isi lurking + an unrelated problem

here is a sum that held me in due to oversight on my part.it has got only one twist- thats all!
here goes-


imagine a rubber string, fixed at one end, is streched linearly in a horizontal plane so that the free end always has a velocity 'v0'.if an insect at the free end starts moving towards the fixed end with velocity v1 , at T=0, and initial length of string is L, find the time at which the insect reaches the fixed end.
my question is that wat shud b the min value for v1/v0.

sorry for for the accccute wording though- cudnt help it.

u know i already feel like reading for college- i feel exhausted with this standard syllabus already.
if u ppl hav applied for isi-bstat admission,discuss in this thread.

Flap Flap ... Times Back

So, ppl ... wonder where i had vanished all this time, been on some very distant time travel into the depths of future. Nah. busy with IITJEE. well tats gone so now i can do some thing closer to my heart. This is what i have been working on.

ORNITHOPTERS

Seems a very far fetched name. But wat lies within is even more weird. Ornithopter as d name suggests is 'flight like birds'. flapping wings. no propellers. The key difference between an ornithopter and an airplane is that the driving airfoils move up and down instead of rotating. For both the airplane and the ornithopter, most of the lift results from forward motion through the air. In the ornithopter, lift is produced by the flapping wings, often in conjunction with some additional fixed wings. Birds likewise use their body and tail as a fixed lifting surface.

Why Ornithopter ?
My sudden intrest in ornithopters can be attributed to the recent air mishaps- crashes. i was very upset. the current air plane designs are over a century old. fixed wings. high forward thrust, some thing new is required. Ornithopters are better in following ways:

1. Very high maneuverability
   
2. low noise
3. high lift
4. good fuel efficiency

Ornithopter isnt a new concept. the first ornithopter was built in early 1900s !! manned flights on ornithopters hav also been achieved. but considerable work needs to be done before u and i can ride one.
Now wat am i working on? am on a fold wing type model which will have a very strong downstroke, enabling it to 'climb'. i will write the details one i have made a successful model. But there is one problem. This isnt a basic science topic and hence i cant take it up in KVPY program. :(

Well then, i think 3d matrices will be good enough for the summer project ...
waiting for ur responses (and refueling my time machine)
TiMe

PANIC!!! New Blog Look

First of all, I'd like to apologize my absolute disregard for all the hard work Rash and Twish did for the site. I thought I could play around with the site so that the comments page would be a bit wider (since we tend to have long comments), and just change the look a bit.
As a result I made a huge huge mistake of not saving a template backup. I thought that there would be a rollback option at the stage, but it seems that there wasn't. Again, I'm so so sorry that I screwed up all your hard work, and I'm desperately hoping that you have a few back up. If not, tell me what all you had, and I'll put in the work to make sure that its back.

I hope you like the new look. I feel its a bit brighter, and easier to navigate. If you've any objects, comment about it.

The KVPY Summer Programme: Discussion

As I laid out in the 'above' thread, this is the discussion thread. Please abuse...

The KVPY Summer Programme

All of us have been caught up in the exam, and I think its time for us to get back to the task at hand, the KVPY Summer Programme. I'm sure that each of us has some ideas if what to do in their bulbs, but really a lot of us haven't the least idea on how to do that. Then again, it could just be me, but I'd like to see you come out and prove me wrong, and then help me out.

So this is how it works, this first post is for each of us to list out what we plan to do, and possibly where we plan to do. You can be as descriptive as you like, and you can write a cute love story between you and quantum physics if you like. But, you get only one post, and you can edit it however much you like. (Copy the entire text and delete your old post if necessary). I want it like this so that we can keep it clean. Do post what you've done, plan to do, etc.

Now, there will be a second post following this one, where we shall discuss as freely as we'd like one what was written in the first post, as well as talking about penguins.

I hope you all pitch in and we're able to create enough volume to help each other out.

THE KVPY SCHOLARS

[Click on the Photo to Enlarge]

As far as i remember the people in the photo are:

Bottom Line (L-R): Rasagy "RaSh/Gr81", Debasish, Priyanka, Abhinav Uppal, Mr. S Mallick (our cordinator of the camp), Another Coordinator, Debanjan "ObiWanKenoby", BhagyaShree, Sunita, Prateeti, Somani (Standing behind).
2nd Line: Sandeepan Parekh "Spidy" (2nd from Left) & Saurya Prakash "Time" (Blue Shirt, behind Debanjan)

3rd Line:Swetabh "Bhakt" (Behind Twish), Twishmay "Twish/Twister" (Red & White) ..... Lagnajeet (Yellow), Manish (Blue), Pravar D Mahajan, Ankit "Pandey" (Black).

Last line: Abhishek Bhatnagar (Red Shirt), Ankit sagwal (Orange Shirt), Tanmay and Ashish.

PS: Isnt that Arpit on extreme Top Right?

Any one else whom u can identify, plz comment....

(Updated last on 17/4/7 by Gr81)

MY PASSION

This post is not about metaphysics as many of the posts on this page are.. It is something u must be knowing...

Every one of you must be having a weakness for something. Someone 's crazy bout programing in computers. some one likes bikes..etc..
Similarly my passion is "Airplanes".

Airplanes have always fascinated me from the beginning. When i was small i told dad to take me to the Bhubaneswar airport in the weekends to see the airplanes landing n take off.

FLYING.. Is what people "do" now a days. It has become a part of their lives. It's no more a luxury to fly as it was to hold a cell phone in the early nineties.
Over a century ago , when two ambitious cycle mechanics "The Wright Brothers" first shared the idea of flying with their friends .. they just laughed away at it. This made them more determined and they worked hard and succeeded in making a FLYING MACHINE " THE WRIGHT FLIER" from the scrap they had in their shop.It was a single engine aircraft which could fly at a height of a few meters . Though their first flight at Kitty Hawk on 17th December, 1903 lasted for seconds.. but it was enough to start a new era for the mankind. Within years the aeroplanes were used almost everywhere.. for transport, for rescue, for met studies..and for WARS.

WRIGHT BROTHERS
Coming to the actual point , today there are aeroplanes which are run by super computers. Super sonic airplanes have become a thing of past. You might be knowing of CONCORD which reached 1.9 Mach during trans-Atlantic flights in the late eighties. (Though it is phased out from active service now). Today there are fighter planes which carry laser guided fire 'n' forget missiles. Moreover there are aircrafts like the B-2 spirit bombers which can take off from the USA , bomb the "Tora-Bora" hills in Afghanistan and return home on the same day without the need for refuelling even once and without giving a single blip in the enemy's RADAR!! Planes have also reached Hypersonic speeds( greater than 5 mach) in some test flights. Within 100 years man could increase his speed from a mere 60 km/hr( on a horse) to 5 machs !!ALso there are fighter aircrafts like the F-22 raptor which have "Thrust Vectoring Technology" which moves the exhaust nozzle in the required direction for better acceleration and maneuvering. Now-a-days Airplanes completely made up of Carbon Fibre have been built. ( ex. LCA (Tejas) of India has almost 90-95% carbon fibre which makes it the lightest multi role combat aircraft in the world.)

LCA

F-22 RAPTOR

You also might have heard of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAV). The "Predator" ( an UAV of US) was extensively used during the IRAQ n Afghanistan wars. These aircrafts are controlled by pilots sitting comfortably in their home land and these intelligent airplanes just come n bomb n go.. The enemy never knows where did the bomb come from? No radar signatures, no noise, no infrared radiations.. India too boasts of having a powerful fleet of UAVs ( The "Lakshya") . The " Lakshya" was first test flown in Chandipur(The Interim Test Range) in my home state(Orissa).
Here i would like to ask a question : Is there the need of Pilots in today's airplanes? Can we leave these intelligent flying machines alone in the battle field? Can we rely on these brainy planes to carry hundreds of passengers safely across the pacific? Can these planes take split second decisions in combat zone and rescue operations??
Here the discussion is directed towards : Artificial Intelligence ~ Human Brain
Here's the OPEN question ..
CAN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE EVER REPLACE HUMAN in some vital JOBS like flying aeroplanes and surgery?(to name a few). OR SHOULD THEY BE RESTRICTED TO MUNDANE JOBS IN THE OFFICE and leave the humans to take up these "more important" jobs??

What I Was Trying To Say

Okay this is just a small post...

When I mentioned a Universe with multiple epicenters, you apparently took it in a way I did not mean. When I say "epicenter", I am NOT referring to "the point from which everything is moving away"; rather, I am talking about the "point where the event first took place".

In other words, I was talking about the mouth/neck of the balloon, not its "center" per se.

Contrary to what you might imagine, the idea of multiple co-existing universes does not contradict the "everything is moving away from each other" stuff. Think of a balloon with its mouth towards the north. Now think of another balloon within this one with the mouth towards the east. We can have many such balloons, but the condition is that each one must expand at a faster rate than the one within it.

If you will give it a thought, this does mean that each and every object (an object is like a point on any of the balloon's surfaces) moves away from every other.

Easy IITJEE paper

Lovely!!!!You come after 3+2+3 hours of hard work

9-12 :- almost a shaky start, and some nervousness arising due to the need of getting the essence of the past two years (actually more) into one crucial day and to do all this in a place you have never been to , before.
12-2 :- might seem the easiest part of the day but is actually the toughest. Getting some food into your stomach and expecting to digest it without any oxygen supply coz the brain has taken it all, is as likely as ending up with JEE rank 1. And then the pressure of not looking into the first paper (you wouldn't like to have a depressed mind, or even an over-confident one - entering the second test)
2-5 :- Get back to work.And it doesn't really matter if the afternoon is hot and the electricity supply is, well ...... typically Indian. The exam is the most important thing during the three hours and a slight dip in concentration may spell disaster.

Ok, after having excerted yourself for the eight hours , you hear people saying it was an easy paper, and... and even though you know those speakers might actually never make it, you are literally forced to believe that you missed out.

Were the eight hours 'easy'? Definitely not. The questions might have been easier but the paper, it was by no means easy. Anyways, it doesn't really matter if the questions are easy or difficult , its going to be the same set of people (with minor changes) who actually make it.

IITJEE is never difficult. Its not the high level of knowledge, or the complicated theorems, its just plain application of what you know, how well you know it, and ofcourse how well you use it. The questions were tricky, no doubt. There were ocassions when the questions trapped me, and literally induced mistakes. Deadly 'match the following'. All in all an excellent question paper, trademark IITJEE.

I hope you'll leave comments, and also an estimate of your scores (the solutions are available at www.fiitjee.com - i know most of you already know it) . Any guesses for what the top score is going to be???