Indian Superheroes

Doordarshan was the only channel available to us when we were kids. And that too on a black and white Onida Television.
In 1997, we had our first superhero on television Shaktimaan, which aired on doordarshan in September that year at 12 noon for the first time.

It had a nice title song too, which most of us who saw the series would remember. 

Like every superhero he had a  girlfriend 'Geeta Vishwas' and a super-villain against him 'Tamraj Kilwis'.

Shaktimaan had some amazing cool powers. He could control the elements of his body and divide into five different bodies made of fire, wind, water, earth and sky. Early Indian Philosophers classified matter in the form of five basic elements- Panch Tatva - air, earth, fire, sky and water.  Our body and anything else in the universe is made up of these basic elements.

Like every other kid, I was huge fan of comics books and superheroes. I used to get comic books on rent. Raj comics, Manoj comics, Diamond comics and DC comics, I read all of them. The fact that stories in these books try to use as much of science as they could but I think the writer's understanding of the subject was a bit limited.

'Parmanu' from raj comics was another such super hero. I always thought that he was bald. But why am I talking about him on a science blog. The badge on Parmanu's chest is the Rutherford's model of an atom, his name Parmanu means atom in english and most interesting he can atomize. He can atomize , what does that even mean? Let me complete the blog you would get to know.

Remember the Periodic Table

In a chemistry mid term paper, I could not recall the atomic numbers of certain major elements, but I was able to quickly draw a periodic table like this

So if i needed to know the atomic number, I simply had to count where that element falls in the periodic table. My table started with Lithium. Hydrogen was always a whole chapter to be studied and not as an s-block element, so I never bothered including it.

Like English has letters A, B, C, D, ...(consonants and vowels), Chemistry has elements H, He, Li, Be , B, C , N, O, F, ...(metals, metalloids and non-metals). So let us learn to remember ABCD of chemistry with the help of these are hindi/english phrases to remember elements in a periodic table;

• Lina K rubs cat's fur : (Li Na K Rb Cs Fr)
• Beta Mamaji ka sararti bada : (Be Mg Ca Sr Ba Ra)
• Bag it or Bal Gangadhar Indian Tilak : (B Al G In Tl)
• Kashiji suno prabhu :  (C Si Ge Sn Pb)
• Nana Papa has sweet barn Biscuit : (N P As Sb Bi)
• Fir kal Bar aai Aunty: (F Cl Br I At)
• Heena Neena Aur Karina ki Xerox Rani (He Ne Ar Kr Xe Rn)
• Shakti vardhak chromium manganese, pheko Niku ji (Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni  Cu Zn)

The table below is a modern periodic table most widely used. Columns in this table are also called Groups and rows as periods.

Have you seen that movie "Horton Hears a Who!"

Have you seen that movie "Horton Hears a Who!".
Ok! I know the book came first but I have only seen the movie. In the movie, an elephant named Horton tries to protect a microscopic world of living beings (living on a speck of dust) from his friends and neighbors who refuse to believe it exists. One would wonder how elephant and the guy from the microscopic community could speak the same language, but don't put your brain into it, it is just a movie.

Let us assume we discover a microscopic world of our own. Would we ever be able to see those creatures. That would totally depend on how big or small those teeny tiny creatures are. Like we see ants and all. But here I am talking about microscopic (remember; ten to the power minus 6)

Not everyone keeps a microscope at home. Can we see it with our naked eyes?
Our eyes can see any object how ever small if it emits or reflects enough light to trigger a signal in our eye's receptors. So what is limited with our vision is the resolution. Human eyes (and the best one of those) can distinguish between two fine hairlines kept at 0.026 mm separation. No, I am not taking of mine, I can barely see the two threads of noodles.

We have traveled in both directions, we know an observable universe which is as big as
88,00000,00000,00000,00000,00000 m (after 88 it is 25 zeroes) and electron on other hand of size one divided by 100000,00000,000000. And electron is not the smallest one. The smallest confirmed particle is neutrino 'ghost particles'.

Standard IX has a detailed description on microscopic elements like Cells in biology and Atoms in Physics or Chemistry. When I was in standard IX there was only two microscope in Biology Lab for the entire school. And once I got lucky to have to look at an onion peel under the microscope. No I could not see the nucleus part at all. It looked like something this

By the way if you did not knew, Nucleus or Core is an almost round object at the center of any other round object. It is does not necessarily have to be round always. Earth has a core, atom has a nucleus and cell also has a nucleus. Even nucleus (of a cell) has a nucleus (called Nucleolus). 

There is no end on either sides.Remember, Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. 

Definition of Science

We all remember that scene from the bollywood movie "3 idiots" where the professor asks the class the definition of machine.



When I passed from standard X, those days it used to be a compulsory board exam and with scores not grades. I used to wait for new books to read. My father taught Physics to me and others in my class. (Yes, my father is a teacher in KV. Which KV ? A lot many. Teachers and their family including kids used to get transferred every 3 or 4 years).

So when I got in Class XI. I was so eager to read all these new science, new things and new undiscovered worlds to explore. So I started with Physics. I picked one of my father's book and it was like more than 2000 pages almost as thick as my mother's Ramayana book, which she used to read in 2 days on occasion of  Ramanavmi. And I started with my first chapter and first topic in the book. the book was called Comprehensive Physics XI or Pradeep's Physics XI. I do not remember which one I started with. Both books were same word by word except the cover-page.

The first chapter was about science. And as the chapter was Science , it started with the definition of science. It had the definition of science by Einstein and Newton and Faraday and by every other scientist or mathematician or botanist or doctor or may be some plumber. As I had just passed standard X where books used to be as thin as H C Verma's Physics, I used to read line by line almost everything, and had the understanding that anything can be asked in the exam. So to remember the definition of Science by different Scientist given in some 15 pages, it took me some 7 or 8 days. Oh god finally, did it.

So you can imagine the level of excitement I had. I started with the next topic. And what a wonderful topic it was. A complete new thing, it was the definition of Physics.