Do we get what we deserve?

Isn't that a very interesting topic to debate on? Do we get what we deserve? Or is it just fate that some people are born blessed and some aren't? Or maybe, there is no such thing as fate or deserving-fate, and instead maybe the luck favours the brave and the capable make their own destiny? Which one of it is it, I wonder.

My son and I read extensively, story books, comics, predominantly mythology, encyclopaedias (his age appropriate) children magazines. And one panchatantra story we read, left me thinking. I'm going to briefly outline it here for you guys to help your line of thought.

There once lived a king who had a son with a strange disease. He had a snake living inside him. And that made him real weak. The king used his influence and invited physicians from all over the world. But in vain. No one had a cure for this strange disease the prince carried. After a period of time, not able to withstand the amount of pain caused by the snake, the prince decides to resign from the palace and decides to go spend the rest of his life in a temple, passing off his days in devotion. Now, he didn't want prying eyes and people dropping on and off to give him advice while he was in the temple, so he left to a random country where no one has heard of him or his stature or his disease, and settled in one of its temples.

Now, the scene shifts, and we see the king of this new country with his two daughters. One daughter is always praising her father, always throwing compliments at him just to please him and be on his good books. The other daughter however, is very right and just and says, "May you get what you deserve father, like everyone else". This enrages the king, and he sends this second daughter away and orders his ministers to get her married to a beggar found in the nearby temple. And the beggar turns out to be our very own snake-troubled-prince. The prince warns her about his ailment, however, she tells herself that she will get what she deserved, and agrees to marry him. They lived in a hut.

Now, very interestingly, one day, when the princess was returning from the temple, she saw her hubby lying down on a rock and sleeping and that there were two snakes next to him. One, the one from his stomach , and two, one from a nearby anthill. And that both of them were conversing. The anthill snake scolds the stomach snake for hurting this innocent-God-praying man and tells him that he knows the secret of how to kill him (he furnishes some recipe) and the stomach snake in turn leaks out the anthill snakes secret that killing him would give the killer pots and pots of Gold. The princess thanks God for giving her a way out of all the trouble, immediately prepares that secret recipe and gives it to her hubby, instantly killing the snake. And then both of them hand in hand, kill the anthill snake and get the pots of gold and live happily ever after. The story ends thus, saying, the princess and the prince got their happily ever after which was what they had deserved.

I totally understand. This story was meant to give children the faith in God, and that no matter how hard the times be, we need to cling on to faith and hope, and that there is a happily ever after after all. And I think that's what my son took from the story too. However, my mind began to wander
Slowly, one by one, came the questions. What is the right time to decide when people get what they deserved. What happens to whatever happens to them before that? Well, this story had a happy ending. But not all stories have one. Why is that? What or who determines that?

Some people say, it's your karma or your doing that affects what happens to you towards the end of your life. If that were true, all people who did good, would be leading happy lives. Some yes, but not all. Some say, God decides your fate. So, as soon as one is born on the earth, God decides the timeline of this person and then for the rest of his life, things go the way 'He' orchestrated. As it is something we cannot change, people called it fate. Some questioned, on what basis does God decide on who gets to live well and who gets to suffer. And that, if the basis were just a random throw of a dice, it would be really unfair. Then came the concept of last birth and that a soul takes many births before taking refuge in God himself. So according to what the person did in his previous birth, he gets what he deserved in his next birth.

Hold that thought. I read a very interesting book : The shiva Trilogy, by Amish. He brings in a new concept. In his book, according to the storyline,  people on whom misfortune falls are categorised as the ill fated  and are considered cursed and are supposed to lead a life of a recluse, in the fear that they might pass on their ill luck to someone else. And they are lead to believe that they are cursed coz of some misdoings in their past life. And also that they have to willingly embrace this life and which is the only way they could wash themselves of the sin. The author then tells us ( through a character in the story ) that though these rules seem very unfair, the ruler came up with them to hold together the discipline and the order of the city. That is, these unfortunate if not lead to believe that they suffer because of their misdoings in the past, tend to be angry and upset with the universe for punishing them unjustly. And hence, such troubled souls turn out to be robbers, terrorists, murderers, and prove to be dangerous to the society as a whole.

Meaning, the stories of bad 'karma' of the past may turn out to be just stories to help you resign to your fate. I'm not saying that it true, all I'm saying is, that it is a good line of thought, anything that helps you sleep peacefully at night , anything that helps you from breaking down given your adverse circumstances. Interesting... But given that, do we really need to resign to our fate? Can we change it altogether?

Before I got married, I used to work, Software engineer. One day, when we (a couple of friends) were heading out for lunch as a team, we saw an astrologer (, a palmist to be more precise) on the way. One of the friends suddenly stopped and said, "Hey, let's have fun.. Let's see what future has in store for us". And just to break from our usual routine, all of us took turns to learn about our glorious future. However, one friend plainly refused. He said, "Hey, I make my own lines." As if to say, he doesn't want to tread on the path that has been laid out for him and wants to make his own which he believes is better in every way. We all envied his spirit. That's heights of positive thinking and positive energy. Isn't it? In a good way I mean.

You know, people believe in God for a reason. It's gives them a sense of peace, it helps them shut out the unwanted negative thoughts, it gives them hope at even the direst of situations. To believe in the omnipresent gives you a sense of security, that a person with supernatural powers is watching over you and will protect you when the need be, and also help you achieve the impossible. It works for them. Some people however, do not believe in God, but believe in themselves, their capabilities and go on to achieve great things. That works for them. Some people believe in conscience or the inner voice and believe that is God, and do just their duty and don't expect anything in return. That's what works for them. So ultimately, what works for you depends on what kind of a person you are. So, you can believe in God and achieve great things, you can believe in yourself and still achieve great things, and you can believe that God is not a superpower but is your conscience and lives in you ( that is, a blend of the first two beliefs) and still achieve great things. Right?

Simillarly, 'Do we get what we deserve' is a very tricky question. If you believe you are going through troubled times and that you deserve better and that God has reserved a happily ever after waiting for you, so it is. If you believe in past life karma, and think, things how they are now are because of your past doings and if you accept it and believe that if you do good in this birth, a good life will await you next birth, so it will. If you, like my high spirited friend, want to orchestrate your life and make it better and make it turn out the way you think you deserve it to be, so will it turn out to be.

Belief and Faith, one makes you who you are and the other really does move mountains. Never let go of both of them. Ever. I'm out to move my mountain, I'm sure you've figured out what works for you too.

How well do you know your desserts?

Yummm... Isn't that mouth watering! Well, if you are thinking how the title could be a thought provoking question, you are on the right track. It isn't thought provoking at all. I didn't want to give away the essence of this post in the title itself. However, I assure you it has got to do something with a dessert.

Phew! This suspense building technique is not quite working out well for me. Let me do it the usual way. Today, In this post, you going to learn something new, and learn in it a fascinating kind of a way. It's something about desserts and a bullet !!! Yeah, that's right, I did say bullet. What could possibly connect a dessert and a bullet? Read on.

Let's perform (or rather watch) an interesting experiment. I'm going to place before you 4 kind of desserts : Whipped cream,  ice cream (vanilla flavour), chocolate sauce and english pudding. Each of these desserts are sandwiched between plastic sheets and are left on a table each. That is, imagine a box, plastic on front and back and wood on the sides, containing each of these desserts left on a table of its own. Now, we bring a shooter, a guy with a gun. We place a watermelon behind each one of these boxes  and ask the guy to shoot at the boxes one by one. How do you think each one of them would react to the gun shot? That is, can any of them stop the bullet and save the watermelon from blowing up gloriously? Take a moment to think and get ready with your answer and explanation and then watch this video from natgeo.

Amazing isn't it? I happened to accidentally come across this episode on the television, and the results left me wide eyed. Wow, a dessert that behaves bullet proof. How cool is that! I told this to my son (4 year old) and he asks me "Maa.. isn't that great. Now all that the soldiers have to do is to eat that english pudding before going to war. Nobody needs get hurt"!! I immediately hugged my cute little empathetic son and applauded him for his thinking.

However, imagine a bulletproof vest made from custard like fluid. How revolutionary would that be? ( This could be your debate topic with your kids today. The pros and cons of such a jacket )

Non newtonian fluid, did you guys know that there was something like that? Well, I didn't seem to remember that there was a category called newtonian fluid, leave alone the non-newtonian. So, we learn, non newtonian fluids are the ones that do not behave. So what is the expected behaviour of fluids or the newtonian fluids. Fluids include liquids and gasses. And what do both of them do normally? They flow. Now the resistance to flow is called viscosity. And what would the flow/viscosity depend on? Usually temperature. That is, if you freeze water (say), its flow reduces and it becomes a solid right?

Now imagine, you have a big tub of water and you hit it with a huge hammer in a sudden movement. Observe the water. It's still water. No big deal right? That's a normal liquid or a newtonian liquid. Now, Instead of water, we have a big tub of custard (say) and we hit it with a hammer. We see that when we hit it, it was like we hit a wall. Now we observe the custard. We dip our finger into it and see the custard dripping off our finger. So what just happened? It changed its behaviour with stress and got back to its original state when the stress was removed. Fascinating isn't it? That's exactly what happened to the custard during the gunshot. While hit with a bullet, the custard acted like a wall and protected the melon, however, the very next second, the custard oozed out of the hole the bullet had created on the plastic container. Did you notice that? That's the behaviour of a non newtonian fluid.

You know, what's more fascinating is that, this isn't all. There are types of non newtonian fluids. One kind behave like the pudding, that is, become solid or rigid when exposed to sudden stress. Type two, does just the opposite. Under stress, it becomes more liquidy. Now where have we seen that? Have you ever wondered why you had to shake the ketchup bottle with sudden jerks to get the ketchup 'flow' out of the bottle. Well, because, its another example of non newtonian fluid! Sudden stress, makes it flow-y. And a lot flowy at that. We almost always end up with excess ketchup on our plates. Isn't it? Have you ever wondered why??

Well, imagine the ketchup bottle was made of some metal and wasn't hollow. Had solid metal inside. Now try inverting it. Does the metal ooze out ? No. That's

metal's property, or rather property of a solid. It doesn't flow. On the other hand, fill the bottle with water. And invert it. What happens? All of it flows out. Thats liquid property. Mr/Ms ketchup has some soul searching to do and hasn't yet figured out if it wants to be a solid or a liquid. It doesn't behave. Apparently what happens is, when we hit the bottle hard, theketchup particles get squeezed and are able to move about freely. Once the effect of the pressure dies, they regain original shape and become non flowy again. Do watch the lovely TedEd video from this page.

The third type, continual stress makes this kinda liquid more flow-y or more liquid-y.. Can you think of examples of the same? Honey it is. Keep stirring honey and you will realise that after a while you find it easy to stir. Type 4 is the opposite of that. Keep stirring or keep applying some stress and this gets non flow-y. Example, whipped cream of course !

Exciting isn't it. Normal household items, that we see on an everyday basis at home, custard, honey, ketchup and whipped cream, all of them have been exhibiting different unruly behaviour and we didn't even notice and didn't think to ever question why ! Hmmm .. well there's the thought provoking question !

Some of you parents out there would've heard about this new fine motor aiding toy, the kinetic sand. Incase you haven't please watch this video. Kinetic sand is also a non newtonian fluid. Under pressure (when pressed into a mould), it behaves like a solid, however when you touch it slowly, it could flow like a fluid. It looks fun isn't it? Science is fun!

How about silly putty? Apparently, it was a very famous revolutionary toy for the kids in the 80's - 90's. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, please watch this youtube video ( for those hard pressed on time, watch the segment between 1:15 and  2:20 ). Again, the same thing. It shows non newtonian behaviour. When you stretch it slowly, it stretches like rubber, however, when you stretch it fast, it snaps. And it bounces like a ball! Cool isn't it?

How wonderful is science isn't it? The next time you try and squeeze ketchup out of the bottle, the next time you make custard at home, the next time you see a honey bottle, the next time you are whipping whipped cream at home, remember to tell your kids about non newtonian fluids, or at the least, help them understand that this liquid is misbehaving. Expand their horizon. Encourage them to ask thought provoking questions. The next time you chat with your friends over french fries and ketchup, ask them if they know why you have to hit the bottle to get the ketchup out.

Hey, I almost forgot Quicksand, the gooey otherwise innocent looking mud that is capable of swallowing you whole!! Elders might have told you, shouldn't struggle in a quicksand. Ever wondered why? Its a non newtonian fluid too. It behaves as a liquid under stress, and like a solid otherwise. So the more you struggle, the faster you drown! And did you know, the quicksand being denser than the human body, cannot drown you completely I read (As opposed to the many movies we've seen where the hero so sympathetically had lost his first love to the quicksand ) In order to escape the quicksand, we need to keep and stay calm, (to prevent further sinking) , take deep breaths (apparently to increase your buoyancy) , and slowly try to wiggle your legs towards the surface and monkey crawl on the quicksand to safety. So (God forbid) when in a quicksand, keep calm and remember me (I mean, this article) (Do read the many reference links below to get a good idea about quicksand)

So, science is fun (as seen in silly putty and kinetic sand), science is yummy (as seen is custards), science protects ( as with the promising future on liquid body armour and quicksand), science also lets you brag to your friends about how you know how to get out of a quicksand. Now, how cool is that! I love cool stuff. I love science. What about you?


References and links to some interesting videos you might want to see :
1. battling out of quicksand video 
2. https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2012/pmpd1207.htm
3. http://sciencelearn.org.nz/Science-Stories/Strange-Liquids/Non-Newtonian-fluids
4. http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geology/quicksand2.htm
5. make your quick sand at home
6. http://www.damninteresting.com/the-physics-of-quicksand/
7. http://laughingsquid.com/an-explanation-why-ketchup-and-other-non-newtownian-fluids-are-so-hard-to-pour/

Disclaimer : This post and the linked videos are not meant as an advertisement to the products. Please don't consider this a recommendation. It was just to illustrate the concept of non newtonian fluids from the very objects/things/toys already available in the market.

Is obedience in a child a good thing?

Ofcourse! What a silly question? Obedience is a good thing. Children 'should' be obedient. That's the one thing we parents expect from the kids, because we feel all the other traits will automatically fall in place.

Obedient children, a rare kind of species, I would say. We definitely do find obedient to a certain extent children in one off households. You would've seen their mothers proudly giving sermons to the other mothers about how to get their children 'under control'. There was a time when I used to look upon those mothers as "guruji's" and listen to their lectures about parenting without batting my eyelids, with deep devotion and intent to grasp the most from it. And then, one day, I had a revelation and I learnt something new.

A not so normal day, something really went wrong, and I ( for once) was the person with the big feelings that day. My son and I were playing and I was stifling my tears over something that was bothering me. He heard the sobs and figured out something was wrong,  looked up and said, "Hey.. you are crying ma". And what came next, caught me by surprise. He said "Amma, stop crying now. Stop crying right now!!" (in an authoritative voice) and goes on to say "First wipe your tears. Then we'll talk"

At that moment, that very moment, I felt two things. One, my son, who I thought would wipe my tears, hug me and maybe even cry with me ( because I'm crying ) , didn't show me even a minuscule of compassion. The second thing I realized was, "Oh no!, so that's how it feels when someone doesn't show you empathy. Is this how my son feels everytime I've asked him to wipe his tears first and then talk later?"

The second thing scared me, gave me a sense of immense guilt and also made me feel stupid, as in, why didn't I see that before? Why didn't I think he, a 4 year old, had feelings too. His feelings however small mattered to him, like how mine mattered to me. Why, why, why did I take him for granted? Why did he have to be obedient and eat up his feelings and wipe his tears and dance to my tunes? Have I been a horrible parent? My mind started shooting questions at me, one after the other.

And when our children rebel and refuse to take orders from us, we strive, we try, and by try, I mean by many and all means, try to get them to 'behave'. And we hang our heads in shame if our children 'disobey' us especially in front of others. I thought, "why do we want them to take orders?" maybe because, that was how we were brought up, or because, we feel we know what is right what is not and the children do not, and that it is for their own good, and above all, they are children for heavens sake, they need to learn to listen. I'm sure many of you would be able to relate to that.

What is this obedience, by the way? It is to comply to the orders/wishes/whims and fancies of an authoritative person. So, two people involved, the authoritative person and the complier. Why would the complier chose to take commands from the authoritative person ? Out of fear, out of trust or out of love. That is, "I'm scared he would hurt me if I don't listen" or "I'm sure it would be for the greater good", or "He would feel sad if I don't do what he said". If you managed to read between the lines, in all the three cases, the complier choses to disregard his feelings about the task. He either does it out of fear, out of trust  or out of love for the other person, immaterial of what he thinks about the command he has 'chosen' to execute.

I can bleakly hear the alarm bells ringing in your heads! So, when we teach our kids obedience, we 'without our knowledge' teach them to disregard their feelings, teach them to suppress their own thoughts. Now, that's dangerous isn't it?

I read a few articles on real examples of obedience and one of it really really caught my attention. There was a man called 'Adolf Eichmann'. Yeah, from the Nazi period. Heard of the holocaust? That time when the Nazis hunted jews and killed them. About 6 million of them and in the event killed 5 million of non jews too. This Eichmann was the person who was involved in organizing , planning the collection, transportation and execution of the people involved. When he was sent to trial, he expressed his surprise saying "I just obeyed my orders. Obeying orders is a good thing". And in his diary he had written," The orders, for me, the highest thing in my life and I had to obey them without a question" ( quoted in the Guardian, 12th August, 1999 )

That's scary isn't it? According to him, all he did was to follow orders. Simply because he had to follow them. But, what did those orders end up doing? Resulted in the death of 11 million people. Not that he didn't know that killing innocents, or killing of any kind for that matter was wrong. He was tuned to prioritise orders over his thoughts.

One could say, "Man.. that is an exaggerated example. Not all children would end up organizing a genocide".  True. But that was just to illustrate the extent of devastation 'obedience' could cause.

Alfie Kohn, the author of a book called "Unconditional Parenting" says its tricky when the obedient child reaches adolescence.  That is,  "If they take orders from other people, that may include people we may not approve of. To put it the other way around: Kids who are subject to peer pressure at its worst are kids whose parents taught them to do what they're told".

Alison Roy, a lead child and adolescent psychotherapist says: "A child will push the boundaries if they have a more secure attachement. children who have been responded to , led to believe - in a healthy way - that their voice is valued, that all they do to is object and action will be taken - they will push boundaries. And this is really the healthy behaviour. Compliance? They've learnt there's no point arguing because their voice isn't valued." So they kind of limit themselves and go with the flow sorts.

And one more thing I learn, children don't just be disobedient. They just react in the only way they know. For toddlers, it's predominantly tears combined with a loud wail bundled with an unruly stamping of the legs or jumping up and down. That's their way of communicating their displeasure. Some are too small to talk. Some have very limited vocabulary. And at that time, we concentrate on  "Why is he not listening to me. I'm the parent here and I say so.", instead of, "Maybe he is sick, maybe he is tired, maybe he is hungry, maybe he is scared ..."  and the million other overlooked underlying issues that might be bothering him or his needs that might be going unanswered. For one, someone might be bullying him at school.

Now, I hope you did not get me wrong. We as parents sure know good from bad, and know what is best for our children better than them, because of our experience and from the wisdom passed on from our parents and so on. I'm not asking you to throw that all away and let your child put his fingers into the plug point or touch fire to see how it feels. All I'm saying is, we guide them about good and bad, and try to reason out with them, rather than using these words : "Because I said so." "First stop crying, and do what I just told you". By showing them some empathy, they know we understand, they know we care, they feel safe and they feel valued. They start thinking on their own and don't hesitate to share it with us too.

The day I had big feelings, I expected my 4 year old to understand what the 31 year old me was going through. But, I, the 31 year old 'wise'-with-experience-mother didn't try to understand the little 4 year old when he had his meltdowns.  How very unreasonable have I been? And when I was sad, I didn't expect him to solve my problems, but I sure did expect him to wipe my tears. Maybe that's what he wanted too, a hand to wipe his tears and understand what he was going through. The more thought I gave it, the more guilty I felt. I decided to leave the past behind and turn over.

I attended a parenting program run by the "Parenting matters" group. They discuss this and a lot more in good detail. I've come across 'hand in hand' parenting through social media, I think, says the same too. (Haven't gone through it in detail yet ) I love learning. Learning of any kind. I believe there's a whole lot of things out there to learn at any age. And I jump at any opportunity to learn. Many believe, parenting can't be learnt and that it has to 'come' to you. I wanted to learn it. And I sure was surprised at the many many things I've learnt over the past few weeks through the parenting program. This was one of the many things I grabbed from there "Obedience is not so good a trait. Don't push it in your children. Don't teach them to suppress their feelings. Teach them to handle them instead."

I ask you today, my fellow parents, would you give it some thought?



References
-------------
http://www.simplypsychology.org/obedience.html
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/19/are-obedient-children-a-good-thing

Why do we yawn?

Have you guys ever wondered what makes us yawn and why yawn is so contagious? The definition of yawn is to open mouth wide and inhale deeply due to tiredness or boredom. Now that reminds me

of a conversation that took place between me and my son :

Son : Amma, why are you yawning so much?
Me : I'm soo so tired baby.
Son : so, after yawning do u feel better?
Me : no, I'm still tired.
Son : Then why did you yawn?
Me : ( a little puzzled ) I'm feeling very sleepy. So, am yawning. Will feel better after I get some sleep.
Son : hmmm... I also feel like yawning. Am I also tired now ?
Me : yes baby
Son : ma, you yawned first. Which means, you were tired first. Then I yawned. Which means I got tired too. So whenever you are tired, I also get tired. Why? Is it because...... I like you very much?
Me : ( delighted at the way the conversation was going, rushed to say .. ) yes yes baby. You like me very much
( Hugging and kissing followed )

Little did I know back then, that contagious yawning had really something to do with empathy. And to prove that point, did you know psychopaths and autistic children who cannot emote with other people are immune to contagious yawning? Ok, before we go deeper into this, let's first understand why yawns happen at all in the first place?

People, thinkers, psychologists, scientists, doctors, all have been wondering about why we yawn and what yawning does to the body for like 2500 years now!! Yeah, you read it right. 2500 it is. The famous greek guy Hippocrates, heard of him? Apparently, he had documented 2500 years ago, that yawn's purpose could be to let out bad or infected air out of our bodies especially during fevers. With that as a baseline, people back then started experimenting. Did we yawn only when we had fever? No...

Later , some people stated that yawning draws a huge supply of oxygen to the body. Maybe whenever the body needed oxygen, it triggered a yawn. They conducted whole lot of experiments around this theory. People were given different compositions of air to breathe in, and their need to yawn was documented and it turned out that yawning wasn't affected by the air composition.

Have you observed, sometimes we yawn when we are stressed out. Like, before an important presentation, maybe job interview. To explain that, another person, I hear he was french, suggested that  yawning increased alertness, and it was the body's way of rebooting the brain. He said, yawning increases the cerebro spinal fluid activity around the brain thereby altering the neural activity. And he goes on to say that maybe contagious yawning was to make the whole group alert. That is,  yawn spreading through the group could help everyone attain the same level of alertness. That sounded reasonable.

Much later, over the last few years, researchers came up with this saying that yawning could be a mechanism to help chill the brain, to stop it from overheating. It seems, just before and after sleep our brain temperature rises. That explains the yawning when we feel sleepy. Apparently, when we open our mouths and yawn wide, lotsa air goes in. That cools our body temperature.

Now how did they verify this theory? Many experiments. They gave people who wanted to yawn a cold compress and asked them to put it on their forehead everytime they felt the need to yawn. This experiment gave favourable results. only 9% of the people who were given the cold compress yawned anyways. The others were able to suppress the yawn.

Maybe chilling increases alertness.. could be! Maybe the other theory about brain alertness is also right.

So far, the text might have compelled you to reasonably conclude that yawning is to chill the brain. And maybe chilling the brain increases alertness. And maybe contagious yawning was to synch the behaviour of the group for effective working of the group. But, did you know, foetus in the womb yawns too? Now why did they have to yawn? Are they practising for the life outside, or is there more to the yawn than just chilling our brains? Maybe yawning in the foetus is to guide the development of jaws. Maybe, maybe not.

Yawning still remains a little mystery to all of us. The temperature chilling effect it creates, we know about. But is that all yawning is? We've to wait for someone to unravel it. But, hey, I read this one tip. The next time you are mustering all your strength to suppress a yawn that might give away the fact that the lecture(or something else) is droning you to boredom, try drawing in a good big breath through  your nose. Maybe it would help you suppress your yawn a little bit. Best of luck! Yaaawww ........ ( deep breath ) suppressed ! 

Why celebrate someone only after they are gone?

Today is the 30th of July, 2015. The day one of the most revered, respected, loved, admired man from India takes his final journey, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, the former President of India, the missile man of India, a motivational speaker, an intelligent man, a man with the golden heart, a wonderful human being (not necessarily in that order). The man who said, "If I die, please don't declare a holiday. Instead work an extra day, if you can". The man whose shared his years of wisdom with the students of the country, hoping to motivate them towards an even better India.

Today is a holiday because the government wanted to facilitate those who wanted to visit Dr Kalam's hometown to pay him his respects. My son's school declares a holiday telling us, "Please use this time to talk about this great man to your children". I completely agree. The man is gone (unfortunately), but his memories should live on for ages and ages to come.

I open my facebook and for the last two days, the only thing I see is posts about this great person. His quotes, his pictures, his achievement, his schooling, all kind of anecdotes about him. Like everyone else, I diligently read them all. All of them go on to prove what a nice man he lived. What an honourable soul he proved to be. Made me wonder, why couldn't he be alive for some more time? Why did he have to go away. Imagine, if only he were alive now, how nice it would've been. He would've come up with many more inspiring books and speeches maybe. Maybe become the President for one more tenure. Maybe changed the world.

Then my logic slaps me hard on my face. He did try changing the world when he was alive. I didn't realize!! Why am I regretting now when he's gone? Why didn't I celebrate him when he were alive? Why didn't I search for his lovely motivational speeches when he gave it ? Why didn't I feel the urge to read his books back then? Why only now? That's a big why!! Imagine, now that Dr Kalam passed away, I'm feeling sad and wishing I knew more of the great man. If I would've read about him when he were alive, maybe I would've been more inspired. More maybe because, the great man who inspired me would have still been alive and would be doing wonderful things and would be able to do so in the future too.

I've spoken only about me. Only recorded my thoughts here. Imagine out of the entire population, if even 10% of the youngsters felt the same, that is, felt inspired and did something to make his dreams come true while he were alive, maybe he would've lived to see the day, the days his dreams come true! But, maybe its human psychology to learn the value of things only after we've lost it.

Makes me wonder, maybe that's why we have this concept of mothers day and fathers day. I used to shun the need of these 'days' and like many other people call it the influence of the other countries. Call it the gimmick of the greeting card companies, who stand to benefit on such occasions. But, think, if those days weren't there, would we all on our own, go to our mothers/fathers and tell them how much we love them and appreciate them being around. Needn't be able to tell them that in the eloquent words that the greeting cards use, but just with a smile and a great big hug! Don't you all agree? For those of you who are parents, I'm sure you would nod in agreement.

What I'm trying to say is, Dr Abdul Kalam, was a great man. Hold on, I'm going to change the tense and say, Dr Abdul Kalam 'is' a great man and will remain a hero in all our eyes and for all the generations to come. Some countries have dedicated a day of the year to him. So that we remember him on that day and talk to our children out him. I regret that he had to pass away. I wish he were still alive. But I cannot have my way. I'm not sure if we would find someone like him in the future, for me to start afresh and celebrate him while he is alive. However, what we could do, is to run to our mom/dad/grandpa/grandma/child/spouse, anyone, anyone who makes your life better, and give them a great big hug and make them feel celebrated! It's time to change!

Let's celebrate the special people in our lives. And because it is july the 30th, 2015, let's take a minute to close our eyes and thank Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam for having inspired us all the way! Salute! Rest in Peace Sir. Return If Possible! How I wish you could!

Why does motion sickness happen?

 I'm sure all of you would be familiar with motion sickness. If you are not a victim of one, you would've had a mom who has it or dad, or uncle, aunt or a distant relative, or at least a friend who cribs about it all the time. It is a common condition that occurs to some people when they travel in a car, train, plane, boat, roller coaster or similar amusement park rides. It starts as a feeling of uneasiness or sweating and progresses to maybe dizziness or nausea and vomiting. Have you ever wondered why this happens?

At least I'd never wondered all these years as to why something as simple as moving in a car should disturb your entire system and send you throwing up all over the place. Apparently, our brain receives signals from the ocular ( the eyes) and vestibular ( the ears ) systems for inputs on our movements. (if you are wondering how the ear is involved in detecting movement, please hold on to that question for another minute. For now just assume it has that added responsibility too apart from the usual hearing responsibility.)

What if the ear and the eyes give contradictory inputs to the brain? What happens then? Let's say the eyes are telling the brain that the person is not moving while the ear is telling the brain that the person is moving? The brain gets confused and assumes the worst, that we are hallucinating. And goes on to assume that we've been poisoned. So , it very dutifully sends signal to the gut asking it to empty its contents. Hence the never ending puke!!

If you would've noticed, the effects are accentuated when we are reading a book, or looking at a person and talking, or have our eyes fixed on our phones. Because in all these cases the eyes seem to think that we are not moving.  And if you've had your share of wise old grandparents, they would've suggested you to look out of the window to minimise the effects. Well, they were just helping your eyes understand that we were indeed in a state of motion!

Now the ear and it's extra power. The ear is more complex that we think. It can do more than just

hear. It has three semi circular canals which can detect rotations, namely, a twirl( we stand in one place and rotate our body till we get dizzy and drop off ), a cartwheel( gymnastic movement which looks like a sideways somersault ) and the nodding of the head movement. And it has two other small structures that can detect linear movement, head tilt and can detect how fast we accelerate. It sure looks complicated. I'm going to break it down to crude facts that give us the logic, logic enough to proceed with this post. Basically these semi circular canals or the two other small structures, they contain teeny hair particles, that detect the movement of a fluid present in them and transmit the information thus gathered to the concerned nerve endings, who so dutifully carry them along alerting the brain and the concerned parts of the body.

In fact motion sickness is one other common sickness like common cold, that is so less understood. Over the decades, everyone seems to have their own theory. We've heard the first theory so far. The brain gets confusing inputs from the two sensory organs and decides we are infected with toxins and helps us eliminate the toxins by throwing up. Before we move on to theory two, let me give some more information right about here.

According to theory number one, motion sickness happens in three ways. One, when the ears sense motion and the eye doesn't, as is the case with car sickness, air sickness, sea sickness,dizziness due to spinning. Two, when the ears don't sense any motion but the eyes do, as is the case with 3d movie viewing, virtual reality experience, for some, video game playing. Three, is when both sense motion, but they do not correspond, as is the case with moving on a bumpy rode at a slow speed. The eye thinks we are moving terribly slow, wherein the jerks make the ear feel that the movement is vigorous. Do look at the lovely video present in this page when you find time.

That being understood, lets move on to the theory number two. This theory is called negative reinforcement. For those of you who have toddlers or have children who have just passed the toddler phase, you know that an effective way of parenting is positive reinforcement. That is, when your child exhibits good behaviour, throw all the attention and love on him, thus reinforcing the fact that good behaviour gets rewards, thereby encouraging him to be a goody goody boy. Negative enforcement is just the opposite. When he does something bad, give him attention by punishing him reprimanding him, taking away screen time and so on. While this is not recommended to be a good parenting technique, it comes handy to understand what our body is telling us. When we spin in our favourite merry go round or one of those fancy rides in an amusement park, just for the kicks of it, our body doesn't like it. And would like to warn us never to do that again. So what does our body do? Gives us a series of unpleasant feelings to scare us away from doing it again.

One other theory is regarding the occular vestibular system. Just a fancy way of saying eye-ear system. Have you noticed, when you turn your head to the right, your eyes 'automatically' turn to the left. Why does this happen? When you turn your head to the right, the images on your retina get disturbed. So your eye moves in the opposite direction to compensate to make sure the images are intact. How does this happen? The ear, vestibular system, (like mentioned way above) can sense a head turn or a tilt. When it does that , it sends signals to the eye muscles asking them to move in the opposite direction. In our i'm-reading-a-book-in-the-car scenario, there are two type of eye movements. Voluntary (as in, when you read from left to right) and involuntary when your head moves because of the jerks on the road. Now when both these kind of movement excite the occular muscles, sometimes it so happens that they contradict each other and thereby end up exciting a nerve called the vagus nerve. Who is connected to the vomiting centre of the brain ( Yes, we do have something called the vomiting centre in our brains!!) And that sends us hurling unpleasant stuff from our gut all over the car! This vagus nerve also sends automatic reflexes like reducing the heart beat, the pressure and there by could get you to faint!

There could be more reasons but I think for a fair understanding three would do. Now, how do we treat this motion sickness? Some say, look out of the window, whiff of fresh air (car sickness), close your eyes, sleep. Some people tend to take some over the counter medication. What does this medication do? Prevents the nerves from getting excited, thereby preventing them from sending signals to the brain. These kind of medications, may induce blurriness of the vision because the inhibit the occular-vestibular co-operation. Other type of medications soothe the vomiting centre, thereby preventing a nasty throw up. The ones that soothe the vomiting centre also have some side effects that induce drowsiness, which in this case, adds on to our advantage.

There is no one solution yet that would cure motion sickness and free everyone from this inconvenience. And not everyone is affected the same way. This post is just a fair understanding of the subject. Let's look over or beyond or above or even under the horizon and hope for a break through to get us understand this bewildering behaviour of our very own human body. Doesn't it make you feel humble and doesn't it keep you grounded to know how much there is to learn yet, despite the immense developments and highly invested researches, despite the wondorous scientific advancement in the last decade. Amazing isn't it, the amount of mysteries waiting to be unlocked. For now, let's stay humbled and just say three very small aaaha's and be content!

White tigers.. A beauty or a pity?

Oh.. look at him. Doesn't he exude pride and look majestic. I love tigers. One of the biggest species of the cat family. And I extremely adored the choice of tiger as our national animal (India's national animal). My son shares the same kinda love towards that animal. He says, "Appa, lets buy some tigers and make a zoo of our own!" You should've been there to look at the expression on his dad's face. A mixture of bewilderment and shock! Anyways, that's my small tiger, who thinks everything is possible.

And because this amazing species has reached its endangered status, the Indian government has taken measures to preserve them. There are 48 tiger reserves in India taken care of by Project Tiger ( a tiger conservation initiative) and did you know 70% of the tigers of the world are in India. I take immense pride. There are like some 6 subspecies of tigers prevalent today itseems. And the initiative takes care to preserve them.

Talking of subspecies and stuff, have you guyz seen the white tiger? That's a real beauty too you know! Imagine, the mere lack of colour gives him a distinct aura of mystery. Isn't it. I remember seeing him for the first time in the Zoo in Hyderabad and was totally fascinated. That must have been like 18 years back.

All my life I assumed white tigers were the albino counterparts of the normal majestic orange tigers. And that it is something that happened by chance in nature. But now, recently, a week back, I read ( from where else, my son's animal book ) that white tigers are not albinos. Albino indicates the complete lack of pigment it seems, and because these tigers do still adorn the black stripes, their condition is called leucistic, (a partial lapse of pigments) . The lapse is because of a particular gene and is hereditary.

And in the forest, this happens only one in 10,000 tigers. Why, simply because, nature doesn't encourage the white tigers. For a good reason. The cubs born with this genetic mutation are at an evolutionary disadvantage because they have lost their ability to camouflage or blend in with the surroundings. So, when they are born in the wild, mostly they die at young age, either  because they are hunted down easily or because of the number of health problems that come along with leucism. And as they die young, they don't live long enough to pass it on to their children. Thus is nature's way of eliminating something that is disadvantageous to the species. Amazing isn't it!

But, humans have a way to meddle with nature. We always do. We call it advancement of mankind! One king spotted this white tiger in the forest and as all kings have a habit of collecting rare things, captured this tiger. And he went on to breed this tiger with a normal orange tiger. Thus passing on the gene. (Apparently, this white gene is present in the Bengal Tigers. When the king gifted it to the US, they let it breed with Siberian Tigers. Most of the white tigers we see today is a crossbreed.)

A brief introduction to genetics will tell us why this whole white tiger breeding this is a disadvantage or an err to the species. Every(mostly, with a few exceptions) cell contains nucleus containing chromosomes. The number of chromosomes present in the cell depend on the species. Like humans have 23 pairs. The animals might have more or even less. What is important is , these chromosomes, contain something called DNA which control our traits. And during breeding or reproduction one of each pair of chromosomes are passed on from the parent to the child. That is to say, in humans, father has 23 pairs of chromosomes that define him and the mother has 23 pairs. They both pass on one of each pair, that is, 23 chromosomes each to the baby. So the baby shares both their traits. 23 from the father and 23 from the mother.

Some genes are recessive and some are dominant. Recessive meaning, if child has acquired the same gene from both parents, only then that trait would be displayed. Example is the green/blue eyes gene. Only if the blue eye gene is acquired from both the parent, the child will have blue eyes. Dominant gene is the one responsible for brown eye color. If the child acquires one brown eye gene from a parent, she/he gets the brown eyes.

The gene responsible for the white colour is a double recessive gene. Meaning has to be acquired from both the parents to be displayed in the cub. Which is also why it was rare in the wild. The king who captured the white tiger in the wild, allowed it to produce offsprings, all normal coloured, with a normal orange tiger. Later, he again mated the white tiger with one of the cubs thus produced. Now this cub would've carried one copy of the white gene. Mated with the white tiger, it produced 4 white cubs. The king was excited and he gifted two to the American National Zoo. Imagine how valued the gift must have been that day when no one had seen a white tiger ever.

The zoo got popular and the king got encouraged to make more of these. The process of breeding within the family is called inbreeding and this has a big fall side. Along with the white gene, inbreeding encourages the passing on of the other recessive or deleterious traits to the offspring. Apart from the other diseases that spread because of inbreeding, the white gene is associated with cross-eyed trait. That is, all white tigers are cross eyed (whether it is seen or not). That is the optic nerve is wired to the wrong side of the brain. Many cubs are born still, many are deformed.. oh the cruel/sad list never ends. I'm going to paste the list of deformities thus resulting from this very informative website right here.

A variety of birth defects are associated with the allele for leucism, including crossed eyes, cleft palate, spinal deformities, club foot, immune deficiencies, heart and kidney defects, hip dysplasia, hind-limb paralysis and mental disabilities. The practice of inbreeding generations of lions and tigers to produce leucism makes all the offspring (not just the rare white ones) more likely to suffer from this myriad of congenital illnesses and defects.

In addition, inbreeding increases the chances of stillbirths and infant mortalities, especially with further inbred generations. According to Big Cat Rescue, about eight in 10 white tigers die from inbreeding-related birth defects, and even the survivors tend to exhibit severe deformities and die young. Because they are so heavily inbred and almost always documented in captivity, white tigers and lions are also more likely to suffer from depression.

Now, isn't that sad. Brace yourselves, I'm going to tell you even worse stuff. Apparently, earlier, in certain parts of Africa, certain companies organized hunting trips for interested people. And the price of the experience or the trip depended on what animals were available to be hunted. For instance, if the package included hunting white lions/tigers, the price shot over the roof. And these companies employed breeders to breed these white animals just to have them shot!! Luckily, the African government intervened and I hear these operations are banned now. 

The other place where breeding white tigers paid off was at the zoo. People thronged the zoos just to catch a glimpse of these white tigers and the cute cuddly white cubs. Little did we know the immense suffering they have to go through all their life. Let's take a vow to spread the word. Out of every ten tigers that result from inbreeding, only 2 survive (for a while). The other 8 that are born ill, or born with deformities, are either killed or discarded because they don't fetch the bucks. And it doesn't stop here, out of the every 30 white tigers that are 'made', only 1 survives for quite some time. Do the math. Save the tigers. Not only is this sad for the white tigers, it also results in keeping the white gene still in the gene pool and preventing the white gene (the gene associated with deformities/sickness) from getting erased away, thereby reducing the survivability of the entire species.

I also read that the tiger species are endangered now. And are slowly getting erased away from the world. Due to million other reasons. And someone says, it might so happen that in the future, the only tigers we see are the ones in captivity. But the ones in captivity we have are all from the bad gene pool. Eventually resulting in extinction. 

Maybe the people back then didn't have much of an information about genes, mutation, recessive genes and stuff. We do. We understand. Maybe all they thought was to protect this white tiger which they thought was a species in itself. Sadly, it isn't a species. So it doesn't need saving. The nature is trying hard to protect the tigers from going extinct. Nature is trying hard to let the tigers be strong enough to survive. Let's join hands with the nature, and say no to white tigers when we see them. Let the poor thing live its life. It's our national animal after all. Let's protect it and treat it with the respect it deserves!

Some amazing websites :

1. https://www.thedodo.com/community/rachelvee/white-mutants-how-these-big-ca-678887439.html

2. http://bigcatrescue.org/abuse-issues/issues/white-tigers/

3. http://www.felineconservation.org/fcf/9_generations_of_white_tigers.htm

If the Earth is really moving, why don't we feel it?

We know the earth is constantly in motion. It is moving. Why don't we feel it? Have we ever felt the jerk or felt being pushed out or have we ever lost balance because of the earth's motion? No! why not? And just for fun, do you know the earth's speed of rotation and revolution? 1670kmph and 108,000 kmph respectively. Did your jaw just drop wide open? Mine sure did.

More questions to think over. Imagine a man riding a horse. He is in motion, say constant speed. He just throws up a ball, high up into the air (while riding on the horse). Will the ball fall in front of him, behind him or right into his hand?

Imagine sailing in a boat. Let's say a guy is sitting at the head of the mast. High up. He is now dropping a ball down. And hey, the boat is sailing, i.e., in constant speed. Will the ball fall plop into the water? or somewhere towards the end of the boat? That is, by the time the ball fell down, would the boat have moved away?

Ponder a little, have your answers handy, and read on. Let's start with what we already know. The Earth is moving and we don't feel it. Let's imagine a similar scenario. You are seated in your car and travelling. You do know that you are moving and you definitely feel jerks. Let's analyse it. How do you know you are moving? You see out, you see things zoom past you, you feel the gush of the wind. You feel the jerks because of the bumps on the road. Imagine, a smooth road, and imagine you can't see out and imagine the car is travelling at the same speed. Will you feel you are moving now?

Similar case is travelling in the plane. You definitely feel it when the plane takes off and lands. But when it is high up in the air, do you feel the movement? You don't. Why because, the plane is then travelling at a constant speed.

Let's get to the horse-man-throws-ball case. The man is on the horse and the horse is moving. The man and the horse are moving at the same speed. Similarly, when the ball is in the man's hand, it also shares the same speed. Now, when he throws the ball up, the ball has both upward velocity and velocity of the horse. So, the ball doesn't go right up and come down in a straight line, but in a parabola. (that is, like an inverted 'u'). So the ball finds its place back in the man's hand. And so is the case with the ball that falls from the mast. It falls right where it would if the boat wasn't moving.

Please go through this interactive from this wonderful website and this video. They explain in detail about the horse-man-ball scenario and the ship-mast-ball scenario and a couple more interesting things.

To sum up, like the ball in the horse man's hand, we share the velocity of the earth. And like the in car and in the plane, you are moving with the Earth, but, with an Earth that moves at a constant speed. If the Earth suddenly speeds up or slows down (God forbid), then we might, ( God knows what ), maybe fall down.

Why are hill stations cold?

A few months back we took a road trip to ooty or ootacamund, a hill station in tamil nadu, India. This is the conversation between my son and I.

Son : "Ma, aren't we climbing up a mountain?" .
I      : "Yes".
He   : "Aren't we moving closer to the sky and the sun ? Why are we feeling cold?".
I      : "Hmmm.. well.."

And flashback time it is! You know in the olden day movies, to depict a flashback, they show us a spiralling thing. Anyways, all I tried telling was, it got me back to my school days.

I'm sure all of you would've learnt about water cycle in your good old school days. I think I learnt it somewhere in my 2nd standard. My son is learning about it in the lower kindergarten. Things are moving fast now a days. Anyways, besides the point. From the water cycle, we all know one thing. Water from the seas, oceans and the rivers, evaporates and we distinctly remember seeing red lines or rather red curves representing the water vapors, rising up. With the explanation, hot air rises. Well, if that be the case, shouldn't the hills and the mountains all be warm or maybe even hot ? (hot from all the hot air that rises)

One more perspective to look at this whole thing, like how my 3 year old pointed out,  we know our main source of heat is the sun. And the sun is high up in the sky. No denying that. One might argue that closer to the heat source, the hotter you feel. That is, the hills being closer to the sun than the ground, the hills should feel warmer than the plain land.

Two different perspectives, with good amount of logic, all telling us one thing. Hills should be hot or atleast warm. But from our experience, we know that the hills or hill stations, are cold. How could that be? What went wrong in my logic? Was my water cycle theory, the one that is clearly etched in my mind through the years wrong, or ..is the sun not high up in the sky?? Let's think this one through!

The water cycle is not wrong. Just think one step ahead. Why does hot air rise? When air gets heated, what happens actually? The molecules in the air, gain some energy. (heat is a form of energy) and the molecules, with their newly acquired energy move faster and bombard into each other and they tend to push the surrounding cold (not hot) molecules aside. And in the process, they've expanded and spent some energy too. Once they expand, they become less dense. And from our previous post, we know that the less dense substance when immersed in a denser substance, rises up due to buoyancy force. That's precisely why the hot air rises.

If you would've carefully read the above paragraph, you would've already said "voila, now I know why the hills are cold". The hot air spends some energy in expanding. Which means it becomes cold. The air that rises, eventually becomes cold. ( Now, a very good follow up question would be, why didn't it sink back then. Now that it is is cold, shouldn't it reverse all the effects that the heat caused and sink back down? There air on top is comparatively less denser than that of the lower layers. So, this cold air needn't sink down. Same density as the surroundings.)

That's one explanation. I've done some reading on the internet and I've found some different perspectives on this. Let me share them too, for completeness. Oh hold on, I still didn't explain what was wrong with the it-should-be-hotter-in-the-hills-because-its-closer-to-the-sun theory. Do you know how far up in the sky is the sun? It is a whopping 150 million kms. Compare that with the height of the heighest mountain you've ever heard of.. 9kms maybe? So whether you are on the top of the highest mountain or on the plain, it doesn't make a difference. We are still the same distance away from the sun, which is, very very very far away.

One more way of looking at why the hills are cold will be, the lower layers of the atmosphere are under pressure from the upper layers. So are usually compressed and under pressure. The upper layers experience lesser pressure. When the gas is under more pressure, it tends to be warmer. Because when a lot of gas molecules are trapped under a small space, the molecules bombard against each other and are in constant motion and hence get heated up. More the pressure, more the heat. And lesser the pressure, lesser the heat.

Another explanation, the sun's heat reaches us as light rays. not as heat waves. Through radiation that is. Once the surface of the earth absorbs it, it releases it as heat waves. One way to see it is that , the air near the earth is dense, so it absorbs more of this heat energy. The air near the mountains is less dense, and it absorbs less of the heat energy. And the layers of air closer to the earth are more warm as compared to the ones near the hills. Also, as the pointed mountain has lot more surface area than the plain, it tends to dissipate more of the absorbed heat, making it a cooler place.

Another one, imagine the layers of air above the earth as blankets you use to cover yourself. If you have one blanket over you, you feel warm. If you have two, you feel warmer. If you have three, you feel hot probably.. You get it? The more number of atmospheric layers on the plains, the more of the heat they hold within them. So you can say, as you go higher up, you start losing the blankets on top of you.

I didn't try explaining atmospheric pressure and density and buoyancy to my 3 year old. I just used the blanket analogy and he seemed happy. For a whole week, he went around asking this question to the adults he came across, and whether they gave him an answer or not, he said, "No. Let me tell you. It is because the hills have only two layers of air, whereas we have 10." And immediately thereafter, he made it a point to find me to give me a hi-fi! Oh, the joys of being a mom.

So essentially, it all boils down to these. The air in the plains are under a lot of pressure. So they are dense. They absorb heat faster, and they also act like a blanket and keep the heat there for us. The air that gets warm, tends to have lot of energy and tends to push the surrounding air particles, thereby expanding and hence rises due to buoyancy, and loses heat in the process, thereby becoming cold. The mountains being pointy and having more surface area, tend to dissipate their heat quicker. And that is why the air in the mountains feel cold. Aaha!

Shouldn't october be the eighth month?

'Octo'pus has eight hands, 'oct'agenarian is an 80 year old, 'octa'gon is 8 sided. Extending this logic, shouldn't 'octo'ber be the 8th month? Why is it the tenth month? You waive it as, "Maybe it is an exception to the rule. I've seen exceptions before." Hey, but that's not the only anamoly. September with a 'sept' should have been the seventh month not the 9th. December with a 'dec' should've  been the 10th month not the twelfth. Are you guys curious now? Tap your index finger on ur chin ( like my toddler would when he wants me to know he's thinking ) and say,"This story needs further investigation".

The calendar we follow now is called the Gregorian calendar, which a long while ago was called the Julian calendar and which a very long while ago was the roman calendar. It all started with them, the Romans. In fact , Rome was founded by a great guy called Romulus. The roman calendar was named Romulus after him. This calendar had only 10 months, starting from March to December . March being the first month and December being the last and the tenth.  Which is why September, October, November and December stood for 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th month respectively!  The days between December and March were left ungrouped under any month.

As time went by, another king called numa pompilius, added those days under two months, January and February. He didn't bother to rename all the other months. January was derived from the God Janus, the God of doors, meaning beginnings. That made it the first month. Pushing the other months two positions down."Aaahanh, so that's the story" ( for a detailed version of the journey of the calendar from its roman version till the latest one, please refer Wikipedia )

Now as a give away, I give you two other tit bits of information regarding our calendar. July was named after Julius Caesar and August after Augustus ( another king ). And in the first roman calendar  those months were named quintilis and sextilis meaning 5th and 6th month respectively.  Maybe because the calendar had gone through many alterations already, the king called numa left the months September to December intact. Well, that's  a question we might never know the answer to!!

The physics I found in a submarine, scuba diving and my son's colouring book!

Submarine is that huge ship that goes into stealth mode by completely diving under the water. It can sink or float at will. Now how is that possible. How can the submarine change its density at will?

Submarines contain tanks called 'ballast tanks' which carry air in them when the submarine needs to float and the tanks get filled with water, when the submarine needs to sink or dive deep. That sounds wonderful isn't it? Being able to change the density to control float and sink.

Now think about this. The submarine was floating on the surface of the sea. It fills its tanks to be able to deep dive. The air in the ballast tanks are replaced by water. The density of the submarine increases. And it slowly starts sinking. Let's say now it's completely submerged and has reached an equilibrium. That is to say, the weight of the object is equal to the upthrust. From this scenario, what does the submarine need to do, to be able to dive deeper. Remember I used the word dive deeper, not sink till the ocean bed.

Will you agree with me if I say, further addition of water will get the submarine to sink? (Because, the upthrust is fixed now that the whole of the submarine is submerged under water) So how does it dive deeper ?

The submarine introduces more water into the ballast tanks slowly at first. The sub would be sinking now. Once they reached the desired depth, they pump the required amount of air into the tanks to be able to reach equilibrium at that point. And they 'hover' there. Hover or flink or achieve neutral buoyancy. All meaning the same!

Yet place where you need to know buoyancy basics to survive is the scuba diving front. By the way, do you know what is scuba? No no not the meaning , but did you know it is an acronym and it stood for Self Containing Underwater Breathing Apparatus. I didn't know that till quite some time back. (Thanks to the all-knowing-wikipedia)

Anyways, that was just an aside. Scuba divers dive into the deep sea. They need to maintain this neutral buoyancy too at a certain depth, to avoid paddling and struggling to maintain the depth. How do they do that? They have oxygen tanks to help them breathe. And some of them have BCD, Buoyancy Controlling Device. Something they wear as a belt apparently. And they either pump in air and increase in volume or expell air and reduce the volume of the diver, thereby altering his bouyancy and helping him maintain nuetral buoyancy.

Also, some of them carry weights with them when they dive in and discard them while surfacing I read somewhere. And did you know, a fat person tends to be in a better position to float than a person with a worked out, toned, muscly body!! Simply because, fat floats!! Alarming isn't it! This is a lovely page on scuba diving, read for more details on the same.

Lot of new stuff we've learn't today. I'm amazed at how much I'm learning from my son's books. You know even a drawing book has had my eyes open wide !! Listen to this interesting story..

Having a toddler, I've spent millions of hours trying to get him to hold a crayon and colour within the border of his colouring books. A very frequent drawing which recurs is a fish with bubbles out of its mouth. Like in the picture, here. And my son didn't agree with me when I told him those were bubbles coming out of its mouth. He said those were the tiny bits of fish food which his owner has generously dropped down for him to gobble up. Why? For the simple reason that he wasn't convinced why a fish needed to blow bubbles from his mouth. I just let it be. But guyz, do you know why?

Apparently, the goldfish has something called a swim bladder. An organ or a sac filled with air. Just like in the submarines. It helps them float. When they want to swim to the top of the fish tank, they take in more air to their swim bladder. And when they want to go down, they let some air out!  And that is the bubble !! AAhaaaa...

Also, you might have seen some fishies swimming upside down or with a tilted head. It seems, they've had a swim bladder disorder.

Oh.. the wonders of nature !! Never fail to amaze me. The next time you hear the name Archimedes, throw him a salute for having figured the underlying principle. And more importantly, the next time you see a colouring book with bubbles out of a fish, silently say 'aahaaa'. No need to correct your toddler yet. I say it's too soon to burst his bubble!!

Sink, float and wonderful things about it.

Have you ever wondered how something as huge as a ship could possibly float in water? We tend to think that lighter objects float and heavier objects sink. But, it just takes a small stone and a heavy ship to disprove that thought.

Let's start with simple questions first. When you drop an object into water, what could happen? It could either float or sink. Have you heard of the word called 'flink'? Meaning, neither float or sink. (I don't think it's an actual word though!) The object is fully immersed in water and is neither moving up nor down. Have you seen that ever?

There must be something right, that decides how much each objects gets to get wet, there must be something. And that's what we are going to read further on.

As usual, it all happened when a great guy born like long long ago, called Archimedes, said this :

When you put an object in water, the volume of water it displaces is equal to the volume of the object inside the water. 

Seems logical right. Just keep this in mind. It will come handy a little later in the post. Now, try this simple experiment at home, right now. Take an object that you know floats for sure. ( I took my son's bath duck ) Hold it in your hand and push it deep into a bucket full of water, and let go of it. What happens to it? It comes back up. Who pushes it up? The water. This force of water, or the upward push is called 'upthrust'. Now where is this force when I throw a stone or a coin into the bucket?

It is there, but it isn't enough. What did I just mean?
If the upthrust is more than the weight of the object, the object floats. If the upthrust is lesser than the weight of the object, the object sinks. Sounds elementary isn't it? If the upward force is more than the downward force, the object remains up. If the downward force is more than the upward force, the object goes down. The coin, that sinks, experiences lesser upthrust than its own weight.

How do we measure this upthrust? When everyone else in the world long long ago was puzzled with this one question, our genius, Archimedes came up with a principle, stating that

"Upthrust, that is exerted on a body immersed in a fluid, whether fully or partially submerged, is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body displaces."

So in the coin case, the weight of the water it displaces is lesser than its own weight. Meaning, it is more denser than water. (Density = Mass/Volume.)

So, the density of the object decides the sinking or the floating behaviour. To understand why a ship floats, do this simple experiment at home. Take a vessel, and some spoons and forks. Drop them in a bucket of water. You see the vessel floats, while the spoons and forks sink. The vessel holds air inside it, making it less denser. Which is why a ship floats while a stone sinks.

Let me suggest a tweak to your float-sink experiment. Keep adding salt to your water. See if something changes. What changes? Some objects that previously sank in the water, now float. So the density of the liquid/medium matters. It's the density of the object as compared to that of the liquid it is in that decides the float sink thing.

We've learnt that there is something called upthrust which is an upward force. We also know that archimedes has taught us how to measure upthrust. We also know what makes ships float. We are not happy. We are thinkers. We think, but why does this upthrust exist at all?

The explanation goes on something like this.... In a column of water, the lower layers are under greater pressure than the upper layers. (because the lower layers experience the weight of the upper layers) So when an object is placed in the water, the bottom part of the object experiences more pressure than the top part of it. Which means to say, the object experiences a net pressure from the medium/water in the upward direction. And that is this upthrust. "Aahaa..."

So.. does upthrust increase with water depth then? Technically, once the body is fully immersed, the amount of water it displaces is constant. So the upthrust should also be constant. But we just said the lower layers exert a lot of pressure. So shouldn't there be a lot of upthrust as the body goes deeper?? What is wrong in the statement I just made?

Yes, the lower layers exert a lot of pressure. But upthrust is the difference in pressure experienced by the top and bottom layers of the object. That difference remains a constant! And so does the upthrust.

Now.. have you noticed the behaviour of tall objects, like when I place an empty glass tumbler in water, the tumbler tilts and maybe even topples off. Add some water to the glass, and you see that the glass stabilises. What is this tilt and stability and who do they depend on?

Apparently, there's something called centre of buoyancy and centre of gravity.

Centre of gravity or centre of mass is the one point where the weight of the object seems like it is acting from. Let's say you have a medium size plate in your hand. The centre of gravity will be the spot where you could balance it on your one finger. (perpendicular-ly)
Centre of buoyancy, similarly is the point where the buoyancy force seems like it acts from. That is to say, just consider the part of the object immersed in the water and find its centre point.

If the Centre of gravity is located below the centre of buoyancy, the object wouldn't topple. Do watch this wonderful video from this wonderful website for a lovely animation regarding the very same point.

For the interested, do go through these wonderful TedEd videos about archimedes and the history behind his principle here and here. Nice interesting story! I found them a delight. And for the ever curious minds, read the next post on submarines after having said "Hail Archimedes"!

Save the turtles.

Today, we are to learn about the endangered turtle species, how to help conserve them and also learn something new and fascinating about them.

A normal morning. After dropping kids in the school, my friends and I decided to let the steam off by getting together for a cup of coffee. "One of my friends (who we fondly call captain, coz she is one, she flies planes!!)   said, "I'm planning to take my kid to the turtle conservatory today. Anyone cares to join?" I hadn't even heard of the conservatory, despite the 4 well spent years in the city. I sent some rapid fire questions her way, in the quest to gather some information. Where? Why? What happens there and stuff. She patiently answered most of them, and she along with the other friend at the table jointly said, " It's a lovely experience, you should come. Do bring your kid along." And boy, am I glad that conversation happened. It was a wonderful experience.

A group of nice minded and like minded people got together and formed an organisation called Students Sea Turtle Conservatory. This is their webpage. Their page has details on how they work. There are seven species of turtles it seems. And they seem to be in the endangered status. Chennai sea coast attracts olive riddley turtles, it says. One of the seven species. These turtle moms, when ready to lay eggs, walk to the shore, dig a hole in the coast, lay the eggs, cover them up and disappear into the sea. When the eggs hatch, the hatchlings come out and find their way back to the sea. The problem in this whole scenario being, there is no control over when the eggs would hatch, as in, the time of the day. As the hatchlings don't yet have a hardened back, and are so vulnerable to attack, they easily fall prey to the crows, eagles, seagulls. Also, itseems sometimes stray dogs dig up the eggs and eat them thereby sending the species towards extinction. Sad isn't it?

It says, the egg laying happens in the december to april period. And during this time, these nice people from the conservatory walk the entire sea coast as a team, and look out for these nests. Carefully dig them out and bury them back in fenced enclosures, thereby protecting them from dogs. After a particular amount of time, they carefully dig the mud around the hole, take the hatchlings out carefully and let them reach the shore after sunset, a time where the birds already found their way back home.

Here's a pic of a volunteer carefully digging up the hatchlings.

This one is a basketful of these tiny little hatchlings ready to go to the sea.

Their final walk.

At the time we went to the hatchery, there were two volunteers. A guy who supervised the whole thing and made sure things happened according to the plan. A girl who so patiently answered all our questions and kept giving us lot of information about these turtles.

I asked the volunteer, "when you guys put it so much effort to take care of the hatchlings, why not leave them in the sea, why are u making them walk the beach? " she said," The hatchlings imprint the beach they were born in while walking. Which means to say, when they have to lay eggs, they come back to the very same stretch of beach." Amazing isn't it?

She told us that we shouldn't touch the hatchlings and cause them discomfort. Because they wouldn't eat for the next two days and need every bit of their energy for swimming. And you know, the gender of the hatchlings depends on the heat the eggs are exposed to. It seems, one can say with a little certainty that the eggs that are towards the centre of the heap have a little more temp than the ones that form the periphery. I asked her why they didn't use incubators to regulate the temperature to make sure the distribution of female turtles were the same as the male ones. She said they didn't want to play God and wanted to help conserve the turtles with minimum intervention possible.

These turtles she said live for quite long like other turtles do. Adult grows upto 24 inches. It seems 100,000 turtles were reported dead over a period of ten years ( 93-03) along the sea coast of Orissa. Imagine how many could've perished all over the world. No wonder their status is endangered or threatened.

I asked her what could've killed so many of them over the years. She said many reasons. Fishing expeditions, discarded nets, sometimes humans dig the eggs out to eat it ( though it's illegal ), some nests get plundered by raccoons, stray dogs, sometimes the nests get infested with bacteria. The very next day I saw an article in the paper about a turtle who had lost his flipper to a discarded net. Sad isn't it?

That day after the visit, my son and I had quite a conversation about how cute and vulnerable the hatchlings were and what we could do to save them. He wanted to adopt one. I'm not sure if that's allowed or if it's causing the turtle more trouble than helping him. Instead, we vowed to spread the awareness amongst our friends and to bring them to this conservatory to let them see for themselves. You know itseems even the balloon that we discard ( let fly in the air) if it happens to fly over the sea before it bursts, the debris the balloon leaves also kills many turtles. I din't know that. Let's spread the word, cause the awareness and save the cute turtles! 

Loss of weight or weight-less

You must be thinking, "physics posts, biology post, now tips to lose weight? Wonderful!!" Well, no tips to lose weight in this post, ( sorry for that, maybe later ) but I'm going to help you understand a new concept called weightlessness. That is, how to feel 'like' you've lost all your weight, when you very much haven't. And where could we see examples of this concept?

To start with the basics,  what is weight? Colloquially we use the terms 'mass' and 'weight' interchangeably. The amount of matter in an object. But, actually mass is the amount of matter in an object and weight is the amount of force with which an object is attracted towards the centre of the Earth ( could be any planet/moon, Earth in our discussion) , and is measured using a spring balance. That said, when we walk, or run or jog for that matter, do you feel any force pulling you down? No. Gravity force cannot be felt. Isn't it? If that's the case, why do you experience soreness when you sit for a long time? What is that pressure that is felt?

The force that acts in the upward direction when you sit is the contact force offered by the chair. Contact force is the force that occurs when two objects are in contact. Gravity on the other hand is not a contact force. Two objects needn't be in contact for Gravity to act. When we sit in our chair, the net force acting on us is zero, so the gravity force must equal the upward contact force. Gravity is not felt, so the force we feel is the contact force equal to our weight. Similar is the case when we stand on the weighing machine. The weighing machine measures the contact force, which is equal to our weight.

Think about this, what if the contact force turns out to be zero. The weighing machine would actually read zero!!?! And we might not feel our weight. Right? Maybe we get the floating-in-the-air feeling? That's good. Now how to make the contact force read zero? Maybe if the chair was falling? Free falling? Then it won't be stable enough to give the contact force. Contact force zero. The person sitting on it will feel weightless!! Ooh la la.

To understand this further, take a paper cup. Punch two holes towards the bottom. One on either side. Fill it with water. Notice water leaking out from either sides. Now drop the glass. How does the water behave? Watch the video from here to learn. Water was momentarily weightless.

Same is the case with a free falling elevator. Elevator whose cable has just snapped and while it's free falling, the unfortunate person or object inside would experience floating and weightlessness.


One another instance is skydiving. When the skydiver jumps from the plane, nothing to give him his contact force. Hence, he feels like he/she is floating. The familiar stomach in your mouth feeling. After a while, the drag force keeps increasing and the skydiver reaches the terminal velocity. In which case, the net force on him being zero, he feels his weight. Just like he were lying down on his bed or sitting in his chair. Then the parachute, sudden increase in drag force, the skydiver feels heavy, momentarily. Finally he reaches a lower terminal velocity and glides down safe.

Have you seen astronauts floating in their spaceship? In movies? That's because of weightlessness video. Explains it wonderfully too. Not because there is no gravity there. There definitely is some amount of gravity there, coz if not for gravity, the spaceship wouldn't orbit the Earth, but fly off into space.( the same as why moon orbits the Earth ) The astronauts feel weightless inside the ship because the ship is falling towards the earth due to gravity and so are the astronauts inside. No contact force. See this

Been to a roller coaster ride? The butterflies in your stomach feeling, which occurs when you've just begun a big descent is also the same weightlessness concept. When the roller coaster takes the descent with you, if fails to offer you your contact force, and you feel like you are lifting off from your seat.

Wonderful! To add on to your excitement, imagine getting into a lift with a weighing machine. And as the lift goes up and down, see if the weighing machine shows you different weights !! Sounds impossible isn't it. Just try it! The weighing machine will actually show weights corresponding to you feeling light or heavy when the lift moves down or up.

Wow! we've learnt a lot of things today. A new force called contact force. The concept of weightlessness. Why we feel light on a roller coaster just at the start of a big drop. Why astronauts float in space, and that it's not because there is no gravity there. And we know how a skydiver feels when he jumps off a plane. Have I inspired you to become a skydiver today? Have I inspired you to become an astronaut today? Do you feel like taking the lift till the highest floor of a tall building just to correlate your experience with what we just learnt? Too much to ask for!! I agree. Have I inspired you to ask thought provoking questions about the simple things that we see in our everyday life? Did you say 'yes'? I say 'mission accomplished'. I can see myself next to  Tom Cruise, with a gun in my hand, wearing all black and mission impossible music in the background! Oh gosh, that is mission impossible isn't it! And this is mission accomplished. I think I went too far!! (Sheepish grin) Never mind. Forget that! But remember the lift, the roller coaster, the astronauts and the skydiver and more importantly, the zero reading on the weighing scale!