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Presenting the Zeroth Issue of..

The M A P
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The zeroth issue of The MAP is released!

I N SI DE T HE ZE R OT H I S SUE

How often have you wished for a place of your own? A place to express your creativity,
your thoughts, your imagination? Physicists are born creationists! Lets face it, we study
a difficult subject; we are all born geniuses! Of course we need (and completely deserve) a place to put down all those crazy ideas buzzing in our heads! Hence, we bring
you The MAP! The Physics departments very own newsletterA place for you, the students, to publish your articles, poems, riddles, photographs, and well, anything and everything that can be published on paper! It doesn't have to be related to Physics as long
as you're a student in our department and if you're not, then it has to! Let the ride begin!

News

News continued

Crossword

Solution to puzzles

Jokes

Cartoons

Editorial

Ever wondered how stars are formed? 13th Zodiac Sign:

Priyanka Jha
explain the same.
Hoax or
Over the years, however, many Stars
Reality?!?!
have been spotted near the galactic
centre which raises the question:
were the Stars able to survive a perilous birth, or did they somehow
migrate inwards from elsewhere?

Often we youngsters wonder how

stars are born? Some of us search for
it in different books, magazines and
ya, how can I forget about Google?
We people are really addicted to
such sites, aren't we? Oops!! I too
have got lost in the world of such
sites and forgotten to talk about the
stars from where we have started.
Basically, star formation is a steady
process, requiring vast clouds of
cold gas to gradually accumulate and
compact. So in the region around the
super massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, which is awash
with violent gravitational tidal
forces, one would expect Stars to be
few and far between. I know its
complicated but different theories

Brain
Strain

Now, a group of astronomers from

the HarvardSmithsonian Center for
Astrophysics, US, and the Max
Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Germany, has evidence that
Stars can indeed be born near the
galactic centre. Using the Very Large
Array of radio telescopes in New
Mexico, they have discovered two
baby Stars, or protostars, just a
few light-years from the Milky Ways
black hole.
Elizabeth Humphreys of the Harvard
-Smithsonian has given the concept
of protostar. A protostar marks the
embryonic stage in a Star's formation, before it has begun nuclear fusion and while it is still hidden
within a collapsing cloud of dust and
gas. This cloud absorbs visible light,
(Continued on page 2)

Aaaaah theres an
astrological sign shift thing
going on! My sign has
changed! I had no idea. Help!"
Divya Mehrotra

There are some who couldnt care

less or say they dont, but most of
us read the horoscope section in
our newspapers first thing in the
morning. But before we go any
further, here's what has happened,
in case you are not already clued
in: Parke Kunkle, who teaches at
Minneapolis Community and
Technical College, and is a member of the Minnesota Planetarium
Society, recently announced, "The
Zodiac had a problem with dates.
Not only is the Earth aligned differently today than it was in 3000
BC, but we've also been leaving
the constellation Ophiuchus out of
(Continued on page 2)

1. The Chicken and Egg Problem: A chicken farmer has figured out that a hen and a
half can lay an egg and a half in a day and a half. How many hens does the farmer
need to produce one dozen eggs in six days?
2. What is the lifetime of the proton, and how do we understand it?

I HAVE A QU ANT UM C AR . E VE RY T IME I LOO K AT T HE SP E E DOME T E R I GE T LO ST . ..

(Continued from page 1) Star formation

(Continued from page 1) 13th Zodiac sign

so to see protostars astronomers

have to search within infrared and
radio wavelengths.

the equation." It was also announced that those born between

November 29 and December 17
will fall under the Ophiuchus zodiac
causing alongside, a shift in the
dates of the other zodiac signs. This
spread faster than lightning, and
though Kunkle quickly clarified that
his theory was based on "2,000year-old information; astronomers
have known about this since
130BC" and that he didn't understand why his explanation of how a
well-known wobble in the earth's
orbit throws off astrology charts
turned into an internet sensation,
he couldn't stem the collective
panic of the world.

Many discussions have taken place

but one theorist who has successfully modeled Star formation in the
circumnuclear disk is Sergei Nayakshin of the University of Leicester,
UK. He agrees that the observations
of Humphreys and colleagues support the simulations, but thinks
that they also raise new questions.
The result from simulations is that
you get many tens or hundreds of
protostars at once, so I would have
expected us to have seen a lot more
of them, he explains. If they are
there, I think they would have been
discovered by now.
According to him, there may be unknown physics at work that reduces the clumping of gas and dust
in the Milky Ways inner regions. If
this were accounted for in the models it might become apparent that
the stars are formed individually
and not in groups.

Really?! Why dont we all just make

our own signs then? Mines
Slytherine - The Serpent!!! A 2000

year old information suddenly

changes the personality of everyone on the face of the earth who
has lived with the same signs for
the past 2000 years very comfortably! Suddenly someone finds a deep
affinity to a forgotten constellation
and decides that the people all over
the world wont mind getting their
personalities changed to get the
constellation some attention!! So
Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting
Ophiuchus! (God! I cant even pronounce it!) The constellation that
changes your sun sign and is responsible for all the sudden
changes in your attitude and your
mood swings!
Though, a word of caution! Dont
believe this piece of news! Itll be
gone before you can absorb it!

The Albert Einstein Crossword

Nevertheless, the fact that Stars

close to the galactic centre can form
in situ does not diminish the possibility that many of the older observed stars migrated inwards
from elsewhere in the galaxy.
This is just a short glimpse into star
formation. There are many other
discoveries waiting to be made.

For more: physicsworld.com

Contributed by Parul Chakraborty

Solution in next issue!
www.armoredpenguin.com/crossword/Data/best/physics

I F YOU ARE N T CON FUSE D BY QU ANT UM ME C HAN ICS , YOU HAVE N T RE ALLY U NDE RS T OOD IT ~ N E ILS B OHR

Answers to Brain Strain

Answer to Question 1:
This is a classic problem that many people get wrong because they reason that half of a hen cannot lay an
egg, and a hen cannot lay half an egg. However, we can get a satisfactory solution by treating this as a
purely mathematical problem where the numbers represent averages.
To solve the problem, we first need to find the rate at which
the hens lay eggs. The problem can be represented by the following equation, where RATE is the number of eggs produced
per henday:
1-1/2 hens 1-1/2 days RATE = 1-1/2 eggs
We convert this to fractions thus:
3/2 hens 3/2 days RATE = 3/2 eggs
Multiplying both sides of the equation by 2/3, we get:
1 hen 3/2 days RATE = 1 egg
Multiplying both sides of the equation again by 2/3 and solving
for RATE, we get:
RATE = 2/3 eggs per henday
Now that we know the rate at which hens lay eggs, we can calculate how many hens (H) can produce 12 eggs in six days using
the following equation:
H hens 6 days 2/3 eggs per henday = 12 eggs
Solving for H, we get:
H = 12 eggs /(6 days 2/3 eggs per henday) = 12/4 = 3 hens
Therefore, the farmer needs 3 hens to produce 12 eggs in 6 days.

Source: abstrusegoose.com

Answer to Question 2:
It used to considered gospel that protons, unlike say, neutrons, live forever, never decaying into smaller
pieces. Then in the 1970's, theorists realized that their candidates for a Grand-Unified-Theory (GUT), merging all the forces except gravity, implied that protons must be unstable. Wait long enough, and, very occasionally, one should break down.
The trick is to catch it in the act. Sitting in underground laboratories, shielded from cosmic rays and other
disturbances, experimenters have whiled away the years watching large tanks of water, waiting for a
proton inside one of the atoms of water to give up the ghost.
So far, the fatality rate is zero, meaning that either protons are perfectly stable or their lifetime is enormous - an estimated billion, trillion, trillion years, or more....
www.antigravitypower.tripod.com

Laugh!
Q: Upon entering a laboratory, you see an
experiment. How do you know which
class it belongs to?
A: If it's green and wiggles, it's biology.
If it stinks, it's chemistry.
If it doesn't work, it's physics.
*
A bar walks into a man, oops, wrong
frame of reference.
*
An atom to another: I think Ive lost an
electron.
The other atom: Are you sure?
First atom: Yes, Im positive!
Contributed by Parul Chakraborty

Editorial Board

A Physics newsletter?? Why?

Nidhi Srivastava

Divya Mehrotra
Nidhi Srivastava
Parul Chakraborty
Priyanka Jha

Send us your articles at

nidhi1106@gmail.com

Next Issue
Coming soon in
February 2011

The MAP

The word science has its roots in a Latin word that means to know. Science literally means knowledge. And Physics is the branch of science that is concerned
with the nature, and properties of matter and energy. It is perhaps the most
widely applied and studied branch of science. The world we live in is defined by
what we knowby science, especially Physics. The comforts of modern life,
healthcare, transport, internet; all arise from science. We owe all these to a bunch
of scientists who devoted their lives to knowingto finding out more, to discovering, to inventing. This newsletter is a tribute to these great people.
We have, however, another reason to bring out a newsletter at college level that
is dedicated solely to Physics.
Despite its undisputable presence is our life, science is largely shrouded by ignorance. It is commonly labeled as difficult or incomprehensible. Moreover, science is frequently misrepresented by the media. The results of pointless
scientific surveys like How does your breakfast affect your homework? are glorified by the media whilst important, revolutionary breakthroughs are largely
ignored.
This newsletter is our little effort to bring to the budding scientists of Maitreyi
College, science news that matters. News that moves. We endeavor to change
how science is perceived. We want to bring you the raw details that come
straight from the lab, not from the desk of the pedantic old editor of some local
daily.
Lastly, we want to reiterate how much our college has given to us. The teachers
of our department have been extremely supportive in this little effort! And we
hope this support will continue because we are Mad About Physics!!

Nothing in this world is to be feared only understood.

~ Marie Curie

The Physics newsletter

of Maitreyi College!

Source: xkcd.com