When I used Newton's law
Physics can be an exhilarating subject, or an excruciating subject, depending on what side of the 'nerd line' you are in. The problem comes with the ample formulaes and cause-effect relationships that this subject has come up with even to explain the simplest of concepts. I know that if I threw a ball, it is going to move for a while and eventually come to a stop. But leave it to physics to go in and put a complicated spin on what is essentially a really uncomplicated concept. So now we find ourselves
1. multiplying force and displacement to calculate work
2. raising it to the power of some random number like 6.023 x 10^26 to calculate the average gravitational pull of the ball with some distant planet and then
3. dividing it by the number of hours an electron stays as a wave as opposed to a particle, to get the energy of the process etc.
You know what I mean. I could do all this with a simple measuring tape for God's sake. So it was with a touch of pessimism and back-bench revolting that I was introduced to various Newtonian concepts, including his apple falling thingie. I knew at an instant that there was no good to be had from all these so-called 'laws of nature'. I knew enough to let a good thing be and not to mess with nature. So imagine my utter shock when I actually used one of Newton's precious laws in a very practical everyday application.
I can see most of you already shaking your head and kicking yourselves for ever bothering to visit this blog, but please stick with me for a minute. Growing up in the middlest of middle classes in Mylapore, I did not have access to geysers for those frighteningly cold Madras winters. It could possibly - yes, hold your breath - touch 22C in the December-January timeframe. And you'll see all the Chennai 'perusus' (oldies) walking around with obscurely colored 'mundas' (pink, purple turbans) and half-sleeve sweaters, complaining about the 'pani' (cold, mist, fog) in Chennai and how you need to be very careful. Personally, I loved winters because this was the only chance for me to request, nay demand, hot water baths and have my wish granted without complaints by my mom. As I mentioned a few lines ago, I did not have a geyser at home. So my mom would pour water in a stainless steel vessel and heat it to near boiling point. Then she would use a towel to carefully carry it and place it in the bathroom.
Now, the trick was to spread this vessel of really hot water into 2-3 pleasantly warm buckets of water. So obviously, I would pour 1/3rd of this hot water (let's call it the source) into another empty bucket and start tempering the second bucketful with cold water till it came to an optimal temperature. Then I would finish the first part of my shower, and then repeat the process with the rest of the hot water. However, this process had an inherent problem associated with it. By the time I finished my first bucket, the source bucket with the really hot water lost a lot of heat and was able to yield only one more bucket, rather than the generally preferable number of 2.0. This was extremely irritating. And I could not very well ask my mother for another round of heating since she would have a pot of sambar, a few veggies and a rice cooker occupying her stove by then.
However, a few days after I got introduced to Newton, I was standing next to my hot water bucket deeply pondering this issue while opening a new bar of lifeboy soap, when, out of the blue, one of his laws came to mind. The law, in its most basic form, goes like this:
Newton's law of cooling, states that the rate of heat loss of a body is proportional to the difference in temperatures between the body and its surroundings.
In layman's terms, what this means is that 'the hotter the water is, the faster it is going to lose that heat in your Madras middle-class bathroom'. So what I did was instead of letting the hot water source stay as it was, I would temper it a bit with cold water as soon as I got it from my mom. Say for example, the source was 80C, I would bring it down to around 60C, then transfer some of it to another bucket and mix this portion with more cold water to bring it to an optimal range of around 40C. And I found that I was back to a total yield of 3 comfortable warm buckets.
As you can imagine, I was dumb-founded. Not by the incredible simplicity of Newton's law, but by the ingeniousness with which I had applied it to a day-to-day problem. That's when it hit me. Physics was not all useless. There were some useful things in there too. All you need to do is look for it and apply it appropriately. So the next time, someone is going on about string theory, quarks or the essential unpredictability of nature, don't sit there shaking your head wishing that an elephant would bury the speaker in its poop. Just know that Physics is essentially a practical subject. You just need to look through all the jargon and useless terminology. Ofcourse, the scientists, physicists and physics teachers of the world do not want you to realize that. Else, they would have to look for new jobs and careers.
1. multiplying force and displacement to calculate work
2. raising it to the power of some random number like 6.023 x 10^26 to calculate the average gravitational pull of the ball with some distant planet and then
3. dividing it by the number of hours an electron stays as a wave as opposed to a particle, to get the energy of the process etc.
You know what I mean. I could do all this with a simple measuring tape for God's sake. So it was with a touch of pessimism and back-bench revolting that I was introduced to various Newtonian concepts, including his apple falling thingie. I knew at an instant that there was no good to be had from all these so-called 'laws of nature'. I knew enough to let a good thing be and not to mess with nature. So imagine my utter shock when I actually used one of Newton's precious laws in a very practical everyday application.
I can see most of you already shaking your head and kicking yourselves for ever bothering to visit this blog, but please stick with me for a minute. Growing up in the middlest of middle classes in Mylapore, I did not have access to geysers for those frighteningly cold Madras winters. It could possibly - yes, hold your breath - touch 22C in the December-January timeframe. And you'll see all the Chennai 'perusus' (oldies) walking around with obscurely colored 'mundas' (pink, purple turbans) and half-sleeve sweaters, complaining about the 'pani' (cold, mist, fog) in Chennai and how you need to be very careful. Personally, I loved winters because this was the only chance for me to request, nay demand, hot water baths and have my wish granted without complaints by my mom. As I mentioned a few lines ago, I did not have a geyser at home. So my mom would pour water in a stainless steel vessel and heat it to near boiling point. Then she would use a towel to carefully carry it and place it in the bathroom.
Now, the trick was to spread this vessel of really hot water into 2-3 pleasantly warm buckets of water. So obviously, I would pour 1/3rd of this hot water (let's call it the source) into another empty bucket and start tempering the second bucketful with cold water till it came to an optimal temperature. Then I would finish the first part of my shower, and then repeat the process with the rest of the hot water. However, this process had an inherent problem associated with it. By the time I finished my first bucket, the source bucket with the really hot water lost a lot of heat and was able to yield only one more bucket, rather than the generally preferable number of 2.0. This was extremely irritating. And I could not very well ask my mother for another round of heating since she would have a pot of sambar, a few veggies and a rice cooker occupying her stove by then.
However, a few days after I got introduced to Newton, I was standing next to my hot water bucket deeply pondering this issue while opening a new bar of lifeboy soap, when, out of the blue, one of his laws came to mind. The law, in its most basic form, goes like this:
Newton's law of cooling, states that the rate of heat loss of a body is proportional to the difference in temperatures between the body and its surroundings.
In layman's terms, what this means is that 'the hotter the water is, the faster it is going to lose that heat in your Madras middle-class bathroom'. So what I did was instead of letting the hot water source stay as it was, I would temper it a bit with cold water as soon as I got it from my mom. Say for example, the source was 80C, I would bring it down to around 60C, then transfer some of it to another bucket and mix this portion with more cold water to bring it to an optimal range of around 40C. And I found that I was back to a total yield of 3 comfortable warm buckets.
As you can imagine, I was dumb-founded. Not by the incredible simplicity of Newton's law, but by the ingeniousness with which I had applied it to a day-to-day problem. That's when it hit me. Physics was not all useless. There were some useful things in there too. All you need to do is look for it and apply it appropriately. So the next time, someone is going on about string theory, quarks or the essential unpredictability of nature, don't sit there shaking your head wishing that an elephant would bury the speaker in its poop. Just know that Physics is essentially a practical subject. You just need to look through all the jargon and useless terminology. Ofcourse, the scientists, physicists and physics teachers of the world do not want you to realize that. Else, they would have to look for new jobs and careers.
posted by c2c at Monday, February 19, 2007
5 Comments:
Dei!! Ennada aachu onakku? I thought you had left all this hard science nonsense behind in Pilani as you prepare for Kellogg.
First, my ex-bathroom tub-a repair pannu. Next, sociology, psychology ponra soft sciences padi.
Brilliant Post. And Congrats for your wedding.
Funkaboy - I guess I'm still a nerd at heart. I know that Modern Physics test in BITS must have been heart-breaking for you :D
Rachit - Thank you. How is BITS doing these days?
I KNEW IT!! The nerd from santhome still lives.
hey really sorry for being so late. BITS still rocks. It gives people like me ( and hopefully us ;) )to do a lot more than try to be av plus in physics tests.
APJ is visiting the campus today, so a lot of stuff going on
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