Me in MadScience

So here I am at MadScience ( I'm sorry, MatScience). Contrary to expectations, I am whirring along pretty well. It's a nice joint, this, with cool facilities.

The people here have been nice and kind to us too. Apart from one little kid who kept looking at me as if I hurt his finer sensibilities, nobody seems affronted by my presence.

There's a pretty good gym here, and some people work out even. I go there everyday, to stand and look admiringly at the equipments.

Chennai is full of surprises. The other day we found a restaurant where they even sell beef. Which is not all that surprising, except to people like us who were getting the impression that fish, chickens, goats or indeed any eatable creatures don't exist in this part of the world. And the hotel Annapurna here is to the good: the bangali food is as good as anywhere in Kolkata.

I shall stop now, Monk is calling me. We're going out to explore the city a bit more now....who knows what we may find today! Free cookies, maybe?

The Right Not to Listen

' Our Party is for unity. Everything is in reality united, pleasure and pain, Hindu and Muslim, love and hatred, religion and science. You wonder about the last two? I am here to tell you they're the same (hear, hear). You know how? Because science says people will die, and when people die what do we do but pray? Thus the unity is firmly established.'

As I try hard to concentrate on the book I've been trying to read for some time now, such brilliant pieces of reasoning are pushed down my ears. Yet another political meeting is being held near our apartment, and they have placed loudspeakers everywhere. Closing doors and windows did not help. Listening to the voice of the Great Uniter, I wonder if the strategically located loudspeakers were at all necessary.  He has the sort of voice that you might confuse him with a firecracker during Diwali.

In the book I am trying to read, something on political philosophy, the words 'individual's freedom ' stare at me. I wonder if I don't have the freedom not to listen to whatever that is being shouted out on loudspeakers by whoever can afford  them. The freedom of speech does not include the right to be heard, and I would like some protection from the noise. Sure, I could put on my ipod or something, but that's not the point. The point is: a person, when she's in her own house, in her own room, should have the right to choose what she wants to listen to, which may be nothing at all.  At this moment, all I demand is a reasonable degree of silence that will allow me to just make sense of the words before me. But the Great Uniter has now worked himself into a frenzy of righteous indignation and is louder than ever. I can't make out anything he's saying, it sounds like a lot of tyres bursting. 

I wonder if there's a law protecting from such noise. Surely this is greater than 65 decibels.   Maybe I should call the police. Is it at all likely that they will stop a political meeting in election time, given the possible political repurcussion? And if they do, will I be able to continue living here, after angering all the political parties ? Or perhaps I should just 'adjust', like everyone else seems to be doing? After all, the Great Uniter has just stopped (having had a heart attack, I'm sure) and his replacement is somewhat less loud.  Besides, all this will stop when the elections end. Mmm, maybe I should settle for a scorching letter to the editor. Or just this post.

 

Alexander McCall Smith visits Jadavpur University

The place, I haunt all the time : JU, more particularly, the Eng Sci building. We often assemble near the door and chat. The man, Alexander McCall Smith,  whose stories takes place in such far away places like Botswana or Edinburgh. I've had imaginary conversations with him, but never expected to see him, let alone in this world of Jadavpur. So when the writer of No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency entered the Engineering Science Building, I was left feeling somewhat unreal.

I hadn't known he was coming to JU, and I suppose not many people did either. It was Ad Libber who informed me (and I am deeply grateful to her). Anyways I had arrived much earlier, so I chatted with our lab attendant Palash da who informed me that our batch had the lowest lab  attendence in recorded history and we were bound to fail in the exams. Feeling much braced, I again went outside and prowled around for a while, a forlorn figure. Dr. Rimi Chatterjee, the smiling Professor of Creative Writing, was also there - waiting for the BCL people to arrive. I really like her blog, by the way.

Anyways, I waited and waited and finally some friends arrived and while we were chatting the BCL people started to arrive. Then came this beautiful lady looking for the KP Basu Hall ( She turned out to be Susie Nicklin, Director Literature, British Council).  And then, finally, he arrived.

Ad Libber had asked me to get an autograph if possible, and I lost no time in cornering him even as he entered Eng Sc. As I cornered him with a 'Mr. Smith?' he immediatley smiled and shook my hands, and seemed delighted to have been asked for an autograph. And when I thanked him for the autograph, he replied ' Thank you very much indeed!' as if I had done him a favour by asking for his autograph, and not the other way round! There's this phrase which I've often read-  'Old World Charm'. I think I saw it in action today.

Not more than 30 people had arrived, including the members of the Faculty of English. So KP Basu was quite empty. Which was a pity, but also a pleasure for those present because they all got to ask questions. The introductory speech was given by the HOD of English Department, who informed the audience that JU English was one of the few places where Alexander Smith's work was taught. The Talk was chaired by Susie Nicklin, who told us that instead of reading, they would have an interactive session. Which was much cooler really. She then proceeded to interview Smith,  and we learned much about the man and his works.

  We learned about Smith's   connect to India through RK Narayan, a major literary influence on him. Narayan   wrote about people who were far removed from the centre of history, and yet he managed to capture many important things about the world in those stories. This was what appealed to Smith.  He said that if there was any justice in the world, Narayan should have gotten a Nobel prize. Smith talked about how he had loved being in Botswana and how his works are in a sense a homage to the place. He talked about Mma Ramatswe, someone who had suffered much and could still be very kind and generous. He spoke of the Little White Van and of author's relations with movie people ( They think authors are irritating people') 'I'm sure we all know such people', he said.  Is he really a crime writer, his books seem to be somewhat lacking in bodies? Smith said that murder is statistically one of the least significant of crimes, so perhaps people should write about more common crimes - like parking offences. He had the audience in splits recounting a story he wrote about an author who chose to write about real parking offences. Nicklin mentioned his Really Terrible Orchestra - an orchestra of people who can't play of which he was a founder-member. ' We don't always finish at the same time' he said, ' The audience expects something to go wrong, and we never disappoint them.'  A possible show in Kolkata? Sure, Smith said. 

 It was a wonderful  session, and Smith had us laughing all the time with his delightful sense of humor. Then came the question-answer session. A lady-fan complained to Smith why Jamie and Isabelle didn't have a full-fledged affair, which would have cured her of her prissiness? Smith said that they do in the later books, and Isabelle even has a child. He revealed to us that he had never had an idea in the beginning of any such development.  Isabelle is forteen years older than Jamie, not to mention his ex-girlfriend's aunt. ' We don't approve of that sort of thing In Edinburgh' he claimed mock-seriously. But it's pressure from his lady-fans which made him make Isabelle and Jamie have an affair. 'I'm an interactive writer', he said, and proceeded to ask the questioner if she would like them  getting married. Many other interesting questions were asked and answered very fully. I asked how he thought of those very interesting titles for his books. He said that he sometimes came up with the names before writing the books and would then write a book that had something to do with the title. He told us that his editor insisted on an adjective in the titles - so while he had come up with ' An attitude to rain' , it was to become ' The Right Attitude to Rain'. 

And then, finally, the session was over, and Smith signed some books. I left, knowing that I had had some really  wonderful time.

[ Note:  The Smith quotes in the post should  not be considered exact Smith quotes. I have obviously forgotten his exact words and may have understood him incorrectly. This is what I understood and remembered of his words.]

Best of Uncyclopedia

I have been sick today, so spent a lot of time surfing aimlessly. Here are  the best among the uncyclopedia entries I read:

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Sania_Mirza

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/J.D._Salinger

( only for those who've read Catcher in the Rye)

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/HowTo:Love_me

This, That

After a month of pain and suffering, exams ended, leaving me a mere shadow of my former shelf. 'You look like the wreck of the Hesperus' Plum Wodehouse would have told me could he have seen me then. Or maybe ' You look like something the cat brought in.'

After that, I had to have fun. So I played cricket with friends for a while. But I was horrible at it, and lost all matches. Then I thought I would watch some movies. Day before yesterday, I watched Australia. It was way too long, it could have been two and a half movies or so. 

And after 3 hours of Australia a reasonable person would have taken a well-deserved rest. Me, I allowed myself to be persuaded to watch Ghazini. 3 hours and 15 minutes and a lot of Rajnikanth-esque action. And with 3 hours of Ghaz and 3 hours of Aus,  it felt like Hugh Jackman and Amir Khan were doing 'dhishum dhishum' inside my head.

Yesterday, I went on a mini-picnic with some friends to Diamond Harbour.  We started too late and it was too hot when we got there. It turned out to be a wrong choice of place, not much to be seen around. We looked for some peaceful, quiet spot but the place was cluttered with pilgrims to Gangasagar Mela. After moving to and fro for some 45 minutes, we decided to call it a day. 

But the weird thing is, even though the stuff we did was lousy, doing it together was a lot of fun! 

Happy New Year

Isn't 8th Jan a tad late to wish us happy new year, I can almost hear my readers cry. Oh, now you remember us, a passionate reader is sure to growl. (Voice in head : And whom are you trying to deceive, my dear sir? You have not readers.  Voice 2: Yeah, but ya gotta Fake it till ya Make it. Know what I'm sayin, kiddo? Voice 1 : Don't call me kiddo, sir. Voice 3: The way this post is being written at the moment makes me rather glad that there are no readers)

Eh, where was I? Oh yeah, that's precisely the question I was about to answer. I was busy with my exams. It's been a month since exams started. First there was the competitive exams like NET and then the semesters.  Speaking of semesters, here's a funny story. There's a guy I know, he has a  great memory. Now he has totally memorised all the stuff profs gave us before the exam. Then we see him asking the guy sitting next to him something. And we think ' This shouldn't happen, that guy never forgets.' And then we hear what he's asking : ' Which page of which hand-out does this question correspond to?' And the next guy says 'handout 3, page 6' and the guy immediately gets started, lightening fast! 

( And if you are one of my, heh, international readers from some first world nation and are wondering if it's possible to do  Masters in Science in India this way, the answer is unfortunately yes in most cases.)

Anyways, I was hip-deep in shit doing some serious memorising myself ( about a week before the exam we were given a 150 page hand-out for our Plasma Physics exam. I still remember the definition of plasma, but not much else) . So I was, as you must have realised by now, detained by circumstances and couldn't wish you. And with no more ado, I will do so : HAPPY NEW YEAR !! The last year may have been one of the worst, but here's hoping that this will be a  good, good year.  

 

Wave Particle Duality

 I will try to give a rough idea about wave particle duality to people who do not know what it is. All you need to know is what a function is.

 

What do we mean by a particle? We have this picture of a small ball-like thing, or a point with some mass  – that’s somewhere or the other all the time. That’s the defining thing about particles – they have a position at all times. So we can describe a particle’s position by a continuous function x(t). That’s the partcle picture.  But for real life objects, can  we desribe them that way?  Does such a function exist at all times? How do we know?

 

Now we can’t tell what the position of anything is without looking at it. This ‘looking at it’ is called measurement. So, when we do a position measurement we get a position. But what about before the measurement? There is no way of knowing what x was, or even if there was a position at all. Simply put, we can’t describe the position by x(t) at all times.

 

 Then what is the right way of dealing with real life objects, like electrons and all?  That forms the substance of Quantum Mechanics. QM says that, between  measurements, all we can say about a variable like position is to give a function f(x,t), called the position wave function. What is the significance of the wave function? If you square it, it gives the probability. So the  values of f(x,t)-square at various points will be the probabilities of the position being found there.

 

 How does the wave come in?  The wave function of an object varies with space and time in a particular way,  but that depends on the surroundings it finds itself in. There’s an equation that describes this variation. If we know the surroundings the object is in, we can find out how the wave function will vary.   Under certain circumstances it varies like a wave.

 

What does that mean? Imagine a wave.  It moves along with its crests and troughs, now rising now falling. That’s the same thing that happens to this function. If you graph f(x) with x for a certain time, you will see crests and troughs, and these crests and troughs move forward with time, just like waves do. That’s roughly the idea.

 

  As the wave function varies like a wave, the probability of finding the electron gets to places where only a wave could reach, and particles couldn’t. There’s this phenomenon called interference, shown by waves.

 

Suppose there are two sources of some kind of wave, placed some distance apart. They flow in crests and troughs. Now suppose they meet at a point where they both have crests. So the two crests will add and make a bigger crest. But suppose a crest meets a equal trough. Then they get cancelled and you get neither crest nor trough. If you take a cardboard with two holes in it, place it before some wall and throw light on ir you will see:  Alternate patches of light and darkness on the wall. The two holes act like two sources, sending in the light waves. You get Light where crests meet, dark where crest meets trough.

 

Now do it with electrons? What do you get, You get the same pattern. Some places on the wall the electrons will hit, at someplaces  no   electrons will it.. That’s because the wave function is like a wave, it shows interference. It has its crests and troughs. If electrons were particles, we would not get this pattern.

 

 So electrons behave in their own way, which is neither particle nor wave.

 

( I may restructure and edit this post a bit.  Meanwhile, any comments regarding inaccuracies or unclearness of presentation will be particularly welcome)