Latest Posts by svishnuu - Page 5

Oh Rayleigh?!

So the sky is blue because short wavelengths of light coming from the Sun (blue, etc.) are scattered more than long ones (yellow, red, etc.), reflecting the short wavelength light into our eyes instead of it passing through the atmosphere as part of white light. Sunsets are red for the opposite reason … but yeah, why isn’t it violet?

Violet has an even shorter wavelength than blue light. So does indigo, whatever that is. There’s a good logical case for a purple sky, right?

Want to know the answer? Why the sky isn’t violet?

Do ya? 

The truth is that the sky is both violet and blue. But the color receptors in our eyes don’t see violet very well, so we get the (incorrect) impression that the sky is just blue. Some birds actually see well into the violet and ultraviolet, so the sky must look trippy as hell to them.

(via xkcd)

Common Physics Misconceptions

Isn’t it time that we stop teaching our kids that the Earth is flat? Sure, we can’t exactly jump into special relativity in 8th grade science classes, but surely we can bring physics education into the 20th, or maybe 21st century?

A fine message by Henry from minutephysics, to go along with his open letter to the President on physics education.

F A C T

I’m going for the second one tonight

Careers I have considered

DREAM JOB:

Professional writer.  Like Popular Science writer.  Or a blogger.

Biologist. Improving humans via augmentations.  Saving the world from cancer, etc.

National Geographic photographer.  Partly because of this amazing video.

Industrial designer.  Like Sir Jonathan Ive.  Still one of my dream job.  When I retire, I want to buy a giant 3-D printing machine.  I’ll dream up designs in AutoCAD, and I’ll create whatever I want.

Navy SEAL.  Scuba-diving, snorkeling, and stealthy missions via submarines are really fun.  Not so keen on the enduring-unimaginable-hardship part.

Starving artist.  Doesn’t sound so bad, except for the starving part.

Graphic designer.  Saving the Gotham City from DC Comics.

Computer scientist.  Maybe if I take Computational Mathematics, I could combine this with my love of Aerospace.

Interestingly, I’ve never felt any desire to become a doctor.  I guess I lack that section of the Indian genome.

However, I got the 'engineer' section, as I'm studying to become a Rocket scientist.  Like Tony Stark (if you're wondering, he's Iron Man.

finals are approching

HELL WEEK, means new blog post!

Updating this blog (basically writing) is ironically relaxing.

R a n d o m // pondering about finals | #finals #collegelife #iphone

V O R T E X

no words

222/365 on Flickr.

Friday After Thanksgiving (F.A.T.)

Its F.A.T. 

3-more-weeks-and-winter-break-can't-wait-!

“If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.” - Niels Bohr

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Take a tour through the Big Questions of the origin, arrangement and future of the universe with these talks by Sean Carroll, Stephen Hawking and Brian Greene

robots are getting faster, literally.

^ Page-Scanning robot reads faster than you.

Do you consider yourself a fast reader? If so, how long does it take you to read a book? 2 days? Good for you but that’s nothing compared to the BFS-Auto book-scanning robot. It can handle 250 pages in a minute. That’s fast even for a machine. It’s just epic when you imagine how they could make widespread book digitization a reality and deal with entire libraries in a matter of days. I wish this technology is available to consumers before my graduation (2015) so that the robot could read the text to me.

Wonder what this technology could lead to? Check out this video.

Stream the solar eclipse live from Australia

In under an hour the moon will pass between the sun and the earth and my attention will pass from cooking tea to watching the event live.

Photo credit: AP

You should be happy.. Math allows us to see some strange things.

Physics Professor

Sound I like (also known as music)

Before you start to read this post, listen to this music as you read through.

My taste in music is “eclectic”*. I like all of the music I listen to, so obviously I have really good taste in music.

There is nothing quite so magical or moving as an powerful orchestral piece played by a full symphony orchestra. I have nothing against poppy music, nor do I have anything against wild bashing and screaming music (except that I mostly hate it), but if I were stuck in Antarctic for the rest of my life, I would die quickly of Hypothermia listen to epic soundtracks like:

“Imagine the Fire”, Hans Zimmer, The Dark Knight Rises

“The Promise”, Michael Nyman

“Extraction Point” , Hans Zimmer, Modern Warfare 2 (a video game with epic score?)

“Escape”, Craig Armstrong

 London Philharmonic’s finest.

 Or simply instrumental.

If you’re still listening to the music, I hope so, right? Imagine you’re sitting in that room, as a group of 50 people playing a song – using violins, bass drums, cellos, and a touch of piano – it precisely melds together into a beautiful, powerful, multifaceted sound…  and it’s just magical as the conductor keeps the whole thing together..  

As you might have seen in movies (like Harry Potter), a wand is portrayed as an instrument for magical occurrence. If you realize, a conductor’s baton (wand) also produces magical waves. I mean, with the flick of a wrist, a conductor can shape music like a painter with his paint brush. He can create striking thunders from the bass drums to the electrifying sharp pitch of the violins.

*I really do have a weird (wide spectrum) taste in music.

By the time I finished writing this, I realized that music is an expression, as it can only be played or heard (its really hard to ‘talk’ about music).

transition from pencils to pens

^ my physics notes

This semester, I switched from pencils to pens. I have been using pencils for the past two semesters. At that time, I could never understand people (fellow classmates) who use pens. You can’t erase with pens – it’s like using a bad old typewriter, if you make a mistake it stays forever.

However, now I understand the profoundness of using a pen!. Pens are almost frictionless. They glide effortlessly over the pages like a zero-volume mass sliding down a frictionless decline. Using a pen feels like you’re saving nano-joules of energy due to fewer friction. The experience of using a pen is unparalleled to that provided by any pencil I’ve ever used. Pencils are TI-10s. Pens are TI-89s. So, wonder why I stopped using pens two semesters ago?

A little history, I sometimes try to be perfectionist. I always try to perfect my MATLAB codes; it gives a pleasure while I attempt to make it concise as possible. However, over the course of my education, I’ve gotten a lot better of turning off my perfectionist tendencies — like when the professor alters the notes after I copy it down. Before, I would have erased it — with the eraser-end of my pencil, of course. Now, I don’t have to. I feel like it’s less efficient; it takes around 5 seconds to erase few words, while it only takes a second to draw a line across the same few words.  So what if I wrote “Kircoff’s rule” instead of “Kirchhoff’s rule”? Well, when I go back to my notes, I would still understand it, and if I don’t know to how to spell it, Google’s “Did you mean….” will save me.

Just the other day, I submitted my Physics (Electricity and Magnetism) problem set. I had few scratchings across some calculations, but I became more conscience later on. You might wonder this would have created a bad impression. Guess what happened after I got it back? Absolutely nothing. I’m pretty sure my professor didn’t care at all and has completely forgotten it, unless he reads this post.  

This shows that I’m really putting my education to great efficiency and doing some Calculus constraining (and also some probability). After putting time fixing my slight errors, I’ve already reached the point of diminishing returns. The slightly decreased probability of something going wrong just isn’t worth the additional time I’d spend to attain it.

I am not on a discriminative drive towards perfectionism (although it wasted too much time), but I think perfectionism shouldn’t be applied to less important things. I think pencils are great (wait, don’t think I’m contradicting) but only for sketching! Pencils, used wrongly, will more likely to obfuscate people than enlighten them. Finally, to me it is a rapture to be a pen person now.

calligraphy, calligraphy, and style

Ever wondered why some papers are so delightful to read? Well, there are many types of writing formats. Textbook style, MLA, APA, etc. The other type is calligraphy or painting. Style is the first impression that imprints in a reader’s mind, regardless of your content. It’s what lights the page and draws readers—it’s what earns their delight, and their tears, and their smiles, and their enlightenment (hopefully). I am not an expert writer, but I believe good style depends on simplicity. Furthermore, writing is not about having sentences filled with thesaurus. You must make simple sentences seem more interesting. Simple things - like “Impeccable sketching” instead of  “Nice drawing” - will make a long lasting impression. I believe, writing verbs should be used often than adjectives. Reducing alliteration and improving word choices always trumps your phrases. I have always wondered why some writings are more vibrant than others. For instance, Apple is the only operating system - as far as I know - with the most vivid combinations of fonts (calligraphy). Every text Apple writes is visually appealing. I had a sense of revelation when I realized how varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, and varying the intensities within the letter ultimately made a huge difference.

In context to grammar, I care about how it contributes to the structure, the flow, the tone, the meaning of the passage.  Naming grammar terms isn’t interesting.  Analyzing them is. Because calligraphy is never simply about fonts—they are about everything you want the reader to visualize. Beautiful typography is what that makes your writings distinct. It ultimately becomes beautiful, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture.

.Beginnings

This newfangled micro-blog is either (1) a chance to test my creative web  skills, (2) a space where I can throw my deepest thinking (sort of like my philosophy) of my deepest soul, (3) a cool to place to express what I see through the lens of my camera (did you know that iPhone is the most popular camera in the world?!), or (4) some mixture of everything.

If you continue to read this, I can assure you three (3) things: (1) impeccable grammar and spelling (thanks to auto spell check), (2) a total lack of entertainment (literally, everyone’s view of entertainment is different), (3) an alliteration of photos, and (4) so many listings.

(and of course parentheses) 

Hi! I'm Vishnu, one of the new ones on Tumblr.

Tumblr is cool... Great discoveries 😃

Toys r us NYC

It's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you

Batman Begins

Brooklyn Bridge