Category: May-June 2015

The magnificent blue LED

Apurv Chaturvedi

More often than not, the Nobel Prize is awarded to inventions and discoveries which are extremely hard for the common man to understand. Ranging from the invention of the cyclotron to the discovery of the Cherenkov Effect, even students of science find it hard to make sense of the details of the subject of the prize winners. However, this year a seemingly simple invention was conferred the Nobel Prize for Physics: the blue LED light.

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A teacher looks back

Partha Bandyopadhyay

Some 34 years ago I joined an undergraduate college as a lecturer in physics. Prior to that, I had worked in a science museum. At the beginning of my teaching career, I had one wish in my mind. I wanted my students to avoid learning by rote and inculcate a scientific temper.

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Our networked world: How the Web began at CERN

Ramya Ramalingam

Here’s a puzzle for you. Can you name an invention that contains, within itself, its entire history? Not just its history from its birth, but the history preceding its birth and its genealogy? An invention that will let you travel back in time? I will leave you to think about that puzzle …

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Cracking the enigma code

Ragini Ramalingam

The Oscar-nominated film, ‘The Imitation Game’ tells the story of Alan Turing, a cryptanalyst, who lived during the Second World War. The Germans created a device called the Enigma machine, which they used to send coded messages amongst themselves.

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Why Physics?

Saroja Sreekanth
Teaching physics is always a challenge especially when students consider the subject to be as difficult as math. So, what can teachers do to keep their students motivated and interested in questions that come up all around us? First, the learning process has to be made exciting and this can be done by explaining the subject’s relevance in a real life context. Second, the Internet would be a great tool to whet the children’s appetite. This way, the teaching- learning program will be rewarding and meaningful to both students and teachers.

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