Dur Khaima (part two)

From then on his heart was in turmoil..until fate, in the greatest Hindu tradition, dealt them both a cruel blow...

It was on one of their daily rides, after making camp, that the bridal entourage, consisting of three Royal relatives, the Brides, and their Guide, our hapless Englishman that the inevitable happened.

It was a normal evening, when the younger Bride having been safely hidden in a Ruth, escorted by her uncle and a horse master, and the elder Bride (to all intents and purposes an 'ugly' woman for an Indian high-born Bride) given to riding alone on ahead with our hero, that circumstances nearly overtook them all.

Almost without warning, a dust-storm arose, and the two parties were separated by the choking clouds.

Fortunately, the younger Bride was hastened away back to camp just in time, but our hero was left alone with his forbidden love in a post-Dante hell. With her wit and quick thinking, she guided the frightened horses through a low gully and located a long-vacated cave-dwelling. In the darkness they suddenly lost each other, and then, just as suddenly, found each other, and from that moment, two hearts became one.

After a breathtaking night, during which all sense of time was lost, the storm left, but explanations had to be made.

By good fortune, the camp was half-wrecked by the storm, and almost all were relieved on two counts.....that the younger bride was returned before the storm, and that our hero had protected the elder bride during it. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else was said.

Except inside two beating hearts that were now one.

What was to be done? How could they go on? With almost divine wisdom the elder bride decided that there was no choice. Condemned to a life inside a palace she didn't know, married to a husband she didn't love, the decision was made to carry on as if nothing had happened, as any other recourse would have meant disaster for them both.

He took it very hard, but his strength came from her as she made him realise that for one night, her dreams had come true, her guy had at last returned and had loved her. Knowing was enough.

It was more than he could bear. He now had to go through with a ceremony that meant nothing to either, as she was to be married to a husband who only wanted the pretty Bride, and there was no way to avoid it. As a British Officer it was his Duty to see it through.

And see it through he did............never imagining what was to come next.....

Dur Khaima (part one)

Once upon a time, 160 years ago, there was an Englishman whose father was a traveller in India. Unfortunately, both his parents died when he was but a babe, and at 5 years old witnessed the atrocities of the Indian Mutiny in 1857.

Fearing the worst, as he was English, his Indian nurse brought him up as a Hindu and with his naturally dark features enhanced by Kohl, was passed of as a Hindu until he was 12. Being brought up the Indian way, he thought himself a Hindu and spoke fluent Pushtu, Hindi and Urdu.

Again tragedy struck and his nurse died in his arms within sight of the Ganges, after having been pursued by enemies from a corrupt Citadel where he had been friends to a young Raj (king) and the Raj's small half-sister, having prevented the formers' assassination.

His only way to live now being in his hands, he took the package left by the nurse, which contained a huge amount of money and a letter in strange writing, to the nearest Cantonment of the ruling British Army.

The package contained proof of his birthright but unfortunately was also his passage from freedom to subservience, as the British shipped him back to England to be 'educated'.

He despised it, but the powers that be encouraged him to use his Indian language skills for the 7 years in Belait (England).

In time, he naturally wanted to return to his native India, and was shipped back there to be a part of the Army. His grasp of the cultures and languages soon elevated him far above most of his peers.

His first major task was to be the sole Angrezi (Englishman) in charge of a bridal camp to escort two young Princesses to their wedding, being aged 14 and 17.

After having saved the lives of the Princesses, and the face of the State, in a dangerous river crossing, they became indebted to him and his fast friends, removing their saris to reveal their faces as a sign of gratitude during his evening visits to the Royal tent.

It was at this point he recognised one of the Princesses. The younger one being such an exceptional Eastern beauty that no man could possibly resist looking at her unveiled face. However, he could not take his eyes off the other one, the elder, for she was the very half-sister of the Raj he had saved in childhood, and she was the epitome of Western beauty, being half-Russian.

She didn't recognise him as he was an Angrezi, but he immediately knew her as he had been her only friend during her unhappy childhood.

Even looking upon a high born Indian woman in 1870 was unthinkable, let alone falling in love with one, especially as she was also a Princess and was now on her way to marry a King she had never met.

And yet........it had just happened to him......

"Even in your own house?"

To me , I am startled that the West has not yet "grasped" the mere rudiments of the East.

I refer to the taking off of the shoes when entering a house.

I do it automatically.

People in the Uk (bless them) seem to think it is ok if I just "wipe my feet" on the "Welcome" mat provided.

After that, I still take my shoes off, leave them on the mat, and only then I bow.

In all the places I stay, I do this.

The question has arisen for me thus: "what about your own house?"

My answer is the same, hence the title. I take off my shoes when I go inside.

The point? When will Westerners learn to have this amount of respect for Us?

American Tourists in Japan have to take off their shoes because they are there, out of respect ( very often begrudged). We just take off our shoes in the USA because we are Japanese.

At least I choose to.

The difference is clear.

Travelling Families - Solution

The problem is a paradox, or a seeming paradox. How can a twin possibly be older then her twin brother?

Moreover, why is it the guy the one who ages faster? After all, it's relativity, is it not?

Relativity says there is no difference in the points of view of either twin, since Chere can always say that is her brother who is moving very fast away from her.

So who is right?

It was just this kind of thing that led Einstein to realise that having Inertial Frames was not enough. An Inertial Frame is a point of view that conforms to all laws of physics in a consistent manner. Einstein said that all these are equivalent.

It is like saying that you cannot detect absolute motion

This is true, except when there are accelerations or gravity are present (they are equivalent). This so hard, it took Einstein 11 years to formulate it. He called it General Relativity.

This is how we resolve the paradox. If we realise that for Special Relativity, accelerations are not invloved, so the twins Inertial Frame (points of view) are NOT equivalent

Why? Because in order to return, Chere has to slow down, stop, turn around and speed up again.
That means we can actually TELL who is moving, and it is Chere, so she stays younger.

More details can be found here....

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/TwinParadox/twin_gr.html#sr_vs_gr

Travelling famillies - a lesson for all would-be relativists

There now follows a demonstration of what Special Relativity (SR) can get up to given it's wicked way. In particular, the misunderstanding of the term "Inertial Frame".

Suppose we had a brother and sister on earth, in fact identical twins. We will call the brother "Mahal", and the sister "Chere".

Chere, the rocket scientist, invents a powerful rocket capable of near light speeds, and plans a trip to Proxima Centuri , the nearest star. Mahal, however, does not like flying, so decides to stay at home.

On their 25th Birthdays, Chere blasts off attaining a speed of 86.6% the speed of light. As the distance to promima Centuri is 4.2 light years, it takes her 4.86 years to get there. She stops, turns around, and blasts back, taking another 4.86 years to get to earth, making the trip time about 9.72 years. The equation used can be seen in the following LINK (equation 1)

The point is, because Chere has been travalling much faster them Mahal, her time has slowed down a bit, and when she gets back, here own "twin" is much older than she is! There is a better example of this HERE

All things being equal. this has been exprimentally proved, and that this is what happens. However, if relativity is right, we could just as well say that from Chere's point of view, it is Mahal who rushes away from her at 0.866c, so it would be him who is the younger when the trip ends? So who is right? They can't both be!

It is exactly this type of question that stumps those who tell us "Oh, I know all about Relativity".

Is anyone able to tell how to figure it out ( you would need a thorough understanding of the subject to be correct!)? I have left a clue - the second sentence.

This is a subject very dear to me, hence the character names. "Mahal" is "dear" in Tagalog (chosen because the twin who stays is (M)ale), "Chere" is "dear" in French (chosen because "Chere" is the French feminine adjective).

The Atom Smasher Effect

At last, an explanation of sorts, for my behaviour in the labs at Tokyo, Incheon, Oxford, Daresbury, Strasbourg et al.

The title of my Thesis was eventually “ Two-proton transfer reactions in the mass-100 region”, an explanation of which follows shortly, Here is the intro to get the mood set:

Atom Smashing.

Everything is made of atoms, but everything is different because there are 92 kinds of atoms, and at least 200 different weights and sizes. It is a good idea to envisage and atom as a little solar system with electrons orbiting a central nucleus. The following relates only to the nucleus.

To find out how all the atoms come together, we had chemists.

To find out why there are 92 different kinds of atom/nucleus etc, we had Atomic Scientists.

To investigate how only 92 came together, we had Nuclear Scientists.

To find out what the 92 nuclei were made of, we had Particle Scientists.

MY area of study comes somewhere between the last two.

I am a Scientist of Nuclear Structure.

My area studies the order behind all 92 atoms, which are officially called elements.
Basically, the question arose, “How is the middle bit of the atom (the nucleus) made up, and is there an order to it?”

To find out, we had to bash the things together.

My analogy is this: Cars. Imagine a long tunnel with an unknown car in the middle. Imagine the only way to find out what it is, was to send into the tunnel unmanned yet known cars at great speeds.

This is a 32-ton Q3D magnetic spectrometer, our "tunnel". The whole thing can be rotated around the target at various angles.
The three blue boxes on the left are huge magnets through which our "tunnel" curves through. The "sample" is the "target" or " unknown car" and is where the smashing takes place.
How do we find out what the unknown car is? We lie in wait at the other end of the tunnel and look at what bits come out. For me, it is the light blue line just after the last of the magnets.
The idea is the same in principle with my branch of physics, only the "cars" (0r "target") are replaced by atomic nuclei.
BUT we still wait at the other end to look at the debris. (that blue line)

Our "target" is our unknown car, and the "focal surface/plane" (the blue line) is the other end of the "tunnel".

After many hours and days of computing and analysis, we get something like this:

These pictures are roughly similar to diffraction patterns seen from light experiments. Note the angle along the bottom axis.
We rotate the spectrometer so that the aperture lies at different angles to the incoming beam, much like a normal spectrometer with a diffraction grating.

The solid and dotted lines are the predictions, the dots are the points seen from the end of the "tunnel".

The numbers are labels for us to tell what we are looking at.

It can be seen that sometimes the theory is good, whereas my results looked nothing like as accurate.

What is the overall picture? The work here is not actually my work, but is very similar, but both this and mine show that our ideas about what happens inside the nucleus are fairly accurate, but in some places, difficult to understand, rather like some of the effects of general relativity (at large masses), and special relativity (at large speeds).

The pictures above where there are solid lines but no dots are a graphic representation that we do NOT know all.

If you imagine this to be a diffraction pattern, with intensity of the "light" being the bumps, as seen from the side.

What was MY contribution? Over the five years I produced over 20 of these, each point representing a "run" on single angle measurement. As each was measured, it often took 2 hours to accumulate enough data to get a single dot.

What did MY data prove? The theory says that there are certain boundaries in the nucleus that like to be "full", a bit like electrons in atoms. My thesis proved there was one at 60 neutrons.

We used two proton transfer reactions . (Oxygen in (8 protons), Carbon out (6 protons)). Mass-100 region means the target had typically100 protons, and we used Molybdenum, Ruthenium, Cadmium, and Palladium amongst others.

My job in Korea will be to continue this work.

My job in Geneva? I will be manager of a project to collect not just ONE angle of data per run, but three, a project adopted by many labs across Europe. it is called SSA (Split-Slit Aperture)

The idea itself? My own!

Newton’s Laws of Motion

This is interesting because Sir Isaac Newton formulated these Laws from simple observations, exactly akin to the observations on this blog.

No, the apple did not fall on his head.

Here are the Laws:

Newton’s First Law: (N1) “A body at rest will stay at rest, and if being translated at a constant velocity, will keep on being translated at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force”

Newton’s Second Law: (N2) “The resultant force on a body is equal to the rate of change of momentum of that body”

Newton’s Third Law: (N3) “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”

The qualifying terms are: “Body”, “Force”, “Translated”, “Velocity”, “Momentum”, “Action”, “Reaction”. However, definitions will follow more easily if the “common sense” Laws are given first.

N1: “If you push a stopped thing it goes, and if you don’t, it won’t.” and

“ If you push something already going, it will either slow down or speed up, depending on which way you push.”

N2: “F = ma” or “Force equals mass times acceleration”

N3: “Push something and it will push back”.

Before the definition of the qualifying terms, some examples will clarify.

N1: Every thrown ball slows down and stops, because of air resistance.

N2: If you keep your foot down on the gas pedal in a car, it will get more and more fast.

N3: In empty space, if an astronaut pushes another astronaut, both will move away from each other at the same rate.

Definitions:

“Body” = anything that can move.

“Force” = a constant pushing.

“Translated” = moved in a straight line.

“Velocity” = speed in one direction only.

“Momentum” = mass x velocity

“Action” = a particular push.

“Reaction” = a particular push back.

Well, these are they. Apply these in the right way, and a lot of problems can be solved about things that move.

The trouble is, knowing which one to use in each situation.

There are more ways of formulating the Laws, but as given, the first set are the “official” versions, whereas the second set are the “normal “ versions that everyone has heard at least once.

The most used is the second. It crops up everywhere. Especially interesting is the case of applying it to a space rocket being launched, but that involves a real knowledge of calculus to solve (clue – you actually need the “official” version of N2, the “normal” N2 is insufficient!).

As a nuclear scientist, I use N1 quite a bit.

That Darn Quantum Mechanics again....

Here is a cool introduction to the bizarre world of Quantum Mechanics. It is a paraphrase of the opening chapter to "The Feynman Lectures in Physics" Book 3. It is a very plain and very simple demonstration of what we were up against in the 1930's, and it is EXCELLENT.



However, it lacks in two areas:

1. It does not mention that any wave effect (waves or electrons) is only possible if the wavelength of the "waving" is about the same size as the aperture. (simple wave theory)

2. It does not say why looking at the electron affects the pattern. The reason why is that until you look, there is an interference pattern, but if you look, you have to bounce a photon off the electron back into your eye to see it. This photon has momentum according to p = E/c, and although tiny, is just enough to push the electron off course from the interference pattern. If you lower the "wiggling" (the frequency) of the light so that this effect becomes less, the amount of photon momentum needed to tell which slit the photon has gone through is enough to not destroy the pattern, but the light is so dim, it is too dark to see which slit it has gone through. This reciprocal effect has a name , and it is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

What has four or six or even twelve strings, but no frets?

OR......"Music hath charms, etc" Part two

Once Again! As the brother of Manuel used to say,

That fancy music stuff where you play two notes at the same time is called “harmony”.

There is a simple and easy illustration of it using a chain (not thin necklace), with links about the same size and weight as a door-lock chain, but about 18 inches long.

What you do is hold it from the top and make your fingers go in a circle, to twirl it round slowly. It just goes in a loop, or rather, rotates in one.

Not very interesting. Something happens as you twirl it faster though, and it happens all of a sudden. As you twirl it faster, something quite unexpected happens – you get a kink in the rotating chain! A very marked “bulge” appears about 1/3 of the way down, and there is a point about 2/3 down, where the chain actually stays still!

If you are really quick with practice, you can go even faster and get TWO “bulges”.

So what is happening? The chain is simply playing a “note”, only there is no sound. The principle is exactly the same though.

When slow, this is the lowest note, faster and the note is “higher”, in fact three times the frequency. Fastest, the note is still “higher”, in fact, five times the frequency. We call these the “Base frequency”, “1st harmonic” and “2nd harmonic”.

The same chain is making different “notes”. This is what piano strings also do. How do we use this? We just play two different notes at the same time, but in the piano’s case, it is not the same piece of wire, they are different wires, linked exactly like the “notes” in the chain.

Then things got really clever. The musicians finally found a use for the “sustain” pedal. This is the pedal on the piano, if you remember, that keeps the music going even after your finger has left the key. In certain circumstances, the musician wants to play a SINGLE note, but with a richer sound than normal. They found they could do this by allowing a note to harmonise with itself.

The concept of octaves here returns with a vengeance! To get a note to harmonise with itself, you press keys at the same time that are exactly an octave apart !!

To get the full effect of this, you must also press on the sustain pedal with your foot when doing this - phew! – three things at once, four if you are also reading music.

There are two striking examples of this happening. The first is Chopin’s Prelude No 14 in D Flat Major, which is also called the “Raindrop” prelude, for its repeated single note (A-flat) played with only the ring finger. Chopin wanted to bring drama into the middle of the piece (in songs, this is often called the “bridge”, but in classical music, it is called the “trio”). So he did exactly the above. You can actually tell the exact point when he switches from the single A-flat to two A-flats an octave apart. What is even more amazing, is that just over halfway through, the A-flat played by the left hand, becomes A-flat played by the right, and a little later, reverts back to the left hand! (so THAT is the difference!)

A more familiar example is the Chariots of Fire theme by Vangelis. It starts off, the percussion kicks in, and the melody is played. Then the second part of the melody is played, with fingers on two notes one octave apart ( this is a little more difficult than playing a single note all the time, and then just bridging the octave).

…and all this just from a little physics. However, these two posts only touch the surface of just what can be done, if you simply know how……….


PS If you can read music you probably don't need this link to prelude No 15

After you download Sibelius scorcher (the link is on the bottom of the page in IE6) you will see the sheet music, and can play the prelude and watch the music at the same time.

For the curious, "pp" means "very soft", "ff" means "very loud", the straight lines like slim sideways "v"s mean louder or softer as you go on, and the funny squiggles and dotted lines below each double line of music are actually squiggles to tell you when to press the foot-pedal.

The point where the "one-note an octave apart" happens is quite clear. Notice the "ff" above this double effect. This is exactly what I meant about the "richness" needed. Try it!

Incidentally, if you think the music boring, it is. It is as played by a computer with no human touches at all. Try listening to Artur Rubenstein, Rudolph Kerer, Vladimir Ashkenazy, or my favorites, Tamas Vasary and Igo Pogorelich. They are all different, and quite stimulating.

Losing My Religion

(SUBJECTIVE POST BY DEFINITION!)

Just WHAT is Religion?

Is it not a belief in that which we cannot see?

Or is that Faith?

As an observer, I often find it amusing (in the case of the Mohammed Teddy Bear) or annoying.

The latter being exhibited by a guy I met in our local pub last night. He and his companion were "Christians" in the broader sense of the word. They called themselves "Pentecostals" and the (older) guy was very interested in me (as a scientist) at first.

However, once I started to ask questions about the Bible he was unable to answer he lost interest. I asked him a few questions, and twice he went off at a tangent trying to answer them with quotes from the Bible. He failed, as I had to remind, twice, to "please answer the question".

I had gotten to thinking that to have faith is commendable, but to blindly believe is just folly, when he proved it with his answer to this one: "If God created the Heavens and the Earth and all that therein is in only six days, why has Jesus been in Heaven for over 2000 years "preparing a place" for the Christians to go to?"

His answer was -

"The Patience of the Lord".

I was dumbfounded.

In the words of Zen Buddhism, he "unasked" the question .

How on earth do they think they can get anyone to "Come to Jesus" (the only words spoken by his timid companion) with such rhetoric?

So I think I was justifiably annoyed at the attitude. Just as "killing all infidels" in Islam is slightly annoying too. The difference being only a matter of degree.