ARTICLES BY S G Tiwari
=================
This following article was prepared by L G Patwardhan from the lecture of P D Arole who was deputed by UNO for imparting computer training to some persons on this island. However this was presented by S G Tiwari
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Niue Island
==========
This island is situated in the southern hemi sphere, to the north of Newzealand and east of Australia, in Pacific Ocean. It is 2000km from newzealand, 560km. From Samoa, 400km, from Tonga and 12-00km. from Cook Islands.
It is only 25ft.above sea level and the shore does not have sand but is made of of boulders,
The population is about 2000 heads and of Polynesian origin. The people are generally obese, and have a wheat competition. The area of the island is 256sq.km and the population is distributed in 14 villages, which are connected by a 55km road.
There are 50 to 60 caves about 3miles deep and with total darkness. One has creep through because of inadequate headroom, with the help of torchlights. You come across stalagmites inside the caves. Coral found in sea near the seashore.
This island was separated from newzealand in 1974 and formed as ‘island with free association with newzealand’ about 15000 national of Niue stay in newzealand while some reside in Australia for living.
The currency is of Newzealand $ ans Newzealand support @$1000/person to Niue residents. Simultaneously it is also helping them to become self-reliant.
Every year during July to August whales are seen near the shore. Due to gusty winds blowholes are formed in rocky strata and sea water gushes out like fountains. This however can be viewed from a little distance from the shore.
The island is administered thus: - a representative from each village is elected and 6 are nominated by newzealand govt. The assembly thus comprises of 20 elected/ nominated members. There is a peculiarity in the election process. The ballot paper indicates names of all the candidates and one has to ‘score out’ the names of the unwanted persons. In case one forgets to score out names, the ballot becomes invalid.
The literacy is 100% and the population is Christian religion. There are 5/6 sub cast among them. English is the official language and there is a niue-english dictionary.
Inspite of being a small island on many occasions new coins are minted. Also new varities of postal stamps featuring whales, bird’s etc. Are printed.
Every year around November, storms occur in the sea when big boulders are thrown on the island by heavy stormy waves.
Some cultural traditions: - The boys get their heads clean shaven at the age of 5or 6 years. The elderly persons in the house cut small locks of hair and finally the barber gives the ceremonial clean shave.
In case of girls the ear is pierced. After this ritual, the entire community enjoys the meals. Of course all the ladies render help in cooking etc. Presents are in cash. A detail list of presenters is made for future record. The reminder of eatables are taken away by all while returning home. The head of family gives in return the presents to all households.
Every village celebrates a ‘village day.’ On this day an exhibition is held showing housemade, artifacts, garments. There is a common lunch. Cricket is played after lunch. The over consists of six balls but every ball is bowled one from each end. There is a compulsory runner who holds a long stick and hence chance of being ‘Runout’ is remote! The only way to get out is either a catch or cleans bold. 15 to 20 Overs are allotted to each team and this is played for 2 to 3 hours.
There is no permission granted for casinos or nightclubs. Theft is very seldom. There is one policeman attached to each village. Chief administrator is appointed by Newzealand. You will find snakes or frog here!
Taro is main staple grain. Papayas, sweet- potatoes, coconuts are boiled together and to this sugar is added. Coconut water is in plenty.
All young force is either in Newzealand or Australia for its livelihood and perforce only old people and lady folk live on the island bringing up the children. There is a school upto 12th STD.
No extravaganza, materialism are still far off the population!
Tourists are well received here. They are received by flower and bead garlands. They reach here by yacht from nearby islands. There are only 2 hotels for tourists. Every month a shipment reaches this island bringing provisions and this day is declared as a holiday. Aeroplane service is available once a week. Cycles and motors from the main transport.
Diabetes is found mostly among the residents. There is a hospital here. However emergency cases are airlifted to Newzealand.
Christmas is celebrated twice here. The menfolk celebrate Xmas at Newzealand/Australia and return to Niue and join their families to celebrate once again. This is because of the ‘International Date Line’ falling in between Niue and Newzealand and Australia.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2) FIGHT FOR APSARA
================
By S G Tewari
----------------
This is not the Apsara you may be having in mind.This a psara is not even distantly related to Urvashi or Menakaand is not even beautiful to look at.However,it has abluish glow in her heart full of water.Some of you musthave seen that glow on top of her head!Do you know the name of that bluish halo.No.It is called Cerenkov radiation.Nowsome of you must have guessed which apsara I am talking about.It is India's first atomic reactor. The fight for this apsara among two schools of thoughtwas extremely interesting.It was not a fight between two political parties in Parliament but between two group of scientists from east and west.The group from east wantedmore study on the type of similar apsaras in some western countries before a decision is made about Indian Apsara.The group from west,however, wanted a specific configuration without wasting much time on such studies,which to some extent have already been done.The battle lines were drawn and an umpire accetable to bothsides had to be chosen.He was none other than India's firstPrime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru.
I , a young researcher in the National Physical Laboratory(NPL) at New Delhi at that time,was an eyewitnessto this battle of arguements and counterarguements betweenthe two sides. The debate was held in the hall of the library of NPL.We were asked not to enter the library between 10 to 5.Though there was no security to check at the entrance,wefollowed the instructions faithfully.I was extremely interested to hear the proceedings andhence thought of a plan. The library was spread over three floors and there wasanother entrance to the library at the back door located atthe top floor.This door could only be approached through aroom alloted to INSDOC(Indian National ScientificDocumentation Center),where I had a friend.A spiralstaircase was going from this to the ground floor of thelibrary.From this door I reached the far end of the hallwhere the action was to unfold.I hid behind a rack ofjournals.From here I could hear the entire discussion. The group from the east was lead by Dr.M.N.Saha and thatof the west by Dr.H.J.Bhabha.Saha was supported by S.N.Bose(of Bose-Einstein Statistics fame).There were a few more scientists from Indian association for cultivation of science.Similarly Bhabha was supported by RajaRamanna,Ganguli and others.
Saha's arguement was that we must make a detailed studyof long term behaviour of such reactors already operatingin different parts of the world.Their stability, problemsencountered safety aspects etc.Also the type of fuel touse,natural uranium and heavy water or enriched uranium. Also what moderator,water or graphite and a host of otherparameters.Several alternatives were presented and detailedstudy for each combination should be done before taking a decision.Even the location of such reactor became a debating point.Saha wanted it in Calcutta,where he was planning to build a cyclotron.Bhabha's arguement was that some studies have already been done .They ruled out graphite as moderator for several reasons.His group wanted light water and enriched Uraniumto be imported from U.K..
Arguements and counterarguements were going on and PrimeMinister Nehru sat bewildered for the full day from 10 to5.No consensus could emerge after the first day.I was exhausted sitting on a stool between the rack of journalsbut curiosity got the better of me and I continued.It is said that if necessity is the mother of invention,curiosity the grandmother! I thought that Mr.Nehru may not come next day,but as I saw his car entering NPL gate a few minutes before 10,I rushed to the same place. Next day was no better.Some more papers were cited from both groups and there was complete deadlock.Nehru appeared disgusted and visibly annoyed.Bhabha and Saha both appeared exhausted and looked dejected. Mr.Nehru then suddenly got up and asked Dr.K.S.Krishnan,the then Director of NPL for his opinion.Krishnan was sitting during this debate but did not take part.He gave a brief summary of what both sides had to say then in his characteristic style narrated a story which wass omething like this: Once a research student joined the famous German mathematician Jacobi who gave him a problem to work on. After about three months Jacobi asked the student about hisp rogress..The student replied that he was still studying the literature related to this problem.After another six months Jacobi got the same reply. Jacobi gave him another six months and the student said that so much literature is coming month after month and he is still reading all that literature.Finally Jacobi lost his patience and said,"Mydear boy start somewhere.Papers will keep coming and you can't afford to keep on reading all the literature of theworld before you start your own research.Then continued,If your father before marrying your mother had seen all the girls of the world before deciding on to your mother,where would you be let alone your research!.So my dear start somewhere and don't wait to read all the literature of the world before starting."So let us have light water moderated enriched Uranium reactor at Bombay. Afterall this is not going to be the last reactor of India.The decision was made.Nehru got up approved this approachand thanked Krishnan profusely.I saw Bhabha embracing Krishnan and almost lifted him up. Epilogue: This reactor became critical on August 4,1956. It's power level is 1 MW(thermal) Fuel is 3 Kgs.enrichedUranium.Used for isotope production,basic research , shielding experiments and Neutron activation analysis.Amen.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3) DATING
========
S.G.Tewari
-------------
In this forum we hear Bhajans,Philosophical discourses andsome topics concerning spirituality and metaphysics.I therefore,thought of introducing some topics on NaturalPhilosophy for a change!I ,today propose to talk on Dating.This is not the dating which some of you might of attemptednearly half a century ago and failed.If you had beensuccessful at that time ,you would be repenting today! Let me give you a hint by putting a suffix and callRadiometric dating or radioactive dating.Again your guesswas wrong.No, it does not mean that you would becomeradioactive if you date.No not at all. This is a technique by which you can determine the age ofany rock or mineral.You can also determine the age of theearth by these methods. Also, the age of say, pottery foundin Harappa and Mohenjodaro,or the age of fossils found indifferent rocks. You may be familiar with the term radioactivity.If notlet me explain in a simple way.There are some elementsfound in nature like Uranium,Thorium, Radium etc. whichemit some kind of radiation spontaneously without anyprovocation.If you heat these elements, cool them,apply anyamount of pressure,this property of emission does not alteror stop.This peculiar phenomenon is called Radioactivity. Our ancients thought of five elementsearth,fire,water,sky and air.They could have reduced theseonly to one namely earth.Why?Because earth contains all the 92 elements found in nature so far , fromHydrogen to Uranium .Out of these Uranium,Thorium,Radiumas mentioned earlier are radioactive that is these exhibitthe property of radioactivity.Geochronologists haveexploited this property to determine the ages of a widevariety of rocks from earth and moon.Archeologistsdetermine the ages of pottery unearthed duringexcavations,palentologists determine the ages of fossils. We therefore see that radioactivity is an extremelyuseful tool. Let us look at radioactivity from a different perspective.If we presume that all the elements were made by God,thenradioactivity is due to mistakes committed by God!When He assembled, say Uranium,why did he put more building blocksthan necessary.Thus elements like Uranium and Thorium whichhad more than the required blocks keep on throwing theexcess blocks till these 'realise' that enough blocks havebeen thrown to attain stability.These excess blocks thrownout manifest in the form of particles which gives rise toradioactivity.It is like a multistoried buildingwhose foundation could stand only a single floor.Such abuilding will collapse till it becomes stable afterthrowing all the extra floors.In buildingcollapse,generally all floors fall in a very short time notso in radioactivity.It has a wide range of times before aradioactive element becomes stable.It can vary from a fewseconds to a million years!The range is like distances ofheavenly bodies from a few light secondsto billion light years. One more aspect also has to be noted that when theradioactive element attains stability it loses itsidentity.For example Uranium is converted into Lead.Like amultistoried building,after attaining stability it nolonger remains multistoried. As mentioned earlier this property of radioactivity hasbeen exploited in dating of rocks.If we can determine therate of decay of say Uranium and its amount today together with the amount of its final stable product Lead,we cancalculate how much time must have elapsed before thisquantity of Lead was formed.Hence by this ratio of Uraniumto Lead we can calculate the age of the rock.Now if we determine the age of the oldest rock in theearth's crust,we determine the age of the earth. Uranium-Lead is not the only method of agedetermination.There are several others likePotassium-Argon,but I am not going to discuss those here.IfI did then people who were alert so far will start dozingand those dozing will start snoring! There is a totally different method of dating certainfossils and organic material like ancient trees.That iscalled radiocarbon dating. Dating of pottery is done by a method using the propertyof thermoluminiscence.It is measuring the light emitted bysome materials when heated.By measuring the colour andintensity of light emitted ages are calculated. This way ages of all ancient artefacts can be determinedfor example ages of paintings from the oraganic paint used. However all these methods will fail if you attempted todetermine the ages of filmstars!Your determination will bedecades away from their ages given in their imaginaryhoroscopes if any!
(Writer was working as a Reseach Scientist at National Physical Laboratory,New Delhi, India.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------