Most Amazing Concepts in Physics

By: Nikhil Malankar

 

Science deals with many aspects of our daily life. You start your day with the application of Science. Just take an example of the toothpaste you are using or the motion of a wave or even respiration. Everything relates directly or indirectly with Science. Science can be divided in the following parts.

1. Physics
2. Chemistry
3. Math
4. Biology

From the topic you must have understood that I am going to talk about Physics. OK Then, What concept do you find the most amazing? If you don’t find it on this list then you are welcome to say about it in the comments column. Let me start off with the list.

1. E=mc^2

We all know about this formula. It was introduced by one of the greatest scientists of all time .i.e. Mr. Albert Einstein. This concept is really interesting one and the debate about its correctness is still going on. It gave rise to other concepts like warped space and space time which are also very interesting and deep. It is a very controversial topic and I had also written an article related to this one. The link to it is:

http://scienceray.com/physics/einstein-some-really-interesting-fact-about-emc2/

2.Gravity

The most important concept given by Physics to mankind is the Gravity concept without which it would have been impossible to make rockets and other studies related to it. The most famous example to explain gravity was given by Sir Isaac Newton with his Apple Tree example. It is said that Newton was not the first one to observe the phenomenon of gravity but it was Galileo who first discovered it. Anyways, this concept caused a revolution and modern day physics is heavily dependent on this concept.

 

3. Space Travel

Few centuries ago it was impossible for mankind to think of such a concept. At that time we would have also not thought of travelling through Airplane but in today’s time everything is possible. Space Travel is a wonderful concept which has given rise to the discoveries of our solar system. Now it is also possible for humans to send computers in space to study our universe. Landing on the moon was possible due to this. It was history created and a new step made by man. So, Space Travel is also an amazing concept turned reality in Physics.

 

4. Time Travel

This has not yet turned into reality but I think that in the near future it will be possible to travel through time too. Many scientists think that time travel will make humans lazy or will cause some disturbance but one thing is sure that time travel will be possible and no one can stop such a great concept to turn into reality. Stephen Hawking also has given so many concepts related to time travel. You can read his book ‘A Brief History of Time’ or even watch his ‘Into The Universe’ which frequently comes on Discovery Channel.

 

5. The Black Hole

I think this is one of the most wonderful concepts in Physics. It is a perfect example of a Perfectly Black Body. The compression caused creates a high gravitational field around the dead star so that light also cannot escape from it. Light has a tremendous speed of 3 X 10^8 m/s and if it can’t escape from a black hole then imagine about the power it has! I personally think that light is not the fastest. I have thought over it for quite a while now and I think I am right about my previous statement. Using the concept of black hole it is possible to time travel but only in the future. So, Black hole is also an amazing concept.

These are 5 of my favorite and amazing concepts in Physics. Do you have anything more to share?

Is speed of light the maximum one can achieve?

By: Nikhil Malankar

 

What is the first scientific thought in your mind whenever you see a light source or a light beam from any source? Whenever I see a light beam the first thought or question arises in my mind is how can light have such a tremendous speed? The second thought which usually comes in my mind is that if light has such a tremendous speed, then can anyone travel more than the speed of light? The whole article is based on the same concept. I always wanted to clarify this doubt about light. I may go wrong somewhere while writing some concepts. If you find any mistake then do let me know about the same through your comments. Let’s start with the discussion.

We all know that the speed of light is 670616629mph to be precise enough. Take a simple example to understand my concept. The example goes as follows: Suppose you are travelling in a car with a speed of 5m/s. Now you want to travel at 6m/s. So, you pump in more fuel to go a little faster with a speed of 6m/s. But is this possible if you were travelling in a shuttle which is able to travel at the speed of light? Take a simple example again. Example is: Suppose you are travelling in a shuttle which is travelling at 670616628mph. Now you pump in more fuel to travel at 670616629mph which is the speed of light. Now you are travelling at the speed of light. But now is it possible to go further than this speed? Or is the speed of light is just ‘THE’ ultimate speed in the universe? As the speed of light is a ‘physical thing’ we also can’t see of increasing or decreasing it. But is there anything else which can travel with a further speed? If it is then what is it? Let’s go into some further details.

Suppose if we are able to travel at a speed greater than 1mph than that of light. Now the question is that will it affect the shuttle? If the shuttle does not get affected then is there a possibility to go at a further speed? If the shuttle does not get affected then what is the maximum speed one can achieve? If light is the upper limit then why is it so? How does it charge the particles at such a fast rate? And if we are able to travel at a greater speed than that of light than what should we call it? Here I would also like to bring one of the existing concepts of ‘Black-hole’. Black hole is such a powerful thing that it can also attract light which is supposed to have maximum speed. So, if Black-hole can attract at such a great speed then can’t we artificially create such a great speed? If the concept of Black hole actually exists then it is also possible to create such a speed which is also able to attract light. According to the theory of relativity, a Black hole is a region of space from which nothing, even light, can escape.  It is called black because it absorbs the entire light incident on it and it reflects nothing. It is a perfectly black body. The life span of a Black hole is infinitesimal but it keeps on multiplying itself at a very high pace. Black hole is also very small in size. But as it keeps on multiplying itself it turns out into a huge mass which attracts anything and everything. So, can’t we use this concept to create an artificial speed which is actually greater than that of light? It would be an ultra speed to travel. How can we use this in day-to-day life? Let’s see further.

If we are able to get a speed higher than that of light then a whole new dimension would open up. We would be able to discover the universe and those hidden mysteries about so many things. So many unanswered questions would have a justified answer. It would also help for advancements in technology and we can also find out if aliens exist or not. If anyone arrives on any conclusions using this piece of information please do let me know. Thanks for reading this article.

The Universe according to Me

:Posted by Gaurav

All the theoretical physicists around the world are looking for the Grand Unification Theory. A theory that incorporates everything in the universe including the universe itself. The four forces in nature are all that make up this universe or rather I should say that universe which can be observed. Definitely we haven’t seen the edge. Neither we have found any center. On the other hand our universe is so big that by laws of mathematics, which we have devised, we are at the center.

Thus all the theories and the calculations we have done cannot be imposed on that part of the universe that we haven’t observed. We may ourselves be an exceptional part in the universe where the value of Planck’s constant is what it is. This is pure imagination but, according to quantum physics, a valid one. The constant will have multiple Eigen value states until and unless it is actually observed. So there is always a possibility that we would not be able to imagine what is beyond the observable boundaries like the experiment with Schrodinger’s cat.

So here’s, what I should say, an extended version of what you all know.

The Universe according to me is designed in three basic simple steps. These are :

1) Initiation

2) Chaos

3) Re-Order

Everything that we see is a result of some kind of initiation. This may be somewhat opposite thought to those who believe in coincidences. But actually, if observed carefully, coincidences are merely the happening of two or more events simultaneously. It is the nature of human mind to find the relation between two events that it observes simultaneously.

Consider a small accident happening. A car hits a truck and loses its rear view mirror. Obviously, the two drivers first come out to check the damage, if any done, to their respective vehicles. The car driver sees that he has lost a rear view mirror and starts yelling at the truck driver. The truck driver doesn’t thinks that it was his mistake. The observers around see the broken mirror and start creating their views about the accident. Each of them has a different theory. Some would say that the truck should have stopped because there was traffic. Some would say the car was speeding and they thank God that no one is hurt. Some would say the car driver is drunk and that’s why he is wasting his time and energy for such a small damage what could have been a big one. Some would say it was just a coincidence.

There can be a correct theory. But the coincidence is that the car and the truck came in contact with each other. So the observers make their theories and name them as coincidences. For eg. An observer who observed the car before collision would say that the car driver is to blame that he was speeding. It was a coincidence that the truck took the car’s rear view mirror.

Hence, everything has an initiation, we just name it coincidence.

Then comes Chaos.

The world has been chaotic in some or the other point in time. Consider the above example again. The car hits the truck. So everything around it changes. If the car had not hit the truck, everyone would continue their work as planned. The truck would have safely crossed a road. The drivers would not have got out of their vehicles. All the observing people would not be observers at all. Of course I am taking the collision as the initiation. The initiation was followed by the chaos by the immediately above assumptions not happening. Everyone came out of the order they were meant to remain in.

And then comes Re-Order.

In the same example, eventually everyone has to go to work or home or any place they want to. So they move away from the site of accident. The two drivers take their vehicles out of the way due to honking of oncoming traffic and the road becomes busy again. But here the order is created due to initiation of some other kind(like the honking).

Hence if observed carefully, everything in the world has an initiation and then go into chaos and then reorder. This was also happening at the time the ‘ Time ‘ started. And it is happening to this very day. The chaos and the reorder become the initiation of other processes thus making the nested cycle of themselves.

My views on the Universe : Part 3

This article is the 3^rd part of the series ‘My views on the Universe’. The first part was.  My Views on the Universe : Part One and the second was My Views on The Universe : Part Two. So, I recommend you to first read the 1^st part and 2^nd part and then come to this 3r^d part. Let me introduce you again to this series. This series is my imagination about how the universe actually is. So, without wasting much time let me start off with the topic.

This 3^rd article is based on an assumption that the Universe is just a sheet of paper. Paper? How? Okay! Let me express myself. Read on.

Imagine that the Universe is just a paper. Paper has many uses and mostly it is used for writing and drawing. So, imagine that the Universe is sketched on a piece of paper. All the planets, meteoroids, stars, etc. are just drawings! This piece of paper is not too big but is very detailed. It has been sketched using a very fine pencil. Or should I say a rainbow pencil which adds a mixture of all the beautiful seven colors and their shades into this Universe. So, why does the Universe appear to be black? The answer is because most of the part is not colored yet J. It takes a lot of time to detail everything and so the artist of our Universe has decided to give colors only to the part which are important. The specialty of His art is that this paper turns its drawings to life within itself! And that’s why we have various life forms. But only those life forms exist which the artist has written at the back of the paper.

So, there is a 100% possibility that aliens exist. This artist has created only our Universe. There are many other artists who have sketched their imagination into their papers and created many Universes which can also be termed as parallel universes. One more thing is that this artist is never satisfied with is work and so he is always creating a new imagination and adding it to our Universe. So, our Universe is ever expanding.

We should praise the intellect of this artist who has created such a wonderful world! And we can learn an important lesson from his artist that ‘Never be satisfied! Satisfaction leads to rest and rest will never fetch you rewards’. So, keep on working and adding new feathers to your hat. And one day you will have your world as the Universe itself!

So, this was my 3^rd part. Hope you liked it. In case you did not read my first 2 parts then their links are:

My Views on the Universe : Part One

My Views on The Universe : Part Two

Add your valuable comments to let me know if you liked my article or not.

The First Electric Current Theory

By: Gaurav Tiwari

//ok….thinking about what i have been since 8th grade….how did the universe all began and how was life created by amino acids molecules….i mean what caused them to combine and form DNA??….recently i got to know that electricity fundamentally consists of flowing of electrons from one point to another(may or may not be a back way)  and was responsible for “destabilizing” the molecules in the oceans filled with dissolved iron to form the perfect life forming recipe… and now starting with the funny language English… he he …lol//

Every once in a while we think about how the universe began and why did it began in the way we see it. One of the mysterious things in physics, which appears almost magical to me, is electricity. This blog is about the formation of the first electric current in nature. I am talking about the lighting we get in the rains. How does that begins? If we find the way or cause of lighting in our time it is certain that all the lightning in the universe began in the same way.

It was the day before the BEEE(Basic Electrical and Electronics Engineering! Phew! The abbreviation is better! 😀 ) exam. I was studying or almost completing my portion for the big test the next day. We had DC circuits and AC circuits as two important chapters in the book and I was passing my time reading the fundamentals of electric current. One thing led to another and I started thinking about the fundamental cause of electric current in any conductor. The answer is simple. Potential Difference. Potential difference causes the randomly moving electrons to flow from point at higher potential to point at lower potential. The current will flow till the PD doesn’t becomes zero. Hence for setting up electric current in any material we need to create a potential difference across it.

How do we create potential difference? By supplying electrons on the negative terminal to make it more negative and taking electrons from the positive terminal to make it more positive. But this also constitutes electric current. Hence the question of how did the first electric current was formed  hit me. The answer was hiding within the skies.

The air molecules in the sky move randomly move about in any free space available to them. In this process they often collide with each other. These collisions provide potential energy to the electrons in the air molecules.

We know that when a body (which is bound to another body due to various natural forces) gains potential energy and moves to a higher orbit. This state is often called the excited state. As a fundamental rule of all bodies that exist in universe the electron will definitely try to lose its potential energy. A ball when thrown upwards falls down because it tries to lose its potential energy. The same happens with the electron in the excited state. It tries to regain its orbit.

But we see that lighting often occurs from one cloud to another cloud and from a cloud to earth. This clearly shows that earth is at lower potential than the electron in excited state. The molecules or atoms on earth are comparatively immobile with respect to the molecules of air in the sky. The reason for that is gravity.

Now there are two ways the excited electron will behave. It will either fall towards the nucleus or move towards the earth.

There is a fundamental rule of the flow of current. It will preferably flow through the path which has low resistance. Hence if the electrons from the excited atoms in the sky are moving towards the earth it is certain that the air resistance suffered by the electrons is less than the resistance in the path which leads to the nucleus.

Now here comes the catch! What could possibly offer a resistance to the electron that is greater than the air resistance it goes through and makes it move the way it moves?

I think there are two possible answers to this.

One is Dynamic Screening Effect. And other is unknown resistance X.

I do not know whether the world knows about dynamic screening effect or something like that is ever used elsewhere. I created that word somehow.

We all know about the screening effect and what it does. Now suppose there is a bucket of water. I take a tumbler and take some water out of it. When the tumbler is removed the water molecules arrange themselves to take the shape of the bucket. Here water tries to regain its original arrangement thus minimizing the effect caused by removal of some of it by the tumbler. Consider another example. Around 7 billion people breathe oxygen every day. Every plant species gives out oxygen and takes in carbon dioxide. Many other processes tend to add and subtract some part of air. But the envelope of air around the earth remains in the shape as before.

Similarly when one electron is taken to a higher orbit other electrons in the electron cloud tend to minimize its effect by rearranging their positions. But the newly formed arrangement provides repulsion to the excited electron which is somewhat like the screening effect. Thus the electron suffers resistance in going back to the nucleus.

Now there are two questions to that thing. How does dynamic screening effect offers resistance more than air resistance? How does it explain lightning in the clouds of hydrogen where there is not enough electrons to build up the dynamic screening resistance?

By logic there has to be some kind of resistance. For hydrogen I can only think of an unknown resistance ‘X’.

Laptop Freeze and Only cursor working (wmpnetwk.exe)

By: Nikhil Malankar

The other day I was playing Skyrim and experienced a seriously deathly lag on my Alienware m14x. To notice a lag on my gaming rig was a pretty unusual thing for me since I’m not used to play on a laggy system for almost a year now! Well, before this I had experienced a problem wherein my laptop’s screen froze but my cursor was working. Something was wrong but I just could not figure out what it was. And suddenly laptop again froze while I was playing Skyrim after the painful lag. My internet connection was enabled that time. So, I had to other option than to directly turn it off by long pressing the power button.

After doing this I was put into another state of shock by seeing the BSOD(For non-techies: BSOD means ‘Blue Screen Of Death’). That scared the crap out of me. The system again restarted by itself after the BSOD. And what next?? AGAIN BSOD!! Shit! I was screwed! My dad was just sitting besides me having his lunch and me besides him on a scary way to Blue Hell! And this loop of BSOD continued for 3 times. After that I entered the BIOS mode and tried to change some values there. And at the ‘Exit’ screen of BIOS I chose to restore the default system settings and saved the changes. Now, after a reboot, Windows started to the screen where it asks the user to Launch a Startup repair or to start Windows normally. I preferred to start Windows normally. But then to my surprise I again encountered the BSOD! Laptop restarted again and then again the Blue Screen error came so I decided to use the same trick of entering the BIOS and exiting. After that again the Launch Windows Startup repair or Start Windows normally screen appeared. This time I chose to launch startup repair. (My dad was still eating!) And then my good luck, startup repair fixed the issue and my laptop started to the login screen. And my dad finished his lunch, phew!

I quickly started taking backup of all the important stuff on my hard disk. After taking a backup I decided to run a scan on my laptop since may be this could be a virus or a malware. After about 3 hours my laptop experienced the same freeze again. I thought that there is some problem in my network card and thats why I mentioned in the first paragraph that my internet connection was enabled. Something was seriously wrong with my Alienware m14x. I was worried but then I could only repeat the procedure that I followed previously to login to Windows. I had to go through the BSOD again but fortunately enough I could skip the startup repair. I started thinking, what possibly could cause this issue? And my logic pointed to two things: over-heating or excessive memory(RAM) usage. So, I opened the task manager and observed that my logic was right
for the excessive memory usage. I’ve got 4GB RAM and the RAM usage was almost as high as 90-97%. To simplify the terms, my physical memory, as one can observe from a task manager, was that high. Something was using a lot of RAM. Now the challenge was to find out what was it? I took a little break to eat something. And then got a little bored with the problem so I turned off my laptop and went to my classes for the lecture.

After I came back from classes it was about 9 PM and I worked on the laptop for about 3 hours without any issues of BSOD or screen freeze. But I knew that the problem was still there. It was around 12 AM when I had taken a back up of all the data on my laptop and was totally exhausted now so decided to go to sleep. So, I turned off my system and went to sleep.

The next day I was equipped with a new inspiration to fix this issue and so started off on the quest to do the same. Task manager was the first step that would further act as a great help to solve this issue. Now I had to somehow find which process/service was using up so much of physical memory. So, I went to the Task Manager’s ‘Performance’ tab. There you can observe how many cores your Laptop/PC has. Plus it also shows you the graph of your physical memory and the CPU usage (i.e. usage of cores). In that you can observe the ‘Resource Monitor’ option. I clicked that. Alternatively you can directly go to your ‘Run.exe’ and type in ‘perfmon.exe’ to launch the ‘Resource Monitor’. Now, in ‘Resource Monitor’ there are 5 tabs namely: Overview, CPU, Memory, Disk and Network. I was experiencing problem with excessive memory usage so logically my solution would lie in the ‘Memory’ tab. Now here I observed that one service was using around a 200k something commit memory which was obviously very high. Then I saw its name and it was ‘wmpnetwk.exe’. Alrighty, so I had got the cause of the problem and now was the fixing service.

Nikhil Malankar

Resource Monitor in Task Manager’s Performance tab

Nikhil Malankar

Resource Monitor Window

Well, I would like to explain ‘wmpnetwk.exe’ program in this paragraph. This is Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service and it should not be consuming so much of physical memory on a computer and if it does then you got a hint that something is wrong with it. A 60%+ physical memory for a single service is way too much and this was the reason for the game lag and screen freeze.

If you are experiencing the same issue then here is the solution that I tried:
Click Start and type ‘services.msc’ in the Start Search. This will open up a window wherein you can see all the services that are executed either automatically/automatically(delayed)/disabled on your system.

Nikhil Malankar

Type services.msc in the Start Menu (For Windows 7 users)

Nikhil Malankar

Services.msc screen and Windows Media Player Network Sharing highlighted. (I’ve already disabled it)

Search for ‘Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service’ and right-click and select ‘Stop’. This will stop the service. Now again right-click and this time select the ‘Properties’ option. There in the Startup Type select either ‘Manual’ or ‘Disable’. Since I don’t use Windows Media player at all so I chose to disable it for good. I’m a VLC fan.

Nikhil Malankar

Properties Screen of wmpnetwk.exe (warning: Before disabling please make sure that you stop the service)

Problem solved gum gums, u jelly Windows??

I hope this little experience of mine would help you if you ever encounter the same problem. And now Skyrim runs without a lag!! ^_^

check dimensions

Posted by Gaurav

There is this theorem in the first semester engineering (MU) which gives the formula of centrifugal tension in a belt.

T=m(v^2)

T->the centrifugal tension in the belt

m->mass of the belt

v->the belt velocity

Even if u don’t know anything about this let me tell you that the equation is written as it is given in the various textbooks many of which are recommended by the best colleges of Mumbai.

The problem is with the dimensions. The left side of the equation has the dimension of force whereas the right side has the dimension of energy. We already know that an equation with incorrect dimensions is incorrect. I asked about this to my teachers but I am not satisfied by their answers. Hoping to get the answer from you.