Tag: fast

Galileo’s Paradox

By Anupum Pant

Here’s an image of a contraption. It is basically a long stick hinged at one end and is free to move about the other. At the end of it rests a ball. Near the ball there’s also a cup fastened to the stick. The big stick is lifted up high and is temporarily supported by a small stick.

galileo paradox

Now, what do you think would happen when the temporary support is removed? Normally, it would be very intuitive to think that the cup and the ball would fall at the same speed. In other words, nothing fascinating would happen. Both would fall and the ball would roll away…no?

However, something very unexpected happens when the support is removed. Something that, in a jiffy demonstrates some very important concepts of physics like centre of mass, torque and acceleration.

The big wooden stick (with the fastened cup) falls and it falls faster than the ball. Actually it falls and also rotates. As a result of the swing, the cup comes under the ball just before ball reaches it and the ball ends up inside it.

Under the influence of the same gravitational force, irrespective of the mass, the cup and the ball must have fallen at the same rate, as predicted by Galileo? What really happens? The video explains…

The Landolt Clock Reaction

By Anupum Pant

Steve Spangler Never ceases to amaze me. Once again I found this old video of him on the Ellen show. These are a few experiments he does on the stage…

  • Lights a tube light with his bare hands and Ellen’s.
  • A transparent liquid suddenly instantly changes colour.
  • Blows the hydrogen and oxygen mixture on Ellen’s hand.
  • And makes someone from the audience walk across the table on a non newtonian fluid.

Steve doesn’t exactly explains what happens there, but the second experiment is my favourite. It is the one in which he asks Ellen to pour two transparent liquids into each other and mix them well. Then Ellen waits for a few seconds and the liquid instantly turns into an ink like colour.

The magical effect is actually a chemical reaction known as the Landolt Clock Reaction. It actually involves 3 different solutions (read about them). The reaction happens quicker once the mixing starts and leads to a third reaction which happens immeasurably fast. It’s totally instantaneous and thus the transparent solutions turn into a bluish black iodine starch complex. As steve’s website puts it…

The sudden change from a colorless solution to the blue-black solution is the result of four sequential reactions. First, the bisulfite ions (HSO3-) reduce some of the iodate ions (IO3-) to form iodide ions (I-). Next, the iodide ions (I-) are oxidized by the remaining iodate ions (IO3-) to form triiodide ions (I3-). The solution now consists of triiodide ions (I3-) and soluble starch. In the third reaction, the triiodide ions (I3-) get reduced by the bisulfite ions (HSO3-) to become iodide ions (I-). That continues until all of the bisulfite has been consumed. Finally, the triiodide ions and starch combine to form the dark blue-black starch complex that looks like ink.

See more at: SteveSpanglerScience

A Fun Way to Multiply Numbers

By Anupum Pant

Please note, in the heading I said, a fun way to multiply numbers, not necessarily a quick way. Widely touted as an “amazingly quick Japanese method to multiply”, I think firstly, it really is not a very quick method. Secondly, I couldn’t find any sources confirming that it is a method developed by the Japanese. In fact, I’m not even sure if there’s anything Japanese about it. Nevertheless, the method sure is fun and should work great for people who don’t remember the multiplication tables well.

Another great thing about it is that it is a multiplication problem turned into a visual counting  problem. Since multiplication exercises don’t really make kids happy, they’d definitely love to count intersections instead (multiplication disguised intelligently).

Of course the counting can be used for single digit numbers too, but that won’t be too useful. For slightly more complex problems involving 2 digits like 32 X 42, it could be a life saver. It’s a fairly simple 3-step process. Here’s how you do 32 X 42 with it…

Step 1Step 1: The best way to go about it is by starting from the top left. First, you draw the 3 lines for the 3 of the number 32. And then you make 2 lines for the number 2, as shown.

Step 2

Step 2: Next make 4 lines and 2 lines intersecting the previously made lines as shown. Clearly, 4 lines for the 4 of 42 and 2 lines for the units place of 42.Step 3

 Step 3: Count the number of intersections in the far left (a), centre (b), and the far right (c). (a), (b) and (c) are 12, 14 and 4 respectively, for this problem.

The 1 from 14 gets carried to the number just at the right of it – 12 of (a), and (a) becomes 13. A similar carrying of the ten’s place to the immediate right column happens if there are any 2 digit numbers. So you are left with 13, 4 and 4 now. 1344 is the answer to 32 X 42.

This can be done for 3 digits too and more…
If there’s a zero, you could make a line and not count any intersections with it. As it has been shown in the video below…

Please hit like if you learnt something from this article.

Moving Light Captured on Camera

By Anupum Pant

The speed of light

In vacuüm, light travels 299,792,458 meters in a single second. In other words, in a single second it travels 186,000 miles. To establish a  perspective, if I could move that fast, I would circumnavigate the world in 0.13 seconds. A hypothetical jet plane would take more than 2 days to do the same. In short, it is fast. It is the fastest – Nothing beats light.

If you try to record moving light on a home camera, you’d fail miserably. That is because normally they can roll only about 30 to 60 frames per second. In fact, you’d not even be able to capture a fast-moving ball without motion blur, forget recording moving light. To record fast things you need fast cameras that can roll several thousands of frames every second.

In the past, high-speed-cameras, rolling film at thousands of frames per second have been able to record bullets moving in slow motion, bubbles bursting, people getting punched and what not! MythBusters use such cameras for almost every experiment they do.

But light travels a million times faster than bullets. Till the year 2011, to capture moving light on film was considered an impossible feat; and then, a team from MIT media lab invented this.

A 1,000,000,000,000 FPS camera

A camera that can record at a speed equivalent to a theoretical one-trillion-FPS camera was invented by a team at MIT media labs in the year 2011. This camera can record light moving through space, in slow motion! To look at what it can do, you’ll have to watch the video below. In the video, the researcher explains its mechanism in detail.

It is theoretically impossible to craft a mechanical device that can roll film at such extremely high speeds. To tackle this physical limit, these geniuses invented a whole setup containing several cameras sensors that work together to make this feat possible.

Note: In reality, the camera doesn’t record the footage of a trillionth of a second. It is a composite video of lines of different pulses of a laser recorded and stitched together. The time it takes to compile enough data for the video, is more than what it takes the light to travel from one end to another.

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Valporate – Performance Enhancing Drug for Perfect Pitch

By Anupum Pant

Today we find out if it would be a good idea to impress your friends during the next gathering by hacking your brain with pills to learn a rare ability fairly quickly. But first, pay attention to the following jargon.

Perfect pitch

Perfect pitch is an exceptional ability among few gifted humans that enables them to recognize and re-create the pitch of a musical note instantly without the help of any external reference. There have been no cases of adults learning this ability by practice. However, pseudo absolute pitch can be learnt with great practice and only retained through regular use.

Brain plasticity

Learning to recognize musical notes, or any other ability for that matter can be reasonably easy at an early age due to a brain’s plastic state. The brain’s ability to change and adapt as a result of experience is far better at younger ages. As people age, they lose the ability to learn like kids.

For instance, picture the rate at which infants learn language. By the time they turn 2 – 4 years old, they start using thousands of words. Try learning a new language at the age of 35. It is tough.

However, a new research suggests that this state of brain can be recovered by using drugs. One such drug, according to Dr. Takao Hensch is Valporate.

Is Valporate a Performance Enhancing Drug?

No! it is not a performance enhancing drug. Valporate or Valporic acid is a drug sold under the common names – Depakote, Depacon and Stavzor. For several years it has been used to treat various disorders from migraines to bipolar disorder. It is a chemical substance that can cross the blood–brain barrier. As a result, it has the power to affect an individual’s perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior.

Dr. Takao Hensch, a Harvard University professor, recently published a study which tested the effects of Valporate on 23 healthy male subjects for two weeks. None of them had a musical experience. During this period they were trained in music. At the end of this study, researchers found that these 23 men did remarkably better than an average adult would do, at perfect pitch tests.

In the future

He thinks, may be 10 years down the line, this drug could be used to enhance other learning abilities like language learning among adults, by changing the state of their brains.

Presently, studies on how the brain changes at cellular level when this drug is taken are underway. Also, Dr. Hensch thinks that humans have evolved to experience these learning stages for a reason. If it is okay to mess around with it, is still being studied. At this stage, trying this out at home can be extremely risky. It would be wise for us to wait for scientists to come out with a comprehensive study on the effects of this drug.

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