Force, Acceleration and Physicists Vs Engineers

Isaac Newton - the greatest scientist of all time

Most of us are familiar with Newton’s laws of motion. The three fundamental laws which govern all aspects of movement in the universe, but lay hidden in darkness until god said ‘Let Newton Be’ and all was light (a famous quote by Alexander Pope). Even people who haven’t studied any science is familiar with the third law (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction), but we are looking into the second law here, which, in Newton’s own words when he published it in the Principia Mathematica in 1687 ran thus – “The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impress'd; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impress'd”. Or, in modern terms, change to “The acceleration a of a body is parallel and directly proportional to the net force F acting on the body, is in the direction of the net force, and is inversely proportional to the mass m of the body, i.e., F = ma”. Yes, the magic equation jumps out at the end, F = ma.

Every school child knows that the force (F) applied on a body is equal to the product of its mass (m) and the acceleration (a) induced by the force. So much is simple. I was so inured to the formula when Hans C Ohanian, the author of Einstein’s Mistakes shook me to the core with the following pronouncement. “You may have been taught in some high school or college physics course that Newton’s second law is F=ma. If so, you were taught by an engineer, not by a real physicist. Newton himself stated that the acceleration (or what he termed ‘the change of motion’) is proportional to the force, not that the force is proportional to the acceleration. Of course, both statements are true, but they differ in emphasis. For Newton, and for most physicists, the second law expresses how the force causes an acceleration, that is, the force is the known quantity and the acceleration is the unknown quantity. Accordingly, physicists prefer to write ma=F. Engineers prefer the opposite way of writing the second law, F=ma, because for them the force is often the unknown quantity, whereas the acceleration is the known quantity (for instance, an engineer may want to calculate what force will be exerted on the wheels of a car when it is racing around a curve at a known, high speed)”. (p.66 in the 2009 Norton paperback edition). Well, it’s a lengthy tirade against engineers since we know that engineers don’t teach school or college physics. The scale of the attack becomes evident when we see his remarks about a prominent magazine which praised Einstein as the engineer of the universe, in salutation to his General Theory of Relativity which forms the basis of gravitation and the fundamentals of space-time. Ohanian don’t let the comment go scot-free. He immediately states that calling a physicist an engineer is no compliment!

Forgetting about the finer shades of distinction between the two classes of professionals, if we take Ohanian’s suggested equation ma=F for a deeper inspection, we wonder whether his arguments would hold against common sense. To solve an algebraic equation, you need to have the unknown quantity alone on the left-hand-side, which is not true in this case. So, to make it ready for calculations, we have to rephrase it as a=F/m or in a more general form as a=kF where k=1/m, the inverse of mass – which is a meaningless physical quantity.

So what point does Ohanian try to establish by this little trick of erudition?

Divine Duty of Judges

Attended a training program on 'Disciplinary Procedures' by Mr. Benny P Thomas, a leading lawyer practicing at the High Court of Kerala, today. The presentation was somewhat okay, if you factor in considerations like this was not his principal job. True to the custom followed by judges and leading lawyers of the High Court, he came dressed in a three-piece suit and was quite an object to behold behind our simple lectern.

While going on with the program, which was aimed at imparting some knowledge about conducting internal enquiries as part of imposing disciplinary proceedings against delinquent employees of our organisation, Mr. Thomas suddenly turned excited and exhorted the participants to think hard about the divine duty they're going to perform while deciding whether the person was guilty or not. In a tremulous voice he declared that judgment is not an easy matter and he personally knew many judges who couldn't eat or sleep well before pronouncing verdicts in some cases involving murder. We didn't understand what piqued our gentle instructor to suddenly come down so heavily against the hapless trainees. 

While at it, it struck me as odd that whether jurisprudence can indeed be termed divine. Judging (no pun intended) from past experiences, we see many instances where the presiding judges turned out verdicts challenging common sense. A recent one is the decree outlawing application of sun-control films on car windscreens. In a literal interpretation of the relevant law, the court decided the practice which actually saved fuel by reflecting some of the heat back. At the same time, it allowed the use of curtains which would ensure privacy but no fuel efficiency. India, which imports most of the oil it burns in its cars, is the net sufferer in the form of fuel wastage incurred due to the additional load on car air-conditioners. So what did the court gain in banning sun-control film and allowing curtains in its place? So much for divine duty.

If you look at the huge number of verdicts set aside by a higher court on appeal, you'd wonder whether some kind of accountability measures need to be implemented for judges in lower courts. There can be no argument if the higher court tones down or up the sentence a bit. Every judge may be swayed a little by human emotions which is quite understandable. But in many of the cases, even the findings are totally reversed leaving the public doubtful about the prudence of the trial judge. Once again, we doubt whether he has discharged his divine duty in a responsible way.

So, before boasting about the godly duty they have to perform, the judicial officers may think twice about the impact of their pronouncements on the society and common man.

Sukumaran Nair on Mission Resuscitation

Social transformation has a curious history in Kerala. The state had practised some of the meanest and most barbaric traditions in the form of untouchability which quickly degenerated into unapproachability, where people of lower castes were grouped into hierarchical levels according to the distance they had had to keep themselves away from people of upper castes. Any breach of the rule resulted in ceremonial impurity, so the lower castes were not even allowed to walk on public roads for fear of polluting people of higher status. The rules were so elaborate and so brutally enforced that Swami Vivekananda once remarked that Kerala resembled a lunatic asylum. The darkest hour was probably early 19^th century, and it was the moment at which a switchover from feudal economy founded on barter system began to give way to a financial system founded on money introduced by the British. This helped a few lower caste people to amass a fortune by diligent use of the means of production at their disposal. When that century was drawing to a close, we find social reformers, most notably Sree Narayana Guru, emerging from the depressed classes, supported by the numerical strength of the poor majority and financial muscle of the affluent minority of those communities. The uprising came at the right moment since all parts of Kerala were under British dominance for at least a half-century before. Malabar directly under them after Tipu’s defeat in 1799, with Travancore and Cochin under their sphere of influence soon after.

The demands of the downtrodden were just, timely and pragmatic. No enlightened individual could have ignored them. So we find most of their requests being met with surprisingly little opposition. They were given representation in legislative assemblies, reservation in government jobs and the right to temple entry. However imperfect, land reform measures redistributed surplus land among the landless. The backward castes undoubtedly benefited the most from this reform. With the rapid spread of education and socialist ideals emulated from the erstwhile Soviet Union, interdining made a quick entry in the social milieu. Intermarriage was the only thing not practised, which continues still.

Perhaps because of the ease and peace with which revolutionary transformations such as the above materialized with so little effort must have caused a sense of complacency among the lower castes and a feeling of resignation to the inevitable in the upper castes. The reform process lost steam around the middle of 20^th century, after running full throttle for about five decades. After a cooling off period of 20-25 years, we find retrograde practises raising their ugly heads again in society. By 1980, almost all sections of society eagerly sought astrologers for fixing such innocuous moments like the time of marriage, house-warming and other auspicious times. Horoscopes began to be cast as soon as a child is born. In extreme cases, child birth was delayed or preponed by medical means so that it is born at the most propitious instant. Such practises which were common among the higher castes were imitated slavishly by the lower castes in a vain bid to upward social mobility. Offerings to temples and costly symbols of belonging to the temple multiplied many times among the backward communities. Often they cheerfully sunk to the depths of ridiculousness in proclaiming their devotion to Hindu deities, in a curious case of being more loyal than the king.

Kerala relapsed into a great slumber as far as social reforms were concerned. Muslims and Christians didn’t lag behind at all – with introduction of purdah with a vengeance, charismatic renewals and meditational healing. The state seemed to be limping back to be worthy of Swami Vivekananda’s depreciatory epithet again.

Enter Shri. G Sukumaran Nair, General Secretary of the Nair Service Society (NSS) with his proclamation that people of his own caste will be employed as officiating priests in temples run by their own organisation. In fact, there was nothing fundamentally new in this – the temples instituted by SNDP Yogam, the leading lower caste organisation had routinely employed people of all castes as priests right from the beginning. But the idea hadn’t gained momentum since Nairs, the most populous and influential upper caste didn’t support it and stoutly held on to the age old custom of availing the services of Brahmin priests only. It is the last ramparts of orthodoxy that is cracking under the thunderous declaration by Sukumaran Nair. Though sure to be opposed with tooth and nail by Brahmin sympathisers, the move is assured of wholehearted support from the lower castes. The only thing we eagerly look forward to is whether Shri. Nair would hold fast or buckle under pressure from regressive circles in his own society and from the uppermost castes like Brahmins. We also hope that Sukumaran Nair would not renege on his historic opportunity to resuscitate Kerala’s reform movement which is in limbo and is bringing out laboured breaths as the first symptoms of imminent death.