Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
The Chip
The Chip: _ Figure below shows chip manufacturing facility: ______ Section-1 Prologue: More than 100 years ago, humans invented vacuum tubes that made electricity flow in different directions or get stronger. The tubes made it possible to invent radios, televisions and computers. Every electronic device like a computer and radio works by controlling and manipulating the flow of electric current through a network of interconnected elements like capacitors, diodes and transistors. Before the invention of the chip, electronic devices such as computers and radios used vacuum tubes, or valves, which were cumbersome, heavy and generated a large amount of heat while consuming a lot of power. A 1940s computer called the ENIAC with vacuum tubes about the size of an adult thumb was about the same length and weight as three to four double-decker buses and contained 18,000 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 […]
THE ATOM
___________ THE ATOM: ___________ The figure above is an animation of the nuclear force (or residual strong force) interaction between a proton and a neutron. The small colored double circles are gluons, which can be seen binding the proton and neutron together. These gluons also hold the quark-antiquark combination called the pion (meson) together, and thus help transmit a residual part of the strong force even between colorless hadrons. Quarks each carry a single color charge, while gluons carry both a color and an anticolor charge. The combinations of three quarks e.g. proton/neutron (or three antiquarks e.g. antiproton/antineutron) or of quark-antiquark pairs (mesons) are the only combinations that the strong force seems to allow. ________ Prologue: Since childhood I was curious about breaking down any matter (table/chair) into smaller pieces continually till I reach a point where it cannot be broken down. What is that point? Is matter infinitely divisible? […]
ELECTRICITY
ELECTRICITY: _ The picture above shows how a barber cuts hair during recent power failure in India. _ Prologue: Electric crematoria were snuffed out with bodies inside, New Delhi’s Metro shut down and hundreds of coal miners were trapped underground after three Indian electric grids collapsed in a cascade on 30th and 31st July 2012, cutting power to 620 million people in India. The blackout engulfed as many as 19 of India’s 28 states on July 31, with more than 100 intercity trains stranded and traffic lights went out in busy roads, causing widespread jams. Without question, it was the largest blackout in world history. Hospitals, factories and the airports switched automatically to their diesel generators during the hours-long cut across half of India. Many homes relied on backup systems of invertors with batteries. On the other hand, millions of India’s poorest had no electricity to lose. Of the […]
