These guys are close to achieving the Holy Grail! This has to be seen to believed!!
For more information go here
Monthly Archive for September, 2007
Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius.You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: How did he do it? He must be a genius!
From “Ten Lessons I wish I Had Been Taught“, by Gian-Carlo Rota
equation through a mechanical analogueLets intuitively understand why Power(P) = Voltage(V) x Current(I) through a mechanical analogue. Power means delivering some amount of energy per second. In electricity, energy is delivered to a system when electrons passing through it move from a higher potential (high energy) to a lower potential (low energy). Total energy delivered per electron is proportional to potential difference (V).
Consider a ball of mass 
falling from height 
. Energy is 
. Lets say that 1 such ball comes to your door at the ground 
level every second and gives all of its energy (It can give you its energy by moving a turbine blade, a windmill etc. Lets assume perfect energy conversion). So Power is 
(Note t=1 sec). Another equivalent scenario is you have a ball that starts out at height 
i.e it has energy 
. Lets assume that 2 such balls appear at your door every second and give you all their energy.
as before.
So:
Power=Potential energy of each ball x No of balls giving up energy per second
In the electrical case:
Power=Energy lost by the electron(U) x No of electrons passing per-second(N)
If 
is the potential difference, the Energy difference is 
. 
is the electron charge. So
Here:
Current(I)=charge of electron(e) x No of electrons passing per second(N)
So you can double your current (double the “balls”) and halve the potential difference (decrease height of “balls” by half) and still have the same power. Current in our mechanical analogue represents the number of balls you get per second while potential(V) represents the gravitational potential.
TIFR gets a steady stream of famous physicists. Last week the 2002 Physics Nobel Prize winner Prof. Koshiba visited us. The guy really seemed sincere, humble and likeable. Midway into his presentation he asked us about the time he had left…(it is obvious to me that Nobel Prize winners did not have any time limits for presentations they make 
)
Prior to his talk I knew nothing about his field of Neutrino Physics. The last few days I’ve done some reading and am absolutely fascinated by it.
Here are some links if you want to learn about Neutrino physics.
- The 2002 Physics Nobel Prize page
- Koshiba’s Nobel Video Lecture (39 mins) – The talk that Koshiba made at TIFR was quite similar to his Nobel Lecture
- Basics of Cerenkov Radiation
- “Solving the Mystery of the Missing Neutrinos” A very good summary article by John Bahcall
There is really no lack of elementary/advanced information on Neutrino Physics. For more resources your best bet is the Nobel Prize site because it has links and references to the authoritative papers on this subject. For brushing up on fundamentals you can also check Wikipedia.
In the meanwhile I leave you with a photo of the Super-K neutrino observatory in Japan. Wow! Nerds rule don’t they?!
This one appeared in my favorite newspaper DNA (Daily News & Analysis) in the Money supplement on September 8, 2007 in the Mumbai edition.
Make an impact in Physics!
Writing a great research paper is an obvious way to make an impact but here are some other ways…
1. Write a book on a topic
2. Write a review paper in a journal
3. Write a piece of software (to teach, simulate or calculate something). If the software is useful, a community will fast grow around it. Also you will learn amazing amounts of stuff by learning to program the physics of a problem!
4. Build a good website (for reference, help with a specific topic, explanation of a pre-existing paper, a tutorial etc.)
5. Build a novel/better instrument or detector. Many Nobel Prizes have been won by people who simply invented new instruments rather than complicated theories!
6. Teach! Teaching helps you learn! A good teacher is also very influential!