As a kid I loved multiplication. Dividing was hard—because I didn’t know what to do if the remainder wasn’t zero—but I managed to do okay in my tests. It was only in high school that I met the Cartesian product. Tensor products had to wait till my undergrad. Mathematics is full of products: scalar product,… Continue reading Coins, Dice, and Entanglement
Some physicists believe gravity is weakening. If true, then Earth won’t hold gases in its atmosphere. Lighter gases, like oxygen, will escape, and life on Earth will end. Robert H. Dicke predicted that gravity weakens by about 0.2% every year (I'm skeptical about this estimate). It must weaken by more than 90% for oxygen to… Continue reading Is Gravity Weakening?
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sriram-akella2/episodes/Popper-and-Reverse-Motion-Pictures-voice-by-11-ai-e2gvs0l Imagine watching an action film like The Tomorrow War in reverse. Or imagine a tree shrinking back to a seed. Or a broken cup rearranging itself into an unbroken cup. Magic, isn’t it? But not everything is irreversible. Imagine a car going straight. If we capture this in a film and run it in… Continue reading Popper and Reverse Motion Pictures
Alpha-quartz infiltrated our homes! I repeat, alpha-quartz infiltrated our homes. It made its way into our smartphones, watches, televisions, video cameras, pacemakers, computers, and toys [1]. It’s about time we ask how and why. Silicon dioxide might not ring a bell, but quartz might. There is a simple reason why quartz is used in almost… Continue reading Quartz: Timekeeper
What chains us to the ground? What stops us from soaring the skies like Superman? What drags us down every time we leap? Since centuries, humanity fought against gravity. Imagine a world where we could fly. But the harsh reality is: we aren’t Gabo's characters [1], plus we’re heavy – gravity is strong on heavier… Continue reading Levitation; Optical Levitation
The history of Science is filled with battles between conflicting ideas. Right from the heliocentric theory of Copernicus to the modern developments of Quantum Mechanics, Science has witnessed remarkable clashes. Usually the matter is resolved with an experiment, but sometimes not. The battle between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein lasted a long time and ended… Continue reading A Clash of Ideas: Least Time Principle
Stepping on a weighing machine, wrapping a tape around your waist, standing next to a stadiometer, what is common in all these tasks? You're being measured by something. A weighing machine that measures your weight. A measuring tape that measures your waist size. A stadiometer that measures your height. In any measurement, there is an… Continue reading What is a Measurement?
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