Category: Science and Tech

The Infinite Monkey Experiment

By Anupum Pant

According to the Infinite Monkey theorem, a monkey forced to be with a keyboard in a room for infinite amount of time would manage to almost surely finish typing a given text, complete works of William Shakespeare for instance. This theorem of course isn’t meant as an insult to Shakespeare work. Instead it is a concept in mathematics that uses the monkey metaphor coined by a French mathematician  Émile Borel in 1913, to describe an abstract device that produces an endless random sequence of letters and symbols. Which goes on to say that such a device, powered for infinite amount of time would almost surely finish typing a given text at some point.

Well, when there’s infinite, there are questions. And the theorem itself is a huge question mark when it comes to actually seeing its relevance in the real world. Even if you had an army of monkeys that filled the whole universe, to complete a piece of text such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet is so minuscule that the chance of it occurring during a period of time hundreds of thousands of orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe is extremely low (but technically not zero).

For someone to assume that this could be tested in the real world would be a complete could be said to be nothing less than borderline insanity.

However, in the year 2003, a few art lecturers and students from the medialab of University of Plymouth decided to use a £2000 grant to test the literary output of monkeys. Six Sulawesi crested macaques (namely Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe & Rowan) in Paignton Zoo in Devon in England were kept in an enclosure for a month, with a robust piece of hardware. By the end they did produce a short book and it was published as a limited edition book. [Read it here]

The book that got published really contained no discernible words, or anything even close to what you could call a word, but the experiment itself had at least some scientific impact. In the words of Dr Amy Plowman, Paignton Zoo scientific officer…

The work was interesting but had little scientific value, except to show that the “infinite monkey” theory is flawed

Later, the data from this experiment got merged with a larger project by i-DAT.

How Many Moons does Earth Have?

By Anupum Pant

The planet Mars has two moons. Jupiter has 67. Saturn has 62 moons. Uranus 27, Neptune 14. And these aren’t fixed (keep a track of the current count). However, there’s one planet whose number of moons is a topic of no debate, right? The Earth. The Earth has one moon and everyone knows that. How sure are you about it?

We see one big moon in the sky. But, no, the answer isn’t one all the time. Sometimes earth has more than one moon, more than one natural satellite to be specific. In the year 1997, an object was discovered – 3753 Cruithne. It was what they call in the quasi orbital of earth – A quasi orbital natural satellite. It goes around the earth in something called a horseshoe orbit, and it’s messy. The object almost reaches venus and mars.

Cruithne orbits the sun about once a year, but it takes nearly 800 years to complete this messy ring shape around the Earth’s orbit.

via [Discover magazine]

Making Balls Bounce Really High

By Anupum Pant

Have you tried balancing a small bouncy ball on top of a basketball and then dropped them together? If you haven’t, you should try it once. The bouncy little ball somehow bounces really high, much higher than it would have gone individually. How does that happen?

The difference is massive. Normally the small ball would bounce back about 70% of the height it was dropped from. But the tree ball stack makes it go 8 times the height it was dropped from. That’s a lot, isn’t it?

And then, did you know the tiny ball goes even higher when you have 2 bigger balls under it when they are dropped? How does it all work. Well, for us engineers the understanding comes very naturally, because we try to locate the source where the tiny ball gets the energy, which clearly isn’t from the gravitational potential – As it bounces 8 times its initial height. Physics girl, a relatively newer science channel which has been making really quality videos lately, explains.

Colour Constancy and the Colour Changing Dress

By Anupum Pant

For the last few days the internet has split into two factions. One, who see the dress (everyone knows which dress) as blue and black, while the people from the other group see gold and white.

Ios1eOY

Well, it of course is blue and is kind of an illusion which this image explains the best. CGP Grey tweeted this, and he’s probably one of the most reasonable man on the internet. And then there was the ASAPscience’s video about Colour constancy –  a feature of the human colour perception system which ensures that the perceived colour of objects remains relatively constant under varying illumination conditions. That I must say is the final word on it. Please let’s be done with this now.

Magnetic Grapes

By Anupum Pant

Try this at home. Take two grapes, pierce them with a straw or wooden toothpick on both ends and try to balance the contraption from the middle part on a sharp edge. All of it to reduce friction – you get the idea…

Now bring a strong magnet towards it, you’ll repel the grape. Try doing it with the other pole of the magnet. It still goes away. So are grapes magnetic?

Well, intrinsically the grapes are not magnetized, but when you bring a strong magnet closer, it gets magnetized in the field of this magnet. Stronger  the magnet, more is the magnetization. This, because it contains water, which is diamagnetic.

By that logic, even frogs are magnetic. So are water droplets. In the year 2000 Andrey Geim, yes the same person who was given a Nobel prize for isolating graphene using a scotch tape, won an Ignobel prize for levitating a frog, water droplets and a variety of other objects using very strong electromagnets. – Levitation without meditation.

Here’s the levitating frog…

and here are the magnetic grapes…

Surface Kills Bacteria on Contact

By Anupum Pant

The toxic effect of metal ions on bacteria, known as the oligodynamic effect is being used almost everywhere – You’ve seen brass doorknobs in many public places, right? That’s one way for objects to kill bacteria. Other one might be this…

In a study conducted by scientists in Spain and Australia, it is claimed that the wings of a cicada are made up of a biomaterial that has the ability to kill bacteria on contact. Instead of a toxic effect, these actually, according to the paper, kill bacteria by the physical morphology of the surface. The surface has millions of tiny pillars that purportedly kill bacteria like it’s been shown in the simulation below.

That’s a great hint to people who can grow nano pillars in laboratory to run and patent a surface that’d kill bacteria when the come in contact with the surface. There, I just gave away an idea worth millions probably. Because for all I know, cellphone surfaces are one of the most dirtiest surfaces, and a surface like this one could have massive commercial applications…

By Anupum Pant

The Cuttle Fish’s Camouflage

By Anupum Pant

“Imagine an alien that could float through space with a giant brain shaped like a doughnut, eight arms on its head and three hearts pumping blue blood.”

This thing that I’m talking about is no alien. It’s the cuttlefish – A flesh eating creature that can hide from predators pretty well. Of course octopus does it well, cuttle fish does it better!

This interesting long documentary talks a lot about the kings of camouflage. You might want to check the first few minutes.

Transcendental Numbers

By Anupum Pant

In terms of how long mathematics has been around, transcendental numbers is a relatively new discovery. Most of the time we’ve been familiar with only algebraic numbers. But these are a universe apart. And it should be interesting to you that these numbers are the ones which cover most of your number line.

These numbers are real, and yet cannot be the solutions of an algebraic polynomial equation whose coefficients are all integers. All of them are irrational, but not all irrational are transcendental. For instance, square root of two is irrational, but not transcendental.

The most common examples of transcendental numbers are ‘pi’ and ‘e’ whose approximate values are 3.14159 and 2.7182 respectively. Their actual value can never be listed, only can be represented.

Numberphile explains…

Weird Vultures

By Anupum Pant

Vultures are usually associated with death. Like if you see a vulture circling above, you’d think something died. So, all you might think about them is that they are creepy. Of course they are. They have an uncanny ability to digest contaminated meat. Also, there’s more.

When vultures are stressed, they vomit. Probably this makes them lighter to move away faster. It also probably serves an evolutionary purpose for them by preventing the ingestion of something harmful, and by expelling noxious substances once ingested. Who knows they do it for something else. But one thing is for sure, if you see a group of vultures perched up  above, don’t try to hurl a pebble towards them, they’ll probably send a stream a vomit towards you.

Vultures also urinate on their own feet. It is believed that they do this because it helps to keep them cool, given they can’t sweat like we do. It’s also believed that their urine helps them to keep their feet free of all the dangerous microbes from the rotten flesh they feed on.

So, that’s about vultures and their unusual habits.

Why do Candle Light Dinners Work?

By Anupum Pant

When the amount of light is low, everyone knows that your pupils become larger (they dilate, as it is said). Now dilated pupils make people look more attractive and this has been known since the 16th century when women would use a solution made out of a toxic plant called Belladona to make their pupils big, and make themselves appear more attractive to men. But that used to make their eyes go bad with time.

Instead this is what Dr. Wiseman advices. Take your date to a candle light dinner. There’s a scientific reason why these dinners work. Both your pupils dilate and both appear more attractive to each other. Dang!

Although in the initial test which he does in the video, I thought the left picture was better because it looked less scary to me. So candle light dinner probably won’t work for me.

What do You Know About Lithium?

By Anupum Pant

You probably know that Lithium is the lightest metal, and the lightest solid element too. But I’m sure there’s a lot more about it you have never heard.

This chemical element with an atomic number of 3, despite how ordinary it seems, is one of the strangest elements in the periodic table, and the universe itself. It probably shouldn’t even exist on earth. Ben Lillie explains why…

Jimmy Kimmel Pranks Using the Halo Effect

By Anupum Pant

It’s easier and more comfortable to think to yourself that the decisions you make are well thought and perfectly reasoned. I’ve talked about it in the past too.

If you’re told that something you chose was due to the halo effect and it wasn’t a perfectly reasonable choice, you wouldn’t believe me. But life is not fair. And if it may come to you as a relief, the whole ad industry revolves around making consumers like something in the commercial (which is often unrelated to the product they sell) and if you end up liking that unrelated thing, there’s a great chance, it will make you think that they have the best product. They’re playing with your psychology.

Here’s ART talking about how the same orange juice packed in different containers made people have completely different opinions about it.

This reminds me of Jimmy Kimmel serving crushed skittles, packed in sophisticated containers, to random people on the street. Look how he’s able to easily fool them.

Flower or What?

By Anupum Pant

I love watching animals using camouflage to blend into their environments. We’ve seen in the past that some octopus have a really good ability to blend into their surroundings, to either save themselves from predators, or be efficient in catching prey.

This preying Mantis, after it has reached a certain age, turns into a mild pink colour and sits on top of plants. An untrained eye would perceive it as just another flower. But if you care to look carefully enough, you’ll see that it’s a Preying Mantis. It’s easier to see it in the video though.