sciencecapsules

     VISIT: 'MATH IN ACTION' SITE       Arranging circles in a rectangle is always a problem.  If you arrange them as in figure(1), there will be a lot of wasted space.       But if you arrange it like figure (2), there will be less wasted space.  This is a hexagonal arrangement.  If oranges are arranged in this way and pressed, each orange will take a hexagonal shape.  Hence hexagonal-shaped objects can be neatly and efficiently packed.  That is why honey-comb cells have a hexagonal shape.  Some floor tiles have that shape.     But the hexagonal arrangement is always not the best.  If apples, oranges, mosambi are arranged in this way in a rectangular box.  There will be a lot of empty space in the beginning and at the end of the rows.   Hence they should be arranged as shown in figure (1).  12 oranges can efficiently be arranged in a box in this way.  That is why 12 - dozen - came into being.     Suppose, you arrange oranges in3D space.  You have to arrange them in a pyrami

      We have id number, license number, credit card number, our marks, our property, our temperature, our BP, all are digits, why?  They can be stored electronically in a small space. A thumbnail-sized chip can contain volumes and volumes of info. Data can be compressed easily. Compressed data can be transmitted easily. An email arrives in no time.  The digital info can be encrypted and decrypted easily. Due to encryption,  your credit card info. is safe.  The errors in the data can also be corrected. Suppose, there is a scratch in DVD, it will still play, hence, there are so many advantages for having info. in digital form.      But, some info. like audio, video is not available in digital form.  How they convert them into digital form. Let us find out. First, we should know what is analog data. Analog: Something physical with continuous change. Digital: Made of numbers.     A girl sings before a mic. It is analog. It is actual pressure waves in the air, so it is physical with contin

      Your son has secured the fourth rank in the class. There are twenty students in the class. Hence 15 students are below him or 80% of students are below him. Now, your son is said to at the "80th percentile". Percentile: The value below which a percentage of data falls. Formula: Percentile = (Number of values below "x"/total number of values)*100 In our case         =(16/20)*100         =80      Suppose, your son has scored 90% marks in math. But has percentile in math as 20. That means, only 20% of the students are below him. That is not impressive in spite of the high score . So percentile gives new meaning to data.      A total of 10000 people visited the shopping mall for over 12 hours.                Time (hours)                       people                    0                                           0                    2                                         350                    4                                         1100                    6 

      'coin toss' is a famous experiment in probability theory. We always have a fifty percent chance of getting head or tail.      If you flip the coin 100 times, you may roughly get 50 heads. Suppose you do 100 flips 100 times, what will happen? Sometimes, you get 50 heads, other times 45 heads, or 55 heads, etc. Anyway, it is always around the central value '50' (50%).      Let us define 100 flips of the coin as one experiment and let us do 100 experiments. The experimental results are given below.        A = number of heads in every 100 flips or in one experiment            B =  number of times A in 100 experiments                                                                A                  B                                  100                       0                         90                         1                         80                         4                         70                         12                         60