Hi everyone,
I apologize for being out of touch with the blogosphere for such a long time. It was mainly due to an overwhelming year of new experiences with new friends in an entirely new place halfway across the world. I'm studying in New York now and my new blog is about my life and experiences as an international student abroad. Hope you will follow me on there:
New Delhi to New York (http://desiinhamilton.blogspot.com)
Thursday 5 August, 2010
New Blog - "New Delhi to New York"
Thursday 12 February, 2009
Monday 2 February, 2009
Posting after a long time!
Okay, I just HAD to post this. lol
Engineer's serenade
I was alone and all was dark, Beneath me and above
My life was full of volts and amps, But not the spark of love
But now that you are here with me, My heart is overjoyed
You turn the square of my heart, Into a sinusoid
You load things from my memory, Onto my system's bus
My life was once assembly code, Now it's C++
I love the way you solder things, My circuits you can fix
The voltage across your diode is, much more than just point six
With your amps and resistors, You have built my integrator
I cannot survive without you, You are my function generator
You have charged my life,increased gain, And made my maths discrete
And now I'll end my poem here, Control, Alt, and Delete
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*awesome*, I think lol.
And here's my pic in alphanumeric characters representation (the pic I used for the IITJEE, AIEEE and other exam forms)
haha!
And here's a must-watch video! Freak accident at a soccer match...
Comment!!
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Monday 8 September, 2008
A New Website
Just created a new website to help students with maths and physics questions. Feel free to ask any questions here .
Monday 14 July, 2008
Gayatri Mantra
The Gayatri Mantra, considered to be the holiest verse of the Vedas, has been paraphrased in different ways. The original Sanskrit is in the shape of a Vedic mantra and forms a formula for daily devotion of all Brahmins in the land.
The mantra:
- (oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ) oṃ tat savitur vareṇyaṃ bhargo devasya dhīmahi dhiyo yo naḥ prachodayāt
Interpretation of the mantra by Arya Samaj :
- "O God, Thou art the giver of life, the remover of pain and sorrow, the bestower of happiness; O Creator of the Universe, may we receive Thy supreme sin-destroying light; may Thou guide our intellect in the right direction."
We meditate on the glory of the Creator;
Who has created the Universe;
Who is worthy of Worship;
Who is the embodiment of Knowledge and Light;
Who is the remover of all Sin and Ignorance;
May He enlighten our Intellect.
The short preamble is simply these four words:
om | |
bhûr | |
bhuvas | |
suvaha |
Om:
As you may have noticed, the preamble begins with Om, the first line of the Gâyatrî Mantra begins with Om and the closing ends with Om.
Om is in everything and everything is in Om. Indeed, the mantric repetition of this one syllable, Om, is of immeasurable value. It is often said that Om is the greatest of all mantras.
For clarification, here are quotes from various Upanishads describing the nature of Om:I will give you the Word all the scriptures glorify and which all spiritual disciplines express, to attain which aspirants lead of a life of sense-restrain and selflessness. It is Om. This symbol of Brahman is the highest. Realizing it, one finds complete fulfillment of all one's longings. It is of the greatest support to all seekers.
Katha Unpanishad (I, ii, 15-17)
Take the great bow of the sacred scriptures, place on it the arrow of devotion; then draw the bowstring of meditation, and aim at the target, the Lord of Love. Om is the bow, the soul is the arrow, and Brahman is called its target. Now draw the bowstring of meditation and hitting the target, be One with It.
Mundaka Upanishad (II, ii, 3-4)
--------------------The beautiful rhythmic patterns, soothing ancient sounds and powerful intent make the Gâyatrî Mantra a magnificent part of daily spiritual practice.
The Gâyatrî Mantra combines the effects of mantric sound with the effects of a deep and profound prayer, resulting in a combination which is exceedingly potent.
As with all spiritual practices, this is a vehicle for intent. The stronger and greater the intent, the stronger and greater the results.
Spiritual progress does not succeed merely by means of intellectual reasoning or theoretical arguments, but rather by direct experience. If you would like a deeper understanding of the Gâyatrî Mantra, it is well and good that you should begin with an intellectual understanding of the words and the intent, but that is only a preliminary step leading to your own direct experience of That Which is beyond words.
Sunday 25 May, 2008
Check out my new math/physics blogsite!
I'll be posting some questions I've solved in math and physics on this site :
http://mathplusphysics.blogspot.com
Do visit it :)
Wednesday 30 April, 2008
Another fine essay by me :)
Do not plagiarize !
My views on God and religion
The existence of a Higher Being, whom we commonly refer to as God, has always been a highly debated topic. On one hand are the religious people, firmly believing that God is watching over us from the heavens. On the other hand are the nonbelievers, skeptics and rationalists, persistently stating the absence of any concrete evidence to ascertain that God is real. This causes me to ponder upon what Friedrich Nietzsche once said – “Which is it, is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s?”
The purpose of religion is to serve as a spiritual medium through which man can aspire to attain nirvana, to unite with the Almighty. Unfortunately though, it has indirectly become a major cause for strife the world over. A large number of people tend to misinterpret the norms of their religion, for the worse. This leads to misunderstanding between people of various faiths and communities. If a religion decrees to its followers to worship and believe in only one God, they turn hostile towards other religions. All the terrorists out there were just like you and me before being brainwashed by certain anti-social individuals into believing that it was their duty to fight, and even slaughter, to appease their God. As Blaise Pascal once remarked – “Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions”. What they forget is that their religion also preaches non-violence. In fact, every religion condemns hatred and violence. We fight over our Gods but fail to realize that all of us just have different names for the same universal God.
God, to me, is an acronym for Generator Operator Destroyer. I believe God is essentially all the unbalanced energy of the universe – the energy difference between what we do and what we get. And this is why all our deeds, good or bad, come around back to us in a full circle through some form or the other. We learn in high school physics that if we perform positive work on a body, energy gets stored in it, and it loses energy if we do negative work on it. This is somewhat similar to our situation. Do a good turn and you can expect one in return. A simple act of kindness or humanity sows the seeds of goodwill, just like performing positive work on something causes it to gain energy. All the energy of the cosmos is conserved, and all the unbalanced energy between our actions and the consequences we immediately face is what constitutes God – the driving force of the universe. God is the creator, preserver and destroyer of everything in this universe.
The world would be so much better and peaceful if instead of fighting over our religions, we learned to live with brotherhood and global harmony. It hardly matters whether or not you believe in God or religion. You might be an extremely religious person or you might be an atheist but, in the end, what really matters is whether you have been a good human being.
Thursday 25 October, 2007
Is Hell exothermic or endothermic?
The following is an actual question given on a McGill University chemistry mid-term Exam paper:
Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Support your answer with a proof.
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyles Law (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant.
One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So, we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that most people and their souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyles Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities.
If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Celine LeBlanc during my Freshman year - that "it will be a cold night in Hell before I go out with you" - and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in developing even a cordial relationship with her, then (2) cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic.
The student got the only A!
Faster than light?
The other day i was explaining the relativity theory to a friend. At the speed of light, any object would have infinite mass so would need infinite energy to make it go faster."This means that there is a maximum speed at which anything can travel, and only massless things like light can travel at that speed," I explained.My friend is very bright, and after a little thought he came up with three situations that semmed to contradict Einstein. Is any of them valid?
1. The poles outside barber shops have helical stripes painted round them. If the pole is rotated, its stripes are seen to travel along it. If the rotation is fast enough the stripes should travel faster than light.
2. If you shine a flashlight on a wall, you will see a spot of light. You can make this spot move along the wall by rotating the flashlight. The speed of the spot depends on the distance from the wall and the speed of rotation of the flashlight. If you shine a laser on a target some miles away, the spot of light formed could be made to move faster than the speed of light by rotating the laser.
3. Very small particles, like neutrons, can penetrate matter very easily. Imagine such a particle, travelling at nearly the speed of light, entering a block of glass. The particle is so small that it will not be impeded by the glass, but light is slowed down to about two-thirds of its speed in air. Therefore, the particle would be travelling faster in glass than the light.
My conclusion:
My friend correctly identified three situations in which something travels faster that light. However, none of them contradicts Einstein, whose work could be more correctly summarized as: " The maximum speed at which INFORMATION can travel is represented by the speed of light in a vacuum. "In the first two examples, nothing physical moves faster than light.
The barber's pole stripes only appear to move along the pole.
The spot of light at one end of the sweep is different from the one at the other end as it is made up of different photons. Neither system could be used to carry INFORMATION.
The third example has been observed experimentally. Such particles break the "light barrier" and produce minute photonic flashes equivalent to sonic booms.