TSR plus twoWe have expanded...

As usual, The Sounding Rocket is late. The last issue came

out in the last week of October. We apologise for that and promise that there will be more issues coming up this semester.

First and foremost, The Sounding Rocket just added two more editors, both from 2013 batch. We are really excited about the value they will add to the newspaper and the fact that The Ratio is finally a finite number. Apart from that, two more members were inducted in the publication council, and they will help us with other publication, Drishtikon, for which the content hunting is still going on. We request the people with a flair for writing or painting to contribute for the magazine.

The whining about the mess food quality has been a constant from the day the institute was conceived. While we can still continue to take pride in the fact that it is better than the Indian and National Institutes of Technology’s messes, there has been a noticeable degradation from last semesters.

And there have been changes that the students do not find palatable. But there are two sides to this story too, and Abhishek Panchal will try to bring out both of them.

He has been denied Nobel Prizes couple of times. His collaborator was awarded, but he was overlooked. He has rubbed shoulders with physicists like Murray Gell-Mann and everybody’s beloved Richard Phillips Feynman. He brought out the idea of the out-of-this-world particles travelling at a speed greater than the speed of light. That’s perhaps the only work of his that an average BTech student has the capability or the inclination to comprehend (We are not being condescending; just Wikipedia him, and if you can understand even the title of his works, you have come to the wrong place). Watch out for the interview of the pride of Kerala and arguably one of the greatest physicists alive: Ennackal Chandy George Sudarshan.

Former HOD, Avionics Branch Dr. Thomas Kurian is no more

more11 News of the world

Top stories from around the world to keep you updated

04 Mess in a mess!?Mess problem- both sides

of the coin

more

12Popular cultureEditor reviews a comic, a

game and a book

07 InterviewWorld renowned Physicist

Dr. E.C.G. Sudarshan talks to the editors

05SportsTSR's sports correspondent

reports about the sports activities in and out of the campus

14For DummiesA guide to the student

committee meetings in IIST

feature featureThe Annual Astronomy and Technology Festival, Conscientia 2014 in a nutshell. From a first year perspective.

26 March 2014 . Volume 4 Issue 2 . 20 Pages

Students’ Newspaper, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology

For internal circulation only

02 cover storythe Dean, Student Activities. Dr. Kuruvilla Joseph now holds the position. Dr. Selvaganesan meanwhile holds the position of Head of Department, Avionics.

You will find that this issue is loaded with sports. The institute is buzzing with sports and games, with the chess and carrom tournaments concluding recently. There is a report on the sports activity during the holidays and another one on the sports day recently concluded. And the new football ground is now functioning, though only on weekends. And you are advised not to loiter in the jungles unnecessarily.

QC-FIXION concluded its fourth edition. With around 25 teams from all over Kerala, it was a grand success. More on it inside.

The annual technical festival, Conscientia concluded on 3rd of

February. A full report on it by our new editors awaits you inside, along with an informative infographic.

Members of the alumni, from the first, second and third batch came to the institution on 15th of March. Around 9 of them, across all the three batches, came here in person, and countless others granted an audience through Google Hangouts. The highlights of the day were a slide show by Ankesh Mishra, former editor of TSR and presently working at ISTRAC, Bangalore, highlighting the pros, the cons, the anti-pros and the anti-cons of working at ISTRAC, Tanveer Ali’s chair to rocket analogy (Also a former editor of TSR) and Abhinav Goel’s tips on career in management and digital art (Founding editor of TSR). Some of the issues that were discussed in this session include bond transfer,

work culture, opportunities outside of ISRO, places to stay and research opportunities. Overall, everybody thought it was a fruitful experience and the members of the alumni requested the present final year batch to carry on such activities in the future. Plans are underway for an alumni program on a much larger scale, about which more information will be out soon.

We do it in every issue and we are doing it again. We just added two editors, but we still face shortage of content. So we request the students to contribute to the newspaper in any way possible. It could either be a report, a comic strip, an opinion or a sketch. We look forward to a greater participation from students in this publication.

Read all the issues at:http://issuu.com/tsr-iist

TSR is in the fourth academic year of its publication. Originally started using funds collected from students in buckets that editors took from door to door in their hostels, the Institute generously agreed to take over the charge of printing after the reprographic facility had been set up from the fourth issue onwards. Each issue of TSR is approved after examination by the Publication Council's members from the faculty. We thank the Library and Reprographic teams for their invaluable support and all our readers and facebook fans for their kind gesture. Feel free to contact us for obtaining digital copies of our archive issues.

thesoundingrocket@gmail.com

Editorial BoardThe Sounding Rocket

Abhishek PanchalAtma AnandPrabodh KattiRitu AnilSourajit DebnathSudheendra Raghavendra

03news

echoes

First year resultsThis year freshers started with new set of academic rules. With 7.5 GPA as criteria for both assistantship and also eligibility for the job in ISRO, there was a lot of fuss about how would the students from new admission test format would fare. 94 out of 156 cleared the 7.5 GPA criteria and 62 had to pay the fees which is around 2.1 times what senior students pay.

8th Sem ProjectIt is even semester, which is the time for final year projects. This is the list of number of students in each centre from Aerospace, Avionics and Physical Sciences.

ISRO centres T A A PISAC 6 2 0 4PRL 2 0 0 2USO* 1 0 0 1SAC 5 0 1 4LPSC Blore 2 2 0 0LPSC Valiyamala 6 6 0 0 VSSC 4 2 2 0SHAR 9 6 3 0

Non ISROIITM 1 0 0 1IITB 3 0 3 0ARIES 2 0 0 2IMD New Delhi 2 0 0 2The rest are in the campus.

*Udaipur Solar Observatory

Bio-Scan is back“Please try again.” Says a female voice after you insert your index finger into the receptacle. It means you have to continue till she says “Thank You” and allows you in. Yes folks, she is back. Initially introduced for marking attendance, it now stands between you and your room. Of course, this has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. There have been attempts to circumvent it using coins, doormats as propping devices, rubber lining of the door and so on. Inmates of H1 and H10 have even been fined for tampering with it. We urge IISTians to try their best to resist the urge to indulge in acts of vandalism.

Deutschklassen Mr DV Arun Kumar from Translinguaindia Institute of Foreign Languages, Trivandrum is currently training 65 (citation needed) wunderkinds of IIST in communicative Deutsch. Students are mainly from MTech, PhD and third year. The course is expected to run for another semester. Learning from experience and keeping in mind the general drop in interest seen amongst students, there is a fine of ̀ 1500 for those who fail to meet the attendance requirements. So far, the course has been well received, and it is expected to be one of the few things that move past the initial phase in IIST (`1500 will ensure that).

The PlaygroundExplicit warnings about not roaming into the jungle has been mentioned in that notice. Open only for a few hours only on weekends, IIST’s new playground is finally open for business. Sports enthusiasts have been warned though that there is no provision for drinking water and therefore, must be taken care of by the students themselves. For those still in the dark, the playground is 5 km outside the campus. To get there, turn left, take the road that is opposite to the smoky chambers of ‘chetta’s shop’ and follow it till you reach the destination.

Holi Hai!! The festival of colours was most predominantly brown at IIST this year with almost everybody covered from top to toe in mud. The atmosphere, as usual was of fun and frolicking. But the necessary public bath outside the hostel before stepping in was a bit of an irritant for some. Of course a few people who were still in the mood for water games made complete use of this much to the apparent disdain of the wardens.

echoes

04

Once regarded as one of the best among the mess of central

government run undergraduate institutes, (No one knows how this comparison was made) the so called golden period of IIST's mess has somewhat concluded. No doubt the quality of food has gone down over the years and there is an urgent need to find the solution.What is the problem?

Well, when we look at the big picture, all the problems in IIST converge to one fact that the number of students studying here is low. With around 600 UG students, even the diverse opinion of around 50 students is a significant number which can't be ignored. IIST’s demography consists of students from different parts of the country and it is needless to say that you can’t make everyone happy.

So having stated that there should be at least something in every meal which can be consumed by almost everyone. This consists of Roti, Dal and Rice. IIST mess provides two kinds of Rotis, the handmade and machine made. Both of which are not up to the mark and are equally criticised*. The everyday monotonous dal with no tadka is tasteless. The opinion on other food items is quite diverse, making it more difficult for the committee to decide. The appearance of some of the food items is quite bad which also affects the desirability of the item.

As far as the menu is considered I am quite sure that on the paper it looks pretty decent, full of delicacies. (Yes, you do say that to your relatives and friends back home) Nevertheless the way some of the sabjis are cooked, it’s far from the expected food taste. Taking into account the fact that a lot of effort goes into making these dishes, it is quite sad that the lack of proper supervision while making them ruins it to such an extent.

The method of cooking brings in light the other significant factor, which is professional skills of the

cooks here. The cooks are given meagre wage, which is not enough in the time of inflation. While the location of college also doesn’t attract chefs from outside. Various attempts both from mess committee and students were made to bring in some professional cooks all of which have gone in vain. Number of cooks is also limited. In spite of all these, the mess staff is rather successful in managing the huge numbers during all the meals, the fact which calls for appreciation.

The above mentioned problem can be partially resolved if the next major problem was not an issue. The budget allotted to mess management is under strict control (Repeatedly quoted by the Mess Manager). Thus any new suggestion regarding the food has to be thought through keeping in mind the budget constraints. This restricts the flexibility in getting any new change in the menu. The pspd (per student per day) mess rates of other IIT’s (Each mess in IITs have different contractor which caters around 500-1000 people so a reasonable comparison can be made) is around Rs. 100-120 depending on the city. According to the Mess Manager the psdp rate allotted for IIST’s mess is around Rs. 80, which has been constant from the beginning. However with the current menu it comes around Rs. 100, the deficit being paid by the institute as and when required.Are we overreacting?

It is quite a difficult job to cater food to 500-1000 people 4 times a day. Yet it is ensured that everyone gets a proper meal within proper mess timings. Maintaining the taste of the huge proportion of food is tough and comparing the same with your home/ restaurant food is illogical. Most people do confess that they liked the food during their first few weeks of fresher year but slowly the fondness faded to a point where everyone hates it. This is primarily due to

monotonicity in the menu. Many students are quick to whine about the bad food but are hostile when asked for suggestion to bring any change. On a positive note, for example, the Bread quality has improved a lot since last semester, as the issue has been brought up many times in most of the meetings. Bandwagon effect regarding the opinion also has its role which further spreads negative opinion.What can be done?

During June 2013 students of IIT Madras went on a hunger strike to protest against the low quality of mess food given to them. The situation is nowhere near to this in our case. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t complain. As a student it is expected to report minor problems immediately to the supervisor so that next time the same problem can be avoided. Most of the issues can be solved by a proper understanding between the administration, the mess management and the students. Student representatives for mess committee aren’t involved in any decision making process and all they do is bring in complains in front of mess committee. However a committee of 20 students from each year is being proposed to get involved in all the aspects of mess committee. Only time can tell how successful is this decision.

We need to establish some level of tolerance, considering the fact that they have been/ will be serving us for few years and in no way intentionally want to ruin our taste and diet. On the other hand it is wrong to consume anything we are served. Yes it needs to be improved. The common goal lies somewhere between these two factors. Till then, Enjoy your meals!

Mess in a mess !?editorial

byAbhishek Panchal

*An online survey among the IISTians was done to choose between the two rotis. Both the types got 50% response.

The author can be contacted at abhishake.iist@gmail.com

05sportsInter-University Tournaments (2013-14)

The winter vacations were busy for the sportspersons

in the institute. IIST had granted permission to the students to participate in 4 Inter-university tournaments viz. Cricket, Badminton, Table tennis and Basketball. Let’s have a look at the performance of our heroes.

1. CricketThe cricket team of IIST was facing

an inter-university tournament for the second time. After having lost very badly in the first edition, our team had a training camp and various practice matches with some of the best colleges in Trivandrum. The camp lasted for 10 days and our team was well prepared for facing a 50 over match.

Trouble started at the train, where half of the team weren’t given any reservation. Having reached Pondicherry after a very uncomfortable journey in an unreserved coach, we encountered, to our great dismay, the rain. The Pondicherry university accommodation greatly

disappointed us by providing one room (size of a room in Ashwini) for the whole team and a single toilet for the whole floor.

It was decided that the match will be of 12 Overs, due to rain. Our opponent was Kerala University for Health Sciences (KUHS). Having high hopes on the Ground which we were going to play, we ended up playing in a grazing field. We won the toss and chose to bowl. We restricted them to 75 – 8 in 12 overs. We could only manage 57 with a loss of 6 wickets. We lost the match, due to our batting order’s inability to fire at the required time.

2. BadmintonIt was finally decided that all

of us would be reaching Manipal University (Host University) before 15th December so that we could practice for a day and be ready for our first match on 15th morning. All of us reached Udupi by 14th morning, and from there, Manipal. There was a lot of miscommunication amongst the organizing team. We had to move around the campus.

Finally we found some respite when they told us that a vehicle would be sent to pick us up and drop us at the boarding point.

Most of us had a nice sleep that afternoon. In the evening we went to have a look at the court where we were about to play the next day. It was a huge building called Marena (their SAC) which was almost 6 floors with each floor having 2-3 different kind of games. To our surprise, it also had a beach volleyball court inside. Finally we reached the badminton court which, in the collective opinion of all of us, was the best baddy court we had ever laid our eyes upon.

It was a big Sunday for the players. We had our first match at 8AM. We got up early and reached the court after having a few bananas as breakfast. Our first match was against Yogi Vemana University, Ananthapur, Andhra Pradesh.

The match began at 8:30 and we got to the best of the starts with Loveraj Singh, the talented southpaw leading the attack. He defeated his opponent with a good

byMalai Devan

Sports Committee representative of IIST gives an exhaustive account of sports activities during the holidays and Annual Sports Day

Cricket Team of IIST @ Inter-University Tournament

(continued to next page)

06 sportsmargin.

The mood of the team was really good and all the players were quite confident. However, the lack of a proper badminton court in the college left people unable to adjust to the new court. Many of the strokes/smashes of our players that were apt for the D2 court, couldn't work their magic in this big court.

Finally, after a lot of struggle and a good fight, the opponents had the last laugh defeating us 3-2.

3. Table TennisThe table-tennis team were ready

for leaving to Kakinada, but due to some misinformation of dates of the tournament between the sports

authority and the students, the trip was cancelled.

4. BasketballThe Basketball team left for

Kakinada this January. Unlike the cricket team our journey was smooth till Vijayawada. From there to JNTU (Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University), Kakinada the journey was a little rough. We reached at the venue on 19th Jan and had started venturing through the wonderful indoor Basketball courts of JNTU.

The Opening Ceremony was held the next day. It was a grand ceremony, completely new to most of us. It was slightly embarrassing

for us that all the other assembled teams were in their jerseys. Our match was in the evening of the same day. It was tight match and the end result was that we won 53 – 49. We were very pleased with our performance.

Our next match was the following morning. After a tiring first match, conditions were sluggish and due to few silly mistakes we lost grip of the match in between. The result of the match was that we lost 45 – 57.

As our booking for the return journey had to be done, we had time to roam around in Kakinada. We boarded our train on 23rd Jan and reached college on 24th Jan evening.

Annual Sports Day of IIST

The 7th Annual Sports Day was held in the same venue

as last year, the LNCPE ground. The weather on Sports Day (22nd Feb ‘14), was really hot, but the competition among students was hotter! And so was the enthusiasm of the students. An extra bus was required to bring the students to the ground. The chief guest who inaugurated the function was Dr. P Pugaleindi, a retired IFS officer.

A few noticeable changes were the change in design, colour and material of the house T – shirts. The events really had the viewers on the edge of their seats. There was a lot of participation from Faculty, Staff and their kids. The records of the previous sports day were broken in almost all the events. Performance of the 2013 batch was commendable and they gave seniors a tough competition.

Though most of the students didn’t go home with medals, they surely had fun. And that’s what we call “True sportsmanship!”

For Details regarding winners, you may look up the facebook group “Sports ‘n Games @ IIST”.

"Run Forrest Run!"

The author can be contacted at malai.devan@gmail.com

(continued from previous page)

07interview

TSR: How has the scientific community developed here and in the rest of India in your lifetime?

ECGS: As a student in intermediate, when I wanted to go to Madras to study Physics Honours, people said, "Why do you want to do that? You can study engineering." I said, "I don't want to go to engineering." Then, they said, "But, you could study some other subject. Why physics?" "I like physics." "But, don't you want to have a job?" "No, not really." So, I went to study physics. And, at that particular time, there was no such thing as research in physics because people always thought that physics meant things. The great name that was mentioned at that time was a gentleman by the name of H P Warren, who was H Parameswaram. And he wanted to get a job when he came to India from England when he wrote his name as H P Warren and people thought he was an Englishman and gave him a job before it turned out that was Parameswaram. But, Warren's great discovery was a pump. Now, pumps are very important things, but on the other hand, I would not consider a pump to be a physics achievement. It was important at that particular time because there was not much distinction between what they considered as physics and engineering and other things. He was famous, but mostly because of the fact that his name was written as H P Warren. But, there was no

research in physics. It was simply not thought of. And when I went to study in Madras, I once talked to one of my teachers. When we got talking about things, about what I expected to do, I expressed that I wanted to do some research. He said, "Which laboratory do you want to go to?" I said that I didn't want to go to any laboratory. I wanted to do theoretical physics. He said, "There is no such thing as theoretical physics. Either it's physics or it's theoretical." The point was that, at that time, it was not considered appropriate for doing such things. I'm trying to give you a background of the nature of things at that time. In Christian College, the mathematics students studied astronomy which meant they knew what was this angle and that angle, not really the physics of the planetary system. But, in physics, we never studied anything about astronomy because it's considered close to astrology and we don't do those things. But, from that, now things have changed so much. We were talking about my grand student Dr Simon, who is at Madras, and whose student, Dr Solomon, who is on your faculty here. You cannot be wiser than Solomon. Now, these are people who have become theoretical physicists. At that time, there was no such thing as theoretical physics. When I first met Raman in some context, he said, "Usually I don't allow theoretical physicists to come. If anybody says they are theoretical

physicists, I ask my chaprasi to throw them out." I said, "Sir, I'm very glad you didn't throw me out." He said," I think you're a nice fellow. So I agreed to see you." It was not the concept at that time that physics was dependent upon theory. There had been some great theorists: Niels Bohr, Einstein, there was Rayleigh and Planck. But there was no living person. A living, breathing person was not considered as a theoretical physicist. That has changed. Now, there are so many theoretical physicists, and some of them are very good. There was a man by the name of Pancharatnam, who was at the Indian Institute of Science, who did some very fundamental work on very simple things. He said that if you take a crystal and pass light through it, the light goes some place, polarised light and when it gets reflected from there and goes back to another place and so on, what would be the phase of the light when it comes back to the original place? One would have said it goes around a circuit and it will come back to zero. He showed that it was not true by actually calculating the thing. And he did experiments to that end. Now, in literature, it is known as Pancharatnam phase. Somebody else, of course, got their name attached to it later. So, the point I'm trying to make is that it did not require a very elaborate laboratory, it did not require very elaborate mathematics, but one had to think. Think of the possibility

Ennackal Chandy George Sudarshan visited our campus on 7th August last year and en-thralled us all with a seminar with anecdotes from his life and his work. For those not in the know, Dr Sudarshan is a Kerala-born philosopher, Vedantin and crackling conversationalist, who does theoretical physics in his free time. He has made several important contributions in the V-A theory of weak interactions, optical coherence, spin-statistics theorem, quantum computation and the mathematical hypothesis of tachyons. After the talk, the TSR team had a chance to have a one-on-one with the man. Here is the conversation, reproduced verbatim for your reading pleasure.

Of Pumps, Physics and Prize

(continued to next page)

08 interview

that there's something here, just like looking for diamonds in the riverbed. You don't think that the diamonds are there, but maybe there are diamonds for you to find. So, in essence, physics, in specific, theoretical physics, has grown in the country. Previously, one always thought of names of long-dead people, but now there are so many outstanding people.

TSR: What is an average day in the life of E C G S now? What research are you currently involved in?

ECGS: At the present, I am basically goofing off. But, that is not entirely true because my health is not what it used to be. Also, I don't have very many students in the present term. There were times when I had ten students simultaneously and they used to keep me awake at all times of day and night. But, now I have one student who makes up for it, basically, by not only talking to me all the time but also talking to my wife. And he's coming to Madras tomorrow. But, apart from that, there we are working on some very basic questions, about what is called the TCP theorem. You may have never heard of it, but it's not a bad thing not to hear about it. When you consider a normal physical theory, you talk about time reversal. You ask the question, in an elastic collision, is the reverse of the collision also an elastic collision? So, it's consistent. This is not true of everything because if it is on an inelastic surface, the process going will be more energetic than when it comes back. And in some other cases, friction loses the energy, that's all. To the extent that the thing is reversible, you can talk about time reversal and ask the question: is the law the same? Similar questions can be asked about space reflection. If you look at something

in a mirror, do you find the same thing? And it was generally thought that they must be the same. For irreversible processes, of course, time reversal is not good. But for reversible processes, mechanical processes, it is always the same. And it turned out that it is not true. It was a great shock when I was a PhD student. The discovery of parity violation came then. So, space reflection is not invariant. For time reflection, it took a little longer to find out. And it's also no. But it turns out that if you combine time and space reflection together, they are part of the Lorentz group, that is the transformation in the relativity proof. And therefore, if something is relativistic invariant, it must also be invariant under TP, the combined thing. But when T is implied, there is a certain complex conjugation. And that's in quantum field theory, there's an associated

particle-antiparticle interchange. So a C comes in. So, TCP is an automatic invariant with regard to reversal. This was a great discovery when suddenly people thought that T and P are not invariant in their properties. Previously, everybody thought that it must be invariant, everything is invariant. Then, it turned out that it was not invariant and people were shocked. But then somebody else came up and

said, that may be true but TCP is always invariant. And we have been working on that particular theory, putting it in its most general form.

TSR: This one is a very special question for us. Every high school kid dreams of meeting Richard Feynman.

ECGS: He's dead.

TSR: We know that, it's impossible now. I was pretty heartbroken when I discovered it.

ECGS: Oh, don't be, don't be. He was a very nice man, but he was just an ordinary fellow. Very smart fellow, but very ordinary.

TSR: But you are a person who has among his credits a theory which served as a major inspiration to him. Do you have any interesting anecdotes about him?

ECGS: Well, the major anecdote is that he got credit for the work that I did. It's not a bad thing because he is a nice man and I would like him to have gotten the credit. But, I would have preferred that they first said it was mine. And I first met him at a conference, an international conference on weak interactions near Gatlinburg, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I had already done the V minus A, the theory of weak interactions. But for some reason, people invited me to be presiding over one session and I was very flattered. I was almost a fresh PhD and they had asked me to preside. But what I did not realise was that this was a very good plot because they did not ask me to talk. I was sitting as the chairman or something and people said, oh fantastic. Yeah. But the point was that it was a method of shutting me down. It's like electing somebody as

Everybody loves Feynman, nobody finds

fault with him. And even when he does something which is

completely immoral, people say, 'Ah, but he

must have been not feeling too well.'

(continued from previous page)

09interview

speaker and he does not speak after that. So, I was sitting with Feynman next to him and then he said, "I understand you had these ideas long before us." So, I said, "Yes, not only I had the idea, but I talked about it with one of my colleagues and verbatim." And he gets credit for the thing. That was Gell-Mann. Gell-Mann is a thief. He's a very bright fellow, but extremely low-principled man. While Feynman is a very different kind of person. Everybody loves Feynman, nobody finds fault with him. And even when he does something which is completely immoral, people say, "Ah, but he must have been not feeling too well." Or something like that. Also, Dirac did not agree with it. Because it was Dirac's work that became Feynman's theory. You know, Richard Feynman is a very lucky man because more things are attributed to him that he had anything to do with. The idea of introducing the Lagrangian in quantum field theory was Dirac's idea. And it is presented in a collection of papers on quantum electrodynamics by Schwinger, in which Schwinger puts this two-page paper of Dirac just ahead of the path integral paper of Feynman. Everybody talks about Feynman's path integral, but the point is that it is Dirac's path integral. Anyway, he asked me, "I understand you had these ideas." So I said, "Yes, the problem is that I had these ideas and I told it to Gell-Mann. And you people wrote a paper about it and it got published before my paper." Even though it was already presented, it was published later. And he said, "Yeah, you're right, you have every right to be aggrieved." So I said, "I'm not aggrieved, I'm simply saying that this is the situation." So, he's an easy man to talk to, while Gell-Mann listened

to me present the thing in detail and then went and wrote the paper without any mention of the thing. He would not admit it. He'll say, "We had already thought about it." Not only Marshak, there were several other people there then. The point is that nobody challenges the statement that I had. Part of the thing is Marshak. Marshak was very impressed with Gell-Mann. I was impressed with him, but not as much because I am also a reasonably bright fellow. And I have done more things than Gell-Mann has done. But Gell-Mann has a big publicity approach, he's a Jew, he has the right credentials, Fermi endorsed him and so on. So, everybody thought that Gell-Mann is very bright. Marshak was Marshak. So I wrote this paper and there was an international conference on high energy physics in Rochester of all places. And I had the damn paper which I wrote in a succinct fashion, two-page. And he first said that you can have five minutes to present it. But then he said, "But you are a graduate

student. That's not a good idea. We will ask Professor P T Matthews," who was there, "to present this one." P T Matthews would not dare piss in front of Gell-Mann and he was not going to stand up and do it. But I was. Since I did the thing, I had no problem in talking to anybody. But I didn't get that five minutes. And of course, that meant that we didn't get the Nobel Prize. So Marshak said, "Your work is very interesting, but I would like you to present it to Murray Gell-Mann." So I said, "Why?" "No, I'd just like you to present it." So, Marshak arranged a tea party where Gell-Mann and various other people were there. I was there and he said, "George, will you please present your ideas?" So I said, "My ideas constitute a theory of weak interactions, a complete theory of weak interactions. It is this." And, those days, I was much more clear and precise and succinct. So I outlined the whole thing, every argument and everything I could. And Marshak asked him, "What do you think?" He said, "I think George is right." So, you would

"And of course, that meant that we didn't get the Nobel Prize."

(continued to next page)

10 interviewthink that therefore Marshak would now be convinced. He asked me, "Why don't you write it down?" I said, "I've already written, but I'll give it to you." A right copy with references and so on. I gave it to him the next day. He sat on it for two months. The point is that he couldn't get the damn paper typed. If he said he could not type it, he could not afford it, I would have done it myself. But he sat on it. And I went on and went off to Harvard. And there I found that Gell-Mann had written his paper. So I said, "But this is the paper I told him about." And of course, there was no mention of my having said the thing. But he thanked me for very good discussions, which impressed many other people, saying "Gell-Mann thanked you?" So I said, "Yeah, he better thank me because it was my work that he has quoted." But, the trouble is that these things, events, happen and then there is no way of you correcting it.

TSR: Any message for the students of an up-and-coming institute like IIST?

ECGS: Well, there. It's an up-and-coming institute, you should

make it even more up and coming. The point is that you have an excellent faculty, you have very good opportunity here and you have selected a number of people who are all very competitive. And I hope you compete with each other. In fact, I must also tell you this particular story. I was a particle physicist and I was a young particle physicist. And those days, jobs were not assured. The fact that you did the most important thing in that century did not assure you of a job. So, but I was very interested in optics at that time. Emil Wolf was the professor there. Wolf is a great expert on optics. And then, Wolf and I together got Mandel, Leonard Mandel, to come. And, so I used to do quantum optics quietly without telling anybody because you're not supposed to do it. You're a particle physicist, you do particle physics and quantum field theory. Why are you bothered with other things? So, I used to do this in my spare time. Spare time, not only spare time, but spare time not talking to anybody because nobody else in the department knew quantum optics. They all knew elementary optics, but nothing more. The idea was that optics is a subject which you study

when you are an undergraduate. After that, why should you study optics? After all, whatever was to be seen was seen with regard to it. So I did it surreptitiously and then it became famous. But the department was very unwilling to admit that they did not know that it was important. So, but the point was the fact that I had good classical education, a good education in Madras, meant that I understood optics well, many things in optics. Dr Thangaraj was my lecturer in optics. He was a very good teacher. But, most of my classmates and contemporaries did not know any optics. They knew, you know, things like double refraction and the fact that when you have polarised light, it gets reflected or gets polarised on reflection. But that was about it. Nobody thought optics was important.

TSR: Thank you, sir. It was a pleasure meeting you.

ECGS: Very good. I hope you will say the same thing when we meet again.

QC-FIXION returned in its fourth edition. One of the most

anticipated events of IIST and one of the most awaited quizzes in the city and Kerala, it was held on 15th February with Prof. P Vijaya Kumar as the quiz master. The venue this time was Mascot Hotel, which came as a surprise to many, considering that Conscientia is conducted on a shoestring budget. But Conscientia’s tie up with KTDC came to our aid, and we managed to conduct the event in the Executive Lounge of the

hotel.With an extraordinary turnout

with participants from all over Trivandrum and Kochi (the hall was packed, but possibly because of limited seating capacity), it was a success and a great curtain raiser for Conscientia 2014. The first place was bagged by the team of Harris A and Sreenathan from University College Kariavattom. The team of Ashad S. Nath and Nithin Vasanth from CET and CUSAT respectively were the runners up, followed by the team

of Ananthu Ravi and Bunny Raju of CET, who were the second runners up.

QC-Fixion 2014

(continued from previous page)

11news News of the WorldCrimean Crisis

byPrabodh Katti

Most of you are probably wondering what’s going

on in Ukraine. And most of us probably don’t know much about the not-so-tiny country apart from the Chernobyl disaster and Olga Kurylenko (Bond girl, Quantum of Solace). So here’s a brief history of Ukraine and the events leading to the crisis.

Ukraine gained independence from USSR in 1991. In 2004, Viktor Yanukovych, then Prime Minister, was declared the winner of the presidential elections, which had been largely rigged, as the Supreme Court of Ukraine later ruled. The results caused a public outcry in support of the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, who challenged the outcome of the elections. This resulted in the peaceful Orange Revolution, bringing Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko to power, while casting Viktor Yanukovych in opposition. Yanukovych was back in power in 2006 though, only to be ousted by Tymoshenko a year later. But in 2010, he came back into power and had Tymoshenko arrested in 2011, an arrest decried by the western nations as politically motivated.

In March 2012, Ukraine initiated Association Agreements with EU. This angered Russia, which then

blocked imports from Ukraine. Because of this, Ukraine's exports dropped by $1.4 Billion and threatened to cut natural gas subsidies. Thus Ukrainian govt. under Yanukovych decided to scrap the talks with EU in order to get closer with Russia. The public, already discontented by corruption, price rise and human rights violations, now took to the streets, inspite of the sub-zero temperature and snow and thus began a wave of ongoing protests called ‘Euromaidan’. Things got messier as more people got killed and the country was destabilised. The parliament then put forward a motion to impeach Yanukovych and in March. managed to do it too. The president then escaped to Southern Russia, and still claims that he is the legitimate head of the state.

Putin, seeing that the turn of the events were not favouring Russia, ordered troops into the Crimean peninsula, and then took control of the same very soon. This move was condemned by many and EU and the US called for sanctions against Russia. Meanwhile, Crimea held a referendum on 16 March, whether to remain in Ukraine, but with greater autonomy or secede to Russia. UN tried to condemn this referendum, but then guess who vetoed it? An overwhelming 97%

of the Crimeans voted in favour of Russia. As of now, this has lead EU and the US to impose sanctions on Ukrainian and Russian officers responsible. Others alarmed by the referendum are Crimean Tatar minorities, as this refreshed the memories of their forceful en masse deportation by Joseph Stalin that caused a lot of deaths and suffering.

Crimean invasion is one of the most bloodless, smooth and stealthy invasion ever. Especially when it is pitted against the other, much bloodier ones undertaken by Russia (the then USSR), viz. Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968) and Afghanistan(1979). The future of the Crimean and Ukrainian crisis is being closely observed with lot of interest and speculation. A detailed history of Crimea, Ukraine, USSR and Russia can be read to gain a better insight into the crisis.

Efforts to locate the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370

Boeing-777 plane, while on full force, have yielded zero result. The flight, on its way to beijing from Kuala Lumpur, was carrying 239 people. Search efforts, believed to be one of the largest in the world, with

involvement of 26 nations and a locus extending from Kazakh-Turkmen border to Northern Thailand, from Indonesia to Southern Indian Ocean, is ongoing. Theories about the plane getting hijacked are making rounds, but none of them are foolproof. Meanwhile, plenty of crowd sourced

online search efforts are also going on. Check out www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/mh370_indian_ocean if you wish to contribute.

MH370: Search efforts ongoing

The author can be contacted at prabodhkatti@gmail.com

12 reviews

MAUSThe Holocaust is a very serious

subject by any standard, and to portray it through the erstwhile funny pages would be going for the creation of a very serious standard indeed. Art Spiegelman's seminal comic book accomplishes all these things with unflinching honesty and unparalleled flair. Maus is a story in two parts, published in 1986 and 1991, adapted from a series of conversations Art had with his father, Vladek, a Holocaust survivor. It talks about his life as a Polish Jew living in the shadow of the Third Reich and his eventual arrest and internment at Auschwitz in 1944. The book is unique in that it portrays Jews as mice (hence the name), Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, the French as frogs and Americans

as dogs, for the purposes of both metaphor and identification. While books and films like Schindler's List and The Pianist and about the Holocaust strive to explain and look for the human cost of the Holocaust or its effect on society and the world, none of them adequately represents the experience of a survivor. Vladek, just like a survivor of any conflict is just like any other human being living in his times: he's misogynist, self-centered, misguided, selfish and even racist to some degree. Like anybody else, his only defining characteristic cannot be the fact that he survived the Holocaust. This, to some degree, is why Maus succeeds as a character study, even finely embedded within the greater struggles of a nation, unlike those other films and books about war which always tend to be sweeping generalisations. Unconstrained by the feel-good necessity of the mainstream, Spiegelman draws on his sensibilities as an underground avant-garde comic artist which takes a long and hard look at the various manifestations of Jewish greed before the war, German cruelty during, and Polish and American apathy afterwards. For a book that is drawn in just black and white, it is a very very grey work. Continuously refusing to portraying Jews and Poles as uniformly good and the Nazis as uniformly bad, it balances the crushing weight of history with uplifting redemption that comes with an experience borne with pain.

SPEC OPS THE LINEVideo games are always lauded as

an interactive medium compared to more traditional passive media like films or books. The very act of playing is expected to compensate for what passes for a story in games or a lack thereof. While some story-driven games have been on the sidelines of mainstream gaming within its separate adventure gaming genre for years, it's still surprising to discover an action shooter game offering a strong, well-fleshed and mature story. Spec Ops The Line is a loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (and the best since Francis Ford Coppola made Apocalypse Now), set in the ruins of a sandstorm-swept Dubai, where you play an embittered US Special Ops Captain. While this set up is entirely mundane by any and all uber-macho action movie standards, the denouement that follows is far from ordinary. Games like Saints Row and Far Cry Blood Dragon rail against the glorification and banality of violence in modern mass media by parodying it, letting you kill and maim in-game charaters in as many over-the-top and gruesome ways as you can. The Line takes these same concepts, but instead of poking fun at them, it subverts the trope. While mainstream run-of-the-mill games like Call of Duty always portray Caucasian protagonists killing Arabic, Russian and African "villains", The Line puts you in a situation where you are forced to kill the remnants of a fictitious renegade

Experiencing the best works of popular culture should never be a tedium, but a revionist encounter every time you enjoy them. These reviews are in no way the only way to think

about these works, your own opinions remain the most important to you. These notes are also not spoiler-free because it is impossible to critique something without getting to its heart. So, read at your own peril and remember you can always enjoy something even if you know how it ends. Just in this case, you can pay more attention to the journey.

The Popular Culture Column

bySourajit Debnath

13reviewsAmerican military battalion, headed by a Kurtz-like figure justifiably named Colonel John Konrad. Your player character Captain Martin Walker goes on a power trip through Dubai trying to justify his goals of saving the survivors of the sandstorm from the said battalion. Everything is gung-ho as usual with you mowing down wave after wave of insurgents and soldiers. Then the game decides to play a trick on you. About halfway through the game, Walker is forced to use a white phosphorus chemical weapon against the soldiers, after which you discover that the soldiers, ones you've been wantonly massacring, were sheltering the survivors to begin with all of whom perished in your attack. While war is hell and this game drives home the point very very painfully, it's when Walker chooses to ignore the consequences of his actions and move further along his quest, it creates a deliberate dissonance between the state of the player's mind and the actions you're portraying on the screen. If it wasn't just a game, you would've stopped playing. But knowing that your actions have no consequence in your world but yet Walker's actions do in the game world, you keep on playing. Unlike other games in the genre which always encourage the player on progression, your allies throughout the game alternately support your actions for their selfish

needs or berate you for doing the wrong thing. So by the time you near the game's end killing more people, there's a sense of self-disgust pervading the air with the weight of your actions hanging heavier than a flock of albatrosses. Hence, the game gives you a logical choice at the end for Walker to commit suicide and stop killing any more people. If you choose not to, you just end up killing more people. It's an interesting conundrum in a medium that thrives on progression. If you decide not to progress at all, is that somehow a better form of progress? When all is said and done, The Line seeks to show you, maybe a tad too bluntly, that the world is not divided into heroes and villains and sometimes not doing anything is better than pushing ever onward.

THE STRANGERAlbert Camus has been

described a kindred spirit of Ernest Hemingway, both novelists and short-story writers dealing with plots that are deceptively simple in terms of action or thought yet lofty in their philosophical magnitudes. Somewhat akin to an iceberg with its bulk below the surface or like a duck furiously paddling underwater. Their stories have characters who don't reflect a lot outwardly in the prose, instead channeling their outlook into their actions, often violent, controversial, contradictory or all

three. Whether the old man in The Old Man and the Sea or Meursault in The Stranger, their protagonists are strong and firm, not necessarily stoic but not unduly talkative either. When compared to novels which outline each and every inner thought of their protagonists (and that list is not just limited to modern young adult or chick lit), this starkness and laconic minimalism lends gravity to only things the reader deems important and lets us walk away with our conclusions. On its surface, The Stranger, Camus's novel translated from the original French, is the story of a man who does not judge other people. He lives his life accordingly and does not have much of any emotion, whether it be sorrow for his mother's death or love for his girlfriend. All this changes when he kills a man in self-defence. His actions become more erratic, but not necessarily life-preserving when faced with the hangman's noose. Now peel away the surface and you begin to see the light. Meursalt, by his own will, does not judge and expects not to be judged. Feeling remorse for killing a man or feeling sorrow are entirely optional in his world, and he is judged as a stranger by society. But we end up seeing a man, who is entirely self-consistent, even upto a "fault", but indeed he has no fault in the way we talk about things. The novella's finale is a conversation between Meursault and a priest who has come to comfort him with God in his final hours. This is where Camus's restraint is temporarily abandoned and let out is one of the most moving testaments to the finality of existence, a weary yet rational acceptance of the abandonment of hope and ultimately, the refuting of an unneeded God. The Stranger is a wondrous work full of oxymorons and paradoxes, vociferously championing for a world of benign indifference and maybe through it, some peace.

Spec Ops The LineThe author can be contacted at dsourajit@gmail.com

14 opinion

Welcome, fellow IISTian to the fuzzy world of Hostel

Committee meetings where all your preconceived, dearly held perceptions will be uprooted, pulverised and if rumours hold true, even atomized. To be truthful we cannot guarantee to acquaint the reader to the 'yen' number of confrontations faced during these trying moments but we can help you bear the ‘logical reasons’ posed therein with an impassive face and resist the urge to shoot yourself. But then there appears to be no alternative.

First let us clear something which many of you might be pondering upon, as to why the title reads ‘Hostel Committee’ instead of ‘Hostel and Mess Committee’. It indeed was designed such, however it has been deemed that the topics concerning IIST’s cuisine touch way too many chords to be covered along with Hostel Affairs, hence effectively in most cases only the Hostel Committee or the Mess Committee can be seen at parley. It is advised

to remain relatively calm when your agendas get shot down due to lack of time.

The bloke who coined “Expect the best. Prepare for the worst” perhaps was instructing fellow mates for something similar, although in this case the former is just too optimistic. Here you have to bear in mind who you are negotiating with. Considering you to be well armed let us state the scenarios.

Your primary argument and solutions will be disregarded straightaway (wouldn’t require a meeting otherwise!) due to capital or requirement of Geological time scales, but fear not, your alternatives will be listened to with a serious face and usually the remark ‘That can be done’. If there is discontent due to introduction of new rules or wild notices, its justification lies in certain specific rules of a confidential book or matters beyond any control.

If this fails to satisfy you, be prepared for inspiring words of wisdom on your current privileges, the materialistic appearance of

the problems and how we should be empathetic to the cause. New psychological generalisations follow (eg. Entertainment Waves – Highly contagious radiations which emanate from people having too much entertainment). However, most cases before reaching this stage are deemed classified and closed. One tends to feel that the best part of the Meeting is the snacks and tea offered on certain occasions (which happens to be better than that of the Mess).

Now if somehow (mostly due to the benevolent intervention of the Dean or the Committee Head) some decision is passed, let things run their course. On a fine day you just might see the result being subtly implemented.

P.S.: Do refrain from raising WiFi issues in this committee, may lead to undesirable consequences.

P.P.S.: Many favourable changes have been observed in the past month (no surprises why).

Hostel Committee meetings for dummies

byAtma Anand

Considering the social spirit (and location) of the campus, it is

fitting to get people acquainted with the tribes, specially to the tribes in Wayanad District – the home to half of the four lakh tribeal people of Kerala (along with picturesque surroundings). In fact it is ascertained that most tribals of Kerala originally lived in Wayanad and were forced to shift to other parts as late as 1940s by encroachment of plantations set

up by the British. Still they continue constitute one-fifth of the district.

Most of the tribal people live in the forests and mountains of Western Ghats, bordering Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. They are physically distinguishable with darker skin and stout built physique. They often live in houses made of thatched roof, mud, bamboo and brick houses set in swampy valleys and plateaus. The Wayanad tribes can be

prominently classified into Paniyas, Adiyar, Kattunayakans, Kurichiyans, Kurumas, Ooralis, Kattunaikkar, Mullukkurumar, Thachanadar and Kanaladi amongst a few others.

In their prevailing culture, worth mentioning are their indigenous streams of holistic herbal medicine which is getting increasing attention in recent years. They have a rich legacy of arts and crafts including music, dances, ornamentation and

byAtma Anand

Tribes in WayanadA brief look at the Adivasis of Wayanad, their lives and more…

A Reassurance for the Rest of Us

15

Quotable QuotesQuotes that brought a smile :)

Puzzle Corner

1. “Monday I will not come to exam hall. Whatever doubt you have, assume it.” -Such quiz. Much reassuring. Very Help.

2. “Geoprocessing means geographical processing."-Captain Obvious, is that you?A Professor answering the question "What is Geoprocessing?" after getting unsatisfactory, descriptive and not so obvious answers.

3. “... its a milky way galaxy pic... supposedly taken with some hi-fi instrument... "-A student commenting on a long exposure image of circumpolar stars.

opinionhandicraft inspired from natural themes, motifs and materials. The Kurichyas have a great martial tradition with many expert in archery. The Adivasis are in the Hindu fold, but primitive forms of worship like Ancestral worship and offerings to spirits are still prevail among them. Dominant modes of livelihood include hunting and gathering; arts like pottery, weaving, painting; some are farmers, although

most are paid farm labourers.These tribals live in harmony

with nature with limited needs. Though faced with problems like rehabilitation, exploitation by non-tribes and lack of modern amenities like schools, hospitals and so on they continue to live their own lifestyle. Even so some of their customs and societal norms are better than that of the so called modern civilised world. Efforts continue to bring them at par

with others. While they may not be too learned we have much to learn from these simple tribes.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the above article are on the experiences of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Sounding Rocket.

Solve these questions and send your answers to thesoundingrocket@gmail.com.

Hints:1. It's a rebus.2. Think movies.

Hint:1. q ---> 11

1526131836341336151914

The author can be contacted at atma1106@gmail.com

1.

2.

16Main CON hu?

For almost all first years, this was the first technical fest. So

seeing the contests were a unique experience, to put it mildly. The events were unlike any we’ve seen before, as the institute website says it truly was a ‘pleasant meadow of camaraderie and a jamboree of innovations and challenges’. The college actually looked different; Vibrant and quoting the MC for the opening ceremony, it was literally ‘palipitating’ with activity. The fest officially began when the Chief Guest - Shri S Ramakrishnan, Director of VSSC lit the inaugural lamp. This was followed by a video depicting Conscientia through the ages. The ‘cultural programs’ consisted of semi-classical dance to celebrate the empowerment of women as a part of the upcoming women’s day.

There were quite a few participants from other colleges. Especially for the workshops, which were clearly a big success. Special mentions to the quadrotor workshop where they had to split the group into batches for feasibility. Large outside participation kept the hospitality team busy throughout and needless to say they did their job with all the perfection and zeal one could ask for.

The music; It was mostly bearable, but then exceptions always exist. They played ‘Blue eyes hypnotise’ and ‘Grenade’ and made many of us want to kill ourselves. Talking about good music, Shreya Ghoshal visited, nay stayed, at our campus for three days. Quite obviously we aren’t talking about the gorgeous professional singer but one of the participants for the Quadrotor workshops.

The food - sweet mother of God - the food was brilliant. Whether it was Zero Degrees’ thirst quenching

lime juices, Ambrosia’s slushes and pastries, Dakhani Degh’s chat + biryani or those heavenly dosas and chutneys by Sai Balaji, the food was to die for.Moving on to the events,Mathematrix

The first online event in Conscientia 2014 was the Mathematrix. It included various word problems, bringing back old school memories. The questions were challenging enough, and the participants were left to think, reason and deduce the answers. It saw a lot of participation from the first years, whose experience at handling competitive exams was fresh. Although it seemed to be too good, it had a catch. The answers to be submitted should have been accurate upto four decimal places. Fine, there was no need to complain (we all do have calculators, of course). But things started to get frustrating when the answers submitted did not match. The answer was checked multiple times in vain. It was then that someone came up with a revelation that the answer stored is slightly different, a small deviation from the correct answer.Astronomia

As most treasure hunts go, it involved mass participation in which participants formed teams of god knows how many and while a few actually tried to crack the levels, most were just busy begging those who cracked the next level for the answers. It was ‘by hook or by crook’ justified. The cajoling and flirting talents of all the participants were put to test here.Webbed

It was tagged as the flagship event in the online section. There were tales going around of how some

people went many nights sleepless in order to compete in Webbed in the previous editions, how it absolutely addicts the participant etc. When one hears such tales, anticipation runs high. The first years were absolutely gung-ho about it. And it was pretty interesting when it started, and ran successfully for about a day. All that anyone talked about was Webbed. But then, all of a sudden, it had to be shut down forcefully because of encountering unforeseen problems. The participants were left with nothing to do but curse the problems. What else could be done?Mobius Strip

This time too, the Strip belonged to its most enthusiastic participant, who has been bagging the prize each time. Ankan Bansal, from IITK won it again (at least MS1), much to the surprise of nobody. As usual, the participation was in single digits, although the questions were challenging and thought-provoking.Roborage:

Come the first day of Conscientia (considering inaugural day to be 0th day) IIST experienced sparks flying. Literally. The first big event Roborage saw an enthusiastic participation from first years (which everyone found surprising), and an overwhelming support from audience for them. The mean machines were built to fight. Metals clashed and sparks flew as the robots thrashed one another. All this action drew a lot of interest among non-participants, who were seen vying among themselves to get a better view of the action. Despite the number of teams from first year IISTians, only one of them managed to make it to 2nd round and that too without a weapon (like a boss!). The other IISTian team was from the

C14

By the freshers. Into the unknown...

byRitu Anil &

Sudheendra R.

17C14

third year. Semifinal of Atom v. Zeus was a real steely showdown. Also, most of the non-IIST robots looked like clones of one another, which was rather disappointing because, variety is always appreciated.Salilsthalchar

It was the next big thing to happen after Roborage. It required the participating amphibots to complete course in the least possible time. One has to admit: the circuit was innovatively designed using available resources. The course consisted of swinging pendulums, a slippery inclined plane, a pool of water (which was later a cause of irritation to the vigilance), bumpy pipes, scattered balls, see-saw bridge, sand, gravel, and an array of blocks. This competition saw participation from across the nation, and the designs were also very different from one another. Again, IISTians failed to make it big, but it had its share of moments of tense action, that left everyone wanting for more.Junkyard wars:

The teams in the finals showed true

skills in carpentry, design, innovation and execution. The cross bows were looked splendid and most of them went respectable distances. Overall the even was a grand success and was praised for the innovative tasks formulated and achieved. Although there was a little criticism by a few teams, especially the first years, who had no clue how to work with plywood.Workshops

Workshop team was in high spirits, as all the workshops, viz. Ethical Hacking, Quadrotor and Raspberry Pi were a grand success. This was demonstrated by the fact that for the first time in the history of Conscientia (or so the team claims), the workshop team had to declare a houseful and close registrations.

Another buzz during Conscientia was Nonsentia, Conscientia’s unofficial filler. Modesty is not one of our virtues, and we are happy to say that it was one of the most talked about things during the fest. We were humbled (for lack of a better word) to see so many people laughing over

the issues and inquiring about the next issue.We now conclude with this:

“The application of fundamental principles to a particular situation requires an additional set of capacities, both that involved in deducing from the universal and general fundamental principles more specific principles, with more immediate application to specific types of situation, and that involved in deriving from both of these principles the particular practical judgments about what is to be done here and now or in some particular set of circumstances which may someday be, but is not yet, here and now. To these capacities the name ‘Conscientia’ is applied.”

Google the meaning of Conscientia. This is the first entry. It is unreadably long and we still don’t understand it, but yes this was what Conscientia was all about. Into the Unknown.

500+ FOOTFALL

600+ IISTians

55%

45%

PRIZE MONEYDISTRIBUTION

NON-IISTians

IISTians

CONSCIENTIA 2014

000 100100100 200200200 300300300 400400400 500500500000 100

100100 200

200200 300

300300 400

400400 500

500500

00 100100 200200 300300 400400 500500

66% WORKSHOP

33 % EVENT PARTICIPANTS

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

WORKSHOP EVENTS

PARTICIPATION

The authors can be contacted at ritu.anilkumar@gmail.com &sudheendra.genius@gmail.com

18

Trivandrum is a tiny city (that is if you can call it one). And

restaurants aren’t all that many, especially when it comes to quality food or more importantly quality chicken. Seeing that the general population of the institute, including yours truly, is completely and truly obsessed with chicken, this review is basically about decent places for quality chicken. Everyone knows KFC and Kebab Khazana so there is no point going into it. These are amazing alternatives that are pretty good competitors to the known food giants of the city. The ratings are from 0 to 10 with 0 being pathetic and 10 being impossibly amazing.

ChicKingThis is a decent alternative to KFC.

Negatives first - as far as ambience is concerned it is only moderate

- way too much red everywhere. And the choice of music was poor. They played Justin Beiber’s ‘Baby’ and Bruno Mars’ ‘Grenade’ back to back, completely killing the mood. But on the positives, when it came to food, their chicken was juicy and very tender. The chicken strips aren’t too good but all other varieties - the breasts and the legs especially - are better than finger lickin’ good.

Features RatingAmbience 5

Food quality 7Service 8

Worth for money 7Overall 7

Oriental SpiceThis is probably one of my favourite

restaurants in the ‘city’. Amazing

ambience and awesome food. Their service is excellent. Dragon chicken and fried rice are must tries. The cheesy chicken and mushroom pasta are delicious. Unlike most restaurants in Trivandrum, this has perfect amount of seasoning: not too much, not too less, just the right amount. All in all, it is the place for wonderful food at a reasonable price.

Features RatingAmbience 9.5

Food quality 9.5Service 10

Worth for money 9Overall 9.8

Chicken ManiaTwo city restaurants reviewed by a junior editor at TSR.

chetta poby

Ritu Anil

The author can be contacted at ritu.anilkumar@gmail.com

"Let me show you some magic" "O eco-friendly... Nature ke Rakshak"

Graphiti byVarala Anvesh

19

"Real knowledge is to knowthe extent of one's ignorance"

-Confucius

Big Bang breakthrough announcedEvidence of inflation theory found

science

Quiz Club of IISTFriday evenings at 5.45Bring a pen and a friend

In what can safely be called the biggest breakthrough in

Astrophysics, scientists have found direct evidence of the expansion of the universe, a previously theoretical event that took place a fraction of a second after the Big Bang explosion nearly 14 billion years ago. The clue is encoded in the primordial cosmic microwave background radiation that continues to spread through space to this day. Scientists found and measured a key polarization, or orientation, of the microwaves caused by gravitational waves, which are miniature ripples in the fabric of space.

Gravitational waves, proposed by Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity nearly 100 years ago but never before proven, are believed to have originated in the Big Bang explosion and then been amplified by the universe’s inflation.

Because gravitational waves squeeze space as they travel, they imprint a specific pattern in the cosmic microwave background. Like light waves, gravitational

waves have “handedness” that correlates to left- and right-skewed polarizations.

Using a special telescope located at the South Pole, scientists not only detected gravitational waves in the universe’s fossil radiation; they also found that the telltale polarization signals are much stronger than expected.

In addition to providing the first direct evidence of the universe’s inflation, the measurements can be used to date the process and

determine how much energy it took.

Computer models indicate that the universe expanded by 100 trillion trillion times in .0000000000000000000000000000000001 (10 to the minus-34) seconds after the Big Bang explosion 13.8 billion years ago.

The telescope used to detect the gravitational waves is called Bicep, short for Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization.

Source: news.discovery.com

20Crossword

Across:

1. Sounds like the French supersonic plane; 8 so far. (9)4. Communication theory concept; Standards; Rival intelligence. (3)6. German scholarship. (4)7. But for Vladimir, this would have been another Iraq or Libya. (5)8. ____ offensive: Turning point of a pointless war on the New Year (1968) (3)9. 22.86cm of sharp, protruding iron. (3)11. London 2012’s sponsor, much to India’s displeasure. (3)14. Tiranga on the moon. (3)15. Protocol; Important symmetry concept in theoretical physics. (3)16. Leo just doesn’t get it. (5)

Down:

1. K in what used to be one of the most feared spy agencies. (7)2. New event, hydraulic bot. (9)3. Unofficial filler of the official filler, LOL initiative. (9)5. Ahmedabad; Forever unfinished. (3)6. Daily Allowance. (2)10. _____, Stephen and Hugh: fellow Cambridge mates, comedy TV series co-stars. (5)12. Tata chairman- IIST connection. (4)13. Up and down in the library- second part of the name (5)15. Trademark. (2)

Drishtikon 2013Annual students' magazine of IIST

Send your articles, poems, stories, artwork, images, etc. at drishtikon13@gmail.com

chetta po