Dawn of Man?

From the prologue of "Chaos and Life- complexity and order in evolution and thought":

About a hundred thousand years ago, perhaps as many as a hundred and fifty thousand or as little as fifty thousand, the first man was born. In the eyes of his parents he must have been an ugly baby, an outcast from the brood and from the tribe from the moment of his birth. He was lucky to survive, for monstrous births were not generally suffered to live in that time and many more like him would have perished, and would in other times and places perish, by accident or design, and without further consequence. He was different from his tribe: his features to them seemed curiously unnatural: angular, sharp, and distorted. His gracile frame seemed spindly and ill adapted to survive in the rigorous climate, which could vary every few years, alternating between humid–hot and freezing–dry conditions, interspersed with a temperate mediocrity hardly more favorable, since it ill suited the growth of the plants on which the tribes depended. To the society of the race he was a useless individual—an idle jack—spending much time in seemingly depressed, introverted contemplation; staring into space; fiddling with pieces of stone and slate; or making marks in the earth with a stick. Perhaps his social experience was the origin of the story of the Ugly Duckling. The first Outsider, he must have been familiar with loneliness in a time when loneliness was a difficult condition to achieve and an undesirable one.
Let us call him Adam.
Adam sat for long periods between gathering plants or catching animals, when he was not shivering too much to think or too exhausted by the sun’s heat. And in those periods when he was able to reflect, he contemplated the great mystery that was his existence in the world. He could speak in a way—the gift of tongues—that the tribe could not, but he had no one to speak to. He made peculiar guttural and explosive sounds, and he seemed to gesture, in apparent madness, at the beasts and plants and rocks, and even at the sky, as he made these strange noises. This was the birth of language, and he was naming the things around him.

-Richard J. Bird

"The more things change, the more they stay the same." is a line I've read quite often. I think the truth of this statement is reflected in the excerpt above. Many of us here, I'm sure, will be able to empathize with "Adam", because thinking, leave alone independent thinking, is not something that is encouraged, or sometimes even allowed today. In fact, the conventional "System", particularly the education system, seeks to stamp it out of our minds as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. So much for evolution.

-H

More things to ponder over a cup of coffee

I was sitting around yesterday without knowing what to do. At this point I usually look towards by book shelf for inspiration. I found it yesterday when I opened the pages of Jearl Walker's "The Flying Circus of Physics". A wonderful book full of problems which the author says himself, "are for fun... What I mainly want to show here is that physics is not something that has to be done in a physics building. Physics and physics problems are in the real, everyday world that we live, work, love and die in."

Here I've stated, word for word, a very curious and interesting problem(like all the others in the book). I don't have an answer, and I haven't looked it up. Thought I'd leave it as an open question for now. And, oh, I've noticed this myself too! But never payed too much attention as I'm too sleepy in the mornings while drinking coffee, and too preoccupied in the evenings. Anyway, it goes like this-

Coffee laced with polygons

If you examine a hot cup of coffee under a strong light that is incident nearly parallel to the surface of the coffee, you will find the surface laced with polygonal cells. They disappear, however, as the coffee cools. You can also destroy the cellular appearance by putting a charged rubber comb (charge it by running it through your hair) near the coffee.

Other liquids show surface designs too. James Thomson, a famous 19th century physicist, noticed the rapidly varying surface designs in a pail of hot soapy water and in strong wines. Later, the Frenchman Bernard was able to make regular patterns in oil surfaces when the oil was heated from below. His regular polygons would slowly evolve into a beautiful hexagonal, honeycomb structure. Still other fluids gave a roll-like appearance. Recently, cellular surface designs were attempted on board spacecraft while under zero gravity.

In these examples, why do rolls and polygons (especially honeycombs) form on the fluid surface? Is the same physics actually responsible for all of the examples? Why do the coffee cells disappear when there is a charged body nearby? Finally, do these several types of surface designs depend on gravity?

The above is listed under the topics- convection, surface tension, nonlinear fluid flow, stability, condensation.

A Fine Man Indeed

A funny thing happened in Sharath Sir's class this week. I think I'm one of two people sitting in that class who found it funny. It went like this- He was showing us these slides he'd made as an introduction to Atomic Physics. He chose to quote Feynman, who, in his Lectures said, famously, 'everything is made of atoms'. Sharath Sir repeated that, and then said, quite seriously, "I hope you all know who Feynman is. If you don't...get out of my class and don't come back..". I think the threat was quite real. But nevertheless, funny. You can't talk physics without bumping into Feynman.

My first encounter was a happy accident. I was in a book store, sometime in 8th standard when I came across 'Surely, you're joking Mr. Feynman'. And then my dad came around and told me I had to read it. This, from a doctor who hasn't "studied" physics since he was in Class 12. And yes, after reading it, I almost decided to hang around book stores, grab random people, and ask them to read it too! But I wasn't that insane(yet!).

What is it about Richard P. Feynman that brings out such reactions in us? To use a cliche, like him or hate him(Oh yes, there are those too), you just cannot ignore him. I thought about this for a long time. It is finally becoming clear to me. Feynman, to me, represented what I wasn't, but wished I could be. A free thinker, a free learner, and a free liver(as in life, not the organ, just clarifying).

Much has been said about his 'zest for life', his 'unique style of teaching physics', etc etc that I don't think I'll be able to say anything that hasn't been said before. Feynman for me, personally, embodies the complete man(not Raymond, whoever that is). Aristotle(see footnote) said "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts", and Feynman, you see, is greater than the infinitely many tales about him. He was one of the most outstanding physicists of the 20th century. Leonard Mlodinow says, in Feynman's Rainbow, "..there indeed was no problem in the world of physics into which he couldn't provide the greatest insight..". But he was equally well-known later, for his fun-loving nature, his various eccentricities and the like, having completely smashed away the notion of a scientist being a boring creature that can be found in labs, working on experiments with fuming liquids, or buried neck-deep in huge books, and the only thing more boring than the work was the person doing it. Feynman made science relevant. He made it fun! I actually have much more to say on this matter but will take mercy on the hapless readers(if any), and edge nearer towards an ending. But not just yet.

Feynman probably wasn't born that way, but everything that went on inside his head, and outside, made him who he turned out to be. He didn't have any grand plans for himself, and he certainly never had any grand plans for humanity. He touched millions of lives without even knowing it, by simply having the courage to be himself. Everything else that followed was a consequence of that. And that is the biggest lesson I learned from him. I try everyday to be a little more like Feynman. I try everyday to be a little more like me.

Harshini




P.S. This is the aforementioned footnote. I googled the quote to see who had said it first and found that it was Aristotle. Alongside that, I saw this, and found it interesting: Kurt Koffka: "It has been said: The whole is more than the sum of its parts. It is more correct to say that the whole is something else than the sum of its parts, because summing up is a meaningless procedure, whereas the whole-part relationship is meaningful." (Kurt Koffka, 1935: New York: Harcourt-Brace. p 176). Incidentally, Aristotle meant the same thing too. Whoever interpreted it otherwise, goofed up.