SCIENCE CAPSULES

         A fast running bi-cycle hit by an object may not fall down.  It gets stabilized due to gyroscopic effect.  A boat or ship tilted by the strong wind will not turn turtle because it is so designed to stabilize itself.  A space station orbiting around the earth may get hit by a rock.  It may slow down.  But it will not plummet to the earth.  It automatically get stabilized.  Let see how.      A satellite is taken by the rocket and pushed into the orbit.  The satellite is given a preciously calculated velocity called 'orbital velocity'.  If the velocity is slightly less than the orbital velocity, it will fall down on the earth pulled by gravity.  If the velocity is more, it will fly away from the earth or earth's gravity.      Any orbiting or rotating body have what is called "angular momentum'.  given by the formula      Angular momentum = mass * v...

         In this essay, let us take some time to wonder about our own planet.      As for as we know, this is the only and lonely planet which sustains life.  When it is looked from the moon, it appeared like beautiful blue marble.  It has little habitable land and more ocean waters.  It shelters wide spectrum of plant and animal life.  It is not like a moon which is a boring and barren land.  It has oceans, dessert, rivers, waterfalls, valleys, farms, vineyards, mountains, forests, lakes and so on.      The earth yields flowers of many colours, designs, and smell.  We can grow sugar cane and hot hot chilli side by side.  It is wonder that the same earth yield so much variety, spice, colours, and tastes.      All the 100 plus  elements in the periodic table can be mined out of earth's surface.  It yields so much iron and hydrogen but little gold and uranium. ...

         Age of universe is said to be about 13 billion years.  It can be estimated using the Radio-activity in a piece of rock.  The entire universe was said to be contained in an atom 13 billion years ago.  An explosion occurred (big bang) and the entire universe was thrown out and started spreading.  The universe continuous to expand even today.      Age of the earth is around 4.5 billion years.  It is born out of sun and belongs to the solar family.  It  has undergone so many changes since its birth.  Even old continents have gone and new continents have formed.      The first man had appeared around 2.5 million years ago.  The first single cell life appeared in the ocean and evolved into intelligent human beings according to Darwin's  theory.      The mutations and environment necessity made us.  We are now dominating the world in using its re...

         Imagine a balloon full of air.  The air molecules are moving randomly inside the balloon.  Let us pierce the balloon with a pin.  The air rushes out.  Why should not the air molecules stay inside the balloon safely and ignore the little hole?  That is not the way the world works.  The molecules always "want to occupy as many states as possible".  Hence the air goes out in the open to occupy more volume.   The things always goes into disorder (entropy) and the disorder increases with time.  The above statement is what we call "second law of thermodynamics".      Consider a cup of coffee on the table. Suppose the heat from entire room flows to your cup of coffee, the coffee will boil and the rest of the room will freeze.  Freezing means bringing things to order and arrangement.  It violates the second law.  Hence it will never happen.  Hence heat must flow from high ...

            Take 4 pieces of triangle shape.  Join and make a closed form.  You get a prism or pyramid form.  It has some properties. 1.  All the faces are triangle (same polygon) 2. Three triangle meet at every corner.  (same number of polygon meet at each vertex) 3. At each vertex, the three internal angles[angle between sides] are 60+60+60=180 degree.  It is always less than 360 degree. 4. They always satisfy Euler's formula No. of faces+No. of vertices- No. of edges = 2    4               +   4                - 6                       =2 This shape is called tetrahedron.  It belongs to platonic solids, named after philosapher plato.  Platonic solids have  the above properties.  There are only five platonic solids in our three dimensional world. 1....

       The observable universe has atleast 2 trillion galaxies in it.  The light takes 93 billion years to travel from one end to the other.      We are living in a galaxy called milky way.  Our nearest neighbour called Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million light years away.      Alpha centuri is our nearest star besides our sun.  We can reach that star, if we travel in the speed of light for 4.25 years.      The farthest planet in the solar system is Neptune, the diameter of its orbit can be taken as the width of the solar system.  The diameter is about 9 billion km.      The sun is about 150 million km from earth.  The distance from the moon to the earth is only 384400 km.      The international space station which is orbiting the earth; in which men lives  and does experiments, is at the height of 408 km from the surface of the earth.  The hei...

      Imagine car moving in a plane surface.  It is moving on a 2-dimensional surface.  Hence it can move in two directions(x and y).  In other words, the car can have 2 transnational motions.  How about rotations?  It can only turn left or right on the surface. It has only one rotational freedom.  Hence one steering wheel is enough to turn the car.      Imagine an air-craft flying in a 3-dimensional air space.  It can have 3 transnational motions (x,y,and z).  It can also rotate about all the three x,y and z axes.  Hence the air-craft also has three rotational freedom.  ( In 3 dimensions only, the number of rotational freedom and the number of transnational freedom equals).      So, an air-craft needs a three steering wheels.  Three wheels are not practically possible.  Hence the joy-stick was invented.  The mechanism of joy-stick is the same as t...