Wednesday, 17 November 2021
Saturday, 15 May 2021
Mathematics in India
As early Indian astronomers tried to quantify the paths
of the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars on the celestial
sphere with ever more accuracy, or to predict the occurrence
of eclipses, they were naturally led to develop mathematical
tools. Astronomy and mathematics were thus initially regarded
as inseparable, the latter being the maid-servant of the former.
Indeed, about 1400 BCE, the Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa, the first extant
Indian text of astronomy, states in two different versions:
Like the crest on the head of a peacock, like the gem on
the hood of a cobra, jyotiṣa (astronomy) / gaṇita (mathematics)
is the crown of the Vedāṅga śāstras [texts on various branches
of knowledge]. In fact, jyotiṣa initially referred to astronomy
and mathematics combined; only later did it come to mean
astronomy alone (and much later did it include astrology).
First Steps
India’s first urban development, the Indus or Harappan
civilization (2600-1900 BCE), involved a high degree of town
planning. A mere glance at the plan of Mohenjo-daro’s acropolis
(or upper city), Dholavira (in the Rann of Kachchh) or Kalibangan
(Rajasthan), reveals fortifications and streets generally aligned
to the cardinal directions and exhibiting right angles. Specific
proportions in the dimensions of major structures have also
been pointed out. All this implies a sound knowledge of basic
geometric principles and an ability to measure angles, which
the discovery of a few cylindrical compasses made of shell, with
slits cut every 45°, has confirmed. Besides, for trading purposes
the Harappans developed a standardized system of weights
in which, initially, each weight was double the preceding one,
then, 10, 100 or 1,000 times the value of a smaller weight. This
shows that the Harappans could not only multiply a quantity
by such factors, but also had an inclination for a decimal system
of multiples. However, there is no agreement among scholars
regarding the numeral system used by Harappans.
There is no scholarly consensus on the dates of the four
Vedas, India’s most ancient texts, except that they are over 3,000
years old at the very least. We find in them frequent mentions of
numbers by name, in particular multiples of tens, hundreds and
thousands, all the way to a million millions in the Yajur Veda — a
number called parārdha. (By comparison, much later, the Greeks
named numbers only up to 10,000, which was a ‘myriad’; and
only in the 13th century CE would the concept of a ‘million’ be
adopted in Europe.) The Brāhmanas, commentaries on the Vedas,
knew the four arithmetical operations as well as basic fractions.
Early Historical Period
The first Indian texts dealing explicitly with mathematics
are the Śulbasūtras, dated between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE.
They were written in Sanskrit in the highly concise sūtra style
and were, in effect, manuals for the construction of fire altars
(called citis or vedis) intended for specific rituals and made of
bricks. The altars often had five layers of 200 bricks each, the
lowest layer symbolizing the earth, and the highest, heaven; they
were thus symbolic representations of the universe.
Because their total area needed to be carefully defined and
constructed from bricks of specified shapes and size, complex
geometrical calculations followed. The Śulbasūtras, for instance,
are the earliest texts of geometry offering a general statement,
in geometric form, of the so-called Pythagoras theorem (which
was in fact formulated by Euclid around 300 BCE).
They spelt out elaborate geometric methods to construct a
square resulting from the addition or subtraction of two other
squares, or having the same area as a given circle, and vice-versa
— the classic problems of the squaring of a circle or the circling
of a square (which, because of π’s transcendental nature, cannot
have exact geometrical solutions, only approximate ones). All
these procedures were purely geometrical, but led to interesting
corollaries; for instance, √2 was given a rational approximation
which is correct to the fifth decimal
The Śulbasūtras also introduced a system of linear units,
most of them based on dimensions of the human body; they
were later slightly modified and became the traditional units
used across India. The chief units were:
14 aṇus (grain of common millet) = 1 aṅgula (a digit)
12 aṅgulas = 1 prādeśa (the span of a hand, later vitasti)
15 aṅgulas = 1 pada (or big foot)
24 aṅgulas = 1 aratni (or cubit, later also hasta)
30 aṅgulas = 1 prakrama (or step)
120 aṅgulas = 1 puruṣa (or the height of a man with his arm
extended over his head)
A few centuries later, Piṅgala’s Chandasūtras, a text on
Sanskrit prosody, made use of a binary system to classify the
metres of Vedic hymns, whose syllables may be either light
(laghu) or heavy (guru); rules of calculation were worked out
to relate all possible combinations of light and heavy syllables,
expressed in binary notation, to numbers in one-to-one
relationships, which of course worked both ways. In the course
of those calculations, Piṅgala referred to the symbol for śūnya
or zero.
About the same time, Jaina texts indulged in cosmological
speculations involving colossal numbers, and dealt with
geometry, combinations and permutations, fractions, square
and cube powers; they were the first in India to come up with
the notion of an unknown (yāvat-tāvat), and introduced a value
of π equal to √10, which remained popular in India for quite a
few centuries.
With the appearance of the Brāhmī script a few centuries
BCE, we come across India’s first numerals, on Ashoka’s edicts
in particular, but as yet without any decimal positional value.
These numerals will evolve in shape; eventually borrowed by
Arabs scholars, they will be transmitted, with further alterations,
to Europe and become our modern ‘Arabic’ numerals.
The Classical Period
Together with astronomy, Indian mathematics saw its
golden age during India’s classical period, beginning more or
less with the Gupta age, i.e. from about 400 CE.
Shortly before that period, the full-fledged place-value
system of numeral notation — our ‘modern’ way of noting
numbers, unlike non-positional systems such as those depicted
above or Roman numbers — had been worked out, integrating
zero with the nine numerals. It is a pity that we shall never know
who conceived of it. Amongst the earliest known references
to it is a first-century CE work by the Buddhist philosopher
Vasumitra, and it is worked out more explicitly in the Jain
cosmological work Lokavibhāga, written in 458 CE. Soon it was
adopted across India, and later taken to Europe by the Arabs.
This was a major landmark in the world history of science, since
it permitted rapid developments in mathematics.
About 499 CE, living near what is today Patna, Āryabhaṭa I
(born 476 CE) authored the Āryabhaṭīya, the first extant siddhānta
(or treatise) attempting a systematic review of the knowledge of mathematics and astronomy prevailing in his days. The text is so concise (just 121 verses) as to be often obscure, but between the 6th and the 16th century, no fewer than twelve major commentaries were authored to explicate and build upon its contents. It was eventually translated
into Arabic about 800 CE(under the title Zīj al-Ārjabhar), which in turn led to a Latin
translation in the 13th century (in which Āryabhaṭa was called
‘Ardubarius’).
The mathematical content of Āryabhaṭīya ranges from a very
precise table of sines and an equally precise value for π (3.1416,
stated to be ‘approximate’) to the area of a triangle, the sums
of finite arithmetic progressions, algorithms for the extraction
of square and cube roots, and an elaborate algorithm called
kuṭṭaka (‘pulverizing’) to solve indeterminate equations of the
first degree with two unknowns: ax + c = by. By ‘indeterminate’
is meant that solutions should be integers alone, which rules
out direct algebraic methods; such equations came up in
astronomical problems, for example to calculate a whole number
of revolutions of a planet in a given number of years.
It is worth mentioning that despite its great contributions,
the Āryabhaṭīya is not free of errors: its formulas for the volumes
of a pyramid and a sphere were erroneous, and would be later
corrected by Brahmagupta and Bhāskarācārya respectively.
The Classical Period, post-Āryabhaṭa
Born in 598 CE, Brahmagupta
was an imposing figure, with
considerable achievements in
mathematics. In his Brahmasphuta
Siddhānta, he studied cyclic
quadrilaterals (i.e., inscribed
in a circle) and supplied the
formula for their area (a formula
rediscovered in 17th-century
Europe): if ABCD has sides of
lengths a, b, c, and d, and the semi-perimeter is s = (a + b +c +
d)/2, then the area is given by:
Area ABCD = √[(s – a) (s –b) (s – c) (s – a)]
Brahmagupta boldly introduced the notion of negative
numbers and ventured to define the mathematical infinite as
khacheda or ‘that which is divided by kha’, kha being one of
the many names for zero. He discovered the bhāvanā algorithmfor integral solutions
t o s e c o n d - o r d e r
indeterminate equations
(called varga prakriti)
of the type Nx2
+ 1 = y2
.
He was in many ways
one of the founders of
modern algebra, and his
works were translated
into Persian and later
Latin.
D a t e d a r o u n d
the 7th century, the
Bakhshali manuscript,
named after the village
( n o w i n n o r t h e r n
Pakistan) where it was
found in 1881 in the
form of 70 leaves of birch
bark, gives us a rare
insight into extensive
mathematical calculation techniques of the times, involving
in particular fractions, progressions, measures of time, weight
and money.
Other brilliant mathematicians of the siddhāntic era
included Bhāskara I, a contemporary of Brahmagupta, who
did pioneering work in trigonometry (proposing a remarkably
accurate rational approximation for the sine function),
Śrīdhara and Mahāvīra. The last, a Jain scholar who lived in
the 9th century in the court of a Rashtrakuta king (in today’s
Karnataka), authored the first work of mathematics that was not
as part of a text on astronomy. In it, Mahāvīra dealt with finite
series, expansions of fractions, permutations and combinations
(working out, for the first time, some of the standard formulas
in the field), linear equations with two unknowns, quadratic
equations, and a remarkably close approximation for the
circumference of an ellipse, among other important results.Graph showing the high accuracy of Bhāskara I’s rational
approximation for the sine function from 0° to 180° (in blue).
The sine function (in read) had to be shifted upward by 0.05 to
make the two curves distinguishable. (Courtesy: IFIH)
Bhāskara II, often known as Bhāskarācārya, lived in the 12th
century. His Siddhāntaśiromani (literally, the ‘crest jewel of the
siddhāntas’) broke new ground as regards cubic and biquadratic
equations. He built upon Brahmagupta’s work on indeterminate
equations to produce a still more effective algorithm, the
chakravāla (or ‘cyclic method’); with it he showed, for instance,
that the smallest integral solutions to 61x2
+ 1 = y2
are x =
226153980, y = 1766319049 (interestingly, five centuries later,
the French mathematician Fermat offered the same equation as
a challenge to some of his contemporaries). Bhāskarācārya also
grasped the notion of integration as a limit of finite sums: by
slicing a sphere into ever smaller rings, for instance, he was able
to calculate its area and volume. He came close to the modern
notion of derivative by discussing the notion of instant speed
(tātkālika gati) and understood that the derivative of the sine
function is proportional to the cosine.
The first part of Bhāskarācārya’s Siddhāntaśiromani is a
collection of mathematical problems called Līlāvatī, named after
an unknown lady to whom Bhāskara puts problems in an often
poetical language. Līlāvatī became so popular with students of
mathematics across India that four centuries later, Akbar had
it translated into Persian by a court poet.
The Kerala School of Mathematics
Along with astronomy, mathematics underwent a revival
in the Kerala School, which flourished there from the 14th to
the 17th century. Its pioneer, Mādhava (c. 1340–1425), laid
some of the foundations of calculus by working out power
series expansions for the sine and cosine functions (the so-
called Newton series), and by spelling out this fundamental
expansion of π:
This is known as the Gregory–Leibniz series, but ought
one day to be named after Mādhava. He went on to propose a
more rapidly convergent series for π:
which enabled him to calculate π to 11 correct decimals.
Nīlakaṇṭha Somayāji (c. 1444–1545) and Jyeṣṭhadeva (c.
1500–1600) built on such results and considerably enriched what
might be called the Indian foundations of calculus. The latter,
for instance, worked out the binomial expansion:
Features of Indian mathematics
As elsewhere, mathematics in India arose from practical
needs: constructing fire altars according to precise specifications,
tracking the motion of planets, predicting eclipses, etc. But
India’s approach remained essentially pragmatic: rather than
developing an axiomatic method such as that of the Greek
(famously introduced by Euclid for geometry), it focused on
obtaining formulas and algorithms that yielded precise and
reliable results.
Nevertheless, Indian mathematicians did often provide
logically rigorous justifications for their results, especially in the
longer texts. Indeed, Bhāskarācārya states that presenting proofs
(upapattis) is part of the teaching tradition, and Jyeṣṭhadeva
devotes considerable space to them in his Yukti Bhāṣā. The
shorter texts, on the other hand, often dispensed with the
development of proofs. In the same spirit, the celebrated S.
Ramanujan produced many important theorems but did not
take time to supply proofs for them, leaving this for others to do!
Whether those specificities limited the further growth of
Indian mathematics is open to debate. Other factors have been
discussed by historians of science, such as historical disruptions
of centres and networks of learning (especially in north India),
limited royal patronage, or the absence of a conquering
impulse (which, in Europe, did fuel the growth of science and
technology). Be that as it may, India’s contribution in the field
was enormous by any standard. Through the Arabs, many
Indian inputs, from the decimal place-value system of numeral
notation to some of the foundations of algebra and analysis,
travelled on to Europe and provided crucial ingredients to the
development of modern mathematics.
Monday, 10 May 2021
Nobel Laureates of Indian Origin
1. SIR RONALD ROSS
Ronald Ross was born in India in 1857 in Almora
district, located in present day Uttarakhand. His
father was a General in the British Army in India.
Ross lived in India until he was eight. Then he was sent to a
boarding school in England. He later studied medicine from St.
Bartholomew Hospital in London.
When Ross was a small boy, he saw many people in India
fall ill with malaria. At least a million people would die of
malaria due to lack of proper medication. While Ross was in
India his father fell seriously ill
with malaria, but fortunately
recovered. This deadly disease
 |
| Sir Ronald Ross |
When Ross returned to India
as part of the British-Indian
medical services, he was sent
to Madras where a large part of
his work was treating malaria
patients in the army.
Ronald Ross proved
in 1897 the long-suspected
link between mosquitoes
and malaria. In doing so, he
confirmed the hypotheses
November 1888 at Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu. His father,
Chandrashekhara Iyer, was a lecturer in physics, in a local
college. His mother Parvathi was a homemaker. He passed his
matriculation when he was 12. He joined Presidency College in
Madras. He passed his Bachelors and Masters examinations in
science with high distinction. He had a deep interest in physics.
While doing his Masters, Raman wrote an article on
physics and sent it to various scientific journals of England. On
reading this article, many eminent scientists in London noted the
talent of this young Indian.
Raman wanted to compete
for the ICS examination. But
to write that examination,
one had to go to London.
 |
| Sir C.V. Raman |
not afford it, he took the
Indian Financial Service
examination conducted in
India. He was selected and
posted at Rangoon, Burma
(now Myanmar), which was
then a part of British India.
Later, while working
in Kolkata, he associated
himself with an Institute called Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, which was the only research institution in those days. While working there, his research work came to the notice of the Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University. The Vice Chancellor appointed him as Professor of Physics in Calcutta University. Sir Raman was in a good position in the Financial
Service. He sacrificed his profession and joined the academic
career. When he was working as a professor, he got an invitation
from England to attend a science conference.
As the ship was sailing through the Mediterranean Sea,
Raman had a doubt as to why the sea water was blue in colour.
This doubt initiated his research on light. He found out by
experiment that the sea looks blue because of the ‘Scattering
Effect of the Sunlight’. This discovery is called ‘The Raman
Effect’. A question that was puzzling many other scientists at
the time was easily solved by him. His pioneering work helped
him become a Member of Royal Society of London in 1924. He
was awarded with Knighthood by the British Empire in 1929.
This discovery also got Sir Raman the Nobel Prize for Physics
for the year 1930. He became the first Indian scientist to receive
the Nobel Prize. Raman discovered ‘The Raman Effect’ on 28
February 1928 and this day is observed as the ‘National Science
Day’ in India. In 1933, he joined the Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore, as Director. Later he quit the post of Director and
continued to work only in the Department of Physics. The
University of Cambridge offered him a professor’s job, which
he declined stating that he is an Indian and wants to serve in
his own country. Dr Homi Bhabha and Dr Vikram Sarabhai
were his students. Sir C.V. Raman died on 21 November 1970.
3. SUBRAHMANYAN CHANDRASEKHAR
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was born on 19 October
1910 in Lahore. His father, Chandrasekhara Subrahmanya Iyer
was an officer in Indian Audits and Accounts Department.
His mother Sitalakshmi
was a woman of high
intellectual attainments.
S i r C . V . R a m a n , t h e
first Indian to get Nobel
Prize in science, was his
 |
| Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar |
of 12, Chandrasekhar was
educated at home by his
parents and private tutors.
In 1922, at the age of 12,
he attended the Hindu
High School. He joined the
Madras Presidency College
in 1925. Chandrasekhar passed his Bachelors (hons) in physics in June 1930. In July 1930, he was awarded a Government of
India scholarship for graduate studies in Cambridge, England.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar completed his PhD at Cambridge in the summer of 1933. In October 1933, Chandrasekhar was elected to receive Prize Fellowship at Trinity
College for the period 1933–37. In 1936, while on a short visit to Harvard University, Chandrasekhar was offered a position as a
Research Associate at the University of Chicago and remained
there ever since. In September 1936, Chandrashekhar married
Lalitha Doraiswamy. She was his junior at the Presidency
College in Madras.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar is best known for his
discovery of Chandrasekhar Limit. He showed that there is
a maximum mass which can be supported against gravity by
pressure made up of electrons and atomic nuclei. The value of
this limit is about 1.44 times a solar mass. The Chandrasekhar
Limit plays a crucial role in understanding the stellar evolution.
If the mass of a star exceeded this limit, the star would not
become a white dwarf but it would continue to collapse under
the extreme pressure of gravitational forces. The formulation of
the Chandrasekhar Limit led to the discovery of neutron stars
and black holes. Depending on the mass, there are three possible
final stages of a star—white dwarf, neutron star and black hole.
Apart from the discovery of the Chandrasekhar Limit,
major works done by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar includes:
stellar dynamics, including the theory of Brownian motion
(1938–43); the theory of radiative transfer, including the theory
of stellar atmospheres and the quantum theory of the negative
ion of hydrogen and the theory of planetary atmospheres,
which again comprised the theory of the illumination and the
polarization of the sunlit sky (1943–50); hydrodynamic and
hydro magnetic stability, including the theory of the Rayleigh-
Bénard convection (1952–61); the equilibrium and the stability
of ellipsoidal figures of equilibrium, partly in collaboration with
Norman R. Lebovitz (1961–68); the general theory of relativity
and relativistic astrophysics (1962–71); and the mathematical
theory of black holes (1974–83).
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was awarded (jointly
with the nuclear astrophysicist W.A. Fowler) the Nobel Prize
in Physics in 1983. He died on 21 August 1995.
4. HAR GOVIND KHORANA
Har Govind Khorana was born on 9 January 1922 in a
small village called Raipur in Punjab (now in Pakistan) and
was the youngest of five siblings. His father was a patwari, an
agricultural taxation clerk in British India.
Khorana had his preliminary
schooling at home. Later he joined
 |
| Har Govind Khorana |
He graduated in science from
Punjab University, Lahore, in
1943 and went on to acquire his
Masters in science in 1945. He
joined the University of Liverpool
for his doctoral work and obtained
his doctorate in 1948. He did
postdoctoral work at Switzerland’s
Federal Institute of Technology,
where he met Esther Sibler who
became his wife. Later, he took up a
job at the British Columbia Research Council in Vancouver and continued his pioneering work on proteins and nucleic acids. Khorana joined the University of Wisconsin in 1960, and 10
years later, joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Dr Khorana received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 along with M.W. Nirenberg and R.W. Holley
for the interpretation of the genetic code, its function and protein
synthesis. Till his death, he was the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of
Biology and Chemistry Emeritus at MIT. The Government of
India honoured him with Padma Vibhushan in 1969.
He won numerous prestigious awards, including the
Albert Lasker award for medical research, National Medal of
Science, the Ellis Island Medal of Honour, and so on. But he
remained modest throughout his life and stayed away from
the glare of publicity.
In a note after winning the Nobel Prize, Dr Khorana wrote:
‘Although poor, my father was dedicated to educating his
children and we were practically the only literate family in the
village inhabited by about 100 people.’ Following his father’s
footsteps, Dr Khorana imparted education to thousands of
students for more than half a century. He was more interested
in the next project and experiments than cashing in on his fame.
He was born in a poor family in a small village in Punjab, and
by dint of sheer talent and tenacity rose to be one of science’s
immortals. Dr Har Govind Khorana died in a hospital in
Concord, Massachusetts, on 9 November 2011.
5. VENKATARAMAN RAMAKRISHNAN
Venkataraman Ramakrishnan was born in Chidambaram,
a small town in Cuddalore district in Tamil Nadu in 1952. His
parents C.V. Ramakrishnan and Rajalakshmi were lecturers
in biochemistry at Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda,
Gujarat. Venky, as he is popularly known, did his schooling
from the Convent of Jesus and
 |
| Venkataraman Ramakrishnan |
to America to do his higher
studies in physics. He then
changed his field to biology
at the University of California.
He moved to Medical
Research Council Laboratory
o f M o l e c u l a r B i o l o g y ,
Cambridge, UK. It was there
he cracked the complex
functions and structures of
ribosomes, which fetched him
Nobel Prize for Chemistry in
2009, along with Thomas
E. Steitz, USA and Ada E. Yonath, Israel. He became the fourth scientist of Indian origin to win a Nobel Prize after Sir C.V. Raman, Har Gobind Khurana and Subrahmanyan
Chandrasekhar.
Venkataraman Ramakrishnan began his career as a Post-
Doctoral Fellow with Peter Moore at Yale University, where he
worked on ribosomes. After completing this research, he applied
to nearly 50 universities in the US for a faculty position. But he
was unsuccessful. As a result of this, Venkataraman continued
to work on ribosomes from 1983 to 1995 in Brookhaven National
Laboratory. In 1995, he got an offer from the University of Utah
to work as a professor of biochemistry. He worked there for
almost four years and then moved to England where he started
working in Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular
Biology. Here, he began a detailed research on ribosomes.
In 1999, along with his fellow mates, he published a 5.5
angstrom resolution structure of 30s subunit of ribosome. In the
subsequent year, Venkataraman submitted a complete structure
of 30s subunit of ribosome and it created a sensation in the field
of structural biology.
Venkataraman earned a fellowship from the Trinity
College, Cambridge and the Royal Society. He is also an honorary
member of the US National Academy of Sciences. In 2007, he
was awarded with the Louis-Jeantet Prize for his contribution
to Medicine. In 2008, he was presented with Heatley Medal of
British Biochemistry Society. For his contribution to science, he
was conferred with India’s second highest civilian award, the
Padma Vibhushan in 2010.
HOW TO IMPROVE MENTAL HEALTH
HOW TO IMPROVE MENTAL
HEALTH
Every year world mental health day is observed on October 10. It was started as an annual activity by the world federation for mental health by deputy secretary-general of UNO at that time. Mental health resources differ significantly from one country to another. While the
In the formidable years, this had no specific theme planned. The main
aim was to promote and advocate the public on important issues. Also, in the
first three years, one of the central activities done to help the day become
special was the 2-hour telecast by the US information agency satellite system.
Mental health is not just a concept that refers to an individual’s
psychological and emotional well being. Rather it’s a state of psychological
and emotional well being where an individual is able to use their cognitive and
emotional capabilities, meet the ordinary demand and functions in the society.
According to WHO, there is no single ‘official’ definition of mental health.
Thus, there are many factors like cultural differences, competing
professional theories, and subjective assessments that affect how mental health
is defined. Also, there are many experts that agree that mental illness and
mental health are not antonyms. So, in other words, when the recognized mental
disorder is absent, it is not necessarily a sign of mental health.
One way to think about mental health is to look at how effectively and successfully
does a person acts. So, there are factors such as feeling competent, capable,
able to handle the normal stress levels, maintaining satisfying relationships
and also leading an independent life. Also, this includes recovering from
difficult situations and being able to bounce back.
Important Benefits of Good Mental Health
Mental health is related to the personality as a whole of that person.
Thus, the most important function of school and education is to safeguard the
mental health of boys and girls. Physical fitness is not the only measure of
good health alone. Rather it’s just a means of promoting mental as well as
moral health of the child. The two main factors that affect the most are
feeling of inferiority and insecurity. Thus, it affects the child the most. So,
they lose self-initiative and confidence. This should be avoided and children
should be constantly encouraged to believe in themselves.
WORLD SCIENCE DAY
WORLD SCIENCE DAY
POSTER:
·
Science is a cemetery of dead ideas.
·
Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.
·
Let’s Have a Moment of Science.
·
Demand Evidence & Think Critically.
· Experiment. Fail, Learn. Repeat.
POEM :
Science!
true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who
alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why
preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture,
whose wings are dull realities?
How
should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who
wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To
seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit
he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast
thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And
driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To
seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast
thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The
Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The
summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
-
The Bizarre Phenomenon of 'Ball Lightning' Has a Startling New Explanation As far as mysteries of nature go, ball lightning is o...
-
Mathematicians Will Never Stop Proving the Prime Number Theorem By SUSAN D'AGOSTINO July 22, 2020 Why do mathematicians enjoy proving th...
