A terribly disappointing TSE2009

This trip to Dibrugarh was the most miseventful and depressing trip so far in my life, IMO. Never have I felt so disappointed before. Dibrugarh neither turned out to have a good lot of scenic travel options around, nor did we get to see the eclipse of the century – the 3.5 minute totality predicted at Dibrugarh. All we got to see was the Brahmaputra, and the darkening of the cloudy, overcast skies during the totality (and the random behaviour of birds).

The only “perks” of the trip were insignificantly few – that of having a brief look at Kolkata, some good photographs involving dragon flies, the Brahmaputra, spiders and tea plantations, and some time spent away from the computer, with friends. Not enough and not worth it – just like several of those recent Hosahalli trips under overcast skies.

Besides, I hate travelling without good company – sitting doing nothing in the flight, for example. All I can do is to crib and compose this post, so that I can vent out some frustration of an untriumphant waste of a journey at the least, and ease myself a bit.

Over all, it was really disappointing to go all the way for absolutely nothing. This was much worse than that pathetic, most pointless visit to Kavalur that happened last year around the same time (which I did not blog about), which was much better in that I did not miss any significant event. These are the times when you start becoming agnostic… Wish I were in Varanasi with Amar and Vivek instead.

I amn’t alone – all of us were really disappointed. Particularly the two Pavans who calculatedly (and I say their arguments were logical!) changed the venue from Varanasi, which we had initially planned, to Dibrugarh. I don’t blame them for anything, because their reasons to favour Dibrugarh were absolutely sensible. Many folks pointed out that Dibrugarh was at a cloud-cover maximum as per predictions, but then Patna, which was at a predicted=cloud-cover minimum, had only overcast skies. It’s just our bad lack… really bad luck.

I guess I will be making a lot of trips to Argentina just to compensate… at the least I will end up visiting and exploring a foreign country instead of a boring, hot, and monotonously Indian town.

I’m currently at an enthusiasm minimum, so don’t expect any trip photos in the near future.

Simulate Eddington’s Experiment!

KStars now gives you an option to correct for General Relativistic effects near the sun!

According to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, light rays bend around the sun because of the sun’s gravity, and this correction is predicted to be about 0.0005 of a degree for light rays that just graze the sun’s surface. During the Solar Eclipse of 29th May 1919, Arthur Eddington verified this theory experimentally.

KStars now lets you simulate this experiment, which essentially measured the apparent positions of stars near the edge of the sun and showed that General Relativity accounted for the difference in the observed and expected positions of the stars.

Fire up KStars, hit ‘0′ to center the sun, and zoom in quite a bit to see the stars at the edge of the sun. Now hit ‘r’ to toggle the relativistic corrections!

A summer at TIFR

As you all know if you’ve been reading my blog, I spent my summer at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) at Mumbai, as a visiting student under their Visiting Students’ Research Programme (VSRP).

I’m now back to Bangalore, with lots of time to spend blogging the proceedings of the last one month.

I somehow felt I didn’t do much work during the last one month. I computed the Jacobian of the operator that I talked about in my earlier post, and it turned out to be unity for all that hard work . But well, it was a good thing it was unity because it didn’t complicate the equations all the more! So we were able to write down the kernel for the Navier-Stokes equation. Then came the task of converting symmetries into constraints on the two-point correlation functions of the velocity field. I wrote down Ward identities, but I couldn’t solve them. Prof. Spenta gave me an ansatz to try and I didn’t have much luck with it. That apart, we ran into some interesting issues regarding anamolous scaling dimensions, which still need resolution.

But here I’m, back in Bangalore, hardly spending time on Physics. It’s just that I’m lazy to start…

Overall, I must rate VSRP as a good experience. My sleep requirement seems to have reduced drastically and I sleep deeper these days, thanks to the fact that we were baccommodated off-campus at Wadala (1 hour away from TIFR / Colaba) – which was, according to me, one of the major downsides of VSRP. The other downside, IMO, is that TIFR is a research institute, and professors don’t know what to expect from undergrad students. However, in my case, Prof. Spenta very quickly adapted to my ignorance and I patiently taught me fundamental concepts! But then, it is good exposure to the scientific community.

Life in TIFR is really comfortable. The west canteen’s awesome food is pretty well-known. Plus, work timings are very free. There are colloquia every now and then and it is really interesting to see biologists attending Physics seminars and vice versa – promoting interdisciplinary exchange of ideas. I think TIFR is the place to be in India for research, and VSRP is an ideal summer internship programme.

I’m a fresher joining IITM – Should I bring a laptop?

This blog post might have some use for freshers who have the aforementioned question in mind – to bring or not to bring a laptop in the first semester. This was a reply that I sent to a student’s parent, and thought it might be useful to others. This post will expose the pros and cons of having a laptop, but will leave the ultimate decision to you. As a side note, in my case, I took my desktop in the first semester because I was (and still am trying not to be) a computer “addict” (thankfully, in a better sense than a game addict). This post might have a bias towards physics department students once in a way. So here goes.

Pros of bringing a laptop / buying a desktop:

• All students will do a course on Computational Methods in their first or second semester. The Engineering Physics students will probably do it in the second semester, whereas the dual degree MS in Physics students will do this in the first semester. A laptop is useful for this, as you might have assignments where you will need to write and submit a program.
• Although there are places to access a shared computer (which I will outline later), you will not enjoy the comfort of your room while studying / working. So it’s a good idea to have a computer in your room.
• Much of the teaching in the first few semesters is done via computer-based presentations (commonly dubbed “power-point”) rather than on blackboard, so a personal laptop / desktop computer will be useful to study for the examinations.
• From the second semester onwards, internet / intranet connectivity will be provided in hostel rooms for restricted timings. Thus, personal laptops / computers will be useful from the second semester onwards, since it will make it easy to communicate or get information.

Disadvantages of bringing a laptop / buying a desktop in the first year:

• The internet facility is not provided during the first semester in the hostels
• There are some very good common computer facilities, particularly if you are a Physics student. The Physics dept. computing facility is a really well-maintained facility that is almost always accessible. A list of other common places to access a computer figures at the end.
• Most students bring a desktop / laptop only in their second year. Thus, any laptop / desktop available in the wing will be in high-demand by your wingmates! Sometimes, this can get irritating – but it isn’t a serious problem if you don’t mind helping your wing-mates. I remember that although I used to try to be liberal with my desktop, it sometimes used to get me frustrated when I find it booted back into Winblows from Linux. I remember that I formatted the Winblows disk some day suddenly in frustration.
• It’s a good thing to avoid internet / game addiction and explore exciting hobbies that you can pursue in the institute in the first year. Internet can be addictive if you are seeing it for the first time at IITM. If you’ve already been a heavy internet user – then this point doesn’t concern you, as you’ve probably outgrown the initial hype now.

Places where you can access a computer:

• The Hostel Computer Room: This is a common computer room in the hostels. Usually, it is badly maintained – but then, there’s an administrator whom you can “pain” and get stuff working if it isn’t. This is the nearest computer-place near your room. However, by Murphy’s Law, all the computers here are occupied when you most need them – so it is better to know other alternatives!
• A Senior’s Room: Most seniors understand how important internet / a computer is for your survival (at least I do!) and will let you use their computer after you are subject to some basic “interaction”. I remember that a very friendly 4th year made a very open offer for us to use his computer whenever we wanted, and we actually used it for preparing some presentation.
• The Department Computing Facility: This is a facility that exists (well, rather is supposed to exist) in every department. Although I do not know, I’ve heard cribs that these aren’t well maintained in most of the departments. However, the Physics and Computer Science departments have very well maintained DCFs that are open for most of the time when one is awake. The administrators are very approachable too. This will be about 8 ~ 10 minutes on cycle from your hostel
• The Digital Knowledge Center: This is a place in the library which is typically crowded and has no place left for you to access a computer . It has mostly Winblows machines, which is why I’ve never been there after my first semester. If you do have a laptop, you have WiFi connectivity in the library, and the DKC has reasonable signal strengths as well. There are some Linux machines, but they are probably servers. The DKC will also be about 8 ~ 10 minutes on cycle from your hostel.

And a final point: Don’t get too worried. Things will be fine.

I’m a fresher joining IITM – Should I bring a laptop?

This blog post might have some use for freshers who have the aforementioned question in mind – to bring or not to bring a laptop in the first semester. This was a reply that I sent to a student’s parent, and thought it might be useful to others. This post will expose the pros and cons of having a laptop, but will leave the ultimate decision to you. As a side note, in my case, I took my desktop in the first semester because I was (and still am trying not to be) a computer “addict” (thankfully, in a better sense than a game addict). This post might have a bias towards physics department students once in a way. So here goes.

Pros of bringing a laptop / buying a desktop:

All students will do a course on Computational Methods in their first or second semester. The Engineering Physics students will probably do it in the second semester, whereas the dual degree MS in Physics students will do this in the first semester. A laptop is useful for this, as you might have assignments where you will need to write and submit a program.

Although there are places to access a shared computer (which I will outline later), you will not enjoy the comfort of your room while studying / working. So it’s a good idea to have a computer in your room.

Much of the teaching in the first few semesters is done via computer-based presentations (commonly dubbed “power-point”) rather than on blackboard, so a personal laptop / desktop computer will be useful to study for the examinations.