Doppler Shift Horn

Imagine you are strolling along a street. All of a sudden, you hear the faint siren of an ambulance in the background. With each passing moment, the intensity of the siren increases, which become more and more piercing. Then it goes past you in a whoosh and the siren shifts to a low-pitch. With the rise in pitch, you estimate the speed of the ambulance’s approach and decide in a flicker whether it would be suicidal to cross the street at that instant. What is at work here? Nothing spectacular, obviously. Every school child knows that the phenomenon pictured above is a demonstration of the ‘Doppler Effect’, which was first explained by the Austrian physicist Christian Doppler in 1842 as the apparent change in frequency of a signal caused due to the speed of movement between the source and the listener. Most of us would also have heard the physics teacher remark that police employs this method to trap speeding vehicles on the road (At this point, one of my naïve friends loudly exclaimed wonder at the cleverness of police officers!). If you bother to search this item in Wikipedia, you would find a simple mathematical formula linking the change of frequency with speed. It is really that simple.

Now, think about the reverse mechanism. What if we supply a horn with a stream of signals whose frequency is changing so fast as to invoke the sensation that a vehicle is rushing on to us at a very high speed? The utility of the horn is obvious. People would stampede on their run to be out of the way of this oncoming vehicle. Your right of way would be guaranteed. If the device is used sparingly and judiciously, the driver can find his way in any crowded street.

The new Doppler horn is not difficult to construct. With a square-wave generator whose frequency can be controlled to be in relation to the desired speed, an electronic horn can be built having sufficient amplification to produce sound loud enough to be used in automobiles. ‘Doppler Shift Horn’ might be a good name for the device.

Any takers?

Animals Can't Detect Quakes

A devastating quake has brought Nepal to its knees. 4400 people are confirmed death by now and Nepali administration fears that the toll may well exceed 10,000. Over 8 million people are affected or about a third of the total population. Being a developing state, Nepal’s infrastructure is strained almost to breaking point under the impact of this natural calamity of a scale unseen In the Himalayan state. As of now, every hand is engaged in extricating people trapped under the debris, before it’s too late. Soon, the effort will shift to reconstruct the damaged buildings. A huge amount of money will be required to put the economy back on track. The impact on tourism industry, which was one of the mainstays of Nepal, would naturally be huge as well. All reservations for the next two years might be cancelled. The country may have to start from scratch again, since it is reported that almost 80% of the ancient temples are either destroyed or heavily damaged.

As we know, Himalayas is a seismic zone inherently prone to devastating quakes like what we saw a few days back. The Indian tectonic plate pushing under the Eurasian plate is a scary reminder for people in this region. There have been no warnings this time too. Soon, hordes of astrologers and charlatans would come out to claim that they had predicted about the tremor. Unfortunately such warnings appear in media, only after the events. No human being has so far been able to forewarn his fellows about an imminent quake. Even technology is helpless as of now to make a prediction applicable to a specific period of time. How long will it take for mankind to device deep probes that sense the heart throb of the Earth?

There is another group of people who claim that they got wind of the impending disaster by the behavioral peculiarities exhibited by domestic animals. This argument is also false, but cloaked under the veneer of scientific probability. It is quite probable that a fault zone about to cause a tremor might release noise in the longer wavelengths, and hence lesser frequency. Man cannot detect sounds less than 20 Hz frequency, so he can’t hear them. But dogs and cats have the faculty to hear low frequency sounds as well. Then, isn’t it possible that the animals may be used to detect earth quakes before they actually occur?

Here, we are in a dilemma. We can’t simply reject the argument as baseless. Charlatans have an uncanny ability to exploit doubts in others to their own nefarious ends. A useful strategy to adopt here is to appeal to practical considerations. Even if we accept for argument’s sake that animals could sense tremors that are on the way, it is equally true that nobody escaped a quake by deducing it from the strange behaviour of an animal. After the event, many people ‘remember’ that their pets acted strangely, but never before it. What is the morale here? Even if the animals detect tremor signals, their behaviour is not altered or at least not changed in such a way as to attract the attention of people around them. Their masters could not detect anything extraordinary in their behavior. Isn’t it clear proof that animals can’t be used to sense earth quakes in a sensible way?

Kerala Hartal Calendar

Public life would come to a standstill on a hartal day

This post is a simple effort to serve as a guide to people from outside Kerala state who are unfortunate enough to arrive on a hartal day in Kerala. This is basically a survival guide to overcome the effects of hartal up to an extent and also provides an online schedule of planned hartals. As soon as a hartal is announced, this will be updated online, and people planning to travel to Kerala may do better to visit the hartal calendar before venturing on their journey. It is always good to postpone the trip, if at all possible. If your travel was planned much in advance, or is very important, you might have to do it anyway, whatever may be the risk. In such a case, you may read the following section.

1. Violence

Surprisingly, there is no risk of personal violence. The protesters may stop your vehicle, if you are riding in one, and may ask you to get out. If the mob is much agitated, they may smash the wind screen, but there is no chance that you will be personally injured.

2. Travel

Flights and railway are the two modes of transport which will operate without any hitch. Strikers won’t normally hinder movement of trains. So, if you can reach the railway station or airport, you can travel freely. On the other hand, all other forms of public transport will be stopped. Busses will not run, taxis will not ply, and auto rickshaws will stay off the road, for fear of their wind screens and tyres. Private transport will not be normally blocked, though many people are reluctant to take their cars on the road. Two wheelers have no restrictions. Protesters will not stop them. So, the best way to reach your destination is to hitchhike on two wheelers, who are generally helpful and would give you a free lift. But if you have heavy baggage, your options are limited. Private cars may or may not accommodate you, of course, depending on your appearance! Another option is to seek help from the Police, who might take you to your destination on one of your fortunate days.

3. Food

Food is the most difficult item to arrange on a hartal day. All restaurants will be closed. If you happen to stay in a hotel with an attached restaurant, you are safe. Otherwise, if you are on the road, there is absolutely no way to get food and drinks during forenoon in the case of dawn to dusk hartals. Eateries may function in the railway stations. It is always advisable to stock up provisions on the previous day itself. Street vendors generally open their stalls by around 2’o clock in the afternoon. Basic food items may be obtained from them. However, if you are exceedingly hungry in the morning, there is not much you can do other than begging at nearby homes.

4. Accommodation

No problem on this front. All hotels will function. If you can reach the hotel, the ‘rest’ is assured.

5. Hartal Calendar

All hartals cripple public life in Kerala, irrespective of the numerical strength of the organization calling for it. Keralites don’t want to take risks. So, don’t entertain the false hope that at least some daring trader would open his shop. Statewide hartals occur roughly about once in two months and district hartals occur more often. There are two types of hartals, one is of the lightning variety that is often called against some political violence. You would get hardly 24 hours notice in this case. Most often, the next day would be declared a hartal day. One point to remember is that no hartal would be called on Sundays and public holidays, because if you do, loss of productivity would be very minimal and the protesters naturally want to cause maximum loss to the public exchequer. The second type of hartal is called in protest against a policy of the government, such as liberalization, hike in petroleum prices, increase in insurance premium and the like. Here, the notice period would be around one week, so to say. So how would you know that a hartal is announced on the day you plan to visit Kerala?

I have started an online Kerala hartal scheduler, which will be updated as frequently as possible. You may see the schedule at TeamUp http://teamup.com/ksb4c10e215321a338/. Or, watch for shortened URL http://goo.gl/Gt9Qpn

Time’s Winged Chariot

Andrew Marvell (1621 - 1678)

Poetry is a very beautiful expression of human emotions. If I left it at that, it would have been the understatement of the year! A couplet, unexpectedly wafted by a literary wind in the form of a quote in a quite unrelated book, might set in motion in you a train of thought, and at the same time savouring the metaphysical essence of it. It is the economy of words while expressing an idea that makes poetry an unassailable foe to prose. Likewise, I stumbled upon the lines

“But at my back I always hear

Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”

as a quote in Arnold Toynbee’s ‘A Study of History’. There wasn’t any mention of the author – just the beguiling lines that invited the listener to immerse in a deep ocean of thinking at the philosophical inevitability of the subject alluded to, by the poet.

If the day was three decades prior to what it actually was, nothing would’ve happened. You would have no clue as to the poet who wrote these lines. May be learned scholars in English literature would have able to help, but most of them are out of reach of rustics like me even now. The lines would’ve forever haunted me with neither the beginning nor the end in sight. I would’ve been forever chained to the present as enunciated in those lines. But the year is 2015, the Internet has reached every corner of the country, and it was a matter of seconds to run a search in Google and coming up with 16,000 matching results! Not only the full poem, but a biography of the author is now available at your fingertips.

It was Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678) who wrote these lines in his poem, ‘To His Coy Mistress’ around 1650. Contrary to all expectations we might have formed based on the metaphysical quote, the poem is actually an amorous one in which the poet urges his mistress to shed her coyness and to respond favourably to his lustful advances because the time available to live is very short and he is already hearing the clatter of time’s winged chariot approaching from behind. What an irony! The thing you thought to be a diamond of philosophical speculation turned out on closer examination to be a piece of charcoal! The fact that both are of the same material need not detain us here. The poem is still noteworthy, with a few more aces down the poet’s sleeve, when he reminds us that “yonder all before us lie deserts of vast eternity”. It ends with this marvelous sextuplet,

“Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run”

English is hilarious if we detect the pun! Full text of the poem may be found here.

Sighting of Scholz’s Star in Prehistoric Times

A team of German astronomers have come forward with an astounding observation. A star, now termed Scholz’s Star after its discoverer, had come very close to the solar system around 70,000 years ago. It flew past the outermost reaches of the solar system called Oort Cloud which is a vast region of space full of stellar debris and is the breeding ground of comets which are nudged by celestial objects whizzing past through the cloud and which then tumble onwards to the Sun by its gravitational tug in a periodical orbit. Astronomers say the comets the star had dislocated in its wake might not reach the sun for many more thousands or even millions of years to come. The star is categorized as a Red Dwarf, meaning the size was very small, and it hurtled past us at a speed of 2,88,000 kmph which is four times the speed of a normal celestial body. It had come nearly 0.8 light years away from the Sun, which means that it reached nearly one-fifth of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star at 4.2 light years away. Dwarf stars are difficult to see with the unaided eye, but many such stars flare occasionally, even up to 4000 times its normal light intensity. If such was the case, it would’ve been visible on the prehistoric face of the earth.

Scholz's Star in artistic concept

It is deeply exhilarating to contemplate the feelings that rose on sighting this new dot of bright red in prehistoric people. The star might have put in an appearance at the intersection of two crucial events in human history – the migration out of Africa and the development of speech. Probably, some inquisitive child might have spotted this unusually bright speck of crimson light on a sky unencumbered with smoke and industrial particulates. With childish naiveté, the little girl might have pointed it to her little brother and possibly to her mother, who would’ve been busy preparing for the long night in an era when artificial lighting was still several millennia ahead. Her father would probably be outside the cave socializing with his fellows and discussing on the hunting strategies to be followed in the new area in which they have arrived on the arduous trek out of Africa in humanity’s greatest ever bid to conquer the world. The girl might have uttered some sounds that was somehow comprehensible to her parents and siblings, since man had just reached the critical stage in his evolution at which speech developed. The guttural sounds of apes gradually or more probably rather suddenly by geological standards, gave way to meaningful speech. Isn’t it wonderful to visualize a little primitive human family looking uncomprehendingly and with a little anxiety watching this portent of unknown events to occur? Religion had not taken root in human societies at that time, as the concept of an omnipotent deity required the development of the ability to produce meaningful spoken words. That family might have just wondered with a tinge of apprehension about how their future could be correlated with the appearance of a little red dot in the evening sky.

And, would they have spared a thought for the man who would not be born for the next 70,000 years from that moment, but would think and write about them in a medium they couldn’t even dream about?

Good Games on Chess.com

Chess.com is a very good site to play chess online. Ever since Yahoo stopped its buggy online chess in March 2014, we have been at a loss to find a good alternative. 

Chess.com was the sweet alternative and have just started some nice gaming there. There are a few memorable games (of victory, of course!). The following are the moves in the game.

1. Against dambrefe2 on 7.2.15 (with black pieces)

1. e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 h6 4.c3 d6 5.h3 Nf6 
6. d3 Be7 7.O-O O-O 8.Re1 a6 9.Bb3 Bd7 10.d4 exd4
11. cxd4 Qc8 12.a3 Bxh3 13.gxh3 Qxh3 14.Qd3 Ng4 15.Be3 Kh8 
16. Nbd2 Bf6 17.Qf1 Qh5 18.Qg2 Be7 19.Kf1 f5 20.Ke2 fxe4
21. Nxe4 Qf5 22.Ng3 Qf6 23.Nh5 Qf5 24.Ng3 Qf6 25.Ne4 Qf5 
26. Ned2 Bf6 27.Rac1 a5 28.Bc2 Qe6 29.Kd1 Qd7 30.Rh1 Rae8
31. Bf4 Bxd4 32.Bxh6 gxh6 33.Qh3 Nxf2# 0-1