Thursday, November 7, 2013

Google Doodle Celebrates Sir C. V. Raman Birthday

Google doodles have been paying tribute to much of Indian legends than in previous years and today it celebrates the birthday of one of the greatest physicist known to India and to the world. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930 for the discovery that when light traverses a transparent material, some of the deflected light changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is now called Raman scattering and is the result of the Raman effect.

Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was born in Thiruvanaikaval, Trichinopoly, Madras Presidency, in British India. Sir C. V. Raman had shown extra ordinary potential through his studies and had won gold medal for physics during his B. A studies and also completed M. A studies with highest honors.

Raman led experiments at the IACS with collaborators, including K. S. Krishnan, on the scattering of light, when he discovered the Raman effect. A detailed account of this period is reported in the biography by G. Venkatraman.

It was instantly clear that this discovery was of huge value. It gave further proof of the quantum nature of light. Raman had a complicated professional relationship with K. S. Krishan, who surprisingly did not share the award, but is mentioned prominently even in the Nobel lecture.

He was offered knighthood and many other medals through 1929 although the nobel prize came late to him and had to wait till 1930 to receive the award. He was the first Asian and first non-White to receive any Nobel Prize in the sciences. Before him Rabindranath Tagore (also Indian) had received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.

Sir C V Raman did not stop his work with the nobel, continued his studies and later in 1932 was involved with Suri Bhagavantam to discover the quantum photon spin.

Raman and his student, Nagendra Nath, provided the correct theoretical explanation for the acousto-optic effect (light scattering by sound waves), in a series of articles resulting in the celebrated Raman-Nath theory.Modulators, and switching systems based on this effect have enabled optical communication components based on laser systems.

He also started a company called Travancore Chemical and Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (now known as TCM Limited) which manufactured Pottasium chlorate for the match industry in 1943 along with Dr. Krishnamurthy. The Company subsequently established four factories in Southern India. In 1947, he was appointed as the first National Professor by the new government of Independent India.

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- Unknown Updated at: Thursday, November 07, 2013

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Schrödinger’s Cat explained : Science Desk

Schrödinger, born in Vienna in 1887, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1933 for an equation of wave mechanics which was fundamental to modern quantum theory.

Today the ‘o’s of Google have been replaced with a cartoon image of a box containing both an alive and dead cat.

The Schrödinger’s Cat paradox was used to illustrate the practical problems surrounding the ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ of quantum mechanics, which suggests that a particle exists in all states at once until observed.

In the mind experiment, a cat is left in a box with a radioactive sample which may or may not decay and trigger the smashing of a bottle of poison. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, the cat is both alive and dead until the box is opened, but common sense would suggest this is not the case.

Schrödinger’s Cat has also been widely influential in popular culture, with references to it in TV shows such as Futurama, Doctor Who and The Big Bang Theory as well as appearing in the works of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett.

In recent years it has been the subject of a series of online jokes, such as the Wild West-style poster: “WANTED. Schrödinger’s cat: dead or alive. Last seen before box was closed.”

Or this take on the 2011 pop hit Call Me Maybe: “Hey I just met you/Your theory’s crazy/But here’s my cat/He’s dead maybe.”...