Saturday, 26 April 2014

An Academic Pilgrimage

Göttingen. It is a small town in the heart of Germany, with several lines of farms and a few small industries. But very few other places in the world have been home to such a stellar population. Many great personalities have been associated with The Georg-August University of Göttingen such as the Brothers Grimm, Heinrich Heine and Otto von Bismarck. The University was founded in 1737 by King George II of Great Britain (who was also the Elector of Hanover) and so far, 45 Nobel Laureates have studied, taught or worked at the University. (And of course, there have been many great Scientists who have graced the town in the pre-Nobel era. Giving Nobel or Fields medal to the likes of Gauss and Riemann would be an insult). 

So when I was visiting my friends there for Easter, we decided to pay homage to the giants of academia that have graced the land of Göttingen.


House of Richard Courant (Mathematician):



House of Hermann Weyl (Mathematician and Theoretical Physicist):




House of Edmund Landau (Mathematician):




House of Carl Ludwig Siegel (Mathematician):




House of Hermann Minkowski (Mathematician):




House of Carld Freidrich Gauss (Mathematician & Physicist):




House of Ezequiel Uricoechea (Chemist, Linguist and Polymath):




The statue of Wilhelm Weber (Physicist) and Carl Freidrich Gauss:




Statue of Freidrich Wöhler (Chemist):




Tomb of Carl Freidrich Gauss:




House of Walther Nernst (Physical Chemist & Physicist)




The Institute of Theoretical Physics (Old Building):

Max Born was the head of the department

Victor Weisskoff (Physicist):




and Carl Freidrich von Weizsäcker



Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli also worked here for some time.


House of Max von Laue (Physicist):




House of Emmy Noether (Mathematician and Theoretical Physicist):




House of Bernhard Riemann (Mathematician):






Sunday, 2 June 2013

On A Bright Sunny Day, I Went On An Adventure



 In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. 


 Bored with the routine of the life, he decided to go on an adventure
Off in the hills, in the woods he went.


Far away, a house on the hill caught his eye, to where he decided to go.


The road took him around the grasslands where sometimes he would catch a glimpse of the old times...


...and occasionally make some new friends.


Finally when he reached to the top, he was greeted by the splendid panoramic view of the Rhineland.


And met an old friend


Unsatisfied with the small hike, he decided to carry on.


A quick check for the directions, looking for options...


The signs of human invasion in the wilderness were found everywhere.


Finally, satisfied with the day's little adventure, he decided to treat himself with nice dessert and drinks.



...and returned home a very happy hobbit.





Monday, 25 March 2013

Applying for Ph.D. in Europe



Recently many people have asked me about the application procedure for Ph.D. in Germany, and answering the same questions to everybody individually is a pain, so I have decided to write this post about a general application procedure for PhD in Germany (or Europe in general).

Selecting the topic: The first and most important step is to decide which topic you want to work on. If you are unsure of the topic, then you can go through profiles of some researchers to know what they are working on and which topics might interest you. You can also talk to your professors, advisers or colleagues about the topic that you may want to work on. The topic should be scientifically important and feasible in the given time frame and budget. Once you have decided the topic(s), you can start the planning for applications.

Application Procedure: There are usually two ways to apply for a position. The traditional method is to look at the profiles of different researchers and see who is working on the topics you are interested in, and approaching them for a PhD position. You can email them stating your interest in working on the topic with him/her. If they have an open position, they will inform you about the detailed application procedure. Having a one-to-one conversation with them will be helpful in understanding (a) what your thoughts are about the topic and (b) what do they expect from you.

The second way is to apply to some graduate schools or research schools or standard application procedures of certain institutes or via some scholarship programs such as DAAD or Erasmus Mundus etc.. This method is helpful because most of these schools have a fixed budget which is independent of the budget of the researchers. Also due to standard procedures, you don't have to contact each and every person at that institute individually.

To have better chances at selection, it is advised to follow both the paths.

The application usually requires you to submit following documents:

  1. A brief, concise curriculum vitae. The CV should contain objective information about your academic career, such as your grades at undergraduate and masters level, performance at entrance/qualification examinations, publications, projects you have worked on, schools & conferences attended and co-curricular activities.

  1. Statement of Purpose: In this statement, you are expected to describe your broad aims during your Ph.D., why you are applying at that place, what are your expectations, and how will the institute benefit from you. It can also be used to assert certain qualities about you which are not stated in your CV. (This is similar to the statement you have to submit when you apply to Universities in USA.)

  1. Research interest: Along with the application, you have to submit your research interest wherein you have to explain which topic you want to work on, why are you interested in that topic, and what are your ideas or inputs you have on that topic.

  1. Letters of recommendation: Usually you have to submit at least 2 letters of recommendation from people who know you well, for example, someone who has guided you during a project, or a person who has taught you courses at bachelor's or master's level.

These are the documents that you would require for application, although the particulars may differ from case to case. The whole procedure from deciding the topic till the successful submission of the application usually takes few months, so it's always good to start early!

Saturday, 26 January 2013

Science and Education on YouTube


Most of the netizens think of YouTube as a place for entertainment videos, a place where they can watch videos of adorable cats, or listen to the songs of their favourite artists, or find highlights of the football matches they missed. And it is true. But there are some people on the internet (including at YouTube) who want to change this image, and use this free platform to improve the human life altogether.

If you want to learn something new, you will find plenty of channels and videos where you can begin, from violin lessons to cooking to photography, YouTube has everything. But I want to focus mostly on Science and Education on YouTube. Not-so-recently, I have come across many channels that portray different aspects of Science, Education, and Learning. The main characteristics of these videos are that most of these are short videos with high school to undergrad level difficulty, thus they are perfect for most of the viewers who are interested. Here is the list. (It may be updated from time to time.)

  1. I must begin with the first channel I came across and my favourite channel of all. Henry Reich, the presenter, uses the method of “time-lapsed drawings” to shed light on different topics in Physics. If you want to learn and understand the concepts of Physics but don't want to get involved in the math nor do you want to attend long science talks, then this is the right place for you. Everything that is related to Physics, from Newton's laws to Quantum tunnneling, you will find it on this channel. This is a cool video of Henry explaining his motivation and philosophy behind his videos and the process of making videos.

  2. Derek Muller is an Australian with a degree in Engineering Physics and a Ph.D. in Physics Education Research. He is the host of the video blogging channel Veritasium (which, as he claims, means “The element of Truth”). He usually makes videos about popular misconceptions in physics. (And other times he makes many more cool videos, from Science music, to super slow motion videos and plenty of science stuff from his travels.) I had a few misconceptions about some topics and his videos helped immensely to understand what is really happening.

  3. As the name suggests, this is a place to get short crash courses on different topics. This channel was created by brothers John and Hank Green (also known as the Vlogbrothers). John Green gave an awesome crash course on World History and recently finished the crash course on Literature and will be starting with the crash course on American History. While Hank completed a crash course on Biology and is presenting a course on Ecology. Why these videos are great? First reason is that they are really compact and yet provide enough information on the subject and make the viewer interested in pursuing the details about the topic. Second reason is the style of presentation. (There's not much point in explaining their styles. It is better you have a look, and I can bet you won't regret it.)

  4. SciShow: A chennel hosted by Hank Green, “where the Sciecne goes”. Anything and everything related to science is here and is a place to disucss stuff related to Science. Hank talks about Science News, Experiments, Great Minds, basics of Astronomy, Physics, Biology, Geology, and Chemistry, and the most interesting of them all the "I don't think it means what you think it means" series where he explains the popular misconceptions.

  5. CGPGrey:
    Colin Gregory Palmer Grey is a London based Yankee who makes videos to simplify complex ideas. In his series “Grey Explains Things” he takes up complicated and misunderstood ideas and simplifies them. One of his classics is the difference between London, England and the City of London. Some of his videos have gone viral over the internet, making him an instant celebrity, although he prefers not to reveal his face on camera.


  6. TEDEd:
    TEDEd is an educational channel of TED.com. It is an online library of short, and concise videos whose ingredients are: cool animations, lucid narrations and high school level difficulty. This makes these videos extremely enjoyable at the same time being highly educational.


  7. Vihart:
    Vihart is a channel by Victoria Hart, who is a “recreational mathemusician” and a mathematics professional at the Khan Academy. She has turned the doodling on the back pages of the notebook in boring maths classes to interesting personalized video doodles while discussing different topics in mathematics.


  8. Vsauce:
    Vsauce is an educational YouTube channel created by Michael Stevens. In his most interesting videos he answers some popular and intriguing questions. The way he jumps from one topic to another in a videos is quite amusing. He also has many other series where he talks about cool stuff on the internet.


  9. SmarterEveryDay:
    Smarter Every Day is a channel by Destin. He describes his project as: “
    I explore the world using science. That's pretty much all there is to it. The goal is simple. Instead of just setting money aside for my 3 kids' college fund, I spend it on making videos to educate the masses. Any donations I receive or revenue from the videos then becomes the college fund. This makes me more aggressive at saving for their college, and EVERYBODY GETS TO LEARN!” I can assure you, he has plenty of cool stuff on his channel, which includes, a extremely high resolution picture of Machu Pichu, extreme Slow-Mo shots of some amazing and newly discovered species in the Amazon, and Guns!


  10. All Channels of video journalist Brady Haran:
    Sixty Symbols, Periodic Table of Videos, Deep Sky Videos, Numberphile, Testtube, Backstage Science.

Saturday, 1 December 2012

The Future of Learning


Many of us (including me and some of my friends) have gone through high school and college, cursing the way certain subjects were taught. It's not the fault of the teachers but the fault of the system. And with the changing times and technological advancement, the education system has to evolve too. Given the fact that there is generally a lack of good teachers around the whole world, we need to come up with something which will solve the problem of education. So being an addicted internet user, I was browsing through some YouTube videos when I came across a video about some basic topics on physics by a channel MinutePhysics, and I was fascinated with it! In the following days, I found few more channels which had similar educational yet interesting videos. So while I was getting more and more educational video recommendations, I bumped into a few TED talks about changing the educational system, and this post is about them. (Even if you don't read my commentary about the videos, I strongly suggest you should watch all of them.)

What is really the problem of the public education system?

The first one that I came across was by Sir Ken Robinson on what is wrong with the current education system (Do Schools Kill Creativity?) in which he talks about how education destroys creativity. As he says in the talk “Everybody is born as an artist, but we are educated out of creativity.” Who does actually benefit from the current system? As he points out, the education system was developed in the interest of industrialization and in the image of it. Schools are organised like factory lines, producing workers. We should stop teaching in schools with the production line mentlity. In other video (Bring on the Learning Revolution – I especially love the part between 10-15 min) he talks about reforming the education system to help kids to discover what they love to do rather than standardising everything. (I should mention here that I have become a great fan of Sir Robinson. He has such a great sense of humour and a British accent! No wonder his talks are so interesting!)

What can we do about it?

The talks from Sir Robinson summarize what is wrong with the education system. But what can we do about it? There is a brilliant talk by Sugata Mitra (SugataMitra's new expetiments in self teaching) on a radically new experiment and I don't want to take away any surprises by talking about it so you should go ahead right away and see it.

(Now assuming you have seen the above mentioned video) That was one way to reform education. What else can we do? Here is a talk by Salman Khan (No, not THAT Salman Khan) about how he got the idea about creating small videos about different topics which grew so much and went on to become one of the largest online high-school and undergrad level learning website. (Let's use video to reinvent education) (My favourite line - “If Isaac Newton had done YouTube videos about Calculus, I wouldn't have to!”) You can also go through this video for Khan's motivation and ideas (Year 2060: EducationPredictions)

And Salman Khan isn't the only one doing this, there are plenty of others who are following the same tracks where they want to convolve (YouTube like) videos to teach common things to students with exercises on websites which will monitor their progress, while teachers can focus on individual educational needs of children.

Another interesting video that I came across was by John Green. (PaperTown Academy) He talks about his thoughts as a student on growing up and getting a job, how he became a learner, and how the online community encourages students to get engaged into learning in a very entertaining way!

To finish off this compilation, I would recommend you to watch the following video (The Future of Learning, Networked Society ).

You can see that we are on the verge of a significant change in the educational system and it has already began and all of us should do whatever possible to improve the lives of the next generations!

Friday, 16 December 2011

Miroslav Klose – The Unsung Hero on the Green Turf

Miroslav Klose is the most familiar name in modern German Football. Those who have seen (any of) the last three world cups do not need a separate introduction of this goalscoring machine. The striker has been on the pinnacle of the German football for more than a decade now and was arguably the best striker of the last decade on the international level. He has the ability to score goals from almost any position. Although he is a right-footed player, he can score fantastic goals from left foot also, his powerful headers seem to burst the net. He doesn’t need a second touch to score a goal and can improvise from any situation to put the ball in the net. He is the ultimate predator. And who can forget his somersault celebrations? His different styles of flips are one more reason why he is favourite among the fans. The coaching staff of the German National team surely understand his importance to the team. Even when he is out of form, he is always included in the team, because when he wears the German colours, he will score goals.


Miroslav Klose

Klose comes from a sporting family. His mother, Barbara Jeż, was a member of Poland’s National Handball team, while his father, Josef Klose, was a professional footballer. He began his professional career at FC Homburg and played his club football at Homburg, Kaiserslautern, Werder Bremen and Bayern Munich, before leaving for Lazio last summer (2011). But it is not the club football that made him so famous. It is the international matches, especially the big competitions, that put him in the limelight. He has scored 14 goals in three World Cups finals, and he is tied with fellow German Legend Gerd Muller and just 1 goal behind Ronaldo in the all time WC goalscorers list. Klose is also the only player to have scored five or more goals in consecutive World Cups, as well as the only player to have scored at least four in three different tournaments. This is enough to make him a Legend. In 2001, he made a statement that in 10 years he would be the best German goal-scorer of all times. Well, he came very Klose to that. He is now just 5 goals behind Gerd Muller with a tally of 63 goals in 113 appearances.

Although sometimes regarded as a player whose success comes to full fruition more for country than club, Klose’s Bundesliga career was one of great accomplishment also. Playing for FC Kaiserslautern, Werder Bremen and Bayern Munich, Klose scored 126 goals in 316 league appearances, adding another 27 goals in European competition and 21 in Cup contests. He has scored an average of 0.40 goals per game, which is nearly equal to Raul’s tally of 0.41. But the pundits and critics always overlook this.

Another most important attribute of the German is his honesty and love of football. Klose is well known among his fellow players as being just and fair in his play (Which is hardly found in other players these days). He is never in the news for the wrong reasons. Even when he was not getting a regular first team action at Bayern recently, he never made a fuss about it publicly. Because of a series of injuries and the rise of Mario Gomez meant that Klose would be a second choice. Bayern were ready to offer him a year’s contract, but he wanted two years. Unfortunately no agreement was reached between the two and Klose was available in the transfer market. He received many lucrative offers from the Russian clubs but he turned them down and signed for Lazio in Italy. In today’s world where players change their loyalties for an increment, Klose certainly stood out as an exception. He is already back in form with 8 goals in 13 matches for Lazio and going strong! He is sure to play in the Euro ‘12 and is hoping to stay fit for the FIFA WC 2014 after which he wishes to hang his boots.

Here is an interesting fact about the right-footed striker: While playing with Werder Bremen he appeared to be fouled by the Bielefeld goalkeeper and given a penalty kick. Klose knowing he had not been fouled let the referee know and the call was revoked. He is admired by his fellow players for this. Could you possible picture Ronaldo or Messi doing the same? I don’t think so.

Such gentlemen are hard to find in modern times. I wish him all the best for his future at Lazio and I hope he will shine again in the club football and will continue to entertain us with his trademark somersaults.

Monday, 3 October 2011

भुलेश्वर मंदिर:

भुलेश्वर मंदिर:

भुलेश्वर हे पुण्यापासून साधारण ५५ किमी अंतरावर स्थित शंकराचे मंदिर आहे. हे मंदिर अंदाजे ख्रिस्तजन्मानंतर १२३० साली चौल्य वंशाच्या राजांनी हे मंदिर बांधले. तर काही जाणकारांच्या मते मुख्य मंदिराचे बांधकाम ८ व्या शतकामध्ये पांडव (?) वंशाच्या काळात झाले आणि बाह्य भिंतीचे काम १३ व्या शतकामध्ये झाले. पण एका गोष्टीवर सर्वांचे एकमत आहे कि मूळ मंदिराचे बांधकाम आधी झाले आणि त्यानंतर काही वर्षांनी बाह्य भिंत बांधली गेली. ( मंदिरासाठी वापरलेला दगड आणि भिंतीसाठी वापरलेला दगड हे पूर्णपणे वेगळे आहेत ). पेशव्यांचे गुरु श्री ब्रह्मेंद्र स्वामी (Dhawadshikar) ह्यांनी १८ व्या शतकामध्ये ह्या मंदिराचा जीर्णोद्धार केला.

ज्या डोंगरावर हे मंदिर स्थित आहे त्याला दौलतमंगल किल्ला (मंगळगड) म्हणतात. हा किल्ला १६३४ मध्ये मुरार जगदेव ह्याने बांधला. (ह्या मुरार जग्देवाने पुण्यावर १६३० मध्ये हल्ला केला आणि गाढवाचा नांगर फिरवला. त्याने हा किल्ला पुण्यावर नजर ठेवण्यासाठी बांधला).

हे मंदिर शिवलिंग, तसेच मंदिराच्या भिंतीवरील कलाकुसरीसाठी तसेच अत्यंत सुरेख आणि रेखीव मूर्तींसाठी अत्यंत प्रसिद्ध आहे.. तसेच भारतीय स्थापत्याचा एक उत्तम नमुना आहे. भाविकांची अशी श्रद्धा आहे कि जर आपली इच्छा पूर्ण झाली (देवाचा कौल मिळाला) तर देवाच्या पिंडीखाली ठेवला जाणारा प्रसाद गायब होतो. ह्या मंदिराचे दुसरे महत्त्व असे कि ह्या ठिकाणी पार्वती आणि शंकराने एकत्र नृत्य केले आणि पुढे कैलास पर्वतावर जाऊन लग्न केले असे मानले जाते.

ह्या मंदिरावर मुसलमान राज्यकर्त्यांची अनेक आक्रमणे झाली. त्यांनी ह्या मंदिराच्या अनेक मूर्ती तोडून टाकल्या, कलाकुसरीचा संपूर्ण नाश केला.. अनेक मूर्तींचे हात पाय आणि डोकी उडवली आहेत, तसेच त्यांचा नाश करण्याचा पुरेपूर प्रयत्न केला आहे. मंदिराचे हे भग्न रूप पाहून मन विशण्ण होते.

मंदिराकडे जाण्याचा मार्ग:
पुणे - सोलापूर महामार्गावर साधारण ४५ किमी अंतरावर यवत गावाच्या जवळ उजवीकडे मंदिराकडे जायला एक फाटा आहे. येथून ७ किमी अंतरावर हे मंदिर आहे. जाताना वाटेत अत्यंत तीव्र चढ असलेला घात लागतो. त्यामुळे वाहने सुस्थितीत असल्याची खात्री करून मगच जावे.

अधिक माहितीसाठी संपर्क साधा:

येथे काही छायाचित्रांच्या लिंक्स देत आहे.


मी काढलेली  छायाचित्रे:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/borkarabhijeet05/sets/72157626407645325/

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