Science and me!

Since the dawn of human beings, the hunt has begun, to answer questions, why something works the way it is working? Why the sun rises? Why an apple falls back? Motion, friction, time, speed, velocity, waves, matter, and what not! Billion years of evolution, an infinite number of discoveries in the past, and yet there is an infinite number of questions unanswered! People in the past have wasted their lives just to teach us the earth is round! People in the past have lost their lives just to show us Radioactivity exists! 

Pythagoras a philosopher predicts the earth is round in 6 century BC, approximately 4 billion years after the formation of the earth! And a kid is taught this lesson in 3rd grade! The kid is literally living on 4 billion years of human evolution and experience and there is so much to be grateful of! 

Gravity and the other three!

Back then when I was in 4th grade, studying fundamental forces of nature. Gravity, Electromagnetic, weak, and strong nuclear force. I asked my father about them. He was drinking water when I asked this question. He paused for a moment and, tapped his thumb on the water glass once and on the water once. Well, the glass was stiff and the water waved! Then he dropped the glass to let it fall down. At last, showed a photocard attached to the Godrej wardrobe. Said “All the actions I did has one or the other natural forces. Take your time and find it out by yourself!” At that time, I ignored him thinking he was dumb and could not answer my question. Now I know he was better than my teacher!

Quantum, the cat!

A few years ago, I had a cat named Benoni. It used to roam around the streets like a Maddog and came to my house only for the food. Some days later I was in my friend’s place where I got to meet a guy who stayed near my home. He showed me a cat photo and said he owns it! Guess what! Its Benoni. We both thought that it was our cat and Benoni enjoyed two house meals. The cat was there in both of the houses and you will never know where he is until you see him. Benoni was our Schrodinger’s cat! Later I renamed him “Quantum” and his legacy is Quantum superposition!

Silicon, My love!

Many people have asked me why I happened to study Electronics despite everything else! I just deny to answer it. Even if I do, nobody will get it! Ok, let’s try if you can get it!

Whenever I think of the Quantum superposition, I instantly think about silicon. Silicon is an amazing element ever. 

Imagine a street between point P and point N. There is a wall built perpendicularly on the road that stops people. But this wall can only stop 10 or fewer people and if 10+ people start walking from point N to P, the wall just vanishes! And when the number reduces back to 10 the wall reappears again! The wall is right there for fewer people and it’s not just there for more people. Logically there are no such walls for people, but magically there are such walls at an atomic level possessed by these beautiful elements called silicon and germanium. I was at grade 10 when I fell in love with these elements. I chose to pursue them later for those most obvious reasons.

Time cheats! Coz it’s different for different people!

The other day I was at a medical store, gave the prescription with Rs 500 to get some tablets. Within no time I had tablets and change on the table. There were three types of tablets one, costing Rs 16 per sheet of 6 tbs, other Rs 28 for a sheet of 6 (I had taken 2 sheets so 56 rs), and so on… I think I took more than 45 seconds just to calculate that bill but the lady at medicals took less than 20 seconds to search those tablets, get the sheets cut as per the number I wanted, calculate the bill and give back the change! Maybe she’s faster in her actions and thoughts... I hope one day she reaches the speed of light or maybe even cross it to go back in time. 

1+2=2.8!

There was an ingenious friend of mine who possessed a great memory and calculation skills. In one of the chemistry classes, the lecturer asked us the mass of a Hydrogen atom. This genius kid knew hydrogen is made of an electron and a proton and knew their respective masses. He added the sum and gave an answer, which apparently is wrong! Hydrogen mass is a way less than the sum of masses of its constituents. 

Pun- 

If you have a gram of gold and your friend gave you 2 grams of gold the sum is 3 for mathematics but Einstein interrupts, Mass is Energy divided by square of the velocity (c square). Total Energy is the sum of kinetic and potential energy. Potential energy can be negative and in the picture, if you see 2 is slightly cross written and is positionally unstable. Thus possess negative potential. So 1 + 2 = 3 - 0.2 of potential energy! 

The point of writing this is to say things were not easy. When someone answers our “Why” questions, it’s easy to read understand and relate to things. But its never easy to discover things by ourselves. If I had 300 years to live, in a lonely parallel planet like earth, I would not have discovered little things like the existence of air. Maybe I would have died sooner not knowing to eat when hungry. Everything that we know is taught to us. If you are doing good in life, its because you are on earth at the right time where everything is sorted out! Generations of people have wasted their lives to discover little things and make our life better. let's end this chit chat with the quote that I love the most. It was originally written for chess players by the greatest player himself “Paul Murphy” which I modified to suit here.

The ability to study something is a sign of intelligence. The ability to get deeper into research is a sign of wasted life!