My Science School

               Srinivasa Ramanujan was one of the greatest mathematicians India has ever produced. His contributions to the theory of numbers brought him worldwide acclamation. He was born in a poor Brahmin family of south India on 22nd December, 1887. Due to lack of scope, he started his career as a clerk. In his spare time he used to devise mathematical Problems himself and solve them.

               When he was 15 years old he obtained a copy of George Shoobridge Carr’s Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics. Having verified the results in Carr’s book, Ramanujan went beyond and developed his own theorems. In 1903 he secured a scholarship from the University of Madras. But since he devoted himself fully to mathematics and neglected other studies it was forfeited the following year.

               But undeterred, Ramanujan continued with his work in extreme poverty without employment. He got married in 1909 and began to search for a permanent employment. He obtained a clerical post with the Madras port trust.

               Ramanujan published his first research papers in the journal of the Indian Mathematical Society in the year 1911. His genius slowly gained recognition and in 1913 he began a correspondence with the British mathematician Godfrey H. Hardy that led to a special scholarship from the University of Madras and a grant from Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1914 Ramanujan went to England, where Hardy tutored him privately and collaborated with him in some research.

               Ramanujan’s genius was unrivalled. He worked out the Riemann series, the elliptic integrals, hyper geometric series, and the functional equations of the Zeta function and his theory of divergence series. In England, Ramanujan made further advances, especially in the partition of numbers. His papers were published in English and European journals. In 1918 he became the first Indian to be elected as a Fellow to the Royal Society of London.

               In 1917 Ramanujan got tuberculosis and so he returned to India. He died at Chelput in Madras on 26th April, 1920. 

               In the study of elementary Geometry we all are familiar with the concept of “Pythagorean Theorem”. This tells us that for any right angled triangle, the square of the longest side of the triangle (hypotenuse) is equal to the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two sides.

               But do you know who invented this famous formula that still is the basic concept of the geometrical studies on triangles? He was Pythagorus, the Greek philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. Pythagorus was born during 500 B.C. in Samas, Greece, near the present city Metaponto in Italy. He migrated to South Italy during 532 B.C. to escape the tyrannical rules those prevailed there.

               But his inquisitive and probing mind always thrived him to share his ideas and thinkings among the people. These desires ultimately led him to establish an Academy at Carton — presently known as Crotona to achieve his goals. His teachings on ethics, politics and brotherhood had a great effect over the people there. His thoughts and ideas were flourished throughout most parts of Italy and Greece. But all these eventually died out towards the end of 4th century B.C., largely because of opposition from some quarters for some reason or other. But apart from his philosophical thinkings, his contribution is also credited with the mathematical concepts of the functional significance of numbers. He, in fact contributed to the development of mathematics and geometry in addition to his ideas on Western philosophy. It is an established fact that his ideas greatly influenced the thinking of Plato and Aristotle.

               In the scientific world, his theories on geometry, mathematics, astronomy, sound behaviours etc. were gratefully acknowledged. The famous astronomer, Copernicus for instance, described Pythagorus as a fore-runner of the suggestions put forward by him that earth and other planets rotate in orbit around the Sun.

               During 493, B.C. Pythagorus died at the age of 83.

 

               From the primitive age man has always known and feared earthquakes. We know about the large scale devastations they caused. Do you know who first invented a device for registering and detecting the intensity the earthquakes?

               He was Chang Heng of China. In 132 A.D. the device for registering seismic activity was invented by him. The device had a number of metal balls around the rim of an urn. It was arranged in such a way that an earth tremor would disturb a central column, operating a mechanism that dropped one of its ball into a metal holder causing a noise. The direction of the earthquake could be worked out by seeing the balls that fell and that did not.

               From this primitive device the modern sensitive seismographs evolved and a science has grown up with them known as the seismology or study of earthquakes. The Greek word Seimos means “a shaking”.

               Within the past hundred years there have been many advances in the design of the device called “Seismographer”. Seismographers give a record of movement and waves of the earth’s crust at their location. There is now seismic recording equipment fixed in every country — making continuous recordings. A heavy inert weight is suspended in the equipment by a spring and attached to this is a fixed pen that is in contact with paper on a rotating drum. During earthquake the instrument’s frame and the drum move, causing the pen to record a zigzag line on the paper. The pen does not move.

                These lines indicated the intensity and location of the earthquake. In modern observatories, at least two or three seismographers are installed. Each one is meant for monitoring the horizontal and vertical movements of earthquakes to measure and locate the exact centre of earthquake. It has not possible yet to design a seismograph to measure faithfully the movement of earth’s crust in every direction at once in response to seismic waves. However, it seems possible that earthquakes may soon be within man’s control to some extent. 

               An atom is made up of three types of elementary particles called electrons, protons and neutrons. The neutrons and protons constitute the nucleus of the atom while the electrons revolve around the nucleus in different orbits. Neutron is a subatomic particle that does not have any electric charge. Protons and electrons however carry equal positive and negative charges respectively but neutron has no such charge. The mass of the neutron is slightly greater than that of the proton. Do you know who discovered the neutrons?

               Neutron was discovered by a British Physicist named Sir James Chadwick. In the early 1900s, scientists were aware that an atom contained electrically charged particles called electrons and protons. Scientists believed that there must be uncharged particles also in an atom. In 1932, Chadwick showed that the radiation from the element beryllium, caused by the bombardment of alpha particles is actually a stream of electrically neutral particles. He called these particles neutrons. He also studied some other properties of these particles. Neutrons directly emitted from atomic nuclei are termed as fast neutron.

               Chadwick also explained the existence of isotopes. An isotope of an element has the same number of protons but different number of neutrons. It has, therefore, a different atomic weight. In 1935, Chadwick was awarded Nobel Prize for physics. Chadwick did pioneering work in the field of nuclear chain reactions. He played an important role in the development of the first atomic bomb during World War II.

               From the studies carried out on neutrons it has been found out that a free neutron which is outside a nucleus is unstable. On an average, a neutron decays in 12 minutes. This length of time is called half life of the neutron. Inside the nucleus, the neutrons are usually stable. When they decay inside the nucleus, that substance becomes radioactive. Beams of neutrons have high penetrating power and therefore they have high damaging effect on living tissues. Because of this, scientists working in nuclear establishments have to wear protective shields as a protection against harmful radiations.

 

Guglielmo Marconi was born on 26th April, 1874 at Bologna in Italy. He studied Physics in a technical school in Leghorn, Italy and conducted his early experiments near Bologna. He was the man, who, most people say, invented Radio.

When in 1887 he came to know that Heinrich Hertz had discovered radio waves, he thought of using these waves for carrying messages. At that time messages were already being sent in Morse code using electric wires. When he was only 20, he managed to make an electric bell ring in one corner of a room with radio waves sent out from the other corner. The bell was switched on by electric pulse across about 10 metres by radio waves.

By 1895, Marconi was able to develop equipment that could transmit pulses up to a distance of about 2 km. But unfortunately the Italian Government did not take much interest in his work and he decided to try his luck in London. In 1896 he moved to London and during 1896 and 1897 gave a series of successful demonstrations of the wireless telegraphy apparatus he had developed. In May 1897, he transmitted Morse signals from Lavernock point in Wales to an island in Bristol Channel about five km. away. He subsequently started the Marconi Company in 1897.

Two years later i.e. in 1899 he transmitted a radio signal across the English Channel covering a distance of about 50 km. In 1899 he also equipped two U.S. ships to report to newspapers in New York City the progress of the yacht race for the American Cup. On December 12, 1901, the letter S was sent in Morse code across the Atlantic Ocean. The world then realized the tremendous possibilities of this new means of communication. In 1909 he received the Nobel Prize for Physics. He later worked on shortwave wireless communication, which constitutes the basis of nearly all modern long distance radio transmission. In 1930 he was chosen the President of the Royal Italian Academy.

This great physicist and inventor died on July 20, 1937.

 

 

               Aryabhatta was a great mathematician and astronomer of ancient India. The first artificial Indian satellite, ‘Aryabhatta’ launched on April 19th, 1975 was named after this famous Indian mathematician.

               Aryabhatta was born in 476 AD at Kusumapura (Pataliputra), India. He was a noted astrologer and mathematician of his times. He was the first astronomer in the world to arrive at the currently accepted theory that the earth is round and that it rotates on its own axis and travels around the sun, thus causing day and night. His works are still available. He was one of those known to have used Algebra for the first time. In 499 AD he wrote a book entitled Aryabhatiya. Written in a concise and scientific manner and in couplets it summarizes the contemporary knowledge of the science of mathematics. It was a famous book of the period and deals with astronomy and spherical trigonometry. In that book 33 rules of arithmetic, algebra and plane trigonometry were given.

                Aryabhatta gave an accurate approximation for pi (), as 3.1416 and introduced the inverse sine function into trigonometry.

               Aryabhatta made many contributions to the sciences of mathematics and astronomy. He was one of the most learned persons in King Vikramaditya’s Court. This great man died in 550 AD. 

            A gun is a weapon that fires bullets from a tube called a barrel. First some explosive is filled then the bullet is placed inside the barrel. A spiral groove cut in the gun barrel make the shells spin as they flow through the air. When the explosive is ignited, it produces large amounts of hot gases. These hot gases expand very quickly and hit the bullet. The force brings out the bullet from the barrel at a very high speed. Although it cannot be accepted as proven, it is believed that the earliest guns were manufactured both in China and in North Africa in 1250 AD.

            The earliest representation of an English Gun is contained in an illustrated manuscript dated 1326 AD available in an Oxford Library.

            The heavy cannons were first used in about 1350 AD. They were mounted on a wooden support. A gunner placed some gunpowder in the open end of the barrel, called the muzzle. He then rammed it down deep into the closed end called the breech. Then he put a cannon ball next to the powder into the barrel. The gun was fired by placing a lighted wick into a hole in the breech. The wick ignited the gunpowder and the cannon were fired. Sawai Jai Singh, the ruler of Jaipur, commissioned cannon on wheels in 1720 which is the largest cannon on wheels in the world. Named as Jaivana, this had a 20 ft. long barrel and weighed 50 tonnes; it required 100 kg gunpowder for a single shot and had a range of 35 km.

            During the 16th century, pistols and other sorts of guns became common but all these were loaded from the muzzle. In 1800 came guns which fired pointed shells that exploded when they hit their targets. During the 19th century, a different kind of gun was invented. This gun was loaded from the back and instead of a metal ball, cartridges were used in it. The cartridges were placed near the back of the gun.

            A cartridge has a metal or paper tube containing a bullet and some powder. This was enclosed by a cap. The cap lies at the back of the cartridge. It contains a small amount of explosive. This explosive is very sensitive and is exploded by striking it with a firing pin. This explosion gives a jolt to the bullet and it comes out. By the 19th century, breech loading rifles and pistols were in general use.

            In 1835, an American inventor, Samuel Colt invented a pistol which when fired threw out a revolving bullet. So, he called it a revolver. It contained a chamber that held five or six cartridges. When the trigger was pulled, the chamber turned round and lined up a cartridge with the barrel. Modern revolvers are very similar to those made by Colt.

            During the 19th century, rifles became popular. Now they came to be fitted with magazines to hold cartridges. These rifles had a bolt beside the breech. These rifles were used on a very large scale during the two World Wars. Inventors developed Muskets Rifles and machine guns for long distance shooting during the end of 2nd World War.

            These were automatic light guns that kept on firing bullets as long as the trigger was pressed. After this, heavy guns known as field guns were developed. Modern field guns weigh about four tonnes. Shells used in these weigh about 40 kg and have a range of about 14 km. The barrels are made of the highest grade of steel and these guns are very expensive. In modern guns a hammer set off an explosion that drives a shell or bullet from the barrel.  

 

 

What was the contribution of Pierre Laplace, the French Astronomer and Mathematician, to the science of astronomy?

Pierre Laplace is famous for his application of applied mathematics to practical astronomy. He published his work Mecanique Celeste in the years 1799-1825. It was an attempt to explain the mechanical problems presented by the Solar System.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name the astronomer who is acclaimed as the father of modern practical astronomy.

John Flamsteed, first Astronomer-Royal of England. In 1676, when Greenwich Observatory was built, he began observations which really began modern practical astronomy. The first reliable catalogue of fixed stars was compiled by him, and he wrote the great book Historia Coelestis Britannica, published in 1725. His work supplied the background for some of Newton’s theories.

              He was the man who first proved that air contains two gases: oxygen and nitrogen. Also he established that when a substance is burnt it combines with oxygen in the air. This really moved chemistry into the modern age, because it explained for the first time what really happens during the important chemical process of burning. This great scientist, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, was born on August 26, 1746 in Paris and is called the ‘Father of Modern Chemistry’. After completing his education, he first became a lawyer and worked as a tax collector. In his spare time he conducted research work.

              In 1766, he won a gold medal for his suggestions on how to light the streets of Paris. He was later given the job of a Gunpowder Officer. Lavoisier did a great deal of research on combustion. In 1772, he proved through an experiment that the ash from burnt metals is heavier than the original metals. Earlier people believed that when such things are burnt, they give off a substance called phlogiston. Lavoisier proved that during the process of burning something was added to the substance. 

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Morse code is a system of sounds that telegraphers and radio operators use to send messages through wire or radio. This involves a system of dots or short signals, dashes or long signals and spaces. Each letter of the alphabet, plus numbers and other symbols, are represented by groups of dots and dashes. The Morse code is named after Samuel Morse of USA who developed it in 1938. He also patented the telegraph in 1840 and was credited with the invention of telegraph.

The first message in Morse code was taped out in the United States over a telegraph line from Baltimore to Washington by Samuel Morse on May 24, 1844. The message was, ‘What hath God wrought’. Morse code can also be signalled by lights.

In 1837 Morse exhibited his first successful telegraph instrument. By 1838 he had developed the Morse code. But it was not until 1843 that Morse built the first telegraph line in the United States from Baltimore to Washington. In the following year, i.e. 1844, he succeeded in sending the first message. 

Telegraph messages are sent by pressing down a telegraph key. The dot is made by pressing down the key and releasing it quickly. This produces a rapid ‘click-clack’ sound in the receiver at the other end of the wire or the radio receiver. In the case of radio telegraph, the sound is more like a musical note. A short dash is held twice as long as a dot. A long dash is equal to four dots. The space between letters is sounded by ‘three dots’. A space that is part of a letter combination equals two dots.

Even today, in many countries, all telegraph messages and many new items are being transmitted by Morse code. Today most of the telegraph messages are sent by automatic printing telegraph machines called teleprinters, and by automatic facsimile like fax or electronic mail.

 

             A synthesis of the Quantum theory of Neils Bohr and the Field theory of Albert Einstein was evolved from a new theory of a great Indian scientist — Satyendra Nath Bose. The theory put forward by Bose explained the behaviour of subatomic particles. He showed that photons—the packets of energy, could behave quite differently from the assumptions of that time. Later Einstein further developed Bose’s ideas into a set of calculations which later came to be known as the ‘Bose-Einstein’ statistics. Though Bose and Einstein never worked together yet their long association was maintained through correspondence.

            A student of mathematics knows about Bose- Einstein statistics. This was a new type of quantum statistics and the particles to which this statistics is applicable are called Bosons, after the name of Bose.

           S.N. Bose was born in Calcutta on January 1, 1894. His father Surendranath Bose was a railway official. He went to Hindu School, Calcutta, for his primary education. There is an interesting episode which offers a glimpse into his genius. In school he once got 110 marks out of 100 in the mathematics paper because he had solved some problems in more than one way. His teacher predicted that one day he would become a great mathematician.

           After school he went to the Presidency College, Calcutta, in 1909. He became favourite with most professors for his brilliancy. He always stood first in all his exams—Intermediate, B.Sc. and M.Sc. 

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               The first gyroscope was devised by a German, G.C. Bohmenberger, in about 1810. But it was named thus by a French Physicist Leon Foucault in 1852, when he used the device to demonstrate the rotation of Earth. Its name has its origin from two Greek words: gyros mean turn or revolution; and skopein means ‘to view’. Therefore, gyroscope means, “to view the turning”. 

                This instrument is based on the same principle as that of a spinning top. We know that as long as the top keeps rotating, it remains upright and resists the force of gravitation. Similarly in a gyroscope, a wheel is mounted at such an angle to the rest of the apparatus that it is free to revolve around any axis.

                 According to the basic principles of motion — any spinning object resists an attempt to change the direction of its axis — the imaginary straight line around which it revolves. Thus you can move a gyroscope up, down, forward, sideways or backwards, and feel no resistance. But the moment you try to turn it through an angle you will meet opposition.

                A gyroscope basically has a heavy wheel. Most of its weight is concentrated in the rim. This gives the wheel a large moment of inertia. It resists attempts to change its position. If an attempt is made to tilt its axis, it will start moving in another direction, in a circle. This is known as precession. 

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               Homi Jehangir Bhabha a name considered synonymous with India’s atomic energy programme, was a great son of India. His contributions in the field of nuclear science gave India a giant leap in the field of science and technology. Consequently this led to the growth and progress in other fields. Indian atomic research has attained great heights today only due to the efforts of Homi Bhabha.

               Dr Bhabha was born on October 30, 1909 in Bombay in a wealthy Parsi family. He had his early education in Bombay. After graduating from the Elphinstone College and the Royal Institute of Science in Bombay, he went to Cambridge University for further studies. From there he got his engineering degree in 1930 and a Ph.D. degree in 1934.

During his stay at Cambridge University, he worked with Niels Bohr on Quantum Theory. Later Bhabha worked with Walter Heitler in the field of cosmic rays. He became well-known for his theoretical explanation of the phenomenon of Cascade showers in cosmic rays. He did significant work in identifying the elementary particles called mesons. 

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            Dr Vikram Sarabhai was not only an imaginative and creative scientist but also a pioneering industrialist and an astute planner. He made significant contribution in the field of cosmic ray physics and in the development of nuclear power and space programmes. When Dr Bhabha died suddenly in 1966 in a plane crash, it seemed almost impossible to fill the vacuum but fortunately a worthy successor could be found in Dr Sarabhai. He took up the nuclear programmes with a challenge and also added fresh dimensions to the space research programmes.

            Dr Sarabhai was born on August 12, 1919 at Ahmadabad in a rich industrialist family. His early education was in a private school in Gujarat College at Ahmadabad. He then went to Cambridge, England, and obtained his tripos in 1939 from St. John’s College. He then came back to India and staled research work in the field of cosmic rays with Sir C.V. Raman at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. In 1945 he went back to Cambridge to carry out further research on cosmic rays. There in 1947 he obtained a Ph.D. degree in the same field.

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               Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Memorial Award is given every year for outstanding research by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). It was instituted in 1958 in the honour of its first Director General Dr. Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar. The awards are given in the fields of Physical Sciences; Chemical Sciences; Biological Sciences; Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean, and Planetary Sciences; Engineering; Medical Sciences and Mathematics (alternate years). Each award carries a cash prize of Rupees one lakh and a certificate.

               Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar was a renowned Indian chemist. He was born on Feb. 21, 1894, at Bhera in West Punjab. He obtained his M.Sc. from the Punjab University in 1919. After taking his D.Sc. from London University under Prof. Donan, he worked under Prof. Haber at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, Berlin, and later under Prof. Freundlich, an expert on colloids. 

               He was a Professor of Chemistry at Banaras Hindu University from 1921-24. From 1924 to 1940 he worked as Director of the University Chemical Laboratories, Lahore. There he made significant contributions in the field of physical chemistry, especially in magneto-chemical studies. He also wrote a book on magneto-chemistry.

               He became the first Director General of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in 1940 and held this post till his death. In 1943 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. In the same year the Secretary of the Royal Society Prof. A.V. Hill visited India to advise the government on the coordination of scientific research in India. Dr. Bhatnagar was one of the members in the meeting along with Hill, Saha and Bhabha.

               In 1946, when Pt. Nehru was the head of the Interim Government, Dr. Bhatnagar took up his views on the development of science in India to translate them into reality. He concentrated on applied sciences and managed to get substantial funds from industrialists for the building up of research laboratories. He opened a chain of National Research Laboratories in India.

               This great scientist died on Jan. 1, 1955. After his death, Bhatnagar Memorial Award was instituted in his honour.