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Pratik once told me that it is easy to please DB and get from him whatever you want...just praise Gel'fand, SDM and Group Theory.
He also added it is not easy to please gps that way...implying that I am a complex character. Maybe he is right in the worldly sense. I am certainly not taken in by guile and wile...I have seen enough my lifetime, so I am immune to them.
But I guess I am like a child in Physics. Physics was never my profession. Teaching certainly was. Indeed the best moments in my life are those spent in the class rooms and labs at IIT KGP...particularly student labs.
When I was in my first year at AU, somehow the wise professors there thought that we better start Physics with Sound (of all things) from a tome by A B Wood. It started with underdamped, critically damped and overdamped mechanical oscillations, done without using complex numbers, in a horrible way. And we never had an experiment on this topic. Since then I had a dream...like Martin Luther King Jr...to watch these oscillations go smoothly over from one end to the other as the damping increased continuously. And I was afraid to ask anyone, thinking it is such a trivial thing and I would be humiliated. And it took 40 years for me to watch them on the oscilloscope in the 4th Year Lab at KGP. As soon as I was made lab-in-charge for a semester, that was the first experiment I set up using the simplest series RLC circuit. And as the pot is turned slowly, my dream came true on the screen of the oscilloscope. Am I not a simpleton in Physics?
Again we were taught Physical Optics from a book full of lovely photographs by Jenkins & White (otherwise a misleading book). Then I had another dream...to watch the diffraction pattern of a single slit going over from the geometrical optics limit via Fresnel Diffraction to Fraunhofer Diffraction. And I was too timid to ask. It took another 40 years and a simple He-Ne laser and an optical bench and a cardboard screen in the same 4th year Lab. It was like a child watching the rainbow for the first time.
Again, that book on Optics had several photos of the rings in the Michelson and Fabry-Perot interferometers. We had neither of these in our AU Labs. And I found them both in the 4th Year Lab at KGP the day I joined there. A leap of joy!
Lastly, when MLM dumped an optical bench measurement of the speed of light using German Technology in the 4th Year Lab asking us to commission it, I didn't sleep the whole night before we opened it. When the thing worked like a charm next morning, my joy knew no bounds.
All these are trivial for one with an imagination...but for a simpleton like me they were profound experiences.
At the end of the day I am happy with my 'short and simple annals' of my Physics at IIT KGP.
And I have consistently refused to serve as an 'expert' in Physics...the last invitation just a 3 days ago. Don't want to spoil my fun.
I am sure Pratik will agree.
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Pratik once told me that it is easy to please DB and get from him whatever you want...just praise Gel'fand, SDM and Group Theory.
He also added it is not easy to please gps that way...implying that I am a complex character. Maybe he is right in the worldly sense. I am certainly not taken in by guile and wile...I have seen enough my lifetime, so I am immune to them.
But I guess I am like a child in Physics. Physics was never my profession. Teaching certainly was. Indeed the best moments in my life are those spent in the class rooms and labs at IIT KGP...particularly student labs.
When I was in my first year at AU, somehow the wise professors there thought that we better start Physics with Sound (of all things) from a tome by A B Wood. It started with underdamped, critically damped and overdamped mechanical oscillations, done without using complex numbers, in a horrible way. And we never had an experiment on this topic. Since then I had a dream...like Martin Luther King Jr...to watch these oscillations go smoothly over from one end to the other as the damping increased continuously. And I was afraid to ask anyone, thinking it is such a trivial thing and I would be humiliated. And it took 40 years for me to watch them on the oscilloscope in the 4th Year Lab at KGP. As soon as I was made lab-in-charge for a semester, that was the first experiment I set up using the simplest series RLC circuit. And as the pot is turned slowly, my dream came true on the screen of the oscilloscope. Am I not a simpleton in Physics?
Again we were taught Physical Optics from a book full of lovely photographs by Jenkins & White (otherwise a misleading book). Then I had another dream...to watch the diffraction pattern of a single slit going over from the geometrical optics limit via Fresnel Diffraction to Fraunhofer Diffraction. And I was too timid to ask. It took another 40 years and a simple He-Ne laser and an optical bench and a cardboard screen in the same 4th year Lab. It was like a child watching the rainbow for the first time.
Again, that book on Optics had several photos of the rings in the Michelson and Fabry-Perot interferometers. We had neither of these in our AU Labs. And I found them both in the 4th Year Lab at KGP the day I joined there. A leap of joy!
Lastly, when MLM dumped an optical bench measurement of the speed of light using German Technology in the 4th Year Lab asking us to commission it, I didn't sleep the whole night before we opened it. When the thing worked like a charm next morning, my joy knew no bounds.
All these are trivial for one with an imagination...but for a simpleton like me they were profound experiences.
At the end of the day I am happy with my 'short and simple annals' of my Physics at IIT KGP.
And I have consistently refused to serve as an 'expert' in Physics...the last invitation just a 3 days ago. Don't want to spoil my fun.
I am sure Pratik will agree.
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