Hmm

Scene: Me studying something seriously

My sis to me: Are you concentrating and studying?

Me: Of course

She: Ya, so you're not.

Ironic isn't it, that you can never say I'm concentrating while you're actually concentrating, unless of course, the only thing you're concentrating on are the words I'm concentrating. Even then, Blah.

Crack!

I've been wanting to post this for a long time. This post is dedicated to Aunty

A few days back, last month perhaps, it was a hot afternoon on one not so particularly enjoyable day. Now, what usually happens on a hot afternoon? A class of course! So it was. Maiya jabbering his usual set of disjointed words which were begging to be connected. I was expectedly seated in the last bench, appreciating many fine things like Maiya's good fortune that made him a prof at IITM etc etc. Sania and Aunty were sitting beside me on either side.

Maiya went on talking. I was half asleep. Maiya then wrote some shite on the board. Who cared.
The board was a good seven meters away. Suddenly Aunty sorta wakes me up, points to the board and asks me 'Macha, what does that look like to you?'.

I turn to the board and ask him 'What're you talking about?'

He replies 'That formula written there'.

I then looked up to find a formula which was written on the board

Well, it actually looked slightly different. It was Maiya's handwriting of course that made the difference. The actual one looked similar to this (Thanks to Caesar for making this in Photoshop :D)

Now, I looked at it and burst laughing. It was an absolute crack! Brilliant! Seven meters away a professor wanting to profess some serious stuff writes a formula involving an exponential function, hoping to get a response like Oh-my-God-Where-the-fuck-did-e power rt-come-in-refrigeration. Instead, you have good engineers, with hawk eyes that can spot beauty seven meters away!

This was one of the best cracks I had ever seen.

For those who still haven't got the beauty of the pic, shame on you. Eat a rat and take a closer look.

Skd

Apart from the numerous atrocities we've had to undergo in Mech through many preposterous acts by the aged people of IITM, there are a few gems too. Sample this: Skd, who said this in one of the classes:

'I have no reason to believe in God. But when I realize that one of the most efficient heat exchangers ever made in the past or the present is our throat, I have a strong reason to believe in God'.

Yes, it is indeed true. If you were living in a cold place with a room temperature of -10 deg, the air at that temperature could kill you. In microseconds, before the air reaches your lungs, the upper respiratory system acts as a regenerative heat exchanger (similar to fluidized bed) and brings the temperature to the body temperature. Brilliance.

Dear

To:

Madarmugam

CC: Madarprasad, MadarRao
BCC: Solar

Sirs

Sub: Reminding you of your senility

I would like to introduce myself as your killer to be. Take care.

Sincerely

CB

Wallpaper

My new wallpaper - 10 MW Solar power plant in California. Beauty ain't it?
Imagine sitting on the receiver and looking around!

Ooh

Oh yes, it's been quite a while since there has been any Verbodynamics on this page. Indeed. You should really understand, it's not my fault. Circumstances have caused the same. India was out of the World cup, and for a few days my hands objected to type out any word which had the letters I, N, D, I, A, W, O, R, L, D, C, U, P, H, A, R, B, H, A, J, H, A, N, Y, U, V, R, A, J, S, E, H, W, A, G, etc etc. Don't call me an idiot. I tried my best, till my hand spoke to me one night in my not so sweet dream, telling me that if I dared to write against it's wish, it would write my Power Plant Engineering End semester exam in Hindi. Now, why would I want to take such a risk. So, I let a few days pass by, till it was all fine, when something else happened: Supreme court stay order. Now, after this news came out, I had to spend a few days understanding the Indian judiciary, and to what extent the Supreme court judges can misuse their power (for instance, their personal vengeance against men with blue turbans and revealing Kurtas, etc) , because of which, again, I could never blog. I almost understood it perfectly, and was all ready to venture out to blog when I realized that I needed something else to blog, something essential, which wasn't with me. Come on, smartie. Of course, I'm talking about time. (Haa haa, I made you bulb). It took a few days, when I finally got what was necessary - the time to blog. I started blogger and was about to start posting, when a bad habit of mine played spoilsport : Often, I suddenly get the urge to read news. So, I opened a new Tab, and clicked on IBN. And lo, what I found there was a nice front page article and video of Richard Gere kissing Shilpa Shetty. Now, I again spent some time on analyzing that video, if it was morphed, or if it was really Gere kissing her, or someone like Himesh wearing a wax figure of Gere, etc. That took a couple of days, and I again lost time to write. Then my hand came to the rescue again. Yesterday night it again spoke to me in my dream, and told me that if I didn't blog today, it would write my Power plant engineering exam today. So, I just had to blog.

Brilliant people

I have been fortunate enough to encounter and interact with brilliant minds with the passage of time. I just thought I'd pen them down. In no particular order, these are the four best minds I've met :

1. Nema

Good friend and classmate at BASE during JEE times. Nema was the guy who was at a completely different level altogether, which we just had to accept. There was no point, absolutely NO point in trying to reach him. We just had to give up and awe at him. I still remember the Physics tests where most of us would score 40-50 on 100 and be elated, and there he would come, with a score of 85, beating the second highest by 35-40 marks flat. He was an absolute God in Physics; his understanding would be completely different; he could learn physics on his own. One of his beauties after which we were left amazed, I remember, was a SHM problem from a FIITJEE test, which none of us got as it was conceptually confusing. Here was our man, explaining to me a macroscopic SHM problem with springs from a microscopic level, atoms colliding - energy transfer in different axis - Motion - SHM. And it turned out to be right! Mother of God! None of us were surprised when the man put AIR 10.

2. Shreevatsa

Another good friend of mine, who also reads my blogs and comments regularly. I don't have much to say about him except for the fact that I decided long back never to solve problems with him; it would humiliate me, make me feel like I should go back to first standard. There was one speciality in him - The problems we all (mere mortals) could solve, he would take almost the same time, and sometimes slightly more. The problems we used to brand as impossible to solve, or just let it go, he would always solve it in less than a couple of minutes. Such are his brains, such is Vatsa, and I'm proud of him.

3. Prahalad Rao a.k.a PR

My Organic Chemistry prof at BASE, for JEE. Well, it seemed to us that God himself had sent him to earth to teach people Organic Chemistry. I mean, how, how how how could a man be SO strong in a subject? Amongst a million miracles PR pulled off in front of us, this was one, just ONE:

There was a problem in Seyhan Ege : Complete the reaction. And two of the reactants were given. I don't remember the reactants, but they were huge with many functional groups that could all react amongst themselves; Siva and I broke our heads so badly for an entire day and couldn't solve it. The answer was given at the end of the book, and the answer was: No reaction. We wondered and wondered, how the hell could there be no reaction when there were SO many functional groups, acidic and basic sites? We decided to make the final move : Go to PR. However, we decided NOT to take the book to him, and copied the problem down on a sheet. Next day, we went. And this is what happened.

Me: Sir, I have a problem. I'm not able to find the products of the reaction (Showed him)

PR: Hmm. (Thinks for 5-6 seconds. Has a look)

PR: This is a bit tricky. But I would say there is no reaction.

Me and Siva: (Wtf Wtf Wtf! How the Fuck)

Me: How sir?

PR: Well, this compound will have pKa of around 6, the other one around pKa 13, so they wont react.


4. Ananthasuresh

I have only two words for him: Raw Genius. Well, I was here at IIT, and I didn't (fortunately or unfortunately) meet many people who I could awe at, like Nema or Vatsa, or PR. That was true till last summer. Till I reached IISc, and met Suresh. It was time again for me to realize how the world is gifted with brilliant people. The difficulty with research (from my limited knowledge) is this: When you encounter a conceptual hurdle, you usually HAVE to solve it yourself, simply because such a conceptual problem at an intermediate stage of research cannot be solved by anyone else unless they are researching on exactly the same topic. In other words, unless someone's working on EXACTLY the same stuff as you, it becomes very difficult for him/her to help you overcome a hurdle, again, simply because he/she would not know what the intricacies are, and the real reason you're stuck. Now, typically this is what would happen: I would work on a problem for 1-2 days, putting full fight. I would reach a certain stage, where I would be stuck. Stuck conceptually. I would try my best to move forward, but it wouldn't happen. I would then meet him to discuss. I would keep talking, explaining what I had done, and there he was - Understanding every little detail. Think of it, he could understand at the speed at which I spoke. At the end of it, he would just smile, and tell me where exactly I went wrong, and how I should proceed from then on. I can't even explain to you the feeling I got during these times. Either it's my inability to express, or it's beyond expressible. The feeling was so great, that to the shock of a few of my friends, I started telling them 'Man, I want to do a PhD here'. Of course it was momentary bliss, but bliss it was.

I'm just hoping I keep meeting people like these throughout life. It gives me a kick. It makes me happy. It humbles me. It makes me think. Think of how I can reach somewhere close to them.

Multi dimensional scaling

I appreciate certain things; adore some. One of these is Bell Labs. The things they do in there, amazing. People work on Robotics and end up writing papers in Psychology. Such was the case a couple of decades back, when a publication (and a small book) came out of Bell Labs, which read 'Multi Dimensional Scaling'. Brilliance, I tell you.

The aim of MDS is simple: Get uncertainty closer to certainty. And when I talk about uncertainty, it's not the quantum world or probability in that sense. It's uncertainty in decisions; when you do not have enough parameters to evaluate, you try reaching a decision based on what you know, however limited it may be. A simpler way to put it would be: Identifying the similarities and the dissimilarities. The best part about this is the fact that people in Bell Labs introduced it in the field of Psychology and explained it's applications. It went on to be a part of Marketing, Data mining, Cognitive Sciences, Psychometrics, Operations Research, what not. A seminar was presented on this by one of the research students when I was there in the IISc Lab.

Take a simple example: I give you three cities, and the distances between any two of them (in pairs). These distances have been measured by an incorrect distance meter. Your job is to find out the actual distance between cities. In case of three cities, you just draw the triangle and get done with it! Now I increase the number of cities to four, and give you distances in pairs. Note that when we add a city, we add three more distances. Which means that for pin pointing the fourth city, three circles have to meet at a point. Which may not, and in most cases, will not be the case. Adding one more city making it five needs four circles to meet at a point, which is even more improbable. This goes on, where for a n city situation, n-1 circles need to meet at a point, for every city. Of course, we know that the distance meter is incorrect, otherwise all distances would be perfect. Hence, we optimize with a so called stress function, which is similar to standard deviation, to obtain pairs of distances, which agree to a reasonable extent with the incorrect meter, overall. We thus obtain how similar the distance meter is, to the actual distance between two cities.

The application of this in Psychology for instance, or psychometric tests is remarkable. Consider an example, where you write a psychometric test. There is no right/wrong in such tests, we know. However, after your responses are registered, an algorithm similar to MDS would be run, with your answers mapped to 'distances' in a certain way, to see how your answers vary from one another. It's like saying: Even if the distance meter is incorrect, MDS gives all distances with errors in distances of different pairs being similar. This however, is true only when the distance meter is uniformly incorrect. Similarly, it doesn't matter whether you're a baby or a terrorist. If you lie in certain questions, in which case you're not being uniformly a terrorist or a baby, the clash in responses gives a high relative error amongst all questions. In which case you get screwed. So never lie.

And Bell Labs rocks.

Update: Regarding the previous post, if you happened to think I was serious, and hence asked me to get a life, or cursed me, please please please, I was joking.

Perfectly competitive markets

I'm taking a basic Economics course as part of Humanities credits this semester. We were discussing monopoly and perfectly competitive markets. The prof was writing down the conditions when we classify a market as perfectly competitive, when it struck me that prostitution is a nearly perfect example of a perfectly competitive market. I told this to Spanky too, who was sitting beside me. There is free entry for everyone to enter the market, there are infinite buyers and sellers, each seller might have a unique selling point, and one buyer or seller cannot influence the price.

CAT vs JEE

It's ridiculous how people even compare CAT to JEE.
JEE's infinitely tougher. You can get up one fine day, brush your teeth, crap and go write CAT and still make it to the IIMs. JEE? Nice try.

Prison break

Rocks!

Woi

We are taught many times over that productivity plays an important part in development. Well, we acknowledged that when we learnt it, but if you really want to appreciate it or understand why what when how etc, a good opportunity for you is to conduct a case study on the comments section in many news items in leading television channels. On going through, one really gets an answer to the mysterious question: How jobless can one get? If you think sitting on Mount road eating paan all day is the answer, you're way off.

For instance, take a typical random sample for the experiment, a news item in a leading television channel's website; an interview with Robin Uthappa on the upcoming world cup. First up, you have one chap who says that being in the Indian team is an unfair deal for Laxman, and that Kaif should not be dropped because he is the second wall of India. Another guy chooses a cryptic way of replying, saying 'I don't think not taking Sehwag is not wrong'. Should tell him, I don't think not using too many negatives does not make a sentence not easily understandable. Next, another guy says 'I'll promise India will be in Semi finals, and 95 percent chance that they're in finals'. I don't get it at all: Why does he want to promise? As if this isn't enough, he goes on 'If India is in the finals, I promise you India is going to win'. I promise you, I had a tough time controlling myself when I read this. Another guy makes a pertinent observation 'Robin Uthappa is inexperienced. So what he says in the interview doesn't matter'. Well, your comment also doesn't matter boss, does it? One more guy asks us to 'mark his words that India will win the cup'. Yes sir, marked them. Finally, a comment reads 'Robin and Ganguly make a wonderful pair. May god bless this couple'. Indeed, we hope. He adds 'May all gods get together and bless all the players with their hands on players. May gods bless Sehwag too'.

You get the picture.

Rotfl

Wimpy's new post which made me Rotfl!

Forecast

My forecast for the week, rightly taken from The Week reads:

Look out for favours from the government. This might boost your income. You will have a pleasant journey and a happy married life. Your public relations skills will stand you in good stead. Your social and financial graph will soar. A good relationship with officers will lead to a mutually beneficial enterprise. You will gain respect from your subordinates. Invest wisely.

What the fuck.

I should've written a forecast to the guy who wrote this:

Look out for insults and life threats from the general public and bloggers. This might boost your morale, although it will strongly decrease your life expectancy. You will have a pleasant death, and a happy dead life. Your public relations skills will bring you back alive as you will negotiate successfully with Yama. Your oxygen supply vs time graph will soar. A healthy relationship with the opposite sex will lead to a healthy baby. Invest in sanitary ware.

Simplicity

I tend to wonder what the purpose of complicating an issue is, when a simple solution exists.
For example, take the Butterfly effect (movie). They've tried so sincerely to explain the concept and its significance only to confuse people. Now take a typical Tamil movie (Aayitha Ezhuthu for instance) when a mini riot starts off in a scene. You have n distinct people in a room (A1,A2...An say, and by distinct, we mean they do not have anything in common, like they're not part of a group or something). A certain guy (A1 say) while talking to another guy (A2 say) hits him. This results in a random person Ai performing a scan around him to find the nearest guy (Aj say) and Ai and Aj start to fight (Note, Ai and Aj are distinct elements who do not know each other before). A definite set of solutions of ordered pairs (i,j) exists that constitutes the entire set of n people (n should be preferably even). However, please note that there need not be ordered pairs only, for if Aj is the closest to Ai, it does not imply that Ai is the closest to Aj. There might be an Ak who is closest to Aj, hence all the three Ai,Aj and Ak will fight. Thus, there can be triplets (i,j,k) , quadruplets(i,j,k,l), or in the limiting case, the whole set of n people (This might happen when all the n are in a line and the successive distances are like in an AP or something). So, what's happening is nothing but the Butterfly effect. In fact, it's so simple: Get all the people of the world together and make one guy hit someone. The whole world is in a world war. And as I type this, I realize that this scene could also be used to explain convection (bulk behavior), but ah, I'm lazy to draw the exact analogy.
Be simple.

An engagement

It was a cold winter night. Robin got down from his car, and held the door open for three more people who followed his act. They were all in suits, making passersby wonder what four people were doing in suits at that time of the day. Robin looked a little angry on the outside. But only he knew how happy he was today. God doesn't give a day like this to many people, he thought. He was right. He signalled to his colleagues to carry on, while he waited there. He lit a cigarette and took a drag. It was divine, on this cold night. He saw a long limo coming in. It halted, and a beautiful young girl got down. She looked intelligent. She was also in a suit.
'Ivy, what took you so long. Don't you ever be on time?', groaned Robin.
'When have you ever stopped shouting at me', came the reply.

They were at the headquarters of General Motors, Worldwide. He was leading a team of strategy consultants, which was hired by GM; its Board of Directors to be precise. He belonged to, what people called 'The firm'. He was the senior most in the team, with the junior most being Ivy, who was just recruited from Harvard Junior College last year, as a Business analyst.

He had a reputation to live up to. He had a reputation to live up to today even otherwise. Robin and Ivy walked steadily, till they entered the main office building. They walked through the posh main reception into the main hallway. He forgot where he had to go. He signalled to Ivy
'Give me your phone'.
'What happened to yours?', asked Ivy.
'Never mind, give me yours', he said.
She reluctantly handed over her phone to him, and he made a call.
An old, baritone voice was on the other end. It was that of the CEO of GM, Mr Quazito.
'Yes. Tell me. Where are you?', came the voice.
'This is Robin here. I'm near the reception. Which floor and room was it? It just slipped my mind'
'22nd floor, M121', came the reply, sharply.
'Alright'. Man, he doesn't have to be so blunt, Robin thought.

Both of them went into the elevator, and were headed for the 22nd floor. They got out, and went into Room number M121. It was like a conference hall, a small but well equipped hall. There was light music playing in the background. Eight people were sitting around a table. Three of them from Robin's team, and five from GM, their client. At the centre sat the CEO, Mr Quazito, with a sheepish grin on his face. Next to him was a beautiful lady, charming to say less. She seemed to radiate exuberance. Her name was Jenny.

People had heard stories about Quazito. He was a strict strict man. A guy who had tolerated no nonsense. A guy who needed facts, not fiction. He was difficult to handle, Robin had been told. One had to be extremely polite to him, at the same time convey the hard facts. That was always the difficult part of a consultant's role. But Robin never seemed to give a damn. Four weeks back, he was almost the only one who accepted this engagement, while many others in his position were weary. The three others in his team were nervous.

'Alright, let me do the introduction part', Robin raised his voice.
'We're five of us tonight, who'll be working with GM for a few months to come; myself Robin; Richie, Joseph, Zarr, and Ivy', he said, pointing to the others.
The charming lady, Jenny, spoke out next.
'Hello everybody. Firstly, I would like to mention that we're all eager and happy to be working with you guys on this. We hope to have a good time, and let this period be an example to GM for many years to come. In a lighter vein, we also want to see how you guys think. Four of us tonight, our CEO, Mr Quazito, Mr Haze, Mr Stoeker, and myself, Jenny. So, we can start.'

The meeting had formally begun. It was initially the CEO, Mr Quazito who spoke.
'Right. It's 8 now. Lets get this all wound up by 10. Firstly lets address the problem we have at hand. Actually, multiple problems. Well, since you seem a bunch of smart guys, let me tell me you the problem immediately. We're losing millions of dollars on budgets in Research and Development we've been conducting, rejection rate per million on many parts which we're developing newly is going up, almost doubling every month, and sales figures are dropping in many countries as a whole, and the manufacturers from where we source many parts are increasing their rates, there has been a 10 percent reduction in our workforce last quarter, and union strikes twice every month, which is crippling the entire process. All these data are illustrated in these sheets.' He passed on the sheets to Robin.

There was silence. Jenny seemed to give a smile, as if to say 'Yeah, you smarties. Think you're smart? Handle this then'. Ivy seemed to look up to Robin, as if she were clueless. The main four in the team took some time to appreciate the problem. Robin repeated the problem, as if he wanted to memorize it. He was thinking. He went through the sheets Mr Quazito handed over to him.

'Alright', was the only word which came out of Robin.

'So it seems we have quite a few problems at hand. Why don't we split them first, and see which of them are interdependent'. He went to the board nearby, drawing six big bubbles with the six problems to be tackled. Then he drew arrows between the bubbles which were related. The only bubble which had arrows to all the bubbles was the problem 'Sales reduction'. 'So, we handle all the independent problems separately, and the main problem gets solved.'

This seemed such an obvious statement, but somehow, the drawing on the board had simplified the process. Everyone was thinking clear now. Robin had done the initial tiny bit to get people started off.

'Now, firstly, we need to address the main problem - R&D'. 'How many people does the main R&D centre have?', asked Robin.
Jenny went though a couple of sheets she had, and came out with the number. 'What's the amount of money that was spent on R&D last year?', was the next question, which was answered immediately. A couple of questions followed, all answered by Jenny, who seemed to have all the facts ready. She handed over a summary of the R&D work that was going on for the past few months.

Robin was shocked to see the summary. Clearly, the CEO, with his board of directors, wasn't thinking twice about allotting money for research. Most of it was unnecesary. The output obtained was much lesser than per capita money spent.

'Who decides the money spent on R&D, Mr Quazito?', asked Robin.
'Well, it's only us. But we encourage research and cutting edge work going on. So whenever anyone in our R&D department asks us for funds, we never say no. It's a culture we encourage, and we don't mind doing so', came the reply, sharply again.
'Well, it's foolish to continue this way', said Robin.

The others were stunned. This was never the way anyone spoke to a CEO. Was Robin nuts? Well, whatever, the statement was delivered, and that was all that mattered. It was out, well into Mr Quazito's ears for years to come. Robin explained what was going wrong in the R&D department, and said 'We need to start with the analysis of R&D department tomorrow, to see what's doing the job and what's not'.

'Jenny, I need a detailed report, of all the research that goes on, with the people in R&D who're heading it'. He seemed to order her already! A discomfort crept into the members of Robin's team, which Robin seemed to notice. 'Relax guys', was all he said.

'Next, let's analyse the problem of workforce reduction.'
'Mr Quazito, what do you think is the reason for this?'
'Well, frankly, no idea', came the reply. It's after all for you guys to find out.
'You haven't had the time to speak to people, or conduct a survey amongst people for the past few months?', asked Robin.
'No'.
Again, this was just too blunt a question one could pose to a CEO of General Motors.
Robin instructed something to Ivy, and she took down notes. They had to get some sort of a feedback form ready, but this was tricky. Robin wanted to get the workers' exact state of mind. He had to sit and prepare the questions himself.

Next, they had a brainstorming session, with each person throwing in ideas to attack the problem in different ways. Robin was continuously scribbling in a notepad. This went on for a while.

'Right, I think its time we wind up now', said Mr Quazito.
'Yup. We'll meet again on Monday morning. Happy weekend all of you', said Robin.
They walked out one after the other. Four of them stayed back in the room: Robin, Ivy, Quazito and Jenny.

Robin walked towards Jenny, and leaned his head forward, close to her face. He whispered to her 'This dress turns me on. Why don't you have it on while we're in bed tonight?', and he gave her a kiss.

'Ivy, take dad home. I'll come home a little later. We're going for dinner', said Robin.

'Yes, my son. But be careful. It's pretty late', came the baritone voice.

'Oh, don't worry dad. I'll take care'.

Inspiration

I always feel there's a higher level to a situation when two people hit off well. There comes a strong bonding between them. It's not friendship. It's not love. Probably a mixture of both. Just a connection between the two.

How often do you come across a person in life who has this sort of a connection with you. A person who can inspire you. A person who can teach you. A person who can make you think. A person who can make you effortlessly awe at him. A person who can make you work 24 hours a day. A person who comes in your dreams. A person who makes you feel that you've known him for a long long time. A person who tells you how to use each second of a minute. A person whose life you would want to mimic. A person you crack jokes with. A person whose sense of humor releases those minute stress pockets in your body stored for a long time. A person with impeccable language. A person who tells you how to distinguish a mathematician's english from a physicist's. A person who teaches you to write scripts for child plays. A person you wish would be by your side for your entire life. A person, you can only pray to be.

Ah, Suresh, what a Godsend.

1Q

At some stage of life, I might be with a company and might come to the insti for recruitment. I was thinking of questions I would ask students. Yes, my tactic would be this: First find out the branch of the interviewee, and then base a single question on that branch. Would be good enough I suppose.

Computer Science - Answer all my questions in 0s and 1s. First question, what's your name?

Electrical - Show me an electron. Also, demonstrate to me how you will explain the concept of junction potential to a snake in front of you.

Mechanical: Draw the free body diagram under dynamic conditions, of the air molecule at a distance of 10cm from your retina. Clearly indicate the reaction forces. You may not assume continuum. Also, explain the action of a dust particle as a microturbine to the air molecule you just analysed.

Chemical - Explain the role of CFD in waste water management.

Engineering Physics - I'm going to select you only if you are in the top 10 percent of your class. Are you?

Aerospace - You must have done an Airplane Design course. Replace air by water and tell me the design procedure. Answer in brief and be accurate.

BioTech - Do you like drugs? If yes, explain why. If no, convince me that your answer will not change even upon the action of Sodium Thiopental

Civil - Look at the ceiling. Assuming we sit here forever, tell me, how long will it take for the ceiling to fall on us. Think mathematically.

Metallurgy - If you have 1kg of metal on one hand and 1kg of non metal on the other hand, which will itch more? Explain using any theorem you've studied.

Naval Architecture - You must have done a Ship Design course. Replace water by air and tell me the design procedure. Answer in brief and be accurate.

Woosh

So here I am in Bangalore again. It's been a couple of days, with interesting incidents.

1. It started with my train journey: Kaveri Express. My seat number was 56; Side upper berth. (55 was the Side lower berth). As I got into the train, I walked, rather hunched towards the other side as my height seemed to deny me any sight below 4 feet. I finally found my seat number. I also found a guy sitting in my seat. There were two of them, one sitting in 55, the other in 56. As my desire to keep warm air inside me for a while seemed impossible, I had to start a conversation.
These guys, after my first scrutiny, I thought were traveling in a train for the first time. Considering that all my first scrutinies lead me to wrong answers in the end sems, I decided to do away with the scrutiny. I told them politely that my number was 56 and showed them my ticket. They had a look at it. A look which was as obscure as the language they seemed to speak. Now, I was expecting one of them to get up and leave. Instead, one of them took their tickets out and showed me that the TTE had written 55, 55 in that. And this followed by a hand gesture and a broken statement 'Me 55. He 55. Both 55'.

Now, how the hell can two guys be given the same numbers by the TTE. Following the golden rule of science, that if you cannot solve a problem, solve a simpler one, I told them this:

"Yes. I understand both of you have been given 55. But my number is 56. So I get to sit here". (After all, to hell with them. If they both had to sit on each other's head or balls, I didn't care. As long as I had my seat).

The response was pretty spontaneous. These guys could think, if not speak.
One of the guys said "But both these seats are 55. So we both get to sit here".
To which I had to give an irritating answer "No sir. That is 55. This is 56".
To which I got a question "Then what is this on top?"
A perfectly valid doubt indeed.
I had to reluctantly answer "56". To which they wholeheartedly agreed.
I then explained "Look sir. For sitting, that is 55 and this is 56. For sleeping, 55 is down and 56 is on top". (Though my innocent mind gave a smirk when my ear heard me say on top)
Aw, it was time again for that obscure look. Felt like saying 'Have both seats if you want, but don't goddamn give me that look which makes me want to reshape your face'.
After a lot of arguing and convincing, I made them agree that 56 indeed was one of the seats. Hooh.

2. Next day, when I landed home from IISc, there was no power. Involuntarily, I had to attend mother (nature)'s call. Oh yes, I had my Nokia 6600. I used the light to guide myself, and went in to the bog. Then, suddenly, as I was balancing my phone, and my act, there were three beeps, and the phone went off. Oh, I remembered. No charge. Why the hell did it have to go off now. I couldn't see where I was. I couldn't see where anything was. Taking an initial guess and iterating, I reached everything I wanted to find (Though for a few, I didn't need to iterate). I got out somehow.

3. On my way to IISc the next day, between 10th and 11th cross, Malleshwaram, I noticed that all shops had their addresses written as 'No ---, Between 10th and 11th cross, Malleshwaram, Bangalore'. I say, teach these guys some engineering and how to approximate.

4. For the first time, I noticed a sign board (when you enter IISc from the subway), which caught my innocent mind's attention.
'Go slow. Hump Ahead'.

Physics and movies

These directors should be taught some physics.

In school and college, we are taught, diligently enough, that the acceleration due to gravity g acts downward (towards the center of the earth, that is). These movies seem to fill in for the other two cases, g acting upward, and a zero value for g. The former being in fight sequences where people just seem to rise out of nowhere. The latter when people just float for 10 odd metres. Whatever happened to the projectile motion we learnt. Also, I always thought work done by static friction was zero. But that doesn't seem to explain how a certain somebody, on getting a horizontal impulse jumps up and lands on the same place. Next, consider this problem: Bodies A and B are on top of a cliff. A is dropped. B is dropped 10 seconds later. Can B catch up with A? Assume B and A similar in all respects, same air resistance etc. The answer is Yes. If B is the good guy and A is the bad guy. Now, consider conservation of momentum. When A shoots B, the recoil A experiences is a few centimetres, due to the change in velocity of the bullet from zero to the maximum value, but on hitting B, due to the same momentum decrease (Maximum value to zero), B is thrown a few metres backwards. This either means one of the guys weighs in milligrams, or in tonnes. Oh, and I don't understand this: When you cut a guy's head (Kill bill kind), the head is cut due to shear force right? Then why the hell does the head fly off?
Bah, there are too many problems out here.