Club Science

Here is a collection of 15 stories that gives a glimpse of important developments reported by Indian scientists during the year. The year 2018 is ending with spectacular success of Indian scientists and technologists in space and defence sectors, with a series of high impact missions. But that’s not all Indian scientists achieved in 2018. Several scientific developments, new techniques and promising technologies – in fields ranging from nanotechnology to space weather – made headlines during the year. Here is a collection of 15 such stories that gives a glimpse of important developments reported by Indian scientists during the year. A gel that can protect farmers from toxic pesticides Most farmers do not wear any protective gear while spraying chemicals in fields, which often leads to pesticide exposure and toxicity. Scientists at the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Bangalore have developed a protective gel - poly-Oxime - that can be applied on skin a

  TUNGSTEN AND COOLIDGE William David Coolidge received a patent on December 30, 1913 for a method of making ductile tungsten. Even though this patent was later invalidated, the process developed by Coolidge helped in brightening the world. A.S.Ganesh throws light upon Coolidge, the man who helped utilise the ductility of tungsten…  A device wherein a wire filament is heated to such a high temperature that it glows with visible light, the incandescent light bulb is one of the earliest forms of electric light that still remains relevant to this day. If you had looked at these bulbs close enough, you surely would have noticed the wire filament. That filament is generally made of tungsten and it was William David Coolidge who made that possible. A liking for electrical devices Born in a small farm in Hudson, Massachusetts, the U.S . in 1873, Coolidge was drawn towards electrical devices from a very young age and spent a considerable amount of time in the town’s machine shop. He

 A meteor is the streak of light that you see in the sky when a small piece of cometary or asteroidal material enters the atmosphere at high speed and burns up because of the frictional heating from the piece’s collision with the atoms and molecules in the atmosphere. Before the small bit of comet or asteroid enters Earth ’s atmosphere, it floats through interplanetary space and is called a meteoroid . Most meteoroids that enter the atmosphere burn up completely as meteors. In some cases, however, the meteoroid does not completely burn up, and the object actually makes it to Earth’s surface. The chunk that has survived its fiery journey is called a meteorite .  A small body starts its life as a meteoroid floating through space between the planets until it makes a bright streak of light in Earth’s atmosphere as a meteor and then, if it isn’t consumed by frictional heating, finally lands on the ground as a meteorite. By Adhil saeem Club science

The world's supercomputer designed to work in the same way as the human brain has been switched on for the first time.                     SpiNNaker  The spiking neural network architecture is capable of completing more than 200 million million action per second,with each of its chips having 100 million transistors.  SpiNNaker, built at the University of Manchester in the UK ,can model more biological neurons in real time than any other machine on the planet.Biological neurons are basic brain cells present in the nervous system that communicate by emitting 'spikes' of pure electro-chemical energy.   It is unique as it mimics the massively parellel communication architecture of the brain,sending billions of small amounts of information sumultaneously to thousands of different destinations

Viruses   are not alive: They do not have cells, they cannot turn food into energy, and without a host they are just inert packets of chemicals. Viruses are not exactly dead, either: They have genes, they reproduce, and they evolve through natural selection. Viruses are already known to infect animals, plants, fungi, protozoa, archaea, and bacteria. Sputnik and Mamavirus suggest that they can infect other viruses, too.   In fact, scratch the whole concept of “us versus them.” Half of all human DNA originally came from viruses, which infected and embedded themselves in our ancestors’ egg and sperm cells.  

ഊദ് വിശുദ്ധവും ദൈവികവുമായ ഒരു ഗന്ധമാണ് ഊദ്. എന്നാല്‍, ആ ഗന്ധം അറിയണമെങ്കില്‍ സ്വര്‍ണ്ണം പുകക്കുന്ന ചെലവുവരും. കോഴിക്കോട് നഗരത്തിലൂടെ യാത്ര ചെയ്യുമ്പോള്‍ 'ഊദും ഊദിന്റെ അത്തറും' എന്ന ബോര്‍ഡ് കാണാത്തവരില്ല. ഒരു സുഗന്ധദ്രവ്യം എന്നാശ്വസിച്ച് കടന്നുപോകുന്നവര്‍ പക്ഷെ കൗതുകത്തിന്റെ കലവറയായ ഊദ് എന്താണെന്ന് അറിയുന്നതേയില്ല. കിലോക്ക് ഒരു ലക്ഷം രൂപ വരെ വിലയുള്ള ഊദ് കോഴിക്കോട്ടെ ചില കടകളില്‍നിന്നു ലഭിക്കും. ഊദ് അഥവാ അഗര്‍ ഒരു സുഗന്ധദ്രവ്യ മരമാണ്. ഈ മരങ്ങള്‍ സാധാരണയായി കാണപ്പെടുന്നത് സൗത്ത് ഏഷ്യന്‍ കാടുകളിലാണ്. ഇന്ന് കേരളത്തിലും ഈ മരങ്ങള്‍ വ്യാപകമായി കൃഷി ചെയ്തുവരുന്നു. അക്വിലേറിയ മരത്തില്‍നിന്നാണ് ഊദ് ഉല്‍പാദിപ്പിക്കപ്പെടുന്നത്. അസമില്‍നിന്നാണ് ഇതിന്റെ ഉല്‍ഭവം എന്നു പറയപ്പെടുന്നു. ഫിയാലോഫോറ പാരസൈറ്റിക്ക എന്ന ഒരു പൂപ്പല്‍ അക്വിലേറിയ മരത്തില്‍ പറ്റിപ്പിടിക്കുമ്പോള്‍ അത് സുഗന്ധമുള്ള ഒരു പദാര്‍ഥം ഉല്‍പാദിപ്പിക്കുന്നു. അതാണ് ഊദ് ആയി രൂപാന്തരപ്പെടുന്നത്. ഊദിന്റെ മധുരതരമായ സുഗന്ധം വളരെ പ്രസിദ്ധമാണ്. ഉ|ൗദ് എണ്ണ വിലകൂടിയതും ഡിമാന്റുള്ളതുമാണ്. അസാധാരണമായി കാണുന്നതും, അപൂര്‍വമായി കൃഷിചെയ്യുന്ന

Mathematics is the study of topics such as number, quantity, space, structure and change. Mathematics is applied in many real world tasks, overlapping with fields of scientific research, analysis and engineering. Numbers talks about how things can be counted. Structure is about how things are organized and this subfield is usually called algebra. Place is about where things are and their arrangement and this subfield is usually called geometry. Change is about how things become different and this subfield is usually called analysis. Mathematics is useful for solving problems that occur in the real world, so many people besides mathematicians study and use mathematics. Some amount of mathematics is needed in almost all jobs. Logic and reasoning are used by mathematicians to create general rules, which are an important part of mathematics. These rules leave out information that is not important so that a single rule can cover many situations. By finding general rules, mathematics sol

A  wax fire  is created when melted or boiling  wax  is doused in water.   In the case of wax melted down, only the top surface has access to oxygen, so the fire progresses slowly. When water is added to the wax, two things happen. Firstly, the water — being denser than wax — sinks to the bottom of the container. Secondly, as burning wax quickly reaches a temperature of well over 200 degrees C, the water instantly vapourises. When water changes from a liquid to a gas, there is more than a thousand-fold increase in volume. The water expands violently, and throws the hot wax layer above it into the air as small droplets. The wax now has a much bigger surface area exposed to oxygen so combustion takes place very quickly.

Engineering is the creative application of science, mathematical methods, and empirical evidence to the innovation, design, construction, operation and maintenance of structures, machines, materials, devices, systems, processes, and organizations. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more specialized fields of engineering, each with a more specific emphasis on particular areas of applied mathematics, applied science, and types of application. Engineering is often characterized as having four main branches : chemical engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering.In the engineering design process, engineers apply mathematics and sciences such as physics to find novel solutions to problems or to improve existing solutions. More than ever, engineers are now required to have a proficient knowledge of relevant sciences for their design projects.

Technology is a capability given by the practical application of knowledge. In this sense, technology describes the product of engineering, rather than the engineering process itself whereas engineering is the application of scientific methods to solve discrete problems. So while the two terms overlap substantially, they are distinct where technology refers purely to results and engineering refers purely to process.

Concave Mirror: If a hollow sphere is cut into parts and the outer surface of the cut part is coated with something that is very smooth. Then it becomes a mirror with its inner surface as the reflecting surface This kind of mirror is known as concave mirror. Light converges at a point when it strikes and reflects back from the reflecting surface of concave mirror. Hence, it is also known as converging mirror.  When concave mirror is placed very close to the object, a magnified and virtual image is obtained. But if we increase the distance between the object and the mirror then the size of the image reduces and a real image is formed. So the image formed by concave mirror can be small or large and it can also be real  Concave Mirror Ray Diagram   : When an object the is placed at infinity, a real image is formed at the focus. The size of the image is much smaller as compared to that of the object. When an object is placed behind the center of curvature, a real image is form

CONVEX LENS Convex lens is thicker at the centre and thinner at the edges. An optical lens is generally made up of two spherical surfaces. If those surfaces are bent outwards, the lens is called a  biconvex lens  or simply convex lens. These type of lenses can converge a beam of light coming from outside and focus it to a point on the other side. This point is known as the focus and the distance between the centre of the lens to the focus is called the  focal length of convex lens.  However, if one of the surfaces is flat and the other convex, then it is called a  plano-convex lens. Difference between convex and concave lens: There is another type of lens known as concave lens. The major differences between the two are: CONVEX CONCAVE This lens converges a straight beam of light. This lens diverges a straight beam of light. This lens is thicker at the centre and gets thinner as we move towards the edges. This lens is thinner at the centre and gets thicke