Purity

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One evening at the Dinner Table of our notorious Faculty Hostel there was a furious war of words between two most colorful characters, Professor Chawla from Delhi and Professor Ghar from Calcutta.

Prof Ghar started narrating an incident that happened to him in the Old Delhi Railway Station.

Prof Chawla at once intervened and cut him off saying there is no Railway Station like Old Delhi; only Delhi and New Delhi.

Well, no one has succeeded in cutting off Prof Ghar so far (not even his two kids Madhumita and Saurabh both of whom were our KGPhians..maybe his grandkids can). So, he simply asked Prof Chawla what the opposite of New is.

And it went on and on...I don't recall how it ended...maybe there was a power cut which were constant argument-stoppers.

Our Math Professor at AU would have said the opposite of New is Non-new. But he would object vehemently when we used to say Pure Math Dept...he insisted it was Math Dept and Applied Math Dept.

And then we used to confront him when he used to say Pure Physics Dept, saying there was nothing like Pure Physics Dept, only Physics Dept , Applied Physics Dept, Nuclear Physics Dept....(and maybe Squalid State Physics Dept now).

My cousin GMK who retired as Professor of Metallurgy from BHU and is settled here banged me once on telephone for a mistake I made in one of my Ishani booklets saying he would give me a lesson in metallurgy, which of course was thoroughly illuminating.

He said there is nothing like Pure Gold...in fact if any metal were 100% pure, it wouldn't stay solid but would collapse since no pure crystal has any strength, which apparently is imparted to it by impurities.

I left it at that and agreed since I have no knowledge of crystal structure which I found boring with its FCC, BCC, Hexagonal, Rhombic, Orthorhombic and so on.

But I was forced to teach this topic in a single lecture as part of our compulsory QM Course to B Tech students, listing all the 14 or so Crystal Classes on the blackboard. I was at once stopped by Rupak Mahapatra, of Russi Mody's Tom Cat,

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/01/russi-modis-tom-cat.html

who shouted: "Sir! is this Physics!!!". And I just smiled. I asked DB who was teaching the CSE Section how he handled this lecture in his class...he replied he gave it as sessional work...he was into Pure Group Theory...not Crystal Groups which he said were messy.

Anyway is there anything that is Pure in this world?

The answer I guess is an emphatic NO!

There are indeed some Absolutes like Absolute Zero Temperature which I guess is unachievable. So too I guess is Pure Vacuum which I am told would breed electron-positron pairs unless you are at Absolute Zero Temp...a Pure Circular Argument if there was ever one.

Is there any Pure Physics?

Physicists, sometime around Maxwell who did the greatest of all Unified Field Theories till then, did dream of 'closing' Physics and shutting shop.

But then there was these Relativity-QM things that appeared and experiments which exasperated Rutherford asking "Who ordered that?" when meson was unnecessarily discovered...correct me.

Still and all the urge for Purity is incorrigible in mankind (especially of their womankind).

I hated Raamjee when I was just a kid when I read that he ordered poor Sita to jump into fire to test her Purity publicly...I beg to be pardoned by Raam Bhakts...I was only a kid then...now I love Raamjee in spite of all his faults.

Because in politics, it is no good if you are Infinitely Pure by yourself...you have to be ready and prepared for getting tested in public not only for your Purity but also your Cabinet Ministers...and there is no good bitching about your CAG...

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