Illusions, Misconceptions & Misunderstandings - I

WARNING: This series of posts should be read under Parental Sub-conscious Guidance. Not suitable for Minors (under-)grads with only trivial encounters with Physic(ist)s.

Let us start by analyzing the topic first. Illusions mean here optical ones: tricks played by your eyes on you - nothing to do with magic and/or David Blaine. Misconceptions & Misunderstandings are used as mortals would normally use them but with restriction to Physics as will be demonstrated here and/or other posts down the line.

IMM 1

Standing outside Pathmark (PM) waiting for the 'Mall Route' bus to arrive, I was scanning its entrance, the pavement, the parking lot, the road beyond it and the (maybe clouded) sky. After a while, I happened to notice a guy exiting PM carrying a plastic bag and I could discern that there were two words (in BIG font) written on the side towards me (obviously!). He came a little closer, I could make out some of the characters and deduced that the words were 'french bikinis'. Feeling triumphant (that I could read words on objects so distant without my specs!), my eyes wandered off to look for some more challenges.

After some time my head completed its 180 degrees turn, returned to the default location and saw that guy (with plastic bag) again much closer now. So I decided to take a look again at the bag and confirm that I was correct. Lo and Behold, this is what I saw:

fresh thinking!!! What the hell??? Now that IS a New Height of Irony, Illusion, Misplaced & Embarrassing THOUGHTs... I could not suppress a big smile and obviously you would also be guffawing right now!

Below I reconstruct the conversation between my eyes & brain that took place that day:

E: Transmitting an image for word-recognition...

B: Image received. Need a hi-res image. Scan again...

E: Request received. Scanning... Re-transmission Complete.

B: Good. Editing image... Extracting characters... Analyzing Patterns... Searching through dictionary... Words found: 'french bikinis'. Task Completed. Accuracy: 95%.

E(thinking): french bi..ki..nis??? well, if you say so!

E(after some time): Transmitting a close-up view of earlier image... Repeat of earlier task requested.

B: OK. Editing image... Extracting characters... Ana...(shocked)...nd: 'fresh thinking'. (speechless!)

E: What the??? YOU said 95% accuracy earlier for 'french...' Were you hallucinating or what???

B: Shut the HELL up... YOU sent a low-res image earlier... I won't tolerate that line coming from you...

E: Oh yeah!!! How the HELL can you 'analyze patterns', 'extract characters', 'search through dictionary' and misjudge '-ing' for '-inis'. Even I can 'see' a word better than that to fit the 'pattern'...

B: Humor me!!!...

E: 'biking'.

B(dumbstruck, embarrassed): Okkaaayyyy... So if you think you are better than me, why the hell did you send the task to me, you... you - 'Three-Moon detecting' worthless pieces of some broken obsolete optical instrument...

E(hurt & sniveling): ya... whatever... you were the one who forgot to bring along specs... Eyelids Shut.

B(thinking): ...man, I Screwed up big time today!!! They will come around eventually, though - how long can they remain shut, anyway???

E: I can 'hear' You up there...

B: Open up... Here comes the bus...

And then 'we' returned.

That is all for IMM 1. See you again in IMM-II...

Afterthought: My eyes and brain get along pretty well. Such skirmishes (as portrayed above) are solely for reader's entertainment and should not be taken seriously. Any alarmed/concerned reader should probably engage in something more fruitful/useful than reading my blog posts.

3-Moon and More...

Old Ends and New Begins???

InuYasha has come to a much-awaited and -anticipated end after 558 chapters! So what does that mean and who all should care??? Those who do not know what is Inuyasha (actually who!) should probably be reading some other blog or doing something else entirely like searching "inuyasha" in Wikipedia.

So now that 'right' people are reading this post lets get to the burning question: what does it feel like having witnessed an end to an 'epic' fairy tale spanning nearly 12 years? It feels good obviously because the ending was nearly what was expected - an emotional one with everyone getting to live happily ever after. But not quite literally as one would expect with usual fairy tales. In usual ones, 'lived happily ever after' means 'lived rather mundane lives which can not be compared to the adventurous lives that the characters lived in the tale till now!' (this is a stripped version of a quote by someone I can't remember [:(].) That is, everyone is expected to live happily ever after in the world of InuYasha but in no way would their lives be mundane since most of the aspects of their lives (except those related with Naraku) have not changed. Lets list one of those aspects for every character of interest.

Inuyasha still has those rosary beads around his neck [:)]. Kagome is still learning to 'control' her spiritual powers. Miroku is still a perverted monk exorcising demons. Now that he's married and had his 'wish' of someone bearing his child fulfilled, the adjective 'perverted' might be dropped I guess! (or maybe I'm being too optimistic...) Sango used to worry about her brother, now has to worry about her (3 on last count!) kids. Shippou still strives  to become a stronger kitsune youkai. Kohaku has now received a new weapon from Toutousai and plans to become a stronger taijiya (demon slayer) on his own. Rin has decided to stay with Kaede-sama for now - may be to 'get used to' humans. Kaede(-ba-san) is still taking care of everyone. Jaken is still following Sesshoumaru-sama. And finally, Sesshoumaru(-sama) is still Sesshoumaru(-sama) with a dense air of pride, elegance and no-nonsense attitude engulfing his totally awe-inspiring self [:)].

Now lets get to the moments in the final chapter which are worth thousand words! Miroku & Inuyasha exorcising an Inu-Youkai. Words in my mind: What the hell is Sesshoumaru doing here? And then slowly I calmed down 'knowing' it could not be Him. A panel of Sango with her 3 kids - too cute... can not think of any other word(s). Inuyasha 'returning back' from modern era leaving Kagome there with her family - felt a bit sad at this point. Inuyasha being all composed while telling this story to Kaede-baba and she asking him when did he become so wise? - I should have gone into fits of laughter here but somehow could not. Shippou revealing to Kaede-ba-san that Inuyasha goes into the bone-eater's well every 3 days and so getting kicked - one of the things that'll never change and which definitely sent me into convulsions! Miroku's (& Sango's) twins playing with Inuyasha's ears and Inuyasha leaving them to 'slay the kitsune' - too funny! Kagome coming back, Inuyasha extending his hand into the well and their long-awaited embrace - was bound to happen or it would not have been the final chapter, would it? Souta's conversation with his 'friends' - ... [:|] Kohaku saying Sango's house is a bit cramped - want to know what would Miroku think of that! Myouga being near Toutousai - was not expecting that. The full shot of flying Sesshoumaru with Jaken holding on his fur - too awesome. Kagome calling out to Him 'brother(-in-law)' and Sesshoumaru glaring at her - hilarious, just hilarious - Kagome should know better than to call out to Him with such salutations? More than that, Inuyasha also 'agreeing' with His glare and adding 'that had a nasty ring to it'! - this totally made my day. So why was Sesshoumaru there? He brought Rin a new Kimono - He cares for her... Good... I expected Rin to hang around Sesshoumaru like before but well I'm not the author! And finally, the last page where Inuyasha & Kagome look forward to the future.

And so the 12 year old epic tale comes to an end which leads us to the question of what new begins now? And I stop and think and realize that a NEW schedule of reading mangas has formed which now only covers Fridays (and/or Saturdays) for One Piece, Naruto & Bleach (Inuyasha normally came out on Wednesdays & Today Is Wednesday!) and 'random' days depending on when Elfen Lied, Claymore & xxxHolic come out!

Well, this is all for this post I guess. I do not have time to think for more new things that have begun as a result of the end of Inuyasha manga. But I'm pretty sure that this paragraph was beginning of the end. If you care, have a look at InuYasha's...

...Final Chapter

Fail to Pass, Hate to Love & Dying to Live

Such oxymorons make one think what do words mean after all???

As Gopaldas 'Neeraj' says "शब्द तो केवल छल है..." (Words are just illusions...) So true... words often hide or reveal too much... relevant or irrelevant information!!!

Gopaldas 'Neeraj' @ IIT Roorkee

Now you would be wondering why am I being philosophical and starting a blog with such 'debatable facts'! Well, because they say the beginning of any article should be catchy and what is better than a controversy or quotes (shayaris if you prefer) from a Great Poet!!!

Anyway lets get to our usual stuff, i.e. Physics and stuff related to it. Just to make an explicit connection with the few lines above, lets consider a statement: "Lifetime of the Muon is 2.2 μsec". Now is this statement really that simple and conveys all relevant info? No. The words have hidden a lot of info and hard-work that goes into arriving at that seemingly simple statement. In addition, the word 'Lifetime' as used here has a specific meaning which is implied but not at all obvious to someone who is not conversant with the terminology!

Have a look at this file that gives a precise meaning for the word 'Lifetime' and some details on the experimental aspect (μ source, detector, electronics, analysis/simulation software, etc.) to get an idea of what all you 'missed' in the above statement. Much more than that, you will notice that there is a formula for μ lifetime (on page 10) containing various constants and its mass. Experimental determination of some quantity is all right but how do you get a formula for it in terms of a finite number of basic constants?

This is going to be done below i.e. what follows is a 'derivation' of that formula (in the framework of QFT). Those who are unsure of whether to continue or not, should probably stop as this blog post got over somewhere around the 3rd paragraph! [ I started this post just to put this derivation here! Muhahahaha :)) As some of you may have guessed, this was indeed an assignment problem in GS's QFT-II course!]

Now, you 'know' how the lifetime of Muon is calculated theoretically and the amazing fact remains that it matches very well with experiments! In summary, I can say that I have managed to pass through it all, have come around to love it and am definitely living to die not the other way around!

All-in-one!

Willingness to Come...

We are familiar with the fact that as one grows old (read transition from high school kid to undergrad to grad to...) the willingness to come to classes decreases 'proportionately'. To find an exact relation between these two variables: Willingness to Come to Class (WCC) and Age of Student (AoS) is the prime objective of this post. The data collection is carried out by carefully studying two recent absolutely uncorrelated events:

1) An undergrad's tenacious admission that he can attend 10 classes of one hour duration in a row on all days of a week (by week, I mean an academic week = 5 days). Now, many reading this post will wonder what was I doing talking to an undergrad and that also about coming to classes??? That is definitely not like me and you would be perfectly justified to wonder that! But if you wonder a little more, it'll all start making sense. If you don't have time to wonder more, let me walk you through a syllogism:

a) I am a Teaching Assistant (TA);

b) I grade quizzes & tests;

=> It is likely that someone will be dissatisfied with my grading and will confront me.

That takes care of me talking with an undergrad but why talk about coming to classes? Lets again consider a syllogism:

a') I am Just a TA;

b') I Just grade quizzes & tests;

=> It is highly likely that there was a question on one of the tests regarding coming to classes and someone was dissatisfied with my grading and confronted me.

That should now stop you from wondering more. But maybe not! So what was the question? That does not matter, what matters is that after a heated discussion on the grading style, the unexpected admission surfaced and rest is history! In laymen's term, I found that undergrad's resolve to come to classes awe-inspiring and we get our first 'solid' data point on the WCC vs. AoS graph... I put it on the upper left (not too left) corner!

2) At the beginning of Prof. Sterman's QFT-II 'extra' class at 5:40 PM (after Spring Sem's last colloquium!) he stated "I appreciate your willingness to come to class at this time. Hell, I appreciate my willingness to come to class at this time..." !!! [Though quotation marks are used, it (obviously) does not mean this is the exact wording!] I don't think there is anything to explain here as this event is self-explanatory. I'd like the Renormalisation of QCD Lagrangian to be as self-explanatory as this but then life is not that simple or as overheard in the same class "it is as it is" (though in a totally different context). I already hear some of you urging me to end this verbiage which is leading us away from the objective of this post! So from this rather trivial event, we get another 'solid' data point on the WCC vs. AoS graph... I put it on the extreme lower right corner!

Our data collection is now complete and we start with data analysis. And we all know what can be said about the relation between two variables when we have just two points at diametrically (almost) opposite corners of the graph: Yes, you guessed it right!!! Absolutely Nothing with 95% Confidence Level.

So there we have it: a systematic analysis of WCC across various age groups. No objective and/or subjective biasing of the author was involved in choosing the sample which is random to the best of the author's knowledge. To that extent, no grad students were involved as the author coincidentally happens to be one.

These are some preliminary results and this is a work-in-progress. Thus, deviations from the results presented here should not be totally surprising and are anticipated. Apart from this, an extensive study on who all are interested in reading such survey reports is also being planned for near future.

Creative Writing

My First Post...

Checking if things work!!!

Posting via Windows Live Writer...

[No idea... why am I doing this???]