Physics as a tool to understand social and many daily life issues

[rkumar]

Dear Friends,

I am intiating this thread to explain some day to day things by taking help of the well established laws of Physics. Hope I succeed in making things clear and helping members to have clear convictions about manythings, otherwise taken forgranted. I will take one example at a time under this thread and will discuss as many aspects of it as possible. I am sure there will be many questions from members. I will try my best to answer as we go along. How this thread proceeds, will depend upon the feedback and the interest of members.

1. Why hard work elevates us in society ?

Explanation: In physical terms the work done leads to increase in potential energy (W=mgh or W=Force.distance). If we take the first equation, work done on ourselves pushes up our position purely in physical terms. Same thing can be understood in wider social context where work done on ourselves will lead to our higher place in society. As we know, society has many layers. We can reach higher layers of society by working hard as expalined by simple work equation.

Like any equations in Physics, this equation also has many limitations when one tries to apply it in areas other than its conventional application. I will discuss the limitations and possible explanations as we go along. To make sure that you people get involved in debate, I myself won't raise the limitations of this equation..

Rajendra

 

[navingulia]

learning

Sir,
I feel it is not hard work alone which can make one move higher in society. Everybody has to do hard work but the onwe who learns is the one who moves forward/higher in society. Learning is very important.
Regards
Navin

 

[rkumar]

Sir,
I feel it is not hard work alone which can make one move higher in society. Everybody has to do hard work but the onwe who learns is the one who moves forward/higher in society. Learning is very important.
Regards
Navin

Thanks Navin. I was expecting this question and many more. I totally agree with you. In physics one is often taught about levers, the simplest form of tools to do the work. Knowledge is nothing but sort of lever. By right knowledge and appropriately placed fulcrum one can do any work. As we go along, I will discuss about the role of fulcrum in social context..

Regards
Rajendra

 

[raj2rif]

Dear Rajendra Ji,

Very nice comparision. I guess, not using one's skills regularly makes him forget them or makes one slow in doing the same job at a later stage. May be that can be compared with rusting. I guess a little chemistry is also involved in it.

 

[anujkumar]

to keep the thread going.......

Anything capable of storing past experience, can learn, that's artificial intelligence. But no purely physical object has that capacity. In physics future only depend on present (you present conditions and the your present surroundings), and your present physical attributes, completely independent of the past.

But this learning thing is two way sword, obviously it let beings transform from a completely ignorant biologiacal being to something which can function in real world, but all the worries, fears, complexes, prejudices and cunningness also comes along. So the elevated are those who learn but also learn to unlearn.

Thus because there is no comcept of learning in physics, it can not answer the human predicament that arise due to learning, otherwise physics would have been the only science. Chemestry is nothing but physics of atoms and molecules.

Jayada ho gaya !!

Anyway carry on!

 

[rkumar]

Famous quote of Archimedes is;
" Give me a firm place to stand and I would move the Earth".

Discovery of laws and invention of tools has been an outcome of human intelligence and therefore can not be separated from one another. Now without diverting too much from my topic and coming back to the concept of lever in executing the work, postion of the force and fulcrum plays very vital role. In social sence that amounts to your place in society and the contacts which you have as they lead to firming one's place. Intelligence helps in choosing the place of fulcrum.

Rajendra

 

[rkumar]

to keep the thread going.......

Anything capable of storing past experience, can learn, that's artificial intelligence. But no purely physical object has that capacity. In physics future only depend on present (you present conditions and the your present surroundings), and your present physical attributes, completely independent of the past.


Answer: Not really..Past, present and future, all are well connected..If future depends upon present, the present also has to be an outcome of past.. Our present is also a future of our past afterall.
...........................................................
But this learning thing is two way sword, obviously it let beings transform from a completely ignorant biologiacal being to something which can function in real world, but all the worries, fears, complexes, prejudices and cunningness also comes along. So the elevated are those who learn but also learn to unlearn.

Answer: Totally agree with you..Learning includes unlearning many of our habits and notions. Worries, fear, complexes and prejudices are a results of varying energy levels achived and the intelligence build with past experience and add to lack of our firmness in society..
....................................................
Thus because there is no comcept of learning in physics, it can not answer the human predicament that arise due to learning, otherwise physics would have been the only science. Chemestry is nothing but physics of atoms and molecules.

Answer: Concept of learning is everywhere and physics is no different to that. Learning is a process of firming our position where from we tend to move the world...

Rajendra

 

[rkumar]

Present world problems and law of Entropy

These days we talk of degradation of values all around, terrorism, drugs, rapes and whole lot of other problems. Are we doomed or is there any solution to all these problems ?

If we apply the law of Entropy over large population, chances are that things will get worst. Whatever solutions we can find, will work only at smaller scales or at personal level. We might have lots of energy, but we will have no ways to put it into action.. I can see it happening.. Are we facing functional social death exactly like how stars die in universe? I strongly believe so..

RK^2

 

[vinodks]

Before we even begin to make such outrageous parallels between physics and society its would be good to define terms...
Whats is entropy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy

dS = dQ / T

Whats social equivalent of Q and T?...
Is system closed or open?

How do "terrorism, drugs, rapes and whole lot of other problems" generate heat and how do we measure it?

One possible state of system (earth) in the ensemble is that all living beings are dead and lying quitely in graves or burned to ashes (i.e. NO "terrorism, drugs, rapes and whole lot of other problems") and planet would look pretty quiet, ordered and nice but still there could be overall increased entropy in the whole universe.

-vinod

These days we talk of degradation of values all around, terrorism, drugs, rapes and whole lot of other problems. Are we doomed or is there any solution to all these problems ?

If we apply the law of Entropy over large population, chances are that things will get worst. Whatever solutions we can find, will work only at smaller scales or at personal level. We might have lots of energy, but we will have no ways to put it into action.. I can see it happening.. Are we facing functional social death exactly like how stars die in universe? I strongly believe so..

RK^2

 

[vijay]

Physics in sync with social and daily life. And this Entropy concept make me laugh.

Whatever, please proceed.

No comments.

 

[rkumar]

Before we even begin to make such outrageous parallels between physics and society its would be good to define terms...
Whats is entropy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy

dS = dQ / T

Whats social equivalent of Q and T?...
Is system closed or open?

How do "terrorism, drugs, rapes and whole lot of other problems" generate heat and how do we measure it?

One possible state of system (earth) in the ensemble is that all living beings are dead and lying quitely in graves or burned to ashes (i.e. NO "terrorism, drugs, rapes and whole lot of other problems") and planet would look pretty quiet, ordered and nice but still there could be overall increased entropy in the whole universe.

-vinod

I see no reason why it can not be applied at social level. Afer all it has been applied in economics already. Broadly speaking all human activities can be broken into some sort of economic activities. As we know, entropy tells us about the level of useless energy or chaos in the system. Unwanted human behavior can be put into the category of useless or chaos and I am sure a quantitative theory can be developed.

RK^2

 

[spdeshwal]

Negative forces!

I have never studied physics after high school, so some of my views may sound stupid.And also i have some basic doubts and would like to have answers for them.

Is their any thing like negative force or forces? How we quantify them?

Isn’t ‘Friction’ a negative force?

Is it possible to quantify Friction? If yes, whether all type of frictions can be quantified? Can we quantify all the negative forces?

If we know the type of friction, we can visualize the remedial action.

Can we quantify the remedial Action?

Yes, we suggest every day to workers to bend their knees before lifting something.

Is it just to comply with Newton’s law?

I think more than any thing else we worry about worker’s safety in asking them to follow this practice.

I may come up with many more silly questions if spared by the negative forces.


Of-course my son recently had workshop on Physics and social issue or something like this. I don’t remember exactly what was the name given to that workshop but in essence the purpose was to support this very idea initiated by Rajenderji.

 

[spdeshwal]

How physic tools can be misused!

Idols drinking milk all over the world. Isn't fascinating?

A school kid must have told his mom,

nahni maa murti doodh nahi pee sakti, mahare masterji ne samjhaya tha aaj, yo te "Surface tension" ki kaaran ho se.

These things may not appeal to the scholar of physics but mean a lot to common people.

 

[deepakchoudhry]

Dharma Means Natural Laws.

From Gross, Subtle to Subtlest everything is governed by these laws.

Vedic Teachings are based on Natural Laws only.

Scientists throughout the human history have been inspired by nature to invent and discover its secret and then create something new.

No harm in using physics to explain how one can live effectively in society today.

I look forward to RK Uncle's contribution.

 

[poonam]

Well, lil’ off on a tangent..

Physics, not my area though, but has always managed to fascinate me, as one can not dissect one form of science from the other , its all so overlapping and interconnected. Any biological question can not be possibly answered without understanding the physics and chemistry behind it.

Anyway, the point here I wanted to make was related to more of the “unconventional” aspects of physics. Speaking of Physics, more or less on the similar plane as RK Sir has pointed out, I would like to mention Fritjof Capra, a physicist who wrote whole lot of “unconventional” aspects of Physics.

The spiritual/mystical/metaphysical version of Physics: I would recommend reading “Tao of Physics”, loved the book (though remember vaguely now, having read it long back). Lemme quote Capra what he himself says about the book:


"Five years ago, I had a beautiful experience which set me on a road that has led to the writing of this book. I was sitting by the ocean one late summer afternoon, watching the waves rolling in and feeling the rhythm of my breathing, when I suddenly became aware of my whole environment as being engaged in a gigantic cosmic dance. Being a physicist, I knew that the sand, rocks, water, and air around me were made of vibrating molecules and atoms, and that these consisted of particles which interacted with one another by creating and destroying other particles. I knew also that the earth's atmosphere was continually bombarded by showers of "cosmic rays," particles of high energy undergoing multiple collisions as they penetrated the air. All this was familiar to me from my research in high-energy physics, but until that moment I had only experienced it through graphs, diagrams, and mathematical theories. As I sat on that beach my former experiences came to life; I "saw" cascades of energy coming down from outer space, in which particles were created and destroyed in rhythmic pulses; I "saw" the atoms of the elements and those of my body participating in this cosmic dance of energy; I felt its rhythm and I "heard" its sound, and at that moment I knew that this was the Dance of Shiva, the Lord of Dancers worshiped by the Hindus."

More Holistic approach: The New Age Thinking, as stated by Capra himself, is more about the holistic approach in understanding the trends in social sphere. I was kind of impressed by the idea if the holistic viewpoint specified in his book “The Turning Point”.

The idea of looking at the “whole” was very impressive especially in the context of health care and its no surprise that its becoming a whole new and popular area in health care. There was an entire section on holistic approach of healing in a clinical conference which I attended lately. Its not just about a living body, its about the disharmony/imbalance in particular, which can be present in a body resulting in illness or in a society resulting in a chaos. Worth pasting an excerpt I lifted from his book:


"For the past three hundred years our culture has been dominated by the view of the human body as a machine, to be analyzed in terms of its parts. The mind is separated from the body, disease is seen as a malfunctioning of biological mechanisms, and health is defined as the absence of disease. This view is now slowly being eclipsed by a holistic and ecological conception of the world which sees the universe not as a machine but rather as a living system, a view that emphasizes the essential interrelatedness and interdependence of all phenomena and tries to understand nature not only in terms of fundamental structures but in terms of underlying dynamic processes. It would seem that the systems view of living organisms can provide the ideal basis for a new approach to health and health care that is fully consistent with the new paradigm and is rooted in our cultural heritage. The systems view of health is profoundly ecological and thus in harmony with the Hippocratic tradition which lies at the roots of Western medicine. It is a view based on scientific notions and expressed in terms of concepts and symbols which are part of our everyday language. At the same time the new framework naturally takes into account the spiritual dimensions of health and is thus in harmony with the views of many spiritual traditions."


Well, a must read!!..

 

[vinodks]

Yeah a good book. I read it when I was in undegrad. Well, it fascinated me then and I seriously used to think about bridging gap between mysticism and rational science. But he is too vague at times, a serious physicist won't give much attention to such metaphysical speculations. Anyway, I grew into dirty old experimentalist and those things don't fascinate me that much any more. Anyway, you guys might be right about this discussion but there is not much in it.

-vinod

whole lot of “unconventional” aspects of Physics.

The spiritual/mystical/metaphysical version of Physics: I would recommend reading “Tao of Physics”, loved the book (though remember vaguely now, having read it long back). Lemme quote Capra what he himself says about the book:

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[viveksiwatch]

classical...

Below are described the classical symptoms of a person under the influence of crystal methamphetamine or meth/ice

Ok, on a serious note, I have over the years read more than a dozen books on metaphysics and its digressed field of occult sciences.

I have no fixed mind set over them, though one has to be carefull about an ever looming line of demarcation between rationality and fiction. It is very easy to get 'carried' away with imagination as it is a basic human trait to be enthralled by the 'unknown'.

cheers,

vivek


"Five years ago, I had a beautiful experience which set me on a road that has led to the writing of this book. I was sitting by the ocean one late summer afternoon, watching the waves rolling in and feeling the rhythm of my breathing, when I suddenly became aware of my whole environment as being engaged in a gigantic cosmic dance. Being a physicist, I knew that the sand, rocks, water, and air around me were made of vibrating molecules and atoms, and that these consisted of particles which interacted with one another by creating and destroying other particles. I knew also that the earth's atmosphere was continually bombarded by showers of "cosmic rays," particles of high energy undergoing multiple collisions as they penetrated the air. All this was familiar to me from my research in high-energy physics, but until that moment I had only experienced it through graphs, diagrams, and mathematical theories. As I sat on that beach my former experiences came to life; I "saw" cascades of energy coming down from outer space, in which particles were created and destroyed in rhythmic pulses; I "saw" the atoms of the elements and those of my body participating in this cosmic dance of energy; I felt its rhythm and I "heard" its sound, and at that moment I knew that this was the Dance of Shiva, the Lord of Dancers worshiped by the Hindus."