Weekly science quiz
My weekly science quiz debuted in The Hindu today, in its In School edition. Here's the first installment. Questions 1. Neil Armstrong, the first man to step on the moon on July 21, 1969, pass…
Uncategorized
767 posts
Who runs science in India?
Right now, Colin Macilwain cannot be more on top of the problem: the role of a Chief Scientific Adviser has shifted toward leveraging science and technology to reap rewards through economic and indust…
Superconductivity: From Feshbach to Fermi
(This post is continued from this one.) After a bit of searching on Wikipedia, I found that the fundamental philosophical underpinnings of superconductivity were to be found in a statistical concept…
The personal loss of a printed book
Over the last few days, I've been getting the feeling that buying a Kindle is the best decision I've ever made. What I find unsettling, however, is that I don't seem to miss printed books…
The Markovian Mind
In many ways, human engagement with information happens in such a manner that, with the accumulation of information over time, the dataset constructed out of the latest volume of information has the s…
(Untitled)
Yaadhum oore, yaavarum kelir. On that note: Tata Photon, fuck you.…
When must science give way to religion?
When I saw an article titled 'Sometimes science must give way to religion' in Nature on August 22, 2012, by Daniel Sarewitz, I had to read it. I am agnostic, and I try as much as I can to keep…
Thinking quantum
In quantum physics, every metric is conceived as a vector. But that's where its relation with classical physics ends, makes teaching a pain. Teaching classical mechanics is easy because we engage…
Getting started on superconductivity
After the hoopla surrounding and attention on particle physics subsided, I realized that I’d been riding a speeding wagon all the time. All I’d done is used the lead-up to (the search for the Higgs bo…
Yes, I had $50.
Last week, I paid $50 to sign up for entrepreneur Dalton Caldwell's new start-up App.net. I wouldn't have found the service by myself until it'd have been too late for me to get on their b…
The marching coloumns
Every day is a swing between highs and lows, and in the last two months that I've experienced them, they've never been periodic. Setting off the work, the mood depends on the weather: cloudy i…
Building the researcher's best friend
One of the most pressing problems for someone conducting any research on personal initiative has to be information storage, access, and reproduction. Even if you're someone who's just going th…