The Science Blog

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‘Learning is personal’ & ‘Learning happens slowly’. Physics is an experimental science. Such skills can be developed by asking questions. Questioning on how things are happening around us can help us explore a lot and get involved with the subject. The sources to learn physics are books, colleges(also other educational institutions) and lectures. Be a critic while you read a book. Avoid accepting what the author says blindly. Explore a lot by finding other ways to solve problems in the book. Solving problems are the basic need to become a noble laureate. Noble laureates and scientists solve open questions whereas the problems in book have solutions. Lectures play an important role in learning physics. Jotting down the questions that arise on seeing the topic of the lecture before attending the lecture helps to a great extent as this makes the lecture as an event of answering our questions. Guessing the sub-topics that are going to be discussed by the lecturer by doing a small research on it also helps. More accurate the guess, more stronger we are in the subject. Though we take notes during the lecture ,summarizing the lecture in our own words helps us retain the points. Learning something cannot be achieved by compulsion. Teachers are guides to show the path and not to drag us through the path. Ultimately the learners(students) are blamed even if the teacher fails to inculcate interest in the subject. It is not advisable to come to a conclusion that one cannot solve a particular problem if his/her teacher couldn’t do so. Be a scientist in the lab during lab sessions conducted in colleges or schools. Question yourself on all the possible outcomes and find answers to it. Filling tabulations and fetching marks never make us aware of the beauty of the subject.

The galaxies are interesting because they are part of our cosmic story. There are two leading theories of how galaxies were formed. One states that the stars were formed by the collapse of vast clouds of gas and dust under their own gravitational pull ( also called the top down theory) . Indeed galaxy is a huge system of stars, gas, dust and dark matter. The other states that the early stages of universe had many ”lumps” of matter which clumped together to form a galaxy (also known as bottom up theory). Scientists used supercomputers to look back in time and simulate how a galaxy was formed. However the results involved some aspects of both the theories. Galaxy formation has not stopped as the universe continues to evolve.

The above question gives rise to another question of ‘How cyclones are formed’. The warm and moist air near the surface of the ocean rises from the surface due to the temperature difference in the atmosphere leaving less air near the surface resulting in the formation of a low pressure region near the surface. The air in the surrounding will be of high pressure than the less air region and tends to flow to the low pressure region. The air gets cooled as it undergoes a pressure difference. This air gets warmed up and again rises. The process continues and results in the cloud formation by the cooled air. The whole system of clouds and wind spins around and that is how cyclones are formed.

The sea surface temperature of Bay of Bengal is higher than that of Arabian sea which is a primary condition for a cyclone to form. The layering of water (Water Stratification) in the Bay of Bengal caused by the difference in the properties which includes salinity, density, temperature and so on initiates the process of cyclone formation. Also the impact of the cyclone is less in Arabian sea than the Bay of Bengal because of the presence of high mountain ranges in the western part of India.

Indeed a cool topic to discuss. Ice is the frozen state of water. The major portion of ice or ice glaciers is found in Antarctica,Greenland and Himalayas.. The equator region of earth receives consistent sunlight than the pole region. This prevents the atmosphere of equatorial region from achieving a temperature below 0 degree celsius which is a necessary condition for the formation of ice. Also the temperature falls as the altitude rises. And therefore, Ice formation takes place in extreme poles and high altitudes. An interesting fact about ice is that ice in bulk, though being a solid in nature possesses dynamic properties.

So how does the formation of ice take place ? The continuous snowfall over time gets compressed to become an ice or ice glacier. Glacier is the huge mass of ice. As ice possesses dynamic properties, it tends to flow but at a very slow rate. They undergo Iceberg calving, which is the breaking of ice.

According to Wikipedia, in geometry, the tesseract is the four-dimensional analogue of the cube; the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of six square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of eight cubical cells. The tesseract is one of the six convex regular 4-polytopes.

But, my view of Tesseract is little different. Here I go with my explanation of tessaract. If you have seen the movie Interstellar, the tesseract concept is represented.