Mathrimonial Woes

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Feynman said that those who claim they understand the Equations (Math) and so they understand the Physics contribute little to Physics and less to Mathematics.

The great mathematician Whittaker (not the serpent one) undertook a two-volume eminently readable study titled: 'The theories of aether and electricity'. In which he gives the entire credit of Special Relativity and Lorentz Transformations to neither Einstein nor even Lorentz but to his famous fellow-mathematician Poincare.

When this was pointed out to Einstein he dismissed it saying everyone is entitled to their views.

But he fought back with a set of Thought Experiments beyond the pale of any mathematician. Panofsky & Phillips build Lorentz Transformations from four Thought Experiments in a book which bristles with math otherwise. It also has a Table listing existing theories and experimental results in a matrix of about a dozen rows and half a dozen columns. Only STR has 'ticks' in all its entries while the other contending theories have one or more 'crosses'. That sort of settled it. I tried to work out the entire Matrix but had to give up half-way after a month or so; and I am far from being a math man.

This 'Thought' adjective reminds me of RKN' s patriotic Mysore Uncle who started a venture called 'Indian Thought Publications' that came out with a Weekly with articles largely written by the Uncle under various names and styles. I think it also published one or two books of RKN. When ultimately the Uncle lost his steam (as I will presently), RKN dubs it: 'Indian Thoughtless Publications'.

This 'Thought' adjective to 'Experiments' endlessly used to amuse me as it implies all other Experiments as Thoughtless.

Anyway, the QM School of Bohr and everyone else took up this 'Thought Experiments' business full steam, maybe to scare Mathematicians away and settle scores among themselves in all sorts of diverting manner; cats and kings sprouting all over.

Rupak's neighbor in his Chemical Engg B Tech Class, by name 'Amanullah', gave me a rare and precious gift at the end of the Semester: A worn out copy of the original English Version of Heisenberg's: 'Physical Principles of Quantum Theory' bought out of a College Street Used Book Outlet. I asked him to keep it for himself, but he said he bought another copy for himself and his dad who happened to be a Physics Prof in Patna. Wonderful gift.

I found that in that book circa 1925 Heisenberg derives his famous Uncertainty Product Relations from a series of Thought Experiments; the most Thoughtful and dashing being one deriving the Uncertainty Product of transverse E and B Fields!

My problems with Lorentz Transformations started with our Math Dept at IIT KGP which had a full-blown Course of Relativity in their 4th Year. There was a Campus Buzz brought to my notice by DB that Teachers in Math Dept were getting both Length Contraction and Length Dilation depending on whether they use the direct or the inverse transformations; and they sort of were proud of it. Our HoD's daughter Saraswati (who later became Ph D in Math and is now the Principal of a famous College, and was in Tanmoy's batch and learned Fermat's Principle there) barged into my Room one morning and insisted once for all to show how to get rid of Length Dilation. I had to ask her to sit down and stick to the definition of length of a moving rod strictly and made her work out the thing either way. She was glad to get the Contraction even if it took a couple more steps. Eureka for the Math Dept!

Lorentz Transformations can be treacherous even to seasoned Physics Teachers if they forget their definitions. Once our then HoD MLM forced me to 'teach' about 40 University and College Physics Teachers from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal (Pakistan opted out, the loss was mine entirely) in a richly funded UNESCO Summer School. I told MLM that I would hardly venture to 'lecture' them but make them do some Problems and Riddles that teased me and show them how to use the beautiful Problem-Solving Spacetime Software of Edwin Taylor of MIT which was set up in our 4th Year Lab.

The first problem I gave them was to find the distance between two photons in a Boosted Frame when that distance is one meter in the Lab Frame. ALL of them used Lorentz transformations 'thoughtlessly' and got the wrong answer! Spacetime Software did it right.

While doing my Ph D I got an indefinite integral 'I' of the simplest of Bessel Functions which foxed me. I then passed it on to Dr. Annapurna who was a Post-Doc under the most renowned Prof of the Math Dept. He returned it to me next day saying it can't be done in terms of known functions. A very useful result. I then discovered that I needed only its asymptotic expansion in the Radiation Zone; which I could do myself.

Similarly I landed up with a 3x3 matrix 'M' involving algebraic (not numerical) elements which I couldn't diagonalize. After a few weeks I passed it on to a colleague of mine in the GG Dept living in our infamous Faculty Hostel and who had a renowned math brother at ISI. On the first weekend he dismissed it saying it is a High School problem. On the second weekend he declared it can't be done in terms of algebraic elements. Again a very useful 'no' like the Michelson-Morley thing. I then carried my 'M' on to the next dozen steps and it sort of diagonalized itself!

Heisenberg titled his book as 'Quantum Theory'. But it didn't catch on. We still talked of QM I, II, III, IV even when the Quantum adjective started qualifying 'Optics and Electronics'. I used to feel that there should be a new name for just the noun dealing with just the 'Principles' of QM. I then discovered that Levy-Leblond and Balibar came up with a fantastic book titled: 'Quantics'. No equations at all. But full of experimental graphs from the latest Phys Rev etc using QM as it is used in the cutting-edge labs.

I used and cited the 'Quantics' book in the Abstract of one our EJP Papers. It went in like knife through butter without the usual referee comments: maybe Levy-Leblod was its referee!

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Moonshine

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Latter half of 1957.

I left my Village School and joined College in a small town. The difference is that we had 'current' in our house. I was living with my uncle (Principal) and his sweet daughter who looked after me like my own 'Didi'.

We had a Murphy Radio set with tubes glowing red all over and heating up like an oven (in winter it was 'cool' to sit beside it). 59 of its 60 watts were eaten up by Joule leaving 1 Watt to Marconi (J. C. Bose) and the other Bose of the Speaker fame.

12 hours of radio listening was by my Didi tuning in to Radio Ceylone Hindi Filmi Geet, leaving 15 minutes to my uncle's 9 P. M. All-India Radio News read by Melville de Mello (I couldn't make out his English pronunciation then like I can't the Hollywood Movies' even now).

Suddenly there was this 'beep-beep-beep' crackling all over.

In utmost secret, Russia (it was always America vs Russia) put its 'Sputnik' in Earth orbit; while America was toying with Diwali rockets.

The blow to American pride and technology was swift and merciless. Only a few months back an American spy plane was brought down by Russia in utter humiliation.

And in a few days, Russia followed up by putting a doggies Alpha and Laika up there.

And then a man (new term cosmonaut) Uri Gagarin and brought him back on solid Earth.

And then Russia quietly went in for military satellites.

Americans were squirming; their pride taking the bloodiest blow since Hitler confined Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill to confer mid-sea (they couldn't meet on land).

True to the American psyche, they went overboard, created (revamped?) NASA, recruiting even IIT KGP Doctorates, and Kennedy committed their Nation to be the first to put Man on the Moon.

By then I joined University at Waltair. The first day on my trip to the University I took a city bus, No. 10, which was nicknamed 'Sputink'. I asked why. And was told that instead of going straight like the other University Buses, it took the circuitous route via the Ramakrishna Mutt Beach Road; such was the dominance of Russia over America.

By 1965, when I joined KGP, I tasted the fruit of American enterprise: Caltech and Berkeley, among others, decided that the Russian dominance was due to Landau and his school giving free and top-notch Physics education to their undergrads. And they roped in Nobel-winners like Feynman and Purcell to come down and teach their UGs. And flooded the world with their cheap editions more for propaganda than real concern for the likes of us.

And the US Consulate and the American Center (?) in Calcutta flooded us with free American novels and a glossy magazine called 'Span' (good for covers of their books). I still have many, including the free gift of 'To Kill a Mocking Bird' (I now know that Harper Lee was a 'she' and wrote nothing else much and never gave interviews; unlike our many).

One sultry July evening around 8 P M I was sitting on the parapet of the first-floor balcony of Howrah Station on my way to Delhi; and news broke of the successful landing of the Apollo astronauts on the Moon; and thereafter their safe return back.

Americans did it! Can do!

But neither Gagarin, nor Armstrong were in the same league as Columbus, as far as adventure went. Landaus and Feynmans and NASA did it, more like.

Coming back to KGP, I was met by Professor KKG of Humanities, specializing in International Relations. To my utter surprise he made the statement: "When I was keenly listening to the first steps of Man on the Moon I suddenly became a believer in God".

To which I replied: "I suddenly knew that He isn't out there".

KKG didn't take it kindly. All sudden converts are like that.

And the Americans went on their propaganda spree.

Even in a remote nook like IIT KGP, they took over the Hangar of the Old Building and publicized their 'Moon Rock'.

Serpentine queues from Puri Gate with giggling boys and girls had their field day in that desolate town starved of entertainment.

I was sitting one evening on my lawn bench of our Faculty Hostel. Our Manager, Rajan (Carnatic Music buff) was squeezed between his two IITian sons on their scooter, returning from an unwilling trip in the queue.

As soon as he was dropped, he rushed to me and said:

"What a joke! They made me stand for two hours to show me what looked like a piece of constipated s**t!"

And he threw away the thing they pinned to his lapel proclaiming: "I saw Moon Rock!"


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Bengali-Italian Great Divide

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This is the greatest of all Great Divides!

All other Great Divides like East-West, North-South, Black-White pale before this.

Bose and Fermi sit across their dining table and spin ALL the elementary particles that come along to build this Universe.

And pocket them between themselves leaving nothing to others.

Bose's collection are called 'Bosons' and Fermi's 'Fermions'.

What an honor for an Indian! All other Indians maybe forgotten (if not forgiven) but as long as Intelligence survives in this Universe Bose will be remembered thus, no escape.

The behavior of a collection of bosons is as different as can be than that of a collection of fermions.

Bosons are gregarious. The more the merrier. All are welcome!

Fermions are unsocial. Keep off!

We already saw that Pauli with his stick keeps electrons apart. That is because electrons happen to be fermions. He couldn't do it with bosons.

That is why normally, you can't crowd electrons in as thick bundles as you wish. But you can do it with bosons. Photons (light particles) are bosons. So, you can have as intense a spot of light as you wish, say in a laser.

But, occasionally, electrons and other fermions pair-up and act like bosons. Then you CAN crowd many of them. This is what gives rise to exotic effects like superconductivity and superfluidity.

The 'spin rule' is simple to state but hard to prove.

It says that bosons have 'integer' spins while fermions have 'half-integer' spins. (There are no other spins like 3.337).

Feynman worried that a rule as simple to state as this has no 'simple' proof (although he too contributed to it). He bluntly states that this simply means that we (he) hasn't understood the thing clearly (yet). He says that the proof is deeply embedded in the recondite nooks of Relativity and Quantum Field theory.

There is what is called the 'spin-statistics theorem' (note that no name is attached to it like the Pythagoras Theorem; which means that several names are there).

I guess the difficulty is that it is a 'negative' theorem. Like the 'no-win theorem' (The Second Law of Thermodynamics). Simply put, it says that it is impossible to build a 'consistent' theory that can cheat this Great Divide.

Long Live Bose and his alma mater Presidency College of 1915 (?) .

[Aside: For folks like me who have strayed into Physics without any aptitude for it, everything is difficult and needs laborious understanding, if that.

I knew that electrons can have spin as well as orbital angular momentum when their charge clouds whirl around a nucleus.

But I was told that so is the case with photons, although they don't whirl around any nucleus (forget black holes where Einstein's Gravity squeezes bosons as well as fermions in a Great Crunch).

So, what could this 'orbital' angular momentum of photons be?

The clue I got was from a stray remark that unlike electrons, photons have no wave function in the coordinate space, but only in the momentum space.

Momentum space wave function simply means 'angular distribution'.

Ah! There you are!

Photons come in various flavors: dipole, quadrupole, of the electric, magnetic varieties and various polarizations.

Then I remembered that photons are generated by electron jumps from various orbitals obeying various selection rules and carry away their angular momenta splits.

Then I chanced to read Akhiezer and Bertetski. It has everything you ever wanted to know about photons and electrons.

A cigar is a smoke but a good book is great joy!]
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Three German Watchmen (Übermensch)

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Let me pick up in my hands that beautiful spherical glass paperweight on my table.

It looks solid, feels solid and of course is solid.

But, is it?

Let me shrink myself like Alice into a size that is a million billion times smaller. I am now truly in a Wonderland unlike anything I saw earlier.

I find the solid sphere mostly vacuum with electrons in hazy clouds. And this micro-nano-femto-world is governed by precise but totally unfamiliar quantum laws.

Let me take a Hydrogen nucleus. It has a tiny but 'heavy' proton. If I now release
a 'microlight' electron nearby, one expects that the electron will inexorably plunge into the proton like two romancing teenagers.

But no! In the vicinity of the proton there stands Heisenberg with a stick to chase away the incoming electron. He doesn't like their merger like a Khap Panchayat watchman. The electron retreats but comes in from another direction. Heisenberg again chases it away. This goes on and on. There is fight between love and law. On the 'average' (quantum world is all about averages), the electron 'cloud' hangs in there in a size a million billion times that of the central proton. That is what gives 'size' for the Hydrogen atom.

Let us now bring another Hydrogen atom nearby. The proton of each 'covets' the electron of the other. But there is our Heisenberg with his stick to see that they don't form an incestuous mess. That is what gives size to the Hydrogen molecule and 'bond' them together. Bring in more and more Hydrogen atoms and cool them. The process goes on and I have liquid Hydrogen, and oh yes! 'solid' Hydrogen (most of which is otherwise empty), thanx to Heisenberg.

Now let us get back to our single Hydrogen atom. And add one proton to the nucleus and bring in one more electron from afar.

Now another German Überman comes in with 'his' stick. His name is Pauli. He is a tough Headmaster. His classroom has a gallery of 2, 6, etc increasing number of chairs. He wouldn't let any two electrons to occupy the same chair. He chase them to the next nearest chair. We then have the next atom, called Helium more or less. Bring in another proton and electron. He chases the new electron to the next rung. And it goes on, bringing variety and spice to our life on Earth.

By and large it is this Heisenberg Pressure and the Pauli Pressure that gives 'solidity' and size to my glass sphere, which is nothing but vacuum mostly.

There is a third Überman watching the game smilingly. His name is Einstein. He would like to play the spoilsport. He would pour more glass into the sphere while it is cooling. The sphere gets bigger and bigger.

Now comes a South Indian Brahmin called Chandrasekhar. At a certain limit named for him, when the sphere gets truly BIG, the Einstein Crunch (Gravity) suddenly overcomes the Heisenberg and Pauli electron Pressures and the glass sphere shrinks to the size of a peanut. All its electrons are squeezed into their nuclei and become neutrons. We call it a neutron star or a pulsar.

But the neutrons too are kept away by the Headmaster Pauli and his stick. The new Pauli pressure gives a size (though infinitely smaller) to the neutron star.

Einstein pours more 'glass' to watch the fun.

At a certain limit named for Oppenheimer and Volkoff (all Germans), Einstein wins once for all, and all the neutrons collapse into nothingness called a 'Black Hole'.

It is not nothingness; it has all the mass that went in. But Einstein says mass is energy. So, it is swirling with intense energy. And Einstein allows energy to be converted into mass back and forth. So, around the Black Hole intense processes of creation and annihilation of 'particles' is taking place where again Heisenberg and Pauli rule the roost. And this conversion of pure energy into pure massive particles is facilitated by what is laughably called the 'God-Particle'.

This much is theory. We see pulsars but not Black Holes (they are black, no?).

The CERN scientists are trying to do it the other way round: Instead of pouring in more 'mass', they are pouring in what amounts to the same thing: 'Energy'.

And look for tiny Black Holes and possibly their God-Particle.

Wish them well!


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Water-Born Ideas

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Surely, the oldest and greatest water-born idea came to Archimedes.

Most of us get our inspiring ideas while sitting comfortably undisturbed in the loo.

[Aside: My sister with her husband and two kids was visiting us at Qrs. B-140 at IIT KGP. That was a spacious Heaven with 3 bedrooms and three attached bathrooms. Only one of them was 'Western' with a commode; but it was deeply hidden in a nook of the apartment. All were using the other two happily. But one fine morning when my brother-in-law wanted to use a loo, the other two were 'occupied'; so I showed him the potty. He went in with his 'Economic Times'. After half an hour my sister was looking for her husband all over and getting worked up. I told her he must be in the third loo: upon which she scolded me: "I wanted to keep the thing a secret from him. Now he won't return till the whole paper is read twice over!"

When I was in our Faculty Hostel, I had an attached bathroom all for myself with a commode. Many of my Ph. D. issues were settled while woolgathering there. Also, I used to have a pen and paper with me. Our X-Ray Professor was reputed to have a whole book-rack installed there handily].

Apparently his King gave Archimedes a fine new crown of gold and asked him to tell him if it was pure gold or the goldsmith cheated him adulterating it with copper, which mixes with gold rather like water with milk.

And Archimedes had a sensitive balance and maybe a meter scale.

Now, the density of gold is almost double of copper. If it was a regular object like a sphere or a cube, the solution is trivial: measure its weight and volume and divide one by the other.

But a crown is a weird irregular object mostly hollow (like the head of its customer) and full of holes for ventilation. No scale can get its volume. So, Archimedes had to act quick with the aid of only his balance.

Rest is history: While jumping and settling down in his swimming pool, he felt the usual buoyancy. But now he suddenly realized that the weight apparently lost by him gives him the volume of the dipped 'article'.

This meant that all he had to do was to weigh the crown in air and again in water and divide the true weight by the loss of weight.

No wonder he jumped out of water and ran home shouting "Eureka!".

To this day I am amazed at this wonderful Nobel-deserving idea.

Let us fast-forward a couple of millennia to the swimming pool at Stanford in the 1960s, maybe. Schiff and his colleagues entered the pool on a summer afternoon for their usual swimming bout. And while fooling around with its water, he had his brilliant idea:

Schiff was worked up to invent an 'experiment' that could verify a strange prediction of Einstein's General Relativity. This says that when a massive body moves about, it sweeps the spacetime around it somewhat. And this 'gravity-current' acts on other bodies nearby and disturbs them from their usual motion. We know that a wire carrying an electrical current attracts or repels a nearby wire carrying its own current. To Schiff this was known as 'gravitomagnetism'.

The point is that the effect is too tiny to detect in the laboratory. While in water, playing around with his hands, he realized that an eddy that he made traveled in the water outwards and 'spun' a nearby floating object.

That was it: We do have a massive spinning object called the Earth and we can put another one in 'orbit' in an orbiting satellite. Suppose we install an extremely sensitive gyroscope in the satellite. If Einstein is right, the spin of the Earth should act on the orbiting gyro and disturb it by tilting its axis a weeeeee bit. The effect is cumulative; the longer the satellite lives, the more the tilt.

Schiff perhaps straight went to his Office in the nood to calculate the tilt and found as usual that it is on the 'periphery of the possible' with the technology available: Perfectly smooth sphere of stainless steel supercooled to avoid any thermal effects, near-perfect vacuum to get rid of air-currents etc. The proposal was approved and a few million dollars granted. The thing was ready in a few years.

But not the rocket and the satellite. Those days, GR got the least priority and all rockets were busy launching military and commercial vehicles.

I first read about this in Chapter 11 or so of Weinberg's tome and gave the involved calculation as an M Sc Project to Porus. And I told him that in that Chapter there are 2 printer's devils: In 2 important Equations, two 'numbers' were missing (like 3 and 1.5). His Project was to find which Equations and what missing numbers. He reported his results in 3 months and was through.

I was watching for its verification till I retired in 2005. Nothing happened: no rocket and satellite available. Only the other day, it seems they could get one and the result, after correcting for a dozen others, was verified indeed to within 15%, making it a brand-new 6th (?) test of Einstein's GR.

It is known as the 'spin-precession' in a gravity probe satellite.

So, there you are: the spinning Earth sweeps the nearby spacetime along with it and this acts on other nearby objects: a clue that the 'ghost' forces of Newton may after all be due to this gravitomagnetc effect of the entire Universe!


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Spin-Drift

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It just happens that it is possible to convince ourselves that our Earth is spinning on its axis (don't ask with respect to what?) without looking out Heavenwards.

1. Let us take that man-eating shark that launched Cecil Rhodes on his Empire.

Let us say that she sets herself on her swimming spree at the Equator in shallow waters. Let us forget the ocean curents for the moment. Let us suppose she starts due North and plans to reach the shores of England to eat up that poor patriotic German. Since the Earth spins from West to East, she has an Eastward speed at the start of her mission at the Equator. By the time she reaches the English latitudes, the Eastward speed of the English shores due to the spin of the earth is almost reduced by half because the circle of spin at these latitudes is that much smaller. So, she is carried away by her initial Eastward speed more than the English shores. If she forgets to correct for this difference in speeds due to the spin of the Earth, she would land up squarely on the English beaches, get killed, cut up and robbed by the fishermen on the beaches...poor fish!

This spin-drift depends on how long she takes to reach her destination. At worst it could be about 5 KM and much more if she lingers.

Had she changed her mind at the outset and sets due South to land up in Australia for her man-meal, the same thing happens and she would lead the Earth at Australia and would land up on their beaches.

This is direct evidence of the spin of the Earth that could be felt by not only sharks but sailors as well. Both have to make corrections if they don't want to drift away at sea and mess up their landings.

2. From the shark's point of view, the drift she feels in her Northern hemisphere would be towards her right, both onwards to England and return back to the Equator .

On the other hand on her Southern journey the spin-drift would be continually left-wards.

What is true for the shark is also true for the winds from the Equator to the tropics and away.

That is why we have the wonderful fact that cyclonic circulations are always clockwise in one hemisphere and anticlockwise in the other!

Here is more proof:

3. Let us take a naval long-distance artillery gun. What is true for the winds and sharks is also true to the shells. If the gunner fails to take into account the spin-drift, the shells would go astray and blow up maybe on friendly ships.

Oh, no!

4.. Let us take a pendulum suspended on the North Pole and set it into its oscillations. It would go on in the same plane as seen from space. But a girl on the ground near the North Pole would be going round in a tiny circle once in 24 hours if the earth really spins. So, for her the pendulum would be turning the other way in its plane once in 24 hours.

But if she does the same experiment on the Equator, the turn would be clearly nil.

In between, at Paris the continual shift in the plane of oscillations of the pendulum would be about once in 43 hours.

This was demonstrated by Foucault by his celebrated pendulum at Paris, a great draw for the crowd (I read that recently Foucault's original pendulum fell down and is yet to be reinstalled).

5. Let us go to Singapore which is right on the Equator. Let us get on to a skyscraper and mount on its top. And drop a stone vertically down. We would expect it to land plumb at the skyscraper's foot.

But consider: the roof is a wee bit at a greater distance from the center of the Earth than the ground. And so the top whirls a little faster than the ground. So, the stone has a bit more Eastward speed than the ground. So, it would land a bit more eastward than expected.

I guess the difference is too small to be directly measured, but the principle is ok.

Samuel Johnson wrote an essay: 'The advantages of living in a garret'. Garret is the very top floor of a multistory building. Somewhat like a cramped attic. So, garrets were rented much cheaper than the lower posh floors of London. And these were all the poor prospective writers and poets could afford.

Johnson makes a virtue of this necessity by saying that the budding writers prefer to live there because the spin of the Earth makes their brains whirl a little faster and they get exhilarated by the speed of the garret and it goes to their brains and gives them the kick needed for their inspired blogs.

Oh, well, you know why my blogs are so insipid: we live on the ground floor; IIT KGP gives us just enough pension.

But of course, Hyderabad is at a height, and that more than makes up for the advantage got by the poor bloggers who can only afford the pent-houses of Chennai!

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Man-eating Sharks and Men

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From: 'Following the Equator' by Mark Twain

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2895/2895.txt

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And finally comes the shark-fishing. Sydney Harbor is populous with the
finest breeds of man-eating sharks in the world. Some people make their
living catching them; for the Government pays a cash bounty on them. The
larger the shark the larger the bounty, and some of the sharks are twenty
feet long. You not only get the bounty, but everything that is in the
shark belongs to you. Sometimes the contents are quite valuable.

The shark is the swiftest fish that swims. The speed of the fastest
steamer afloat is poor compared to his. And he is a great gad-about, and
roams far and wide in the oceans, and visits the shores of all of them,
ultimately, in the course of his restless excursions. I have a tale to
tell now, which has not as yet been in print. In 1870 a young stranger
arrived in Sydney, and set about finding something to do; but he knew no
one, and brought no recommendations, and the result was that he got no
employment. He had aimed high, at first, but as time and his money
wasted away he grew less and less exacting, until at last he was willing
to serve in the humblest capacities if so he might get bread and shelter.
But luck was still against him; he could find no opening of any sort.
Finally his money was all gone. He walked the streets all day, thinking;
he walked them all night, thinking, thinking, and growing hungrier and
hungrier. At dawn he found himself well away from the town and drifting
aimlessly along the harbor shore. As he was passing by a nodding
shark-fisher the man looked up and said----

"Say, young fellow, take my line a spell, and change my luck for me."

"How do you know I won't make it worse?"

"Because you can't. It has been at its worst all night. If you can't
change it, no harm's done; if you do change it, it's for the better,
of course. Come."

"All right, what will you give?"

"I'll give you the shark, if you catch one."

"And I will eat it, bones and all. Give me the line."

"Here you are. I will get away, now, for awhile, so that my luck won't
spoil yours; for many and many a time I've noticed that if----there, pull
in, pull in, man, you've got a bite! I knew how it would be. Why, I
knew you for a born son of luck the minute I saw you. All right--he's
landed."

It was an unusually large shark--"a full nineteen-footer," the fisherman
said, as he laid the creature open with his knife.
"Now you rob him, young man, while I step to my hamper for a fresh bait.
There's generally something in them worth going for. You've changed my
luck, you see. But my goodness, I hope you haven't changed your own."

"Oh, it wouldn't matter; don't worry about that. Get your bait. I'll
rob him."

When the fisherman got back the young man had just finished washing his
hands in the bay, and was starting away.

"What, you are not going?"

"Yes. Good-bye."

"But what about your shark?"

"The shark? Why, what use is he to me?"

"What use is he? I like that. Don't you know that we can go and report
him to Government, and you'll get a clean solid eighty shillings bounty?
Hard cash, you know. What do you think about it now?"

"Oh, well, you can collect it."

"And keep it? Is that what you mean?"

"Yes."

"Well, this is odd. You're one of those sort they call eccentrics, I
judge. The saying is, you mustn't judge a man by his clothes, and I'm
believing it now. Why yours are looking just ratty, don't you know; and
yet you must be rich."

"I am."

The young man walked slowly back to the town, deeply musing as he went.
He halted a moment in front of the best restaurant, then glanced at his
clothes and passed on, and got his breakfast at a "stand-up." There was
a good deal of it, and it cost five shillings. He tendered a sovereign,
got his change, glanced at his silver, muttered to himself, "There isn't
enough to buy clothes with," and went his way.

At half-past nine the richest wool-broker in Sydney was sitting in his
morning-room at home, settling his breakfast with the morning paper. A
servant put his head in and said:

"There's a sundowner at the door wants to see you, sir."

"What do you bring that kind of a message here for? Send him about his
business."

"He won't go, sir. I've tried."

"He won't go? That's--why, that's unusual. He's one of two things,
then: he's a remarkable person, or he's crazy. Is he crazy?"

"No, sir. He don't look it."

"Then he's remarkable. What does he say he wants?"

"He won't tell, sir; only says it's very important."

"And won't go. Does he say he won't go?"

"Says he'll stand there till he sees you, sir, if it's all day."

"And yet isn't crazy. Show him up."

The sundowner was shown in. The broker said to himself, "No, he's not
crazy; that is easy to see; so he must be the other thing."

Then aloud, "Well, my good fellow, be quick about it; don't waste any
words; what is it you want?"

"I want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds."

"Scott! (It's a mistake; he is crazy . . . . No--he can't be--not
with that eye.) Why, you take my breath away. Come, who are you?"

"Nobody that you know."

"What is your name?"

"Cecil Rhodes."

"No, I don't remember hearing the name before. Now then--just for
curiosity's sake--what has sent you to me on this extraordinary errand?"

"The intention to make a hundred thousand pounds for you and as much for
myself within the next sixty days."


"Well, well, well. It is the most extraordinary idea that--sit down--you
interest me. And somehow you--well, you fascinate me; I think that that
is about the word. And it isn't your proposition--no, that doesn't
fascinate me; it's something else, I don't quite know what; something
that's born in you and oozes out of you, I suppose. Now then just for
curiosity's sake again, nothing more: as I understand it, it is your
desire to bor----"

"I said intention."

"Pardon, so you did. I thought it was an unheedful use of the word--an
unheedful valuing of its strength, you know."

"I knew its strength."

"Well, I must say--but look here, let me walk the floor a little, my mind
is getting into a sort of whirl, though you don't seem disturbed any.
(Plainly this young fellow isn't crazy; but as to his being remarkable
--well, really he amounts to that, and something over.) Now then, I
believe I am beyond the reach of further astonishment. Strike, and spare
not. What is your scheme?"

"To buy the wool crop--deliverable in sixty days."

"What, the whole of it?"

"The whole of it."

"No, I was not quite out of the reach of surprises, after all. Why, how
you talk! Do you know what our crop is going to foot up?"

"Two and a half million sterling--maybe a little more."

"Well, you've got your statistics right, any way. Now, then, do you know
what the margins would foot up, to buy it at sixty days?"

"The hundred thousand pounds I came here to get."

"Right, once more. Well, dear me, just to see what would happen, I wish
you had the money. And if you had it, what would you do with it?"

"I shall make two hundred thousand pounds out of it in sixty days."

"You mean, of course, that you might make it if----"

"I said 'shall'."
"Yes, by George, you did say 'shall'! You are the most definite devil I
ever saw, in the matter of language. Dear, dear, dear, look here!
Definite speech means clarity of mind. Upon my word I believe you've got
what you believe to be a rational reason, for venturing into this house,
an entire stranger, on this wild scheme of buying the wool crop of an
entire colony on speculation. Bring it out--I am prepared--acclimatized,
if I may use the word. Why would you buy the crop, and why would you
make that sum out of it? That is to say, what makes you think you----"

"I don't think--I know."

"Definite again. How do you know?"

"Because France has declared war against Germany, and wool has gone up
fourteen per cent. in London and is still rising."

"Oh, in-deed? Now then, I've got you! Such a thunderbolt as you have
just let fly ought to have made me jump out of my chair, but it didn't
stir me the least little bit, you see. And for a very simple reason: I
have read the morning paper. You can look at it if you want to. The
fastest ship in the service arrived at eleven o'clock last night, fifty
days out from London. All her news is printed here. There are no
war-clouds anywhere; and as for wool, why, it is the low-spiritedest
commodity in the English market. It is your turn to jump, now . . . .
Well, why, don't you jump? Why do you sit there in that placid fashion,
when----"

"Because I have later news."

"Later news? Oh, come--later news than fifty days, brought steaming hot
from London by the----"

"My news is only ten days old."

"Oh, Mun-chausen, hear the maniac talk! Where did you get it?"

"Got it out of a shark."

"Oh, oh, oh, this is too much! Front! call the police bring the gun
--raise the town! All the asylums in Christendom have broken loose in
the single person of----"

"Sit down! And collect yourself. Where is the use in getting excited?
Am I excited? There is nothing to get excited about. When I make a
statement which I cannot prove, it will be time enough for you to begin
to offer hospitality to damaging fancies about me and my sanity."
"Oh, a thousand, thousand pardons! I ought to be ashamed of myself, and
I am ashamed of myself for thinking that a little bit of a circumstance
like sending a shark to England to fetch back a market report----"

"What does your middle initial stand for, sir?"

"Andrew. What are you writing?"

"Wait a moment. Proof about the shark--and another matter. Only ten
lines. There--now it is done. Sign it."

"Many thanks--many. Let me see; it says--it says oh, come, this is
interesting! Why--why--look here! prove what you say here, and I'll put
up the money, and double as much, if necessary, and divide the winnings
with you, half and half. There, now--I've signed; make your promise good
if you can. Show me a copy of the London Times only ten days old."

"Here it is--and with it these buttons and a memorandum book that
belonged to the man the shark swallowed. Swallowed him in the Thames,
without a doubt; for you will notice that the last entry in the book is
dated 'London,' and is of the same date as the Times, and says, 'Ber
confequentz der Kreigeseflarun, reife ich heute nach Deutchland ab, aur
bak ich mein leben auf dem Ultar meines Landes legen mag'----, as clean
native German as anybody can put upon paper, and means that in
consequence of the declaration of war, this loyal soul is leaving for
home to-day, to fight. And he did leave, too, but the shark had him
before the day was done, poor fellow."

"And a pity, too. But there are times for mourning, and we will attend
to this case further on; other matters are pressing, now. I will go down
and set the machinery in motion in a quiet way and buy the crop. It will
cheer the drooping spirits of the boys, in a transitory way. Everything
is transitory in this world. Sixty days hence, when they are called to
deliver the goods, they will think they've been struck by lightning. But
there is a time for mourning, and we will attend to that case along with
the other one. Come along, I'll take you to my tailor. What did you say
your name is?"

"Cecil Rhodes."

"It is hard to remember. However, I think you will make it easier by and
by, if you live. There are three kinds of people--Commonplace Men,
Remarkable Men, and Lunatics. I'll classify you with the Remarkables,
and take the chances."

The deal went through, and secured to the young stranger the first
fortune he ever pocketed.









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

Spin Two

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

The other day I talked about how six-months-old Ishani's first view of spin, the sleeping beauty top, needed two giant brains, Klein and Sommerfeld, to make some sense out of it.

Within the next six years Ishani is going to have her next bout of spin; and this would fox Newton, puzzle Einstein, and YOU are welcome!

It is called the merry-go-round.

After the half a dozen kids are seated on their wooden horses in a ring, the motor is switched on and they go round and round in a thrilling whirl. As they do, they find themselves thrown OUT.

Why? Who exerts this lateral force? Why not thrown in? Why not just go round in the same circle?

These questions so vexed Newton that he had to perform his famous Ice-pail Experiment; with not much insight or outsight.

The problem is that according to Newton, forces on a body must be exerted by other bodies. Earth pulls kids (and apples) down, and give them 'weight', ok. But which other body pulls them out and why does it do only when they go round in a circle but not when at rest?

Fortunately for Newton, all the kids are pulled away the same rate; obese or lightweight. This saved Newton, somewhat.

Let us recall the legendary demo of Galileo from atop the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He dropped two stones, one ten times as heavy as the other; and showed contrary to all popular expectations that they fall together.

Newton later showed the same result by his guinea and feather thing.

This is built in luckily in Newton's Mechanics:

1. Acceleration is inversely proportional to mass.

2. Gravity is directly proportional to mass.

So, masses cancel and the apple and moon drop together towards the Earth.

Luckily for Newton, the accelerations of kids on the merry-go-round share the same feature.

So, Newton could 'release a patch' (software jargon) by inventing two 'ghost' forces called 'Centrifugal and Coriolis Forces' and save his celebrated Mechanics (Laws of Motion). 'Ghost' because there are no obvious bodies that exert these two forces.

Press Newton hard and he would vaguely say: "These two forces are exerted by the Rest of the Universe (fixed stars)".

Here Newton is talking eminent sense: If Earth were the only sphere in the Universe, it doesn't make any difference if it spins or no: "spins with respect to what?": "Nothing". QED.

But that begs the question: "Can Newton formulate a New Force Law and calculate the cumulative (integrated) force exerted by each and every one of the billions of stars in the Universe just so?"

"NO".

Einstein to this day is no better; just a bit more likely.

I first heard the name Einstein when I was in Class VIII in my Village School. There was this buzz even in that remote patch of land: "Einstein is dead". I guess no other scientist had this privilege.

I was a naughty kid not interested in school books (other than English stories). Playing always and reading a day or two before the final exams. My father wanted a 'mentor' for me. He found one in a 'gentleman' student two years senior to me: Narahari Nageshwara Rao. He was my 'complement': No play, all books. But he was just a fantastic mentor. (Fate decided that he retire as a Block Development Officer and I as a Master Blogger)

I went forth and asked him:

"Who is this Einstein?"

"The greatest scientist ever born"

"What did he discover?"

"Space is curved".

End of conversation.

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

Einstein banished Newton's Gravity. He said it was a put-up-job.

Bodies simply warp the spacetime around them just so that when they move freely they appear to take curved paths.

Oh, well! Does it make any difference to the 'ghost' forces of Newton which come into play when the merry-go-round starts whirling? Are they also put-up-jobs?

Hum and haw; "should be so".

Slight evidence is just now leaking perhaps in the March 2010 results of the Stanford Gyro Experiment.

To be continued later; but for tomorrow a fantastic story somewhat topical.

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

Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld

=========================================
***************************************
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Sommerfeld.html
***************************************
Arnold Sommerfeld's mother was Cäcile Matthias and his father was Franz Sommerfeld. Franz was a medical doctor who came from a leading Königsberg family. Franz was 48 years old when Arnold was born while his wife Cäcile was 29; they had been married for six years. Arnold wrote autobiographical notes in around 1917 (which he updated towards the end of his life) and we give some quotations from these throughout this biography. In particular let us quote what Arnold said about his parents (see for example [1], or Sommerfeld's Collected Works which contains the full autobiographical article):-

My father, the practicing physician, ... was a passionate collector of natural objects (amber, shells, minerals, beetles, etc.) and a great friend of the natural sciences. ... To my energetic and intellectually vigorous mother I owe an infinite debt.

Sommerfeld entered the Altstädtisches Gymnasium in Königsberg in 1875. Two slightly older pupils at the same school were Minkowski and Wien. At this High School, he excelled in all his subjects and it was not clear to him what subjects he should pursue further:-

I was almost more interested in literature and history than in the exact sciences; I was equally good in all subjects including the classical languages.

He took his final school examinations (the Abitur) in 1886 and decided that he would concentrate on mathematics at University. Sommerfeld entered the University of Königsberg immediately after passing the Abitur but although mathematics was his main subject, he followed his all round interests by attending lectures in natural sciences, philosophy, and political economy as well. The Mathematics Department at Königsberg at this time was remarkable for the talented staff who were teaching there. Hilbert, Hurwitz and Lindemann all lectured to Sommerfeld and, after attending a course by Hilbert on the theory of ideal numbers, he felt that abstract pure mathematics was the right subject for him.

At this time the University of Königsberg was famous for its school of Theoretical Physics which had been founded by Franz Neumann. However Sommerfeld's interests were in mathematics rather than physics. He was also much involved in student life and he joined the Burschenschaft, a student society, which proved a major distraction [1]:-

Active participation in [the Burschenschaft], with its compulsory drinking bouts and fencing duels, prevented systematic and concentrated study in his first few years at university.

In fact he received a long fencing scar on his forehead from this time. It was the custom of German students to move from one university to another, yet Sommerfeld did not do so, remaining in Königsberg. Later in life he regretted not moving because of the time he ended up wasting with the Burschenschaft, but at the time the inspiration he received from his remarkable mathematics teachers kept him in Königsberg.

Lindemann was Sommerfeld's doctoral thesis advisor and, in 1891, he was awarded his doctorate from Königsberg for his thesis Die willkürlichen Functionen in der mathematischen Physik (The arbitrary functions in mathematical physics). It was a thesis which, during the summer of 1891:-

... I conceived and wrote out in a few weeks.

In this thesis he studied the representation of arbitrary functions by the eigenfunctions of partial differential equations and other given sets of functions.

After completing his doctorate, Sommerfeld remained at Königsberg to work for the teaching diploma which would let him teach mathematics and physics at a Gymnasium. After passing his teaching diploma examinations in 1892, he then began a year of military service. Many academics find military service a necessary evil to be suffered but not so Sommerfeld. He did his military service in the reserve regiment in Königsberg and for the following eight years continued to undertake voluntary eight week military exercises - he really enjoyed the life and in many ways looked the part [1]:-

Despite his squat build, by middle age, with the aid of a turned up waxed moustache, he managed to give the impression of a colonel of the hussars.

In 1893, after completing his military training in the September, Sommerfeld went to Göttingen, knowing it to be "the seat of mathematical high culture", and he first spent a year as an assistant in the Mineralogical Institute. However he quickly fell under Klein's spell:-

Overwhelming was the impression which I received, in lectures and discussions, from Felix Klein's grand personality.

In September 1894 he became Klein's assistant. He wrote in his autobiographical notes:-

Consciously and systematically Klein sought to enthral me with the problems of mathematical physics, and to win me over to his conception of these problems as he had developed it in lecture courses in previous years. I have always regarded Klein as my real teacher, not only in things mathematical, but also in mathematical physics and in connection with mechanics.

He soon came to know Klein's lectures very well since one of his duties was to manage the Mathematical Reading Room, and to make copies of Klein's lectures available there for the use of students (no photocopiers in those days!). As indicated, the direction of Sommerfeld's research was immediately influenced by Klein who at this time was heavily involved in applying the theory of functions of a complex variable, and other pure mathematics, to a range of physical topics from astronomy to dynamics. Sommerfeld's first work under Klein's supervision was an impressive piece of work on the mathematical theory of diffraction. His work on this topic contains important theory of partial differential equations. Other important work which he undertook while at Göttingen included the study of the propagation of electromagnetic waves in wires, and the study of the field produced by a moving electron.

In March 1895 Sommerfeld presented his habilitation thesis The mathematical theory of diffraction to Göttingen and became a privatdozent in mathematics. He lectured on a wide range of topics, giving lectures on probability and also on the partial differential equations of physics. The lectures Klein gave in 1895-96 on the spinning top led to Klein and Sommerfeld starting a joint project to write a four volume text on the theory of gyroscopes. This would eventually be published in 1909-1910, the first two volumes dealing with the mathematical theory, while the final two volumes deal with applications to geophysics, astronomy and technology. While at Göttingen he had met Johanna Höpfner, the daughter of Ernst Höpfner who was the curator of university, but they could not marry while Sommerfeld was a privatdozent with insufficient income to support a wife.

From October 1897 Sommerfeld taught at Clausthal where he became professor of mathematics at the mining academy. This was not an exciting job from the teaching point of view, but it provided sufficient salary for him to marry, and it was also close enough to Göttingen to allow him to continue collaborating with Klein and others there. The marriage between Sommerfeld and Johanna Höpfner produced three sons and one daughter.

At Klein's request he took on the editorship of Volume V of the Encyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften (Mathematical Encyclopaedia) which dealt with mathematical physics. This was a big undertaking which occupied a lot of his time long after he had left Clausthal. Reich writes in [11]:-

In 1901 Sommerfeld sent a directive of 8 pages to all contributors of this volume. In his note he proposed a special way of denoting vectors, vector calculus and the electromagnetic magnitudes, which became obligatory for all contributors. In September 1903 Klein founded a so-called "vector commission" consisting of Sommerfeld, Ludwig Prandtl, and Rudolf Mehmke. Its aim was to create a unified vector symbolism and calculus.

Three years after taking up the appointment in Clausthal, he became professor of mechanics at the Technische Hochschule in Aachen. This appointment had much to do with Klein. It was he who strongly believed that engineering should be based on a strong mathematical base, so he had pressed hard for Sommerfeld to be appointed to this professorship. However Sommerfeld's new colleagues at Aachen did not have the same vision as Klein and had to be won over:-

Although my Aachen colleagues and students at first regarded the 'pure mathematician' with suspicion, I soon had the satisfaction of being accepted as a useful member not merely in teaching but also in engineering practice; thus I was requested to render expert opinions and to participate in the Engineering Society.

In 1906 he became professor of theoretical physics at Munich. There an institute was set up for him, with rooms for seminars, rooms for assistants, and laboratories for experimental work. Despite being a mathematical physicist, he wanted to be able to direct experimental work aimed at checking his theories. In fact he supervised a large number of students at Munich, many in theoretical physics, but for others he directed them in programmes of experimental research. His most famous students include Peter Debye (doctorate in 1908), Peter Ewald (doctorate in 1912), Wolfgang Pauli (doctorate in 1921), Werner Heisenberg (doctorate in 1923), and Hans Bethe (doctorate in 1928). In total he supervised nearly 30 doctoral students at Munich.

Max Born, in [7], gives an insight into Sommerfeld's way of supervising his students:-

Theoretical physics is a subject which attracts youngsters with a philosophical mind who speculate about the highest principles without sufficient foundations. It was just this type of beginner that he knew how to handle, leading them step by step to a realisation of their lack of actual knowledge and providing them with the skill necessary for fertile research. ... He had the rare ability to have time to spare for his pupils, in spite of his duties and scientific work. ... In this friendly and informal way of teaching a great part was played by invitations to join a skiing party on the 'Sudelfeld' two hours by rail from Munich. There he and his mechanic ... were joint owners of a ski hut. In the evenings, when the simple meal was cooked, the dishes were washed, the weather and snow properly discussed, the talk invariably turned to mathematical physics, and this was the occasion for the receptive students to learn the master's inner thoughts.

One of the first topics he worked on at Munich was atomic spectra. He studied the hypothesis that X-rays were waves and proved this by using crystals as three dimensional diffraction gratings. From 1911 his main area of interest became quantum theory. Sommerfeld's work led him to replace the circular orbits of the Niels Bohr atom with elliptical orbits; he also introduced the magnetic quantum number in 1916 and, four years later, the inner quantum number. It was theoretical work attempting to explain the inner quantum number that led to the discovery of electron spin.

In the later part of his career, Sommerfeld used statistical mechanics to explain the electronic properties of metals. This replaced an earlier theory due to Lorentz in 1905 based on classical physics. Sommerfeld's approach was to regard electrons in a metal as a degenerate electron gas. He was able to explain features which were unexplained by the earlier classical theory. His important treatise Atomic structure and spectral lines which ran to six editions, reflects the development of theoretical spectroscopy between 1916 and 1946.

Morris Kline writes about the last part of Sommerfeld's life:-

Sommerfeld's life was saddened toward the end of his career by events in Germany. Anti-semitism, always present in that country, became virulent in the Hitler period and Sommerfeld was obliged to witness the emigration of famous colleagues, including Einstein.

Let us break into this quote to provide another quote, this one being in a letter Sommerfeld wrote to Einstein about a year after Hitler came to power:-

I can assure you that the misuse of the word 'national' by our rulers has thoroughly broken me of the habit of national feelings that was so pronounced in my case. I would now be willing to see Germany disappear as a power and merge into a pacified Europe.

After this interjection, let us continue with Morris Kline's quote:-

All he could do was use the friendships he had built up during a one-year stay in the United States and a one-year round-the-world trip to help place the refugees. The loss of so many of its best men in this way together with World War II, destroyed the scientific strength of Germany, and Sommerfeld felt obliged to continue teaching until 1947, long after the usual retirement age of 65. His life was ended by another tragedy. Somewhat deaf in his old age he failed to hear a warning [when out walking with his grandchildren] and was struck by a truck in the spring of 1951. He died of the injuries two months later.

Kline also gives this tribute to Sommerfeld:-

[He] was at the forefront of the work in electromagnetic theory, relativity and quantum theory and he was the great systematizer and teacher who inspired many of the most creative physicists in the first thirty years of this century.

Finally let us give a brief indication of the many honours Sommerfeld received. He won the Lorentz Gold Medal, the Planck Medal, and the Oersted Medal. He was elected to the Royal Society of London, The National Academy of Sciences in Washington, the Academies of Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Göttingen, Budapest, Uppsala, and Madrid, as well as the Academia dei Lincei of Rome, The Academy of the U.S.S.R in Moscow, and the Indian Academy of Sciences. He received honorary degrees from many universities including Rostock, Aachen, Calcutta, and Athens.

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http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Sommerfeld.html

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

Spin

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

The monosyllabic four-letter word 'spin' governs everything from Quark to the Cosmos and beyond (the 'beyond' being the spin I put on every tale I tell).

Every child, like I did, meets spin first in the spinning top in their toy kit. My 6-month-old Ishani is fascinated by the spinning top and stares at it till it rolls and falls over (and then grabs and has a crack at it as at any other teething teaser).

The child's fascination is instinctively scientific, I guess. The top would fall head over its heels if it were not spinning. The sleeping top is a wonder to all; kids and Kleins.

I used to play with my father's glass paper weight with its distorted and magnified floral bubbles. Setting it spin, I saw what I later learned as a 'Tippe Top': sometimes, it would do the unexpected; roll over and spin on its wrong side. Much later, in the KGP-HWH Locals, plastic Tippe Tops were sold for a Rupee each. I bought a dozen and played with them endlessly, with my son.

Then of course, the 'ring tennis' in our school called for not only spin but wobble. When I read Feynman, I was delighted to read that his fascination with the relation of the spin to the wobble of a pancake (Frisbee) in an eating joint led him back to his Nobel-winning research work after his weary war-work.

Then again the spin we imparted to our ball-badminton made the game challenging. Ping-Pong, Tennis, Cricket, golf and most everything with a ball uses spin to give top, bottom, side- spins, swings, googlies and the works.

When I was 5, I used to look forward to visits to our Village Shiv Temple: there was this exotic tree (I can't name it in English). It had its fruit like a small ball attached with large triple 'rotor' blades turned upwards. When they dry in summer, they are feather-weight. And, when wind blows and detaches them from their stems, they fly a long distance, rotor blades spinning and giving them a wonderful buoyancy. They land on earth in a majestic descent like so many tiny helicopters. There were several of these huge trees on the roadside at KGP and I never tired of playing with them.

Anyone who thinks that the Mechancis of tops is trivial, beware! Klein (Felix) and Sommerfeld needed four hefty and tough Volumes to cover their theory: 'Theory of Tops'. Legend has it that Sommerfeld and his Guru, Klein, used to visit the sea-beach regularly to play with pebbles, setting them spin to verify their theory. There are the spherical tops, symmetric tops and asymmetric tops, with their parallels in molecules and their spectroscopy.

Once upon a time (I don't know now), The Royal Society of London used to have Christmas Lectures and Demos to which the Queen was the Special Invitee apart from the paying public. One of them used to be a Popular Scientific Lecture-Demo by an FRS. Two of these were printed as monographs: Perrry's 'Spinning Tops and Gyroscopes' and Boys's 'Soap Bubbles'. These two booklets are 'must-reads' for all and especially students of Physics.

Perry's booklet is wonderful. He demonstrates not only the basic stability imparted by spin, but also the directional stability of a gyroscope by locking a spinning one in a suit-case and asking an audience to hold it on his head and turn his head this way and that; with near-disastrous rollicking antics that followed.

And it was noted with delight that the stage after Perry's Lecture was taken by a professional juggler, most of whose tricks with hats and rings depended on 'spin'.

And, when I was a smoker, it was a delightful hobby to blow and watch the stability and twirling progress of smoke rings in the placid winter air of KGP. And what a pleasure it was to find an entire Chapter devoted to smoke-rings in Feynman; a lesson in viscosity of air!

That spin can shatter and kill was understood by our Gods: Lord Vishnu's Chakra (discus) is his deadly weapon. Also, in Krishna Leela,a demon called Vritthasur carries the child Krishna up and away before he dodges and kills the demon. Of course he was a Personification of Tornado (Twister) which is a common sight in the dusty hot plains of UP and Bihar (even Bengal and Bangladesh); not to speak of the vast unending plains of the US Mid-West.

And the grinder's wheel. Just by a couple of swings on his pedal he converts his carborundum wheel into one that sends sparks flying when touched by a steel axe. Not to talk of buffing machines used to polish gold ornaments.

Equally deadly visuals are those of bikini-clad beauties doing their somersaults on a gymnasium floor or on a diving board in a swimming pool, all of which depend on imparting themselves spins of various delicacies.


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Local to Global

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My childhood sea-side Village, Muthukur-Krishnapatnam, is unique in India: escalating from Local to Global Economy, Connectivity, and Environmental Degradation within the short span of my lifetime (67years).

Then it was a sleepy village with 90% of its requirements met within a semi-circle of 30 kilometers (the other semicircle is at sea).

Now only 10%.

Then there was no Electricity. We had oil-in-glass lamps with a cotton wick. The oil was vegetable oil ground in a local mill powered by bullocks going round and round in circles, with their eyes blindfolded to beguile them into believing they are in 'progress'. The oil seeds were grown in a neighboring village. The bullocks were home-grown. The cotton of the wick was from the nearby fields. The glass was manufactured in the Glass and Ceramic Factory 20 KM away.

Now it boasts of a 5000 MW Mega-Watt Super-Power Plant supplying Power to villages as far as 3000 KM away.

Then there was hardly a fishing boat venturing into its sea.

Now it has one of the biggest Ports in India with ships berthing from all corners of the East, exporting iron ore and importing many things.

Then it had a mini-bus running on coal-engine.

Now it has the most modern cars, trucks and buses owned by Big Business Tycoons.

Then it had a narrow strip of sandy bullock-cart road.

Now it is connected to a 6-lane Super Highway contracted to a Malaysian Firm.

Then there was only one pre-College school within 20 KM.

Now it has half a dozen Engineering Colleges and a Medical College attached to a Super-Specialty Hospital.

Then only 1% of its population traveled to the nearby city (Madras).

Now 50% of its population have close relatives and friends in West Asia and another 20% in the US.

Then owning a push-bike was a dream.

Now 50% of the families have an automobile (moped, scooter or car).

Then no one sent a telegram; the Post Office thrived on post-cards.

Now most every family has a cell-phone and the Post-Office is busy with Savings Accounts Operations.

There were only a handful of people having access to a national newspaper (the Hindu).

Now, every family has a 100-Channel Color TV and no one reads newspapers anymore.

Then there was only a Touring Cinema Talkies.

Now there are half a dozen Wide-Screen Cinema Halls within a radius of 10 KM.

Then most vegetables, rice and lentils were grown in the Village environs.

Now everything comes from the nearby Supermarket Chain.

Then 1% students of the Village went to the University.

Now 50% go to Engineering Colleges.

Then information traveled at the speed of the minibus.

Now it travels with the speed of light via the Internet.

Then we never saw a mosquito.

Now, one can't sleep in the open without mosquito-repellent creams, or All-Outs.

Then school-kids used to play outdoor games 5 hours a working day.

Now they play Video-Games 10 hours a day.

Then there was no obesity in the Village.

Now there is no wiry, healthy, lanky sportsman in the entire Village.

Then food was cooked in mud-pots on clay-stoves lit up by firewood gathered from the local trees.

Now in stainless steel vessels on gas-stoves lit by Gas from the West Asia Crude.

We kids were most happy then with hardly any tensions.

Now right from birth they are driven to compete with kids all over India and beyond.

Much gained.... but much else lost....like the Starry Heavens under clear skies!


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Gifter-Giftee Perplex

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Polonius:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 75–77
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Times have changed much from Shakespeare's. Children are born nowadays with a Credit Card or two in their Gift-Hampers.

For long, this business of 'gifting' has consumed a lot of my precious time, imagination, emotion, not to speak of mere money.

While it is true that 'cash' or one of its modern equivalents is the most convenient and thoughtless ways of 'gifting without tears', there is pleasure in the pain of thinking up a suitable article as a gift; for one wants to be appreciated and remembered for the gift one has made with some thought and feeling.

My eldest brother-in-law, Sri G. Ranga Rao, IAS, missed my Wedding since he was in Australia then (he graciously permitted me to go ahead without waiting for his return knowing the utmost hurry I was in to close the Deal and Consummate it before second thoughts prevailed on my bride's party).

But he made it up by bringing in the latest gadgets from Australia and showered them on me when I met him with my newly-wed wife to seek his blessings; and goodies that go with it.

Next summer, when my wife was away at Jalgaon with my new-born son, I was getting bored at KGP and decided to join the JEE Spot Valuation. I was lucky to meet Prof SKS from IIT Kanpur and we got along like two sailors on shore leave. I met him later too at IIT Delhi. He was one of the most sincere and capable physicists I met (sadly he passed away very young).

When he saw that I was using a brand-new gadget for calculations, he came down to my table and asked me where I bought that Calculator. I said that GRR brought it from Australia as my wedding gift. Next day, he saw my first-ever digital watch in India and asked me the same question and got the same reply. Next day, when I took out my leather wallet, he asked the same question and got the same reply. Next day happened to be my Wedding Anniversary, so my wife asked me to turn out in my new shirt. SKS came down and joked: "Don't tell me that your new shirt is also a gift from GRR". I had to say: "Yes, indeed it is!". He shook his head this way and that and went away thoughtfully.

But this is rare.

On one of my my son's Birthday Parties, he got 6 identical 'ships' from six of his friends because that good-looking ply-wood 'sail boat' was the latest arrival in Gole Bazaar, and everyone thought that he was the only one to spot it.

Since I was in the World of Academics, my students didn't have to think much what to gift me when they got good grades or good recos: they just gave me books. This was nice and easy too. I cherish them and remember them with pleasure whenever I reread their books.

There were also occasions when I myself chose the books my friends wished to gift me. Webster, Sneddon and Panofsky & Phiilips were my choice-gifts from my fiends. My literary uncle BRK loved pens and I always gifted him the latest and he still preserves them fondly.

The first question I asked my wife soon after our marriage was what gift should I give her to please and propitiate her as and when needed. She promptly replied; "I love saris, and could do with any number". So that problem was solved once for all.

To my parents, I decided that I gift them what they could happily use daily but would never spend on them themselves: like an Attached-Bathroom, Geyser, Inverter, Telephone, Water-Purifier to name the lot.

There was one gift that I had to refuse:

Prof BCB and I joined IIT KGP the same day May 1, 1965, he as a Professor in the Aero-Engg and I as an Associate Lecturer in Physics. He was 15 years older to me. But since he was (and is) a bachelor, he was staying in our Faculty Hostel with us for a while, driving a Fiat Millicento, the only car in the Campus then. He comes from an aristocratic family of Calcutta, and is rumored to be a close nephew of Comrade JB. He had his schooling in the best of Calcutta Schools and then spent 14 years in England before taking up his position at KGP. Somehow or the other despite our age and background chasm, we became fast family friends for the next 45 years (myself and my wife met him at KGP this January: at 80+, he still has an Office in the Wind-Tunnel Lab he set up there).

Whenever I used to visit his A-type Bungalow, I used to praise his Center-Piece: an antique, carved, rose-wood beauty with a Belgian Glass top etched with floral designs.

Soon after his retirement, he was leaving KGP to take up a prestigious assignment in Canada. He shifted all his heir-loom furniture to his sister's palatial home at Calcutta, but for that Center-Piece. He graciously offered it as a gift to me as well as a fond memento.

I at once declined, saying it is too precious for me, doesn't go with my deal-wood creaking sofa-cum-bed set, my naughty kid-son would break or scratch its glass-top, so on and so forth. But the real reason was that I believe family-heir-loom sets should not be broken up (I might have accepted the whole set ;-)

Again, I had a hunch that he would soon return from Canada and rejoin IIT KGP on some assignment or the other. And would get back his sofa-set from his sister's place and would be forlorn without that Center-Piece because nothing else in the market would match.

My hunch proved correct and I always felt happy whenever we visited him and saw that set beautifully intact, unmutilated.

He too must be happy!



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Books & Stagnant Brooks

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Myself and my eventual Ph D Guide SDM joined IIT KGP in 1965: he as a Senior Professor and me as a Junior Lecturer. It was his last decade of service and my first. He retired in 1975.

Ever since he joined KGP we used to see that he was getting by Post fat issues of the prestigious Journal 'Mathematical Reviews', published by the American Mathematical Society. Since there was no way he or any individual buying these expensive elephants, we concluded that he must be getting them free for being chosen as one of its Honored Reviewers.

When he retired from KGP out of his vast and spacious A-type Bungalow, we wondered how he would be able to shrink to the inevitable cramped apartment in Calcutta, bought or rented (I know now!). It is like the Camel of the 'Sermon on the Mount' trying to pass through the eye of that needle.

Since he was a lover of books and had a keen sense of humor, I myself gifted him a Thurber-Wodehouse set which he relished like a child. So, we guessed that whatever furniture and goods he might give away, he would carry his books; and we were not wrong.

I was a bachelor at that time waiting to get married and living in a C1 type Bungalow, which had practically no furniture and its Hall very like a football field. He knew this since he used to make surprise visits to my den to discus some point of Physics or the other (I had a framed picture of Ramana Maharshi whom I sort of admired. He once looked at it and asked if it was my father, to which I coolly replied: 'grandfather'; and then he asked what happened to that Lamy Equation that he dumped in my lap).

A week before he left the Campus, he called me to his Quarters and requested (ordered) me to safe-keep some books of his in my spacious Qrs till he could shift them to Calcutta. And he led me to a vast sea of bound volumes of Mathematical Reviews. Like the Daffodils of Wordsworth, I saw a ten thousand at a glance and shuddered.

Being the simpleton he was, I could see that he went to the expense of getting them bound in the Library Journal fashion, Volume per Volume in leather. He must have spent a large part of his meager salary on this.

I fetched my Rickshaw-Puller, Maninder, who looked at the pile and said he would need at least 3 trips and a good blackmail money. For the moment I asked him to dump them on the floor of my Hall.

Whenever I looked at it, the dump seemed to grow like sin in my inner eye and I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to safe-keep them from 'ratification, termtitination and verminization' as long as they resided on the damp KGP floor. So I went to my friend, the Manager of the Faculty Hostel and asked him if I could borrow a huge Table that is strong enough to withstand a ton of books. He said ok with the proviso that I have to return it when he himself retires a decade later to get his: 'No-Dues Certificate'. Nice of him. So the 100 odd volumes were uploaded onto the bare Table by Maninder, awaiting the Command from SDM that I arrange to shift them to Calcutta.

A Commandment that never came!

I used to remind him of his legacy from time to time at intervals of six months or so by Post Card, to which he would probe what happened to the solution of that Lamy Equation; a silencing tactic on both sides.

When my wife joined me she wanted that Table badly since it could serve as a make-shift Dining Table. Then I had to do a 'Cost-Benefit Analysis' and say ok to her: Food for the stomach takes precedence over food for thought.

So, Maninder was engaged, this time, to upload the bound volumes of SDM to the Attic.

A decade later, I knew that SDM can no longer afford to shift them to his tiny flat at Calcutta nor ask me to destroy them, sell them as junk, or keep them forever till I retire 3 decades later, in which case he had to make a Will.

Typical SDM Conundrum.

Sometimes my brain works wonders.

I wrote to him to permit me to donate this complete set of Mathematical Reviews of 25 years to our Central Library which both of us loved and of which he was a Chairman for a 3-year term. I knew he would jump at it.

He did!

But my troubles merely started then: The Ma'am-in-Charge of 'Acquisition' asked me to go to hell when I proposed this gracious Donation from her ex-Chairman. She said they already have a set of this Collection and they have absolutely no space for a Duplicate, space-crunch being what it is. And she told me off saying that it would set a bad precedent as she would be flooded with all sorts of books donated by all sorts of retirees (meaning me too), and who would catalog them, shift them, track them and what not; the staff crunch being what it was.

I saw her point.

When I returned home my heart was sinking. Then I did something I had never done at IIT KGP: "Pull Strings". Professor SHR, a book-lover himself and the current Chairman of the Central Library happened to have a wife who was a distant cousin of my own wife.

So, you see the Game!

The Libarary Committee duly met and resolved to 'accept' SDM's Donation as a 'one-time-gift-not-to-be-quoted-as-a-precedent'.

The Ma'am at the Library never forgave me and I had to hide from her when our paths crossed in the alleys and by-lanes of our hallowed Central Library which till then was my 'home-away-from-home'.

And before shifting them to the Library (via Maninder) I thought I would make a rubber stamp: 'Donated by Professor S Datta Majumdar', buy a stamp-pad and ink.

When I brought this set home, my 5-year-old son took over and I happily outsourced the 'stamping work' to him.

After the job was done and all of us heaved several sighs of relief, I found that my son started stamping all my books, his books and the other Library books I borrowed before I could stop him.

I grabbed the rubber stamp from his hands, carried him on my scooter to the Lake, and gave him the utmost pleasure of throwing the damn thing as far as he could in its placid waters.

Returning home, I dreamed that one of our fishermen of the Technology Angling Society netted this stamp and gave it as a gift to his son, who started stamping his School books and his dad's books:

"Donated by Professor S Datta Majumdar".

And I woke up to the one and only genuine laughter this Deal ever gave me.

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Renunciation Woes

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Like Charity, Renunciation often tends to be loud and highly visible.

I suppose it would not be worthwhile otherwise.

Renunciation is a topic on which I can write a thesis. But here I confine myself to the trials, tribulations and embarrassments I had to undergo owing to other peoples' Renunciations.

Among Renunciations I include vows, vraths, donations and all such queer stuff.

That one's own Renunciations cause precipitate inconveniences to others, particularly, if the Renouncer happens to be in a position of Power and Politics is documented by Gandhiji's weird lifestyle.

Gandhiji, who was a strict vegetarian, had to depend on the abundantly available and cheap stuff like milk and groundnuts. Once, it seems, Gandhiji happened to visit the Goshala of one of his well-to-do (they were all flocking to him) chelas. And saw with his own eyes the cruelty to which his holy cows were routinely subjected in order to yield the maximum possible liters of milk (like being given painful injections of hormones). Gandhiji, on the spot, renounced milk, once and forever.

His hosts, followers, ashramites (like termites?) and khadi-topi-Congresswalas were bewildered and dismayed on what to feed Gandhiji. As such he was a lean and thin figure. Even the British were worried about his health, because his death could lead to riots and revolts: Gandhi alive is easier to deal with than Gandhi dead!

Eventually, the ever-compromising Congresswalas
proposed a formula: Gandhiji could perhaps be convinced to partake of Goat's milk as a substitute. They went with folded hands and explained their predicament. The ever-reasonable Gandhiji acquiesced when they told him that no one but goat-kids drink goat-milk and so goats are not subjected to painful injections (they are eaten whole!).

Thereafter his chelas had to buy tickets for a couple of milch-goats during his third-class travels (another Renunciation of his which prompted Sarojini Naidu, the sensible hilsa-eating Bengalee Bhadramahila, to remark that it cost the Congress a fortune to keep Gandhiji in penury).

At 13, I left home for College studies for a year, during which period I was staying with my uncle, YVS, a wonderful gentleman 15 years older to me. We became great friends. He was a smoker, fond of playing cards, Hindi film music, cricket; and a good sport all in all.

During the next summer holidays when I was back at home in my Village, he happened to be passing through on an official visit. I prevailed upon him to stay for lunch at my place and go ahead on his official work to the next village. He was very shy but agreed. I received him at our bus-stand and brought him home and he was welcomed warmly by one and all because he was too shy to visit anyone else's home. And I told my mother to cook the most delicious of the available vegetables of the season. We settled on lady-fingers, of which I had bought a tender bagful from the Village Market.

And, when we all squatted on the floor for our lunch, mother started serving the first of two courses: subji. He blushed and declined her offer of subji. My mother was perplexed and started serving the next item on the menu, the delicious sambar. He inspected that and rejected that too.

My mother made a guess and asked him if he had 'Renounced' lady-finger at Kashi during his recent trip there. He blushed pink and said yes. It so happened that I asked my mother to put my precious lady-fingers in both the items.

Tears were welling up my mother's eyes because there was nothing else on the menu except pickles and butter-milk. He was gracious and offered handsome apologies for his fault of not announcing his renouncing in advance. Very embarrassing to one and all. And as a recompense he charmingly agreed to drop down on his return trip in the evening and have dinner with us, this time fixing the menu as per his favorite dishes in advance. That meant he would be staying with us that night and we all had great fun and frolic with him. So, everything turned out for the best!

I happened to pass in flying colors that year and got a prestigious seat in the Andhra University Physics Integrated M Sc. A week before I was schedule to leave for Vizagh to join that great seat of learning sanctified by the footsteps of C V Raman, my mother announced that I had to visit Tirupati on a pilgrimage and get my head shaved clean (tonsured). I was stunned. I knew that Lord Balajee's most favorite item on his menu was the hair of his devotees, symbolizing the Ultimate Renunciation: EGO; because everyone is fond of their hair, as I was very much so of mine. I told my mother that it just can't be done because as a freshman at the University, I would be teased and ragged to death. We hit upon a compromise formula that I would postpone it to early next-year's Summer Vacation, since I would have 3 good months for my hair to grow back to its peak size. And I made my mother promise that she would never again make me a dark and unwilling Renouncer of my hair or anything else for that matter.

This Kashi thing is a gimmick in our families. Actually it is not at Kashi, but at Gaya on the compulsory way to Kashi. There is this famous age-old Vishnupada Temple (Ramakrsihna Paramahmasa visited it because his mother saw the Lord of this Temple in her dream before conceiving him).

Under its centuries-old Banyan tree, the pilgrim-couple, after offering holy tarpan to their
forefathers (as a sweetener for persecuting them while alive and fighting over their property after they are quietly dead) proceed to their Great Act of Renunciation:

Each of the two is supposed to give up forever one of their favorite vegetables and one of their loved fruit.

Since there were only a couple of good vegetables and an equal number of fruit in the Village Market, they and their kids would be forever foregoing half of the Village Produce if they do it sincerely. So, they hit upon a compromise: Both agree to renounce the same vegetable and the same fruit (a wonder!). And suddenly they remember that bitter-gourd (kariyala) and sour lime (unripe orange) happen to be their favorite stuff for the nonce! YVS was too sincere!

Hinduism has survived and prevailed over all other religions of this world by its ultimate flexibility: "Please All!" is its motto: "Sarve Janah Suknhino Bhavantu", including the here and the hereafter.

Let me conclude by quoting a light verse I blogged more than a year ago:

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Friday, March 27, 2009

Narayana, Narayana!
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"..Sixty is the age when all of us should renunciate worldly life": Quote attributed to N. R. Narayana Murthy in DC 27 March: Banner headline with Photo on Page 8 (italics mine):


DC's a law unto itself
Quoting Narayan's good self
It enunciates, denunciates
Pronunciates and Renunciates
As it pleases itself!

Webster should learn anew
How little English he knew!

Posted by G P Sastry (gps1943@yahoo.com) at 2:19 AM


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Why Blog?

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Not infrequently I do ask myself why I indulge in this crazy daily blogging.

The answers are many:

Within months of my retirement in August 2005, my phy.iitkgp.ernet.in account was blocked and deleted.

With this I lost my umbilical cord with my students and well-wishers and became a non-person, sort of.

I enjoyed my freedom from e-mailing for sometime. But some of my junior faculty at IIT KGP, for reasons best known to them, expressed their wish to make myself available to them in the cyberspace with an internet-account. So, I asked my son to create one for me. He chose Yahoo (gmail being nascent then). He asked me what I would like to have as my login. Obviously it would be 'gps1943', because my students call me names by this gps moniker; and 1943 reassures them that this is the same old buffoon they knew at IIT KGP.

As Sam Weller would say: "It is just one step from drinking to debauchery; and e-mail to blogspot". My son asked me what should be my blogspot title: Obviously 'gpsastry', no pseudonym. And my 'Profile' should just have my Yahoo e-mail id.

Rest as they say is history.

I went crazier than usual.

An unemployed pensioner should invent some diverting employment for himself if he wishes to remain physically and mentally healthy and not bore people around him to distraction.

First I tried reading. But it can't be a full-time activity, since books are expensive to buy and are a punishment on the dwidnling eyesight.

Writing creative pieces on a daily basis is a dashed tough activity and is like the proverbial mental-iceberg: choosing a topic takes about 8 hours of 'pondering'; composing mentally the 'material' takes about a couple of hours. So, 10 hours daily are spent with no strain on the eye (other than the 'inner' one). Actual blogging at the keyboard takes a couple of hours. This too can be done almost 'blindly'.

And when the piece is posted, there is this Jim Corbett feeling: "Something Attempted, Something Done". A great sense of pseudo-satisfaction.

And almost at once the question arises; what next for tomorrow?

And the twelve or so hours of mental activity is no hindrance to daily household chores like dropping the daughter-in-law at her place of work driving the decade-old Maruti 800 (which requires no brain in Hyderabadi honking traffic that moves at snail's pace if ever it does), buying vegetables, playing with the granddaughter, teasing the wife, and filling the drums with erratic water from the dry taps etc.

So, it is a full-time activity, much more demanding of 'inventive powers' than just teaching Physics at IIT KGP.

The bonus is that one does get in touch with old students at the steady rate of one a month, for mutual benefit.

Apart from that, it is like the Selfless Action of Gita: "Blog and Forget".

And I had this longstanding illusion that I am a 'humorist'.

Now, ask any 'humor-writer': it is ten times more demanding than just writing clean good serious prose; it is a pain in the neck.

But humor being essentially a self-deprecating activity, one can score some brownie points on others: Calling your self a donkey enables you to call others by implication asses; unbeknown to them.

That is highly rewarding.

So, these are briefly the virtues of daily blogging.

Just try for 3 months and tell me how tough it is and so how pleasantly triumphal.


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Thermodynamics & Marital Bliss

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Footnote on Page 77 of Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything':


"The Chemist P. W. Atkins says: There are four laws of Thermodynamics. The third of them, the Second Law, was recognized first; the first, the Zeroth law, was formulated last; the First Law was second; the Third Law might not even be a Law in the sense of the others".

In the briefest terms, the Second Law states that a little energy is always wasted. You can't have a perpetual motion device because no matter how efficient, it will always lose energy and eventually run down. The First Law says that you can't create energy and the Third Law that you can't reduce temperature to absolute zero; there will always be some residual warmth.

As Dennis Overby notes, the three principal laws are sometimes expressed jocularly as:

(1) You can't win

(2) You can't break even

(3) You can't quit

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A mild rewording would render these as the

"gps's Laws of Marital Bliss"

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I read from this very readable book that most of the 18th and 19th Century British Scientists and Explorers were wealthy individuals of independent means free to pursue science as a hobby for pleasure.

And their 'wealth' came from the British Empire.

Before that there was hardly any British Science to speak of; or the means to keep the Empire down by the Guns propelled by these laws of science they discovered:

As it was put by Hilaire Belloc, in the words of the figure "Blood" in his poem "The Modern Traveler":

Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.


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