And the Winner Is ....

 An article on the 2012 physics Nobel Prize, written for 12-13 year olds...

 
Who won? Serge Haroche and David Wineland for “ ground-breaking experimental
methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum
systems.

What does that mean? When you go down to very small distances, you see
matter in the form of atoms. Similarly light also is made up of particles
called photons. These are not “classical” particles like a ball or a book,
but they are “quantum” particles. They have some very strange properties
that make it very, very difficult to isolate them and measure their physical
properties like momentum or position, energy or angular momentum.


In Wineland’s lab, using electric fields, ions were trapped in a small area
and then excited using laser pulses. It is a great feat to isolate
individual atoms and to put them in specific quantum mechanical states.


Haroche and coworkers trapped photons in a cavity made of special reflecting mirrors and then by sending in specially prepared ions one by one into the cavity, inferred the presence or absence of photons there and measured their quantum state.


Why does it matter? You may have heard about atomic clocks. They are a way
of measuring time using the oscillations of a caesium atom. Now you can have an optical clock which consists of just one ion or two ions in a trap. One ion’s oscillations are used to keep time, and the other ion is used to read the first one without destroying its quantum state. These clocks will be a hundred times more accurate than the caesium atomic clocks.


Another application is in building quantum computers.  Classical computers
work on binary logic, that is, their basic building blocks are bits that can
exist as 0 or 1. Now you have a quantum system that can be in a mixture of
states, a 0 and a 1 at the same time. A basic logic operation has been
demonstrated with these quantum particles and so we may have quantum
computers that work on quantum bits or q-bits in the future.
Complicated? But then who ever said getting the Nobel prize was easy?

A rose by any other name

The latest crib is about my name... wish it was smaller - my brother-in-law once said there cannot be a woman who wouldn't be happier thinner and richer. Well here's one that conforms to his idea, but wishes not only were she thinner but also that her name were smaller. Reason - why it's simple - only if it is shorter would my readers - already tired and world weary - would get up, open their email and type the letters and respond to my articles by sending in readers' comments...

Well, I am joking at least partly on the above. Names are always a pain, at least your own are always. they are too bland, too boring , too, long or too short or some such thing... after all not everyone can be a Mimusops Elengi or an Erythrina indica or an Azotobacter or an Anthurium... 

One thing I am glad about is my name being long allows a half-length shortening which sounds adorable. Well not by itself but it sounds adorable because its a half-length shortened form... sort of friendly like..

There was a rush once among parents to name their child something beginning with an A... suddenly you could see little Adityas and Akilas and Anands and Aditis frolicking in the playgrounds merrily... no doubt with the subtext that the race had begun and there was only room for the alphas... My parents thankfully gave me a lethargic S as an initial... It was an S that shaped my whole life and attitude no doubt. Come to think of it the Anands and Aarathis (spelt correct believe me) in my life were just that weeny bit more aggressive -
(no that's a lie -- they were much much more aggressive than that)...

There seems to be no way out of this I am committed to a long set of names...  in practice. However there is a way out in principle - I have all these characters I write about - what a lot of names to name. I can exercise every idea in my head and satisfy every longing too by naming my characters as I please.
Don't be surprise next if you come across a story about a Mimus or a Rina or an Anthuria...

Good Day!

Thirty Rupees Taramani to Adyar

I read in a news report that auto rickshaw fares in Chennai have shot up to such a level that they are more expensive than even flight charges ...I was totally impressed. Do you mean to say I am actually living the life of a princess - taking the equivalent of an expensive flight to office everyday?

The autorickshaw drivers of Chennai are a unique breed.  In every other city I am told they fall in line with the government's order of following a meter rate. I am intrigued by the fact that the Chennai guys alone manage to thwart the government's ideas to impose a check on them. Is it because they have a strong union or is it because they enjoy the patronage of the middle class? I am rather inclined to believe that it is the latter that protects them and makes them so resilient and resistant to change.

I have lived in this city ever since I can remember - I should say that's long enough for me to forget exactly how long - and one way of marking time for me has been the changing auto rickshaw fares. I remember travelling from Radhakrishnan road in Mylapore up to nanganallur and back for just fortyfive rupees. That is a memory from my childhood to be cherished now.

Much later when I was doing my PhD in Matscience, I used to go to my aunt's house in adyar very often - paying the grand sum of thirty rupees, of course haggling over one or two rupees to reach there  - highly hassled and entertained - One day, I was cross with my aunt for some reason and I had with me a fifty rupee note that she had gifted me - so cross that on that day when the autorickshaw dropped me at Taramani, instead of the usual thirty or so rupees I chucked the whole fifty at him and said - Go man  - (though not quite in the same way that Gautami does, rather more famously, in Devar Magan - The bloke was stunned. For a whole minute he looked. First at the fifty, then at me and then in front and started his auto with a vengeance and drove off at top speed before I could change my mind... God knows he must have thought there was something the matter with me...

There are many such auto stories - If I had the talent of R. K. Narayanan I would be able to write an amusing and perhaps even moving account about autorickshaw drivers... but this is all I can do and so let's wait until inspiration really strikes until I can pen down a better story....

The Kudankulam crisis

The crisis at Kudankulam is an example of what can happen if one section is allowed to remain uneducated and under developed. The government is facing this crisis only because it never included these people in the decision making right from the start. In other words the time for nuclear power has not yet come to India.

At this juncture the government is morally bound to stop its development and growth agenda and change the politics drastically to focus on development of backward people and equity and only then can it continue with "Growth plans"...