Book Title: Pale Blue Dot Author: Carl Sagan Year written/published: 1997 Book Source: Google Books, Library Summary: Human’s perception and conquest of the universe Some extracts:
Our fear of tininess…
But if our objective is deep knowledge rather than shallow reassurance, the gains from this new perspective far outweigh the losses. Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs—in time, in space, and in potential—the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors. We gaze across billions of light-years of space to view the Universe shortly after the Big Bang, and plumb the fine structure of matter. We peer down into the core of our planet, and the blazing interior of our star… We are right to rejoice in our accomplishments, to be proud that our species has been able to see so far, and to judge our merit in part by the very science that has so deflated our pretensions.
The garden and the sin…
So long as we were incurious and obedient, I imagine, we could console ourselves with our importance and centrality, and tell ourselves that we were the reason the Universe was made. As we began to indulge our curiosity, though, to explore, to learn how the Universe really is, we expelled ourselves from Eden. Angels with a flaming sword were set as sentries at the gates of Paradise to bar our return. The gardeners became exiles and wanderers. Occasionally we mourn that lost world, but that, it seems to me, is maudlin and sentimental. We could not happily have remained ignorant forever.
Cosmic Purpose…
The evidence, so far at least and laws of Nature aside, does not require a Designer. Maybe there is one hiding, maddeningly unwilling to be revealed. Sometimes it seems a very slender hope. The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable.
If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.
Humbling us…
Even today, the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years, it still takes my breath away.
In every culture, the sky and the religious impulse are intertwined. I lie back in an open field and the sky surround me. I’m overpowered by its scale. It’s so vast and so far away that my own insignificance becomes palpable. But I don’t feel rejected by the sky. I’m a part of it, tiny, to be sure, but everything is tiny compared to that overwhelming immensity, And when I concentrate on the stars, the planets, and their motions, I have an irresistible sense of machinery, clockwork, elegant precision working on a scale that, however lofty our aspirations, dwarfs and humbles us.
2009 is the Internaltional Year of Astronomy – 400 years since Galileo started using the telescope to observe the universe that engulfs and all encompases this earth.
Thales’ theorem states that if A, B and C are points on a circle where the line AC is a diameter of the circle, then the angle ABC is a right angle. Thales’ theorem is a special case of the inscribed angle theorem.
The converse of Thales’ theorem is also valid; it states that a right triangle’s hypotenuse is a diameter of its circumcircle.
Focal length of a camera lens system is a measure of how strongly it converges (focuses) light. A photographic lens is used in a camera to make images of the opbjects on the film or other image sensors.
I want this water powered clock! Yes, really… this clock is powered by only water. Here’s how…
The internal converter simply extracts electrons from water (or other liquid) molecules and provides a steady stream of electrical current acting as a fuel cell to generate power to the clock.
Check out this and a lot other eco-friendly gadgets in Think Geek
Book Title: Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman! Author: Richard P. Feynman Year written/published: 1985 Book Source: Google Books, Library Summary: Colletion of very short stories about Feynman’s adventures of being an inquisitive person. My Comments: This book is so humorous that instead of being in the physics section of the library, it must be in the fun section. Through these little stories you get the lessons out for life – learning and investing is all about having fun and being inquisitive!! Contents page:
Far from rockaway to MIT
The Princeton Years
Feynman, the Bomb and the Millitary
From Cornell to Caltech, with a touch of Brazil
The world of Physics
Some extracts:
about symbols… seriously this is what i call true learning… often kids just gobble up what’s given to them and take these representations as unchageable and the ultimate truth
While I was doing all this trigonometry, I didn’t like the symbols for sine, cosine, tangent and so on. TO me, “sin f” looked like s time I times n times f! So I invented another symbol, like a square root sign, that was a sigma with a long arm sticking out of it, and I put the f underneath…. … I didn’t like f(x) – that looked to me like f time x. I also didn’t like dy/dx – you have a tendency to cancel the d’s – so _ made a different sign, something like an & sign. … … I thought my symbols were just as good, if not better, that the regular symbols – it doesn’t make any difference to what symbols you use.
fixing radios as a kid…
SO the guy says, “ What are you doing? You come to fix the radio, but you’re only walking back and forth!” I say, “I’m thinking!” … … So I changed the tubes around, stepped to the front of the radio, turned the thing on, and it’s quiet as a lamb… When a person has been negative to you, and then you so something like that, they’re usually a 100% the other way, kind of to compensate…. … kept telling everybody what a tremendous genius I was, saying, “He fixes radios by think!”
in front of eminent scientists…
A day or 2 before the walk I saw Wigner in the hall. “Feynman,” he said, I think that work you’re doing with Wheeler is very interesting, so I’ve invited Russell to the seminar…” Henry Norris Russell, the famous, great astronomer of the day was coming to the lecture! Wigner went on. Wigner went on. “I think Professor von Neumann would also be interested.” Johnny Von Neumann was the greatest mathematician around. “And Professor Pauli visiting from Switzerland, it also happens so I’ve invited Professor Pauli to come” – Pauli was a very famous scientist – and by the time, I’m turning yellow. Finally Wigner said, “Professor Einstein only rarely comes to our weekly seminars, but your work is so interesting that I’ve invited him specially, so he’s coming too.”
Bt this time I must have turned green, because Wigner said, “ No no! Don’t worry! I’ll just warn you!…. ….”
Today we use many units that were actually once the surnames of eminent scientists… examples from this site includes a list of units scientists and engineers use everyday
