Monday, October 31, 2016

October 31, 2016 Monday

Bedtime Story 


The Physics of CRT RAM



By the end of the war, the idea of an electronic computing machine had been firmly established due to the likes of Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, Tommy Flowers (designer of the Collosus series at the Bletchley Park), John von Neumann among others.

One among many hindrances in the development of a computing machine was the absence of means of storing instructions or data.

It was in the immediate post-war years of 1946-47 that these 2 men came up with the invention that carries their name and is called the Williams-Kilburn tube.

Ask yourself how a scintillating screen that is coated with phosphor can store information.

Just thinking about a problem without coming to an answer is a reward in itself as it can make life very exhilarating and meaningful.

Let us consider what happens when a beam of electron or rather a single electron hits the phosphor coated screen on the cathode ray tube.

When an electron hits the phosphor atom (with added impurities), it exhibits the phenomenon of fluorescence.

Fluorescence is essentially absorption of electromagnetic energy of high energy and release of energy of low energy that is explained by the quantum nature of arrangement of electrons in an atom.

So we see a glow in the cathode ray tube.

That is a well understood by anybody who has attended his physics laboratory during his high school science courses.

When the beam of electrons having energy beyond certain threshold and hits a phosphor atom, then the phosphor atom besides releasing electromagnetic energy of lower frequency may end up releasing or losing an electron.

This in physics is known as secondary emission and the electrons released are known as secondary electrons.

These released electrons do not possess sufficient energy or momentum to fly away too far and hence fall back after travelling a short distance.

During that short duration of time before their emission and recapture back by the coated surface, in that spot for a very brief period a relative positive charge is created.

Technically it is known as a charge well or the potential well.

We are talking of extremely small dimensions where quantum mechanical behavior takes over.

These 2 bright men Kilburn and Williams realized that this charge well so created can be used to represent a single binary digit.         

 Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/

Good night and my fellow cousin ape.

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an IIT graduate and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:


All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:


For edutainment and English education of your children, may I suggest this large collection of Kids Songs:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMX11Z5SJQ3kgwSsFJLRIcg


                             Basic circuit of a CRT RAM

Sunday, October 30, 2016

October 30, 2016 Sunday

Bedtime Story


The First Computer RAM was a Cathode Ray Tube!


It came quite a shock to me to know that the first electronic memory devise was a cathode ray tube or the CRT.

A CRT is essentially a vacuum tube (on which I have dedicated few nights of bedtime stories) with an electron gun and a phosphorescent screen.

This is the same vacuum tube that were used by the legendary J.J. Thomson to identify electrons in the Univeristy of Manchester in 1897! 

This same cathode ray tube was used in the early television sets to generate images.

And it is this same vacuum tube that have the capacity to act as logical gates and perform mathematical operations! 

Damn!

Left to myself, I would never have thought of utilizing an empty glass tube in this manner.

Given the contributions of these vacuum tubes to us modern apes, if we were even reasonably close to being rational, we ought to be worshipping these air-deprived glass tubes rather than the bizarre array of anthropomorphic gods.

Not only were the cathode ray tubes first electronic storage devices, they were also randomly-accessible. 

The word random-access implies that the time taken to retrieve or “recall” a data by a device does not depend on the physical location of data.

This is in contrast to a devise such as a magnetic tape in a cassette or a compact disc ReWritable where the data is written down in a consecutive manner and hence the time taken to retrieve the data will depend on where on the tape or disc it was stored. 

The idea to use the CRT as a data storage device came from 2 men who were working on radar at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) first at Worth Matravers in Dorset county and later at Malvern, Worcestershire in the United Kingdom. 

One of them was Frederic Williams an Engineer and the other Tom Kilburn, a mathematician and a computer scientist.

William had recruited Kilburn first at the TRE in Malvern during the World War II to develop the radar.

Later, after the war from December 1946 onwards, they worked together at the Victoria University of Manchester to develop computer.

It was here that they first tackled the problem of storage for a computer.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/

Good night and my fellow cousin ape.

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an IIT graduate and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

For edutainment and English education of your children, may I suggest this large collection of Kids Songs:


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMX11Z5SJQ3kgwSsFJLRIcg


                                       A Cathode Ray Tube


                            Tom Kilburn and Freddie Williams

An Even Better Picture

Saturday, October 29, 2016

October 29, 2016 Saturday

Bedtime Story 


Hans Bethe Rescues His Mother with His Nobel Prize Winning Paper
(Now lets see who can call mathematical physics useless)



If you recall (I really do not expect you to), Hans Bethe after the Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics held on March 17, 1938 had collaborated with Charles Critchfield on 2 papers explaining how the sun shines.

The first paper outlined the proton-proton cycle and the second one the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) cycle.

Bethe had send both the papers to the journal Physical Review for publication.

The problem with publishing scientific papers is that you don’t get paid; rather you need to pay to the journal for publishing.

It so happened that one of his student Robert Marshak came upon an advertisement.

The New York Academy of Sciences was proffering a reward of $500 for the best paper on solar or stellar processes.

Of course, it had to be both original and unpublished.

Bethe rescinded his CNO paper from the journal and instead submitted it to the New York Academy of Sciences.

It won the best paper award along with the $500 that went along with it.

Robert Marshak was given $50 as a reward for his information (America works on reward on punishment) and Bethe used $250 (a substantial amount) to help his mother settle in the land of free and enterprising.

This second paper which won the $500 prize money later went on to fetch more fortune and even fame for Hans Bethe.

The two papers earned him the Nobel Prize for Physics of 1967 for providing us human apes the understanding of how stars and our sun shine (till then it was attributed to gods as anything not understood is.)

After his 2 monumental papers and getting his mother out of the violent Europe, Hans Bethe like any ape found a mate and reproduced.

In 1941 he became an American citizen (a fascinating ritual that I was fortunate to attend thanks to mon ami) and this is what Bethe had to say about his naturalization and America:

“I am much more at home in America than I ever was in Germany.

“As if I was born in Germany only by mistake, and only came to my true homeland at 28.”

In this, Hans Bethe was reflecting the sentiments and feelings of millions who had arrived and millions to arrive in the great nation that was once a tiny thin strip of 13 colonies who revolted against the Empire in 1776 calling themselves United States of America.

Who would have thought then this tiny strip of a newly declared nation would 150 years on become the world’s super power in every sense of the word and home to the most gifted and talented.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/

Good night and my fellow cousin ape.

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an IIT graduate and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:


All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:


For edutainment and English education of your children, may I suggest this large collection of Kids Songs:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMX11Z5SJQ3kgwSsFJLRIcg


He not only explained why and how the sun shines, but also explained how elements are created (at least till the Oxygen from hydrogen and alpha particles) in the stars. 


His two 1938-39 papers not only earned him the $500 award money which he used to save his mother from the Nazis but also went on to earn him the Nobel Prize in 1967.

Friday, October 28, 2016

October 28, 2015 Friday

Bedtime Story 


Jews Flee Germany after the Kristallnacht 1938


          
After that unforgettable hellish night, Hermann Göring, the founder of Gestapo and the future commander of the Luftwaffe (Reich’s formidable air force built up secretly after World War I moratorium) was very unhappy with the destruction of the Jewish properties.

He complained directly to Reinhard Heydrich, a human butcher of top class and said:

“I’d rather you guys had done in 200 Jews than destroy so many valuable assets!”

On November 12 just as the rioting had ended, in the meeting of the elite brass of the Nazi leaders Göring said:

“I have received a letter on the Führer’s orders requesting that the Jewish question be now, once and for all, coordinated and solved one way or another…

“I should not want to leave any doubt, gentlemen, as to the aim of today’s meeting.

“We have not come here merely to talk again, but to made decisions, and I implore all competent agencies to take all measures for the elimination of the Jew from the German economy, and to submit them to me”.

The loot and destruction of Jewish businesses and professions continued to go on after that deadly night.

Over this the Nazis had the impudence to foist on the Jewish community a collective tax of 1 billion Reichsmark for the murder of vom Rath and 6 million for the destruction of their property.

The Jews knew they have had it.

In the next ten months, more than 115,000 Jews left Germany, one among them being the mother of Hans Bethe.

The quota of Germans who could emigrate to America got full rapidly just like it gets these days for Indians scooting off (a favorite term of my dear friend) to the land of milk and honey on H1B visa.

Bethe’s mother Anna entered America through the French quota as she was from Strasbourg, a city in France but at the border of Germany.

Do you know how Hans Bethe raised money to help his mother Anna?

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/

Good night and my fellow cousin ape.

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an IIT graduate and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:


All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:


For edutainment and English education of your children, may I suggest this large collection of Kids Songs:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMX11Z5SJQ3kgwSsFJLRIcg


Jews Arriving in America just before the Holocaust 



Limping from the recession, most Americans did not wish to take them in



Thursday, October 27, 2016

October 27, 2016 Thursday

Bedtime Story 


Kristallnacht November 9, 1938



The rioting that was unleashed on the night of November 9 and carried till the dawn of November 10 goes by the epithet of Kristallnacht, a very apt sobriquet.

The dogs of war were released in waves starting first with the Gauleiters (essentially Nazi party henchmen) followed later by the SA (Sturmabteilung = Storm Detachment) the paramilitary force of the party.

To finish off the carnage came the deadly SS Schutzstaffel run by the Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler.

SS grew from a small elite and fiercely loyal (to Hitler) force of 8 (the Führer did not even trust the SA, the Brownshirts) to become the most powerful and lethal organization of the Nazi Germany.

It was this Schutzstaffel that instilled fear and terror in the heart of Europeans and was most responsible for carrying out “the Final Solution to the Jewish Question”.

You should be quite aghast to know that the subject of the “Jewish Question” was first raised in Great Britain somewhere in mid 1700s.

Later it was a matter of discussion in France after its revolution and enlightenment and finally Germany decided to settle it once and for all with their perfect solution.

That night, all over Germany and Austria (recently run over by the Germans), Jewish businesses, homes, synagogues and Jews themselves were systematically targeted, destroyed and killed.

The numbers to me seem pointless, but beside all the havoc, destruction and killings, that night some 30,000 young Jewish men were rounded up and taken to concentration camps.

This was the beginning of the end.

While the pogrom in the nation ended on November 11, the beatings of the men in the concentration camps begun.

“They were beaten so bad that their skulls had smashed, eyes knocked out, faces flattened shapeless” as reported in the News Chronicle of London.

A Daily Telegraph correspondent wrote:

“Racial hatred and hysteria seemed to have taken a complete hold of otherwise decent people. 

“I saw fashionably dressed women clapping their hands and screaming with glee, while respectable middle-class mothers held up their babies to see the fun.”

Of course, not all Germans conducted themselves this cruelly and diabolically.

Yet as the saying goes,

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” as often happens in most cases.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/

Good night and my fellow cousin ape.

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an IIT graduate and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:


All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:


For edutainment and English education of your children, may I suggest this large collection of Kids Songs:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMX11Z5SJQ3kgwSsFJLRIcg




Heinrich Himmler - the man behind the dreaded Schutzstaffel and the Einsatzgruppen or the Task Forces...In short, the human killing machines



A member of Einsatzgruppen operating under Schutzstaffel on his way to killing a mother who is shielding her child at Ivangorod in Ukraine of 1942. Human bestiality is never too far deep under the skin. An iconic image that we all must keep in our drawing rooms to remind us that we are all capable of barbaric atrocities.   

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

October 26, 2016 Wednesday

Bedtime Story


Conditions Were Perfect for the Reich to Orchestrate its First Pogrom



November 9, the day Ernst vom Rath was declared dead was very special for the Nazis.

On the very same day, in 1923, fifteen years ago, Hitler and his gang of Nazi thugs had tried to seize power in Munich, Bavaria.

This failed coup is famously known as the Beer Hall Putsch from where Adolf Hitler actually rose to fame.

The Nazis considered it as their most celebrated day and designated it as the “Day of the Movement”.

It was the first time that Hitler gave the demonstration of his magical oratory skill.

Dr. Karl Mueller, an eye witness of the event and also a professor of modern history had to say this after Adolf Hitler gave a short speech to the crowded auditorium explaining the reason for the putsch:

“I cannot remember in my entire life such a change in attitude of a crowd in a few minutes, almost a few seconds…  

“Hitler had turned them inside out, as one turns a glove inside out, with a few sentences.

It had almost something of hocus-pocus, or magic about it”.

The date set the mind of the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels racing.

He knew how to exploit it.

He came forth with a crafty, Machiavellian speech in the same beer hall where 15 years ago Hitler had given his.

In it he said that it would be perfectly understandable if the German people outraged by this assassination would take the law into their own hands and stormed Jewish homes, businesses and places of worship.

He said, “Führer has decided that such demonstrations should not be organized by the party, but in so far as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.”

Having said this, the dogs were let loose (essentially party men in civilian clothes) with secret telegrams sent by Reinhard Heydrich to the police and security personnel not to interfere in such “spontaneous rioting”.

Kristallnacht had begun by 10.30 pm of the November 9, 1938 barely 2 hours after the death of vom Rath.

I must bring to your notice mon ami that Kristallnacht is a classic and a thoroughly studied example of the way any riot, pogrom and genocide is orchestrated by the state against any ethnic minority.

We in South Asia have the privilege of witnessing such bloodbath with unsurprising regularity so much so that they scarcely shock us, amaze us or for that matter, interest us.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/

Good night and my fellow cousin ape.

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an IIT graduate and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:


All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:


For edutainment and English education of your children, may I suggest this large collection of Kids Songs:


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMX11Z5SJQ3kgwSsFJLRIcg


Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda another powerful orator found the death of vom Rath and the date November 9 the perfect combination to spew his antisemitic venom on to the masses

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

October 25, 2016 Tuesday



Bedtime Story The Angry Herschel Grynszpan shoots Ernst vom Rath



Herschel Grynszpan stormed out of his uncle’s house, angry and bitter.

That night he spent outside at some cheap lodge.

With some francs that he had, he wrote a postcard to his family (but not dispatching it) and bought a 6.35 mm bore revolver and bullets.

It was a Monday morning of November 7, 1938 in Paris when Herschel headed to the German embassy.

At the embassy he claimed to be a German citizen with a “most important document” for “His Excellency, the ambassador”.

Little did he know that he had just walked past the German ambassador Count Johannes von Welczeck who as usual was going out for his morning walk.

Grynszpan probably wanted to meet the German ambassador Count von Welczeck.

Instead, the officer at station asked a junior diplomat Ernst vom Rath to attend to the young man with a “most important document”.

Grynszpan coolly entered the office of vom Rath, and on being asked to show that document of his, took out his revolver and shot vom Rath 5 times in the abdomen.

Hitler dispatched his two best doctors to Paris, a physician and a surgeon, to save the 29-year-old diplomat who he himself had recently promoted to the rank of Legal Consul, First Class.

Back then in 1932, the only available commercial antibiotics were the first sulfonamide Prontosil, a prodrug, the active compound later discovered to be sulfanilamide.

Even blood banking had only recently been started as late as in 1936 when it was discovered in early 1920s that blood could be stored using anticoagulants and refrigeration.

In addition, the 5 bullet shots had inflicted grievous damage to vital organs such as pancreas, spleen and stomach.

Ernst vom Rath was declared dead on November 9, 2019 at 5.30 pm local time. 

His body was taken to Düsseldorf, Germany where it was given a state funeral attended by Hitler and the Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, his close confidant.

This was just the pretext that Germany was looking for to initiate the Final Solution.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/

Good night and my fellow cousin ape.

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an IIT graduate and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:


All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:


For edutainment and English education of your children, may I suggest this large collection of Kids Songs:


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMX11Z5SJQ3kgwSsFJLRIcg


17 year old Herschel Grynszpan and 28 year old Ernst vom Rath 


These shots echoed very loud and long 

Monday, October 24, 2016

October 24, 2016 Monday

Bedtime Story


Expulsion/Deportation Begins in 1938: Starting with Polish Jews



In the 1920s, the Jews were very well integrated in the German society.

It all started in 1933 with the rise of Hitler after the Reichstag Fire when the new Civil Service Law was passed banning all Jews or non-Aryans to occupy any government posts.

It was soon extended to all professions, whether government or private.

In short, these new laws greatly curbed their right to make a living, right to educate themselves and in general, rights of a full citizenship.

Still there was no deportation; not yet.

Then in 1938, all foreigners, especially Jews of foreign origins were ordered to leave Germany.

Polish Jews being the most in number were the prime target.

Their misery was supplemented and aggravated when Poland refused to accept them.

As they were getting ferried in the police trucks and lorries to the German border, ordinary Germans on the streets were shouting with contempt and utter scorn:

 “Jews out, out to Palestine!”

Of the 12,000 Polish Jews who were getting expelled was a family by the name of Sendel and Riva Grynszpan who had settled in Hanover and worked as a tailor to make a living.

They had 6 children only 3 of whom survived their childhood to become adults.

The youngest of them was Herschel Grynszpan who facing segregation and discrimination in schools by other children developed pride in his Eastern Jewishness (Ostjuden).

When he was 14, his parents sent him to Paris to live with his uncle and aunt anticipating the fact that things would go from bad to worse for the Jews in Germany (He tried to immigrate to Palestine first but failed).

In France he turned out to be an illegal immigrant, a stateless person making it impossible to either work or educate himself.

Herschel was growing increasingly lonely and desperate with no skills or education and at the same time facing the displeasure of his uncle and aunt; he began to miss his family intensely.

Soon by 1938 the French police were on the hunt for him to deport him; it was a time of intense dread and distress for this young confused man who could not understand why the world was so much against him.

It was during these stressful days that he received a postcard from his family (written by his sister Berta) asking for some money describing how the Germans had expelled them from their homes.

He begged and implored his uncle to spare some money for his family but his uncle would not have a word of it, saying already he was under both financial strain and legal jeopardy harboring an illegal immigrant.

Such, mom ami, were the conditions in Europe (Yes, West Europe) just a few decades ago.   

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/

Good night and my fellow cousin ape.

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an IIT graduate and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:


All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:


For edutainment and English education of your children, may I suggest this large collection of Kids Songs:


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMX11Z5SJQ3kgwSsFJLRIcg


Poland history is as tragic as that of the Indian subcontinent with Polish Jews becoming the first victims of the Holocaust. By the end of 1938, all Polish Jews were asked to leave Germany. What was worse was Poland refused to accept them in that bitter and hungry winter.

Sunday, October 23, 2016

October 23, 2016 Sunday

Bedtime Story


Belief Perseverence: Concenputal Inflexibility



Beside the obedience to authority explanation, Milgram also came along with a parallel explanation which could also account both by itself and along the obedience theory the strange outcome of his experiments.

He beseeched upon the idea of belief persiverence, one of the most ubiquitous cognitive fallacies and mental biases of human apes.

He wrote, “What people cannot be counted on is to realize that a seemingly benevolent authority is in fact malevolent, even when they are faced with overwhelming evidence which suggests that this authority is indeed malevolent.”

Why the phenomenon of belief persiverence is so rife and pervasive in us apes is not known, but many claim that we have a deep-rooted requirement of continuity combined with a powerful instinct to resist the unpredictability that is innate to both life and nature.  

This, of course is just petitio principii, or begging the question.    
   
Many thinkers of past yore have mocked this tendency of ours.

Willard Quine, the great American philosopher and logician had to say this:

“The desire to be right and the desire to have been right are two desires, and the sooner we separate them the better off we are.

“The desire to be right is the thirst for truth.

“On all accounts, both practical and theoretical, there is nothing but good to be said of it.

“The desire to have been right, on the other hand, is the pride that goeth before a fall.

“It stands in the way of our seeing we were wrong, and thus blocks the progress of our knowledge.” 
      
Both these human tendencies, videlicet obedience to authority and belief persistence led to the savage and vicious night of November 9, 1938 that is infamously known as Kristallnacht, the night of the Broken Glass.

Hans Bethe’s mother who had remained in Germany rightly feared for her life as Kristallnacht led to the inception of the Final Solution and The Holocaust.

Even though it was very well known that the German economic crisis following World War I was the result of war borrowings of the Weimar Republic and the London Ultimatum of the Treaty of Versailles (50 billion gold marks), yet one whole race was blamed for it without any rhyme nor reason.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/

Good night and my fellow cousin ape.

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an IIT graduate and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:


All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:


For edutainment and English education of your children, may I suggest this large collection of Kids Songs:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMX11Z5SJQ3kgwSsFJLRIcg