MindField

What is colour? It is really difficult to define it objectively. I have often wondered how we might describe colour, to a blind person. I am yet to find a satisfactory answer to that rhetoric.  However, colour is a delusion. Yes, you interpreted that right, colours are a myth. They don't exist. Colours are a product of millions of years of fine-tuning and grading of the meat inside our skull. The wavelengths received by the retina is fed into this meat. At this point, the information is just a wavelength of light, without any characteristic property attached to it. The brain takes in this data and uses its " pre-loaded " algorithm to interpret this wavelength. That's why Roses are red, Violets are blue and so on.  It does not mean that roses are absolutely red. Or violets are absolutely blue. It is the brain that thinks that something is red or blue.  Perhaps it is obvious, but another straightforward example is that of Infra Red footage. We often see them in black an

We often take language for granted. However, it is one of the most fundamental reasons why we humans (or Sapiens, to be specific) have grown to the position we are in. The ancient language was similar to that of animals' call. They comprised of a limited number of syllables and each " call " meant something different. For example, Langurs give out a characteristic call when a predator is close by so that the deer can be cautious. " Careful, Lion! " is what the monkey perhaps means by giving out a shrill tone. However, the limitation is that the amount of information that a single call could convey was limited.  This is where Sapiens had a great advantage.   A study shows that a maximum of 150 individuals on average can form a group and cooperate without internal conflicts.  Source:- The Royal Society.   However, modern-day humans form large communities, counting up to billions, and still stay and cooperate together, pretty much. Why? Language. Language helps pr

Eruption to Bicycles The bicycle is conceivably the simplest yet revolutionary invention to date. It serves as a reasonable mode of transport and a fun way to burn calories. However, the invention of bicycles has a very " dark " story behind it. Read along. Mt. Tambora, Indonesia, is notorious for the 1815 eruption, which led to widespread famines, slaughter and carnage. The explosion on 10th April 1815 was so severe that the eruption could be heard up to 2600 kilometres away. This also brought with it a lot of smoke of sulfur and nitrogen compounds and ash, which was dispersed in the atmosphere. This resulted in dark brown clouds occupying the sky for the better part of the year. Such was the extent of the eruption that the average global temperate dropped by 3 °C.  The year 1815/16 was dubbed as " The Year without Summer ". Europe at the time is still recovering from the devastation of the Napoleonic Wars. So things weren’t exactly great, to begin with. The year w

So here I am finally attempting to write a blog....hope it goes well..... I am Anwesh, a sixteen-year-old  guy , currently at a reputed coaching institute in Mumbai for my jee preparation.  Perhaps, you have guessed by now that I am doing the customary ritual of preparing for the JEE. Perhaps most of you reading this blog [out of the handful of you :] have to undergo the same custom. Honestly, I believe that this has become an integral part of Indian culture.  Why am I preparing for Engineering entrance examinations? Parental pressure? naaah... Wanna impress someone? Of course not. My passion? Maybe?? Perhaps my passion<entrepreneurship>  drives me through the process? Who knows. Anyways, we all are conscious of the number of candidates in this prestigious examination. I can easily wager that 78-80% of the folks are just there filling up enrollment forms and paying ransoms for nothing. Why is this so? THE RITUAL,  Yes, the ritual of getting admitted to the IIT for t

Well, what exactly is a mole? Trust me, its no rocket science. It's actually an easy concept. See, like we have units of measurement of quantity like dozens, score and the like, similarly, we have moles to represent a large quantity into numbers which can be easily dealt with. To make things a little more clear, take this example:- 1. A dozen chairs (12 chairs, in other words.) 2.A mole of chairs(6.022*10^23) This number, 6.022*10^23 I mean, is the Avogadro'ss number. Basically, a mole contains 6.022*10^23 things. So instead of saying that I have 6.022*10^23 shoes, you can simply say that I have a mole of shoes. However, we do not use it on a daily basis as such a situation is absurd. So this unit is used to calculate the number of electrons, atoms, molecules and the like.....things which are in a large quantity.