RPI in Fall

Fall colors are wonderful at RPI.

This is the ivy covered back-wall of the library.. ain't it pretty??

Now ofcourse, winter is setting in, and Fall is falling...

:-)

Life is so beautiful, I love living...

:-)


Photo Credits: Vasu [His pics are so beautiful, that they are going around the entire community's albums]

Analogies

This is about a professor I TA for. He is Swiss, and teaches in a very interesting way. He jumps about the class, and explains everything with lots of actions, but that won't probably be effective in words, you have to see it...

His analogies are out of the world too. And I being the TA, can actually take notes on anything I want.. So here, I present his brilliant masterpieces almost verbatim.

Topic: Stress, Strain and Elastic Limit

Prof: "I am sitting on this table and the leg of the table is getting pushed down."(He swings his legs wildly, sitting on the table)"Now, if I eat a lot and weigh twice as much what happens?? "(This while making actions of stuffing food in his mouth with both hands)

A student says: " The table leg gets squishes more".

Prof: "Yes, this squishing is called Strain. "

"Now if I eat too much, and get too fat, I won't remain in the elastic limit. If I am still eating a lot, a lot of chips and cheese and icecream, and become an elephant, the table wobbles, and the leg breaks and the elephant is scared and runs around the room."( And he actually ran around the room with scared expressions!!!!) " This is called fracture, not of the elephant's leg because of the running, but of the leg of table."

:-)

Topic: Ferroelectric Domains and Curie Temperature

Prof: " We are all holding hands and looking at the sun, since it is a bright sunny day. As it gets warmer, we get restless, and our palms get sweaty. So we let go off hands and start moving about, talking to our friends in the chains. "

"This is exactly what domains in iron do, when they are heated up, they loose their orientation."

Topic: Bending of light, Refraction

"Suppose you want to shoot the sun, you pick up a rifle, and aim at it through the closed classroom window. Since the light bends due to refraction in the window glass, your aim would be off. But the sun is so big, that you might hit it anyway, so the sun is a fantastic shooting target."

This guy's awesome, if you get so entertained in a Physics class, you are unlikely to ever forget the concept.

Am I homesick yet?

I have been here for 3 months. I like it here, the place, the school, the new life, new ppl, everything...

I have largely been happy, not really missed home or family. I guess I have still not accepted it in my mind that I have come away for ever, my heart still escapes the fact, and pretends as if this is just a holiday away from home, and I can return any time I choose.

What happened today?

Home-made sweets arrived from the aunt in Texas, and a card from my parents, for my birthday. Just the opposite of usual. Mother used to make sweets for me, buy me a new dress, and even get me flowers... but never a card... card was something ppl far away sent....

Now my mom's sent me a card, and written it exactly the way I used to write cards for her, complete with the "open with a smile" and smiley on the flap. I saw it, and my mom's feeble attempt at drawing a smiley, and tears filled in my eyes. I could not do as instructed...

I held the card in my hands, and silent tears kept falling. have never felt so alone in life, as I did when I held that card in my hand...

I just can't picture my mom looking for a card in Archies. I can't, since I have always bought all cards for everyone at home.

I used to buy cards, give them to everyone on their birthdays, have them admire it for sometime, and then leave it on a table, which I quietly picked up and preserved.These small mementos on birthdays were my introduction to our austere South Indian household, where payasam was the only celebration for birthday. Now, my family is BUYING cards, and sending them to me. And they are doing it, because they feel I value cards a lot... but today I wish, I was with them, instead of recieving cards in the mailer....nothing can occupy the void created by absence of dear ones... not phone calls, not emails, not cards...

Life is great, but not so easy sometimes...

Physics of deja vu !

Lets begin from the beginning.

From Einstein's special relativity, we know that velocity of light is same in all inertial reference frames. An inertial frame is anything that moves at a constant speed, a car, a space ship in orbit etc. To find position, speed etc. of a system moving w.r.t. to another system, we use transformations, which are basically math equations. If a space ship moves at a definite velocity w.r.t. earth, a meter stick in the ship will look shorter than a meter when measured from earth. Time also changes, to keep the velocity of light constant. One second in the spaceship will appear to be greater than one second on earth, when measured from the earth. This concept is called time dilation.

Now, if a pin takes 1 sec to fall from your hand in a SPACE SHIP, it takes less than that on a video taken from earth. So, earthlings can predict where the pin will fall, before it does... Why? because time moves at different paces in different frames…

These different frames in metaphysics could be referred to as "dimensions". So, what has already happened on earth will happen 2 yrs later in another dimension. Closer to light velocity, the velocity of the frame, greater will be the difference in time. The same way some dimension can be 2 yrs earlier than us.

This concept can allow one to conclude that what will occur on earth tomorrow has already occurred in another dimension. It is also the basis of the fantasical time travel.

We are trapped in this dimension, so even though there is this possibility of knowing what will happen, we are no better off.

But this discovery, that in another dimension we have lived out our lives, and we can’t walk out to that dimension to change it, can lead to the conclusion, that everything about our life is "predetermined". So, all the conscious choice, "I make my own choices" goes poof, and in a scary way.

Whatever is happening, there is no way to change it, if you have to be at a certain place at a certain time, that’s where you will be, irrespective of whether you want it consciously..

I don’t want to believe that we are picked and placed, and that we have no free will... But the math points that way, and I have not been able to find faults with that logic yet, though I am trying hard, and that’s the point of writing this blog.

What does this imply?

You are not even thinking today where exactly you will celebrate your 63rd bday...But in some dimension, you might have already blown out 63 candles... and had a mast party...

At some instant, what happens to you, the dialogues you say, the setting of the room, reaction of people etc.; basically a short trivial scene, do they sometimes ring a bell? That you have played it in your mind before…That kind of a thing??

Doesn’t this give you a slight apprehension that things might be predetermined after all??

If not, then what does this cute little intuition mean to u??

Is it just random play of nature, or some inherent cerebral activity?

If it is some inherent mental process, what triggers it?

Because most of these scenes are totally trivial...you would never plan them or worry about them with your conscious mind.

Why should nature be so random in some aspects and so precise in others is what puzzles me, and makes me delve into whatever theories seem to explain something.

Keep wondering, and if you have any ideas, do let me know… would love to discuss it and clear my head.

DISCLAIMER: Kindly don’t scold me for obtuse thinking, I am not the founder of this theory, though it is an assimilation from various sources, including my cerebrum. I would be grateful for any lapses in the theory, which makes me revert to the “Free Will” system, that I would prefer to believe.

CREDITS: Anirudh Maitra, this blog post is mostly lifted from a conversation I had with him on this. He asked the questions, I developed my philo to answer them.

Postscript: I am not the only one thinking of physics of deja vu, ppl have written books on it.... sure gives my independent idea atleast an iota of credibility...

http://www.manyuniverses.com/WhatIsDejaVu.htm
http://dailymull.com/1229/The-Dead-Book-13-frag-2

Latest Goof-Up

Midterms underway, so time for only a quick story...

I was proctoring a Mid-Term exam yesterday, since the professor was out of town. Stood very seriously and stoically for 1 hr and 10 minutes, getting dreadfully bored.Just 10 more minutes to go.... I could have finished the day with dignity, but the Email-Obsessive Graduate Student inside me called to me, and I walked to the the computer in the room. Logged on, checked mail in RPI inbox, moved on to gmail. A friend had mailed, scolding me ( with nice expletives) for never calling her. I started typing the reply, but suddenly looked at my watch.... It was alomost time to finish. Then I heard smirks and giggles from the students... To my horror, I realised that the projector was on, and my mails were up there on the projecter screen for everyone to see...I panicked and switched off the monitor, but the mail was still on the screen.... I fumbled a little more, and finally found the button to switch off the Projector.

I was so embarassed...but I had to announce "Time up, Hand in your Sheets", and collect the sheets.

I hope most of them were busy writing their exam and din't even look up to the screen... This is optimism stretched toooo far, even by my standards....