education

My PhD Thesis, Preliminary Exam !

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But my own PhD thesis is a kind of different tale altogether. For my work there is no CP Violation.

In CP Violation two leptons (electrons and positrons are leptons) are imparted quite good amount of energy and made to collide against each other. Thus just like in CERN lab, there is a much smaller tunnel at the Tsukuba facility, called an accelerator-detector facility. In this facility an electron and positron pairs are given enough energy and made to circle in opposite direction.

When they collide, they are made to do so, right inside the detector. They produce pairs of B-mesons. The B-meson one and two, they are almost at rest when they are produced, in the lab frame of reference. But the matter of fact is the B-mesons are produced from what are called Upsilon (4S) mesons.

These Upsilons are called resonances, and they are highly unstable (all resonances are short lived elementary particles). So they turn into B-mesons as soon as they are created.

3 myths of physics, especially in textbooks.

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2. Last year in a text book in Indian High School curriculum, I spotted and corrected with my students, the following:

Myth; there are only 3 quarks that have been detected or FOUND/confirmed so far, in nature.

Its based on a knowledge that was true more than 3 decades ago. All quarks, 6 of them, have been confirmed as hypothesized, the last of them was confirmed 2 decades ago. So there is really no reason why these facts should have been omitted from the text books that are updated every few years as such. Who are our experts?

3. During my freelance research, I have pointed out the following fact within last 3 or 2 years. A recurring myth in very advance texts of physics, concurrently followed in major and wide number of universities around the world, some of the finest texts in the field of particle physics and widely believed to be excellent, which they are nonetheless.

Myth; (particle life time and range of forces) A (force carrier) particle is long range if its mass is zero. Lifetime is the uncertainty that gives rise to an energy which is equivalenced through Einstein’s mass-energy relation and mass being zero, we have an infinite range as range is inversely proportional.

Fact; This is murky waters. Its a manipulation of sorts. Experimentally life times are quite arbitrary, while mass is supposedly fixed. Neutrino has a mean-life from 15 seconds to 10 billion seconds in order of magnitude .. I have hypothesized that’s possible, because it has such a high energy, and given it can’t lose this energy via any possible processes, it must live that long.

Why Harvard does not promote education.

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Its when we teach that we ourselves realize how effective our research quality is. As is said by the giants usually Einstein and Feynman “If you can’t explain it in simple terms perhaps you don’t understand”. So basically how can we be sure that the research Harvard is doing is applicable to validity or even a contribution towards intellectual assimilation by humanity? (Of-course Sean makes very clear all along that thats not the mandate of Harvard and its news to me that it isn’t.)

Only Industry, Funding Agency and Nobel Prize Committee will estimate the worth of the organization and its work. Isn’t that a death-nail to science? Because science is Research+Education not just research. I have done pain staking research in my life in last 12 years at-least for 10 years. But they will never be known, especially my particle physics research, if I will NOT be able to explain them or teach them, if some of them turn out to be interesting for any field. Of-course I am not Harvard and an individual. But this is the kind of difference between organizations and individuals, the organizations constitute of individuals but work in a fashion that respects only a specifically chosen policy, thats not questionable, whats questionable is why it will appeal the masses? Just because money flows from one end to another where no-one has a say?

House is to brick what society is to family and …

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Apply this to the education system, we can’t criticize the students, the teachers or the admin for ever, once a reasonable bits and pieces of them (and only that no less) is in place we can’t go on around criticizing the same. WE can’t blame the teacher for ever nor can we blame the students for ever. Then we talk about education system. But whats a education system? Do we define it? WE have to first define it from its bits and pieces and see the links and processes in its most effective info-graphic, if thats possible. That would be like a carbon-cycle. We do understand that (carbon-cycle) perfectly, why else we would understand our physiology so well? (we may not be applying such in a given situation, thats another dimension and thats criticism-awaiting) .

We need to therefore see exactly how our education system is defined: here is higher education department and it consists of so and so with such and such qualification assigned to execute such and such. That follows regional level officers who are assigned with such and such power and privilege and RESPONSIBILITY. Then comes the tertiary level and the ground workers. And here is the process. We need to thoroughly understand the principle and the process behind each component in this info-graphic, and how effective they are. Then we need to objectify the big-picture goal and see what gets carried out and what NOT.

The 1 ppm mentality of India in education.

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This article talks about some educational paradigms of India but gives the following anecdote to the end.

Belated Happy Feynman Birthday. 11/may/2013. He was born this day in the year 1918. 8 years younger to my maternal grand father. Which is why I am always amazed by Feynman. My grand pa was a farmer in a village of India and a teacher, a renowned teacher at that in his locality. He was paralyzed in his last years and died in 1996. Thats again exactly 8 years after 1988 demise of Feynman. Hence they both lived exactly 70 years of age. They were both outstanding teachers and artists {my grand pa was a fabulous artist, a fact I had forgotten over the years, he drew many things for me when I was about 7/8 years old, including say Shiva or Ramayana, at an instant’s notice by me}, Feynman was a bright star in the Glove, my grand pa only in his locality which perhaps extended say 100 villages if not more. Feynman was a farmer in some sense because of his hard work. But my point is Feynman’s vigor. A fact of amazement, perhaps since Feynman didn’t grow in a village of India but the communities of advanced localities. Perhaps Feynman was simply the highest standard of exuberance. My grand pa was lively and funny and loving but Feynman was a womanizer. I don’t know about this secret of my grand pa. My grand mother always crushed my interest in knowing such matters.