Happy End of My Computing

=========================================================================

Edwin's 'Computer Graphics Utilities, IMB PC, Apple Macintosh' in 1987 were all Jabberwocky to me and I at once deleted them from my consciousness. I thought he had some Relativity Demos up his sleeve and I was never interested in demos where the audience don't interact. So I wrote a two-sentence letter thanking him and forgot about it.

Within a week, it so happened that our HoD, Prof K V Rao, was on a family visit to our Qrs, and I mentioned Edwin's Letter since KVR was at MIT a couple of decades back during its Centenary Celebrations. He jumped up on reading the letter from a gora saheb and confiscated it saying he would take a copy of it and forward it to our new Diro, KLC, who had a low opinion of our Physics Faculty and expressed it wherever he went (his ideal was our Ex-Prof G B Mitra...one man's meat is...).

I thought KLC would trash it, since I felt his interest in Relativity was meaner than mine in Thin Films. But, no, the very next day I got a Congratulatory Letter on the hallowed Director's Letterhead. So far so good. But there was a tailpiece...he asked me to get those 'computer graphics utilities' and show him what was in them.

As they say in the British jargon, a Request from Boss is an Order.

So, I was in the position of a bald-headed chap whose scalp was itching and he scratched it with the nearest tool available which turned out to be a red-hot poker.

But that set things rolling because it turned out to be a matter of Departmental Prestige as KVR put it. What it actually turned out to be was a six-month period of pleasantest learning...it is minor accidents like this that are labeled 'serendipitous' (the word comes from Ceylon...Simhaladwip...Lions-dwelling Island).

So, I wrote frantically to Edwin to send me his 'programs' forthwith...which he did, in a bulky envelope which was superscribed: "Magnetic Materials". Opening which I saw two huge diskettes I had no idea of whatever they are called, and a detailed Instruction Manual. I read the Manual (whose climax was the Project: Flickering Bulb Paradox). And I found to my astonishment that what he sent were no Demos but Interactive Problem-Solving Software...they do NOTHING unless you ask them to do what you have in mind.

One was labeled: Spacetime (with 90% of the Manual devoted to it) and another called Collision (which was brushed off). Both were developed by MIT Seniors under the guidance of Edwin.

I could see why Edwin was so enamored when he got my Paper for Refereeing...it was as if he bought an expensive tool but couldn't find 'toolworthy' Jobs.

I discreetly found out that there was no PC in our Department nor in most of the other Departments. One was available in IEM where my friend, NP, was the HoD, but it was 'owned' by a newly recruited Lecturer who soon became famous for hiding his keyboard with one hand while typing with the other...ambidextrous...he would hide with the right hand when he typed with the left and vice versa...he went into Banking soon, I was told, where I guess there is much to hide.

BKM had one 'on loan' from Mech Dept...BKM was ever a geek. And he offered to help me out with the PC. But I am a slow learner and despite his enormous patience, I was unhappy with instructions like "chkdsk" and pressing Alt Del and Ctrl or whatever to start it.

What I wanted was a PC all to myself whenever I was in the mood to play with it and learn...like a girl-friend.

And I discovered it in the Tech Market...a young chap opened a cubicle with one primitive PC XT and was looking for customers at a nominal rate of Rs 10 per hour. And that is how I learned Relativity in the Tech Market...I used to go to his shop at around 2 PM when he was alone and learned how to use it from him.

And it turned out that in 15 days I learned the Relativity that I didn't in 15 years. And quickly found that the Collision Program that was dismissed as an 'also ran' had undreamed of power in it. It could simulate (with some ingenuity) obscure effects like Wigner Rotation, Ray Surfaces in Moving Media, Cherenkov Cones, Doppler, Headlight and other effects nicely with figures and numbers.

Within a few months, there was a makeshift Computer Lab with one working PC XT in the abandoned Infrared Spectrometer Room in our Phy Dept. And I and a few students were crowding it with our backs and arms hitting and getting bruised by the dino called IR Spectrometer which had yet to be dismantled and removed.

And when I was ready, I asked KVR to fetch ceremonially our Director KLC; which he happily did. Apparently KLC had another important Committee Meeting and his Secretary gave us only 10 minutes...KLC sat for two hours...the Committee Meeting got postponed.

At then end of my 'Demo' to him, I requested him to install one PC in the 4th Year lab so that my students whom I was teaching SR Theory could also see what they were learning and play with it. KLC got up and said: "I will give one PC on your Table, and one other wherever you want it provided you write a Program like this."

I then remembered the Dennis Cartoon:

Dennis: What about a cookie, mom?

Mom: What about a bath?

Dennis: I withdraw my demand if you withdraw yours.

I told KLC that I was busy cracking Gravitation & Cosmology of Weinberg and had no time nor inclination for learning computer programming at this late age.

But what were rare and precious possessions became peanuts and, before KLC left KGP, there was a PC on every table and in every lab...and some students of Fourth Year started enjoying Edwin's Spacetime Software and also inventing. TRR did his Project on it and we published our 'discoveries' in AJP in 1990 to the delight of Edwin.

**************************************************************************************************************

And then there was an evening Sougato asked me a question on what happens to a tippe top as seen in a boosted frame...while I and DB were sipping tea at Harrys. I gave an offhand answer which was right but trite. The next day, I told him to quantify it and use Lorentz Transformations to get a complete solution; and forgot about it...it was Souagto's problem and he should get the credit for solving it.

When he was leaving for England on his Inlaks Schol and came to bid me goodbye, I asked him if he worked out his tippe top problem. He said 'No'; he was busy otherwise. I then asked his permission to try it, but then I would be a co-author. He said it would be an honor.

But it resisted. I didn't want to put the kinematic effects like length contraction, time dilation, asynchronization, velocity addition etc 'by hand' because it would be misleading; a correct Lorentz Transformation of the equation of motion should incorporate all these and more... a tricky job.

As usual it got solved 'analytically' when I was supposed to be doing something else somewhere else...in a 3-hour Invigilation.

But I was not SDM to be happy with an Equation...I wanted numbers and pictures...

It led to a transcendental equation, solving which requires elaborate numerics. One day, I and RSS stayed back at lunch and with a pocket calculator and a graph sheet could just plot a few points in one-quarter of a cycle. That gave us confidence that we were on the right track, but getting complete pictures for various angular speeds and boosts required an enormous amount of effort which only a computer could do. So, we shelved it for the time being.

And then Aniket joined as a Project Student under RSS (I gave up that job long before) and RSS was supposed to give him a problem on Atmospherics. But I told him why not ask this young genius to write a program for the tippe top thing and show the particle orbits on the monitor of a PC (I guess XT and AT were by then written off and a more powerful model was in). I don't know what happened then, but late one evening Aniket and Kedar were in my room for a spell of gossip and I asked them if they did the tippe top. They said they were 'trying', but I was no 'kind' Prof like RSS and so I chased them, egging them on.

One night they entered my Room when I was chatting with Edwin and 'announced' they solved the programming hitches and invited me to have a look at their monitor in the Computer Lab...by then the IR Spec was junked and the whole room was available for many PCs on which students were playing pranks and hacking their teachers' mails.

After a few minutes, I was very happy that all our hunches came out right and there is a Paper in EJP. But procrastination being the byword of all males, I delayed writing it up and after a couple more years, the manuscript was ready with printouts of the figures supplied by Aniket and Kedar.

The Editor was happy to publish it but with the proviso, as asked by the Referee, that the entire Computer Program has to be supplied as an Appendix. Ha! There is the rub as Hamlet said...I didn't have an iota of idea of what the Program looked like. And Aniket and Kedar were 'elsewhere'.

But by then I learned to send and receive emails with Attachments and Aniket fished the program out from his old files, worked it out again, and sent it to me, while Kedar sent me its 'movies'...not blue but colored...

So, I ended my career with a good-looking Paper with five authors (I was always happy with as many as I could gather) and an Appendix with a Computer Program of which I don't have an inkling.

That is what happens when you are lucky to collaborate with students young enough to be your kids and grandkids...sucking their blood like a Dracula:

Quote from Dr Dracula: http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/05/dr-dracula.html

"...Only the other day I was talking to VK that I was a Dracula sucking the blood of students. With the difference that after slaking my blood-thirst I did that of their juniors as well..."


===========================================================================