Marvels of Science

I remember the first lecture of Chemistry in my 11th Standard. Our professor, who had taken a sabbatical from the college and taught in Nigeria before resuming his duty in a college in Changanassery in Kerala, was a very humourous person. He explained the concept of the structure of atom very simply to the class in our all boys college - "You know, whenever I happen to walk across to teach some class in the girls college, (which was behind the boys college), I find most boys walking around the compound of the girls college. The guys are obviously walking around the college walls in the faint hope of seeing some of the girls of their liking through their hostel windows. Clearly there is an attraction of the girls, which is what making the boys roam around the college compound in the hot sun. Now imagine the structure of the atom, which is quite similar. The electrons roam around the centre of the atom, which consists of the positively charged protons and neutrons. And they do that perpetually." Men being men, the imagination of the structure of atom was quite vivid to all of us guys and I am sure that to this day, none of us have forgotten the structure of atom. There was brief reference to Max Planck and his theory of quantum physics - the fact electromagnetic radiation released and absorbed quantas of energy. I had then forgotten all about it. Science has has obviously not stopped developing since then. While reading the book " God and New Physics" by Paul Davies, my interest in physics was revived albeit marginally considering the lack of time. What I found interesting was there were so many things that have since evolved, the study has gone beyond explaining the structure of the atom and the smallest of the then known particles - electron, protons and neutron.Scientists are still trying to explain various phenomena including energies, mass and the big bang explosion. For eg, Paul Davies explains that if an electron gun is directed at a wall , it is impossible to predict where an electron emanates and which direction it takes. Scientists are still unavailable to explain the black hole, which constitutes a major portion of our universe or across galaxies. In the Discovery channel, a series presented by the famous movie star, Morgan Freeman, a lucid presentation of evolution of scientific theory, makes us wonder at the extent of involvement that scientists across the world are trying to explain how the world came into existence. The Large Hadron Collider, is the world's largest and highest energy particle accelerator, where the scientists are trying to recreate the Big bang in miniature way and to find the Higg's boson (a particle, if found could possibly explain a lot of unproven theories). In the interim, my son is hoping to clear his academics before Higgs boson is added to the school curriculum.