Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Quantum Mechanics To The Rescue

My college convocation is around the corner and for the past few days i had been debating with myself whether to attend it or not. Why debating?I mean its always nice to go back to your college, catch up with old friends, relive the memories and to top it all, formally be declared an engineer (as if it makes any difference though). But then i wanted to avoid running into certain people.Although there are a lot of people i really really want to meet( and yes it includes you too dumbsentis :P ), i wasn't sure that the joy of meeting these people would outweigh the unpleasantness of running into these other certain people.While i was still lost in my ambivalence,i chanced upon an article on Wikipedia and to my surprise, it was quantum mechanics which came to the rescue of my conundrum.

In 1935, Erwin Schrödinger designed a thought experiment to critique the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.The following is the jist of the experiment:
A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device(which must be secured against direct interference by the cat) : in a Geiger Counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.
For more, click here

Now you all must be wondering what the fuck has this got to with the the problem i was facing, right!!Well you see, according to quantum mechanics, the cat in the box, left to itself, is simultaneously, alive and dead. Yet when we look into the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, and not a mixture of both. So similarly my trip will have both positive and negative outcomes if left to itself. Only when i make the trip will i know which one of them it actually is.
Am sure Schrödinger, while devising this experiment would have ever imagined that it would be put to such use :P.

PS:Am pretty sure that this Cat's gonna be alive after the trip,coz running into the other undesirable ones really does not matter anymore. :P

Monday, February 16, 2009

Best Friends

Why is it that we always fall for our bestfriends?Is it because we know we can trust them? Is it because we know them so well? Is it because they know exactly whats going on in our head?Or is it because they are there any day, any time, anywhere without the promise of kisses, intimate touches or whispered sentiments of love?
I think we love them because they are there when there's nothing in it for them, nothing except that smile they hope to see on your face.We love them because they love us for exactly who we are.We love them because this life just would not be the same without them.And we love them simply because we love loving them.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

ANATHEMA

Anathema. I don't know but for some reasons i have always loved this word. And i have always wondered how such a beautiful word could have just the opposite meaning. I mean how could someone ascribe so unsavoury a meaning to so poetic a word (exaggerating!! naah i don't think so.)? What was he/she thinking? This word could have so easily meant something positive, something sacred, something beautiful. No No..think of it. For example: "Aahh what an Anathema those eyes were! I wish i could keep looking into them forever" or "The Anathematic view from the top of the mountain took my breath away" or or "Beta, Anathema..How was our day at school today". I would have so loved to give my daughter this name (if and when i had one i.e.), but for some lunatic's whims and fancies (well to come to think of it, this whole thing might just be one of my whims and fancies, but then since its mine i guess i have the liberty to ignore it..:P).

So i did some research on the origin of this word and voila, it turns out i was right (or atleast partially).The word has Greek origins and it originally meant something lifted up as an offering to God, or in other words, something Sacred . But somehow later, with evolving meanings, it came to mean denounced, cursed, etc etc.(and here i thought evolving means tending to something better...) For more, click here.

But after learning this, i guess i don't really care what it means now. I was right about this word all along. Although i think i still can't name my daughter that.. L

And here's something before i end this post

"Its such an Anathema (read curse) that a word as Anathematic (read sacred) as Anathema should have evolved to acquire such an An/Un- Anathematic meaning."

What say eh!!!

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Its Raining

ensconced in the bed by the window-side sipping a steaming mug of hot cofee..... and listening to the rain splashing outside......harldy few other things enrapture one the way this does.....the serenity of it all seems so perfectly utopian.....theres this sense of some kind of inner joy, some kind of calmness being felt after a really long time...all the doubts, the fears, aspersions, all just seem to simply fade away and you just love everything about life at that moment....the verdure spread outside gives everything this pristine touch.....more like ''i feel like a new born''.
And you just simply sit back and wonder how can as inane a phenomena as water cycle make this world look so amazingly beautiful...even if only for a short while.........

Monday, February 2, 2009

"In India you don't cast your vote, you vote your caste"
I read this quote in the book "Inspite of the Gods...The strange rise of modern India" by Edward Luce.
How very very true!

Sunday, February 1, 2009

7 Pounds

Just done watchin this movie...ironical that i should see this movie just after i had been through with my last post (happiness).why ironical??well for that you need to watch the movie. and watch you must because its a brilliant movie.

PS: Thats 3 brilliant movies in a row now.It started with Masoom, then The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and now this. Some one seems to be on a roll eh!! :P

the saying goes.....

  • I'm learning real skills that I can apply throughout the rest of my life ... Procrastinating and rationalizing.Calvin and Hobbes

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