SCIENCE CAPSULES

  Zero was invented long after the invention of numbers.  zero(0) usually indicates nothingness.  I owe you nothing or zero dollars.      First, zero serves as a place holder in a number system. Examples: 5; 500; 0.005 It aids readability of a number. Adding and multiplying with zero is easy. 5+0=5;  5*0=0 but subtracting,  5-0=5 0-5= -5 Division presents some problem 0/5=0; it is logically okay But 5/0 is a mathematical nightmare.  First it is said to be undefined . Another argument goes like this, 5/1=5; 5/.1=50; 5/.01=500 So as the divisor are goes on decreases, the answer is looming large.  The conclusion is, when the divisor  is zero, the answer must be infinity .  But infinity is another weired concept.   In physics, we have zero temperature, zero energy level, zero gravity etc,. So, "nothing" really matters. Science update: Potato has been grown in simulated Martian condition(mars) in ...

      Scientist Focault made a pendulum using 200 foot long wire and 61 kg bob.  He conducted an experiment using this pendulum in Paris.  This large pendulum can swing for an hour before getting damped.  He attached a pin at the bottom of the bob.  The pin drew line in the wet sand spread on the floor.  After an hour of swinging, focault observed, the line drawn on the sand rotated (tilted) by an angle of 11.25 degrees.  How this happens?  Let us examine.      When the heavy pendulum swings, the plane of swinging or the path of oscillation cannot get altered.  While the pendulum swings strictly in one direction, the floor of the earth slowly rotates .  Hence the direction of the line drawn by the pin on the floor slowly changes(tilts).  After an hour, there is a observable change in the direction of the drawn line.      Focault measured the speed of rotation of the earth accurately by t...

    In a bank,  a customer may enter randomly.  He has to join a queue.  He has to wait for sometime before his turn comes.  Each customer may require 5 minutes of service.      The manager of the bank wants to know,  how to reduce the waiting time?  How many windows should be kept open?  What is the average waiting time for a customer? etc,.       One may write a computer program to simulate the queue situation in the bank and get answers.           We have to simulate the situation minute by minute.                                                   ROUGH ALGORITHM A minute begins: A customer may arrive(based on a random number) If the customer arrives, we have to increase the length of the queue by 1 . A customer is being served (duration of 5 mi...

  Einstein predicted that heavy astronomical object can bend light like a lens due to gravity.  Years later, Eddington proved this and then Einstein was shot into fame.      We know, stars cannot be photographed during the day.  So Eddington chose a total solar eclipse day ,  a proper place and photographed stars' light passing by the sun.  The same stars were photographed in the night when the sun is not present near the path of star light.  Both the photos were superimposed.  A shift in the positions of the same star were observed in the overlapped photographs.  The shift proves that the sun's heavy gravity attracts and bends the star light.      When a very big star dies, it collapses, shrinks, becomes a massive object and develops enormous gravity.  This gravity attracts and obsorbes all the light.  Hence we call this object as a black hole .      Since massive astronomical body ...

    Let us make a row of 5 cells and fill it with binary numbers as in figure 1. Only the center cell contains " 1 " and all other cells have " 0 s".   Now let us frame one rule and start a game.  Rule:  " If either one of a cell's  neighbors are 1, but not both, then the corresponding cell the next row will get 1 otherwise it will have 0 ".  .    Refer figure 2.  First cell do not have neighbors of 1, so first cell in the second row get 0.  Second cell's right neighbour is 1.  Hence the corresponding cell in the second row gets 1.  Proceeding with the rule, we can fill up the second row.   Apply the rule and create up to 4 rows. Blacken the cells having 1 and leave the cells with 0s blank. So a pattern is starting to emerge.(figure 3&4)      If we add more rows and more cells( a computer program is suitable), the pattern as given in the figure 5 appears.  Oh, it is sierpinski tri...

      Children love to play with soap bubbles.  The feel, colours, and motion attracts them.  Let us see how the colours appear in the bubbles.      It is a hollow sphere made up of thin film of water.  Only air is inside the bubble.  We know the sunlight contains the famous seven colours.  The sunlight enter and exit the bubble.  There may be several reflected and refracted rays of sunlight in the water film.       At one point in the bubble, the thickness of the film and our viewing angle may be such that; only red light waves(rays) will be in phase (in order); then they will reinforce themselves and red will appear bright in that point.  All other colour waves will be out of phase (in disorder) and they will destroy themselves at that point.      By the same reasoning we can tell, at another point yellow will only appear; at the next point only orange will be bright.  ...