DO YOU KNOW

 Where are the ghost mountains?

     In Antarctica. It is the nickname for the 1,200km-long Gamburtsev mountain range on the icy continent. It is named so because it is buried under four kilometres of snow. It was discovered when ice penetrating radar equipment was used.

     It was discovered in 1958 by Soviet geophysicist Grigoriy A. Gamburtsev. In 2008-2009, a multinational team of experts embarked on a mission called the AGAP (Antarctica's Gamburtsev Province) to map the sub-glacial range. Aircraft loaded with remote-sensing equipment criss-crossed the area, flying 120,000km, that is about three trips around the globe! It collected data about the ice thickness and radar images of the rock bed and conducted gravity and magnetic surveys. The findings revealed a jagged landscape not unlike the Alps of Europe. The project explored 20% of the East Antarctic ice sheet.

     It is yet not known how the mountain was formed, but it is estimated to be several million years old.

SNAKES AND LADDERS IN HINDU PHILOSOPHY

Mokshapatam

     The game was associated with traditional Hindu philosophy  contrasting karma and kama, or destiny and desire. It emphasized destiny, as opposed to games such as pachisi, which focused on life as a mixture of skill and luck.

     The ladders represented virtues such as generosity, faith and humility while the snakes represented vices such as lust, anger, murder and theft.

      In the original game the squares of virtue are: Faith(12), Reliability (51), Generosity (57), Knowledge (76) & Asceticism (78).

     The squares of vice or evil are: Disobedience (41), Vanity (44), Vulgarity (49), Theft(52), Lying (58), Drunkenness (62), Debt (69), Murder(73), Rage (84), Greed (92), Pride (95) & Lust (99)

     These were the squares where the snake waited with its mouth open. The 100th square represented Nirvana or Moksha. The tops of each ladder depict a God, or one of the various heavens (Kailas, Vaikunth, Brahmalok) and so on.

     The morality lesson of the game was that a person can attain Moksha through doing good, whereas by doing evil one will inherit rebirth to lower forms of life.

     The numbers of ladders was less than the number of snakes as a reminder that a path of good actions is much more difficult to tread than a path of sins.

     Presumably, reaching the last square number 100 represented the attainment of Moksha (liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth). 

TO BECOME PART OF THE DIVINE

Do a good deed

     A wise and successful man bought a beautiful house with a huge orchard. But not all were happy for him. An envious man lived in an old house next to him. He constantly tried to make his fellow neighbour’s stay in the beautiful house as miserable as possible. He also threw garbage under the neighbour’s gate as well as did numerous other nasty things. 

     One fine day the wise man woke up in a good mood and went out onto the porch to notice buckets of garbage thrown there. The man then took a broom and bucket and cleaned his porch without a word of complaint. He later carried another bucket and went to knock on his envious neighbour’s door. The envious neighbour heard a knock at his door and gleefully thought, “I finally got him!”. He answered his door ready to quarrel with his successful neighbour. However the wiseman gave him a bucket of freshly picked apples saying, “The one who is rich in something, shares it with others.”

Moral: If you repay evil with evil, there is no difference between you and the person who has done evil to you. If you choose to repay evil with good deeds, then you become part of the Divine.

JOURNEY INTO LIGHT

Sir Chandrashekhar Venkat Raman

     Sir C. V. Raman, the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize in Science, was foremost among the Indian scientists who contributed to the understanding of light. His discovery known as the Raman effect gave human kind a technique to use light to look into the smallest building block of matter, the molecule. 

Early Life: Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman was born on 7 November, 1888 at Tiruchirappally in the Madras Presidency (Tamil Nadu). He was the second child of Parvati Amma and Chandrasekhar Iyer, a lecturer in Physics and Mathematics. Raman was a brilliant student. He completed his BA from Presidency College, Madras at the age of 15. He graduated with honours, winning a gold medal in Physics. He completed his MA with distinction from the same college when he was hardly 18. Raman topped the Civil Service competitive examination and in 1907, he was posted as Assistant Accountant General in Calcutta. One day, while travelling to his office by tram, he noticed a sign board on a building that said, ‘Indian Association for Cultivation of Science’ (IACS). It was a private science institute established by Mahendralal Sircar. He got down from the tram and obtained permission to work there. The institute later became the springboard for his groundbreaking research.

     The institute had many unused scientific apparatus. Using these instruments, Raman started working on various problems in sound and light without any guidance. He followed a gruelling schedule; he would reach the institute everyday by 5.30 am, work till 9.30 am, go home for a quick meal and then go to his office. He would be back at the institute by 5p.m. and return home only by 10p.m. He would spend the entire Sunday at the laboratory. Soon Raman started to publish high-quality research papers in international journals and became famous in the scientific world. 

     In 1917, Raman resigned from his well paying government job to become the first Palit Professor of Physics (a highly respected teaching post) at the Calcutta University. At the same time, he continued working at IACS. Students flocked to work under him, drawn by his fame and brilliance. 

The Blue Sea: In 1921, he sailed to London to represent his university at the Assembly of Universities. While returning by steamer, Raman was fascinated by the deep blue colour of the Mediterranean Sea. Lord Raleigh (a Physics Nobel laureate) had already established that the blue colour of the sky was due to the scattering of light by air and dust molecules in the atmosphere. The blue component of light gets scattered the most, giving the sky its characteristic blue colour. Scientists explained that the blue colour of the sea was simply the reflection of the blue sky in the water. 

     Raman refused to accept the explanation. He conducted some simple experiments on board using a nicol prism and showed that the blue colour of the sea was caused by the scattering of sunlight by the water molecules. 

Effective discovery: Raman continued his light-scattering studies with different liquids using his home-made equipment in the IACS labs. Using optical filters, Raman passed a strong light beam of a single colour through a liquid and observed the light scattered by the liquid through a spectrograph. His studies yielded an unexpected result. A very small portion of the deflected light actually changed colour from the original light. This phenomenon was later named Raman effect. The change in colour of the scattered light was indicative of the molecule which scattered the light and thus became a tool to understand that molecule. 

     Raman made his discovery on 28 February, 1928.  Two years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, making him the first Indian and non-white to receive a Nobel Prize in science. Raman also studied X-Ray scattering and published papers in the field of musical instruments. Many awards and recognitions came his way. He was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society in 1924, knighted in1929 and was awarded the Franklin medal in 1942. Raman joined the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in 1934 as its first Indian director. In 1949, he established the Raman Research Institute. He continued to teach and mentor students till he passed away in 1970.

A moment that highlights Raman's commitment towards his work: When Raman was invited to Rashtrapati Bhavan to receive the Bharat Ratna on 27January, 1955, he wrote to the then Indian President Dr. Rajendra Prasad, expressing his inability to attend the function. He said he was busy supervising the thesis of his student and he thought that the job of mentoring his student was far more important than being present for the award function!

Facts: 

* India observes National Science Day on 28February to honour Raman’s discovery.

* Dr. G. Venkataraman’s biography of Sir C. V. Raman is aptly titled Journey into Light. 

TO BUILD THE LADDER OF SUCCESS

 Stop Drifting and Start Rowing

     Jesse Owens was the first American track and field athlete to win four gold medals; attained at the 1936 Olympic Games.

     Jesse was born with scrawny legs. But one day, the man who was known as the fastest runner in the world, Charlie Paddock, came to his school. Addressing the boys Paddock said, “You can be what you want to be in life. Decide what you want to be. Then go to God, and ask Him to help you to become what you want to be.” The words of Paddock penetrated the young Jesse’s consciousness. And he felt as if an electric current had passed through his entire being. He went out to the playground, and started jumping. He kept on and on jumping. In this upbeat mood, he met the sports coach, and said to him, “I have a dream to be the fastest man alive, like Charlie Paddock!” The coach patted the boy, and said to him, “It is good to have a dream. But you must build a ladder to reach that dream - a ladder made up of four things: determination, dedication, discipline, and a positive attitude.” 

     The rest is history. Jesse Owens built this ladder. The dream he cherished finally came true as he won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. 

     Albert Einstein once said, “A ship is always safe at shore; but that is not what it’s built for.” Often we find ourselves just idling, and drifting along with the current. Once we stop drifting in our lives, we can become more purposeful. Our actions will be much more goal-oriented, propelling us to fulfil our dreams. Remember, an ambitious dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work. So stop drifting, and start pursuing your dreams with passion!

DO YOU KNOW

 How the human ear works?

     An advanced and very sensitive organ of the human body, the ear performs two important functions. One is that of facilitating hearing by collecting sounds and sending the sound signals to the brain, and the other is that of maintaining equilibrium (balance).

     The ear has three sections: the outer ear, middle ear and inner ear. The outer ear consists of the pinna--- the projecting part or flap of the ear, and the auditory canal, where ear wax is produced. Wax lubricates and protects the ear. 

     Sound waves enter the ear through the pinna and travel through the auditory canal towards the middle ear. Here, they strike a membrane called the eardrum, which separates the outer ear from the middle ear. This causes the sound vibrations, which enter the cochlea, a small, snail shaped tube in the inner ear. The cochlea is lined with sensitive cells covered with tiny hair. When sound reaches the cochlea, the vibrations cause the hair on the cells to move, creating nerve signals which the brain recognises as sound.

     The inner ear also has the function of maintaining the balance of the body. It contains sensitive hair cells and a fluid called endolymph, which fluctuates in response to the movement of head. This sets up impulses in nerve fibres that lead to the brain. The brain then sends messages to muscles in all parts of the body to ensure that equilibrium is maintained.

MOUSE MAN

Douglas Carl Engelbart

     Douglas Carl Engelbart was born in Portland, Oregon on 30 January, 1925. During his college days, he was drafted into the United States Navy and sent to the Philippines as a radar technician. While serving there, he read the article 'As we may think' by Vannevar Bush, an American electrical engineer and inventor who was known for his work on analog computers. Douglas was so impressed by Bush's article that he decided to become an electrical engineer and take up a job that would enable him to augment or enhance human intellect using computer technology.

     After he returned from the Philippines , Douglas completed his doctorate in electrical engineering at the University of California in Berkeley. While working as an assistant professor there, his long cherished dream of augmenting human intellect began to haunt him. At that time, computers were specialised machines that only trained scientists could operate. Douglas saw computers as a way for ordinary people to enhance their intellect. He would imagine users sitting at display 'working stations', flying through information space and harnessing their collective intelligence to solve pressing global problems.

     A year later, Douglas left the university and joined the Stanford Research Institute, where his report on 'Augmenting Human Intellect: A Concept Framework' led to the establishment of the Augmentation Research Centre at Stanford. Together with his team of researchers at the centre, he developed a number of interactive information systems that helped to make the computer a user friendly tool. 

     In the 1960s, Douglas invented the computer mouse. He did not like the light pen that people used at the time to point out at things on a computer screen, and so he made a pointing device which comprised a wooden shell, two metal wheels and a connecting cord. The cord resembled the tail of a mouse and gave rise to the device being nicknamed 'mouse'. 

     In 1968, he patented the mouse but it came to be used commercially only in the 1980s. Although Douglas received several awards in his lifetime, he did not get any royalties for inventing the mouse.