imagine only you are in space, nothing else, everywhere you see just darkness no light and nothing and there you try to define time what will you do? You start counting numbers at regular intervals and say this is my time. Fair enough! Now instead of you, keep a wooden box surrounded by noting but just black space, then how would the wooden box define time?. It tries to move in a circle so that it could count the number of circle It made and define a unit time, but it couldn’t go in a circle or not even move! Why? Because it had noting relative to which it can check if it was moving. Fine!. Now you throw a spherical into the space and now you tell the box to define time. Now the box tries to move in circle revolving the sphere as center. Puff! Box failed. Every time it covered a distance it could see the same sphere with no difference. But now box has another chance, it can move about repeatedly making oscillations in any way such that it is not at constant distance from the sphere. Now what happens? It did succeeded in defining time . how ? Every time it made an oscillation it saw a change in “shape” of the ball. Each time it went nearer to it the ball grew shorter and each time it went away from it the ball grew bigger. And the “gap (time)” between the shortest and biggest (or any gap) cold be the defining unit of time for that ball.

This seemed logical so I thought the eq. d(x)/d(t) = v could pour me out some information why cant we define the time as d(x)/d(v)…? This clearly shows out why velocity(relative motion) when there is no relative  motion (dv = 0) time tends to infinity meaning the time interval or the basic time unit (where there is no relative motion) would be infinity or it is like the smallest time difference one can measure in a relative motionless space is infinity. This makes sense. But till now, I still don’t know whether am right or wrong. It seemed to work fine for me. Time from my poin of view is defined by this equation – t = d(x)/d(v) .

Note: things written here are my personal experience feel free to coment and point out my mistakes.Part II will be posted soon. Have hell a lot of unanswered question in my mind. 

Santosh Kumar

Physics lover,Tamil nadu,

Chennai,

 India

Science is Questioning but wait, "what to Question?" - the science way

one of the best thing i learnt from my physics sir is how to question.crazy isn't it ?.

i still remember the first class i saw my prof. and the questions that popped out from our students side. when i look upon it now , i sit along with a smile in my lips... those were the days when i was not used to distinguish between the two most important divisions of questions "1) questions to be asked & 2) questions not to be asked" ! having a question mark in your mind now eh?

this seems absurd at first. well what the hell are the questions to be asked and questions not to be asked ?. let me quote the incident that took place in my first year discussion. the first day i entered my sir thought the very first topic - 'motion' and gave a statement "whenever we see an particle moving, i associate a quantity called average speed,which i define as the ratio of distance traveled to the time taken" (mind me, he is not a person who makes random statements, in science , he personally believes the importance of "talking science" rather than English)  and as soon as he finished the statement there were a dozen hands which rouse with dozen questions in hand! let me recollect a few of the questions
1) "sir, if this is average speed, then what is velocity?"
2)"sir, isn't the speed related to the kinetic energy of the body"
3)"sir, should we not apply limits?"
4)"sir, is the particle in uniform or non uniform motion?"

remember this was the first class and that was the first statement he made and see the questions that has been raised. let me validate each question
1)----at first this question is no way related to the statement made. in science discussion it safe, or rather it "science manners", not to be over inquisitive in asking questions. the statement made by him was to define average speed, from the listeners side the range of questions the ask must lie between the statement's knowledge. no other extra words, or undefined words must be used in the question.

2)----this seems all the more worst!. now the second person is making a statement on his own and not asking question. this doesn't come under the heading "question" in the due course it is sure that the tutor would teach him what kinetic energy is. but thinking he is smart by asking this question,he is actually exposing his ignorance of knowledge to ask question !

3)---this one seems logical, but this shows the understanding of the person. the statement made above was about "average speed" and not "speed"

4)---since no where in the sentence he made he has used the word uniform motion etc. its not his head ache to answer.

these are the questions that fall under the category not to be asked ! well, what then are the questions that can be asked.?
questions that could be asked forms he basic building blocks of learning the subject. often when one reads a book or text, he just skims through it and tries to understand it, but how? he tries to visualize the scene and then comprehend it. but as for as i am concerned a complete learning is one in which a person knows the meaning of each and every word he read in the text. for instance in the above statement my sir made - "whenever we see an particle moving, i associate a quantity called average speed,which i define as the ratio of distance traveled to the time taken" , instead of questioning thinking that you have a sound knowledge before hand ,question as if you are new to this area and you don't know a word in it. a good qualified questions would be like
1) "what is distance?"
2) "how useful is the defined quantity?"
3) "why do we need to define such a thing?"
4) "what do you mean by, when you say particle?"

these questions make your knowledge about the subject deeper and the quality of these questions compared to the previous set is just so high. in a science discussion it is important that right questions pops up at the right time. this improves the discussion and often leads to a sequence of interrelated questions. in fact questioning is a skill. shooting the correct question at an appropriate time needs high thinking skills and analyzing capability.

All time favorite question not be asked ! my sir drew a diagram of inclined plan (wedge) and said "an experimenter is finding the friction coefficient using the set up shown....." and asked us to ask questions relating this

student(seriously) - sir i doubt weter this system would work !
sir                        - is that so? , why do u think so?
student                 - in this set up i think since the wedge has no support it would fall down due to                                                                                                                                           
                             gravity and so the experimenter cant find the friction coefficient !
 sir(stumbled!)       -  ooh! great, now can you answer this."i say again it would fail because there is                     
                                 no experimenter shown!  
student(?)              - !@!@$#%

well here the student dint understand the tempo in which the problem is set. it is assumed that the wedge has support and there is experimenter etc. and if he was to question these things then there would be innumerable questions such as will not the body fall after it completes? , wouldn't the wedge break if he body is heavy? would not the body fly off when wind blows? etc... these are some questions ( or worst questions) that are not to be asked and assumed to be answered by our own brain.          

thus the questions fall under the two great category - "TO BE ASKED and  NOT TO BE ASKED " !!!!!!
and in fact after 2 years of physics with my sir, i still find it harder to put up my questions in these two divisions !