Riddles in Your

Teacup
100 S C I E N C E P U Z Z L E S F R O M E V E R Y D A Y LIFE

PARTHA GHOSE
DIPANKAR HOME

RIDDLES
IN YOUR

TEACUP
100 Science Puzzles from Everyday Life

PARTHA GHOSE
DIPANKAR HOME
Text illustrated by
SUPARNO CHAUDHURI

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CALCUTTA
ALLAHABAD

BOMBAY

DELHI

 Partha Ghose and Dipankar Home 1990

An Original Rupa Paperback
First edition 1990
Third impression 1992
Published by
Rupa & Co

Cover illustration by Meera Dayal Deshaprabhu

Cover design by S. Karmakar
Typeset by
Megatechnics

Printed by
Gopsons Papers Pvt Ltd

ISBN 81-7167-014-8

"With faith in the unsearchable riches of creation and the untried fertility
of those fresh minds into which these riches will continue to be poured,
I wish you success." - J C Maxwell, at the foundation of the Cavendish
Laboratory, Cambridge

Contents
Preface
1
Kettle Croon - Physics around the Kitchen 11
2
Our Daily Bread 18
3

Play Time 32
4

Flow, Fluid Flow 35

5

Through the Palm, Strangely 40

6
Facts and Fiction - In Movies and Novels 49
7

The Murmuring Brook - Mysteries of Nature 53

8
Give Your Brains a Racking 64
Answers
1 : 79; 2 : 84; 3 : 97; 4 : 99; 5 : 105; 6 : 112; 7 : 116

Preface

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the

fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true
science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer
marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed". - Albert Einstein.

One of our greatest pleasures over the last few years has been
interacting with young people and "playing" with physics:
trying to understand commonplace phenomena in terms of
basic physical principles and delighting in their beauty, profundity, generality and their subtle interplay with reality.
Our familiarity with natural phenomena and the ordinary
things that happen everyday around us rob them of their
mystery and makes them seem obvious to us; we stop wondering at them. Yet more often than not they conceal delectable
surprises and puzzles. Identifying and cracking them has been
a fascinating quest that has given us countless hours of pleasure.
In his famous autobiography, Richard Feynman recalls how
one day he saw a person in the Cornell University cafeteria fool
around and throw a plate in the air. Feynman saw the red
medallion of Cornell on the plate go around faster than the
wobble. He started to think about it and "play" with its physics.
He says, "the diagrams and the whole business that I got the
Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the
wobbling plate". So, to our young readers in particular, our
plea is: look out for the subtle and the profound in the familiar

and the seemingly trivial; don't brush it aside. Who knows, you
might be throwing away the Nobel Prize.
This book has grown out of our regular columns in Science
Today (now called 2007) and Amrita Bazar Patrika. We owe a
lot to our enthusiastic readers who have helped not only with
answers but also with problems. Some of these problems
appear in this book. Unfortunately, our benefactors are far too
many to be acknowledged individually. They have already
been acknowledged in our columns. The initial impetus, of
course, came from the Television programme "Quest" in
which one of us had the privilege to participate for a while. Two
books have also been sources of inspiration for us. They are The
Flying Circus of Physics (J. Walker, Wiley, 1975) and Clouds in
a Glass of Beer (C.F. Bohren, Wiley, 1987).
We have arranged the book into several sections, not according to the conventional partition of physics into heat, light,
sound and so on, but according to whether we face the puzzles
in and around our kitchen, out there in nature, on the play
ground, watching a movie, or reading a novel. We find this way
of classifying more interesting and natural. The last section
contains a few riddles that, to the best of our knowledge, still
remain unsolved or whose solutions are not that straightforward. We urge you to have a go at them in the spirit of Richard
Feynman.
We hope you enjoy reading this book. Please do so critically.
And if, as a result, you are able to solve one or two of the open
problems or notice new ones or have anything to say about the
answers we have given, do write to us, care of the Publishers,
about them. We would love to hear from you.
We have enjoyed collaborating with Suparno Chaudhuri
who has done the illustrations and cartoons.
Calcutta
November 1989

PARTHA CHOSE
DIPANKAR HOME

Kettle Croon
Physics around the Kitchen
"All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorajice^'

11

Kettle Croon

Boiling water in a kettle is a daily chore for most of us. We are

all familiar with the hissing sound (called the "singing" of the
kettle) that starts a few moments after the kettle is put on the
fire. This sound gradually increases and then suddenly drops
when the water starts to boil. In fact, we know from the sudden
drop of the sound that the water is ready, boiling. Have you
ever wondered what causes the kettle to "sing"?

Spoon in a Teacup

The experienced housewife often puts a metai spoon into the

china cup before pouring hot tea into it. Why? Which is safer
to use, a thin-walled cup or a thick-walled one?

13

Don't Lick an Ice Tray

Have you ever tried to hold a really cold frosted ice tray? If you
have, you must have noticed that your fingers tend to stick to
the tray. Why? Don't ever try to lick the tray - it will be a very
painful experience !

From Fermi to the Frying Pan

The celebrated Italian physicist Enrico Fermi once asked a

student during an examination: "The boiling point of olive oil
is higher than the melting point of tin. Explain how it is then
possible to fry food in olive oil in a pan". (Italian saucepans are
wholly made of tinned copper). What is the answer ?

14

Leaping Liquid

One of the regular headaches for a housewife is the nuisance

caused by milk spilling over when boiled. She has to keep a
constant watch and stir the milk to prevent it spilling. Some say
an easy way out is to keep a spoon immersed in the milk from
the beginning. Why does milk (and also 'dal') have this peculiar
property ?

Soup Swirl

Next time you have a thick soup at lunch, or prepare a paste of

starch, give it a good swirl, lift your spoon and watch for a few
seconds. You will notice that just before the turning stops, its
direction reverses momentarily. This phenomenon illustrates
an important characteristic of real fluids, namely, ... what ?

15

The Kitchen Sink

Next time you are in your kitchen, turn on the sink tap. Notice
that on striking the sink, the water spreads out in a thin layer up
to a certain radius, after which the thickness increases abruptly,
creating a circular wall of water around the falling stream. A
similar wall is also produced when a stream falls on a flat floor.
You must have seen this phenomenon innumerable times.
Have you ever stopped to wonder 'why' ?

Honey of a Problem

Pour out honey gently from a jar. If you intercept the thin
stream of falling honey with a knife, you will see that the honey
above the knife shrinks back and disappears into the jar. Don't
pour out the honey too quickly; let it just trickle dqwn. What
do you think causes this antigravity effect ?

16

Einstein in Your Teacup

Erwin Schrodinger was a famous physicist who wrote down an

equation for atomic particles that has replaced Newton's
second law, which is now known to be valid only for ordinarysized objects. Schrodinger's wife remembered Einstein every
time she poured her tea. This is because it was Einstein who first
explained to her and her husband why the tea leaves, which are
heavier than the liquid, collect at the centre of the bottom of the
cup when the tea is made to rotate by a spoon. Next time you
have tea, turn it with your spoon before pouring in the milk and
notice where the leaves settle. Why do you think the leaves
settle at the centre and not get pushed to the walls by the
centrifugal effect ?

17

Our Daily Bread

"The essential point in science is not a complicated mathematical formalism or ritualised experimentation. Rather the heart of
science is a kind of shrewd honesty that springs from really
wanting to know what the hell is going on." - Saul Paul Sirag

18

Have a Drink

When we drink, we bring the glass or cup containing the liquid

near our lips and suck in the liquid. What makes the liquid rush
up into our mouth ? Take a bottle of some drink, cover its mouth
with your lips and try to suck in the drink without inverting the
bottle above your mouth. What happens?

Soap and Dirt

How does soap help remove dirt from our bodies and clothes?
Any idea?

19

A Burning Flame

Next time you carry a candle or a burning matchstick, notice

that the flame is initially deflected backwards. Which way will
it deflect if you carry it in a case or protect it with your hand ?

Funny Funnel

through a funnel that you have to lift the funnel from time to
time when the liquid collects in the funnel and does not flow
down. Do you know why?

20

Blow Out!

Who hasn't blown out a candle or watched one being blown

out by a gust of wind? Even such commonplace a phenomenon
is however quite baffling. Why should a candle be blown out in
spite of a supply of more air (containing oxygen which helps
burning)?

Iron It Softly

It is common practice to sprinkle some water on a starched

cloth before pressing it with a hot iron.
Why does it help to sprinkle water and use a hot iron ?

21

Fire! Fire!

Whenever there is a fire we wish to extinguish, we think of

water. The fire brigade uses water to put out big fires; a
housewife sprinkles water on the kerosene stove after cooking
is over. What makes water an effective fire extinguisher?

Ice Fumes

Have you noticed that when exposed to air, a large slab of ice
appears to give out fumes? What are these fumes and why do
they form?

22

Coasting Along

Why does a coaster tend to stick to a wet-bottomed glass when

the glass is lifted?

Of Doorbells and TV Screens

Have you noticed that whenever somebody rings your doorbell, there is a disturbance on your TV screen? What has the
doorbell got to do with the TV screen?

23

Tractors and Buffaloes

A heavy crawler tractor is able to operate on soft, muddy

ground but the farmer's as well as his buffaloes' feet sink. Why?

Dropping a Bottle

Imagine you are travelling in a car: You have a glass bottle in

your hand. In which direction relative to the moving car should
you throw it to minimise the danger of its breaking on hitting
the ground?-

24

Swimming Underwater
a

Have you noticed that when swimming underwater, you can

see much better if you wear goggles. Why?

Blinding Light

We are annoyed when cars comingfrom the opposite direction

have their headlights on, because the bright light dazzles our
eyes. Also, when there is a power cut, for a while we are unable
to see anything. Then gradually our eyes get adjusted and we
are able to discern faintly the objects around us. Why do our
eyes react to light the way they do?

25

Hum with Your TV

Philip C. Williams, Florida, U.S.A., observed (Nature, Volume

239, p.407, 1972) that humming at a certain pitch while
watching television from a distance caused horizontal lines to
appear on the television screen, which were visible only to the
person who was humming. These lines could be made to
remain stationary or move up or down by altering the humming pitch. Isn't that queer?

Coiling Chocolate

The coiling of thick molten chocolate as it is poured onto a plate

or a slab of ice-cream must have struck you as odd. What on
earth makes it coil?

26

Rest in a Hammock

Why is it pleasant to lie in a hammock though the pieces of rope

that go to make it are by no means soft? Why is it pleasanter to
sit on a wooden chair rather than on a flat-topped stool?

Play on a Ship

Two friends are playing with a ball on board a ship moving at

a steady speed. One is standing nearer the aft and the other
nearer the bows. Does one of them find it easier to throw the
ball to his partner? (Ignore wind effects)

27

Long and Broken

The image of a street lamp on a lake or pond often appears

elongated and broken; a very common sight. Do you know
why?

Boot Polish

Afriend's son was polishing his shoes the other day. Neither the
sticky polish nor the brush had anything that he could connect
with the shine of the shoes, he was puzzled. Can you help?

28

Ride Along

A cycle (or a thin rimmed wheel) at rest cannot be made to

stand on the ground, but given a rolling motion, it does not fall.
What do you think is the reason?

Whistle Melodies

People often whistle melodies through their lips when in a

merry mood. What exactly happens to produce this sound?

29

Tear a Paper

When you tear up a piece of paper, you can hear a characteristic sound. Notice that the quicker you tear it, the higher is the
pitch of the sound. Any idea why?

Woof, It's Cold !

Have you been to a hill station? It's usually cooler up there, isn't
it? Why is it cooler at higher altitudes than at the sea level, even
though you may be several thousand feet nearer the sun?

30

Foggy Mirror

Many of you must be familiar with the fogging of the mirror in

the bathroom after a hot shower. The fogging of car windscreens during heavy showers is also a familiar sight. There is
a simple way of avoiding this kind of fogging. Do you know
what it is and how it works?

Roll a Coin

i f
Place a rupee coin vertically on its edge on a table. It tends to
fall on its side. Now give it a push - it rolls forward steadily for
a while without toppling. Why?

31

3
Play Time
"We dance around a ring and suppose, But the secret sits in the
middle and knows." - Robert Frost

32

Raman's Billiard Ball Problem

Raman was passionately curious about everything that happened around him, including the sharp click that is heard when
two billiard balls collide. Did you ever suspect that even such
a simple and common phenomenon might involve unexpected
subtleties of physics? Raman made a careful study of these
clicks and arrived at some unsuspected conclusions. For example, he found that the intensity of the click varied with the
direction around the billiard table. Can you guess in which
direction it is a maximum and why? It might be well worth your
while to do the experiment yourself and find out. If you cannot
find billiard balls, try with marbles. We are grateful to Professor
S. Ramaseshan (Raman Research Institute, Bangalore) for
drawing our attention to this beautiful problem.

Play Cricket

A cricket ball often moves faster after pitching on a smooth

wicket. Have you noticed that? What do you think is the
reason?

33

Top Spin

Tennis and table-tennis players often use 'top spin', which

makes the ball dip and land earlier than expected. Why does
the ball's spin (about the diameter perpendicular to its direction
of motion) make it dip?

Follow Shots

In agame of snooker or billiards, ope often sees "follow shots"

in which the cue ball follows the ball (of exactly the same mass)
it hits for a time, even when the ball which it hits picks up its full
speed. This seems to violate the principle of conservation of
energy. How would you explain such follow shots?

34

4
Flow, Fluid Flow!
"So long I have seen only with my eyes; now I want to perceive
through my intellect." - Rabindranath Tagore

35

Smoky Swirls

You must have noticed that when there is no breeze or draft,

smoke from a cigarette resting on an ashtray rises steadily and
smoothly up to a point and then suddenly breaks into swirls.
Why?

The Fluttering Flag

The fluttering of a flag in the wind is one of the most common

sights. Yet, how many of us have ever bothered'to ask, why?
Do you know what causes a flag to flutter in the wind?

36

The Puzzling Balloons

A friend, Professor Arthur D. Yaghjian (Concord, Massachusetts, USA) was once travelling in a car with his family, carrying
helium-filled balloons. He noticed that whenever he accelerated the car, the balloons surged forward and crowded around
his shoulders ! Every time he put on the brakes, the balloons
moved backwards and pressed against the rear window! Why
did the balloons behave in such a crazy way?

An Anti-gravity Effect

If you dip a capillary tube (a tube with a very fine bore) into a
liquid, the liquid rises inside the tube. This is the mechanism
that works in blotting papers which consist of fine capillary
tubes. If you keep one corner of a towel dipped in water,
gradually a large portion of the towel gets wet. Again it is
capillarity in action; a towel has thousands of fine capillary
cotton tubes through which water can rise. The question is :
what is the source of energy that makes the water rise?

37

Pour a Liquid

When you pour fruit juice or milk or any such liquid gently from
acontainer, why does it tend to run down the side and not drop
straight off from the lip? What factors determine how far down
it adheres to the side of the container?

The Tapering Stream

Turn on the tap in your bathroomand watch the steady and

smooth stream of water fall to the ground or into a bucket. You
will notice that the stream narrows as it falls. Is there a force
squeezing it together?

38

Expanding Smoke Rings

Have you seen veteran smokers puff out smoke rings? These
rings are technically called vortex rings. They are remarkably
stable in still air and can travel considerable distances without
distortion. If such rings are directed towards a wall, it is found
that they expand as they approach the wall. Why does the
proximity of a wall make them expand?

39

Through the Palm,

Strangely!
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of
theories to suit facts... The difficulty is to detach theframework
of fact - of absolute undeniable fact - from the embellishments
of theorists." - Sherlock Holmes

40

Through the Palm Strangely

Roll a piece of paper into a tube. Hold it v\ ith one hand, say, the
left hand, and look at a distant object through it with your left
eye, keeping your right eye closed. Now, bring your right palm
in front of your right eye so as to touch the tube, and then, open
your right eye as well. You will see the distant object clearly
through a hole in your right palm! (Both hands should be about
15-20 centimetres from your eyes). It's fantastic, isn't it? How
do you explain it?

It Does Not Pour Out

It is usually stated in text books that if you fill a glass completely

with water, cover its mouth with a stiff card and invert it, the
card sticks to the mouth of the glass and does not drop. Actually
you will find that you do not need to fill the glass completely.
Just pour some water into it, cover its mouth with a stiff card
and invert it, and the card will stay in its place. What keeps it
stuck to the glass?

41

Darting Pepper

Take some water in a glass and sprinkle some pepper on it.

Now rub a fingertip on a detergent soap and touch the water
surface. You will be amazed to see how instantly the pepper
particles will fly away from the spot in all directions. What
makes them do that?

The Silvery Shadow

Take a bowl of water, hold it under a bright light, lower your

index finger so as to dip into the water and watch the shadow
on the bottom of the bowl. You will be surprised to see that as
soon as your finger touches the water, the shadow of the tip of
the finger splits into two and there is a silvery lining along its
edge. A similar effect can be seen beautifully when an insect
skates along the surface of water and bright light falls on it from
above. What causes these splittings and silvery linings to
appear?

42

Weigh Yourself

Next time you weigh yourself, notice what happens when you
bend forward. You will find that while bending forward, you
seem to lose weight! Try another thing. Lift one of your arms
quickly. This time you will find that while lifting your arm, you
seem to gain weight! Why?

Defying Gravity

"Water will not pour out of a rotating vessel - even when the
vessel is bottoms up. Rotation prevents it", wrote Aristotle
some two thousand years ago. If you swing a bucket of water
fast enough as shown in the figure, the water will not spill. Why
won't it spill?

43

Weigh a Stone in Water

Place a glass of water and a stone on one pan of a balance and

balance them with weights. Then drop the stone into the water
in the glass. What happens to the balance? And why?

The Puzzling Rubber Band

Take a thick rubber band, stretch it quickly and hold it against

your forehead - you will feel it distinctly warm! This is contrary
to what one would normally expect. Remember that quick
expansion of a gas usually cools it. Why does the rubber band
behave in a contrary way?

44

Comb Your Hair

When your hair is completely dry, you can try the following
experiment. Take a small plastic comb and comb your hair or
rub the comb with a piece of flannel. Then go near a tap and
turn it on gently so that water just trickles out. Hold the comb
near the water. You will find that the trickle becomes a steady
stream and is deflected by the comb! Why? (The experiment
works best in dry weather conditions).

The Woolly Winter Coat

Keep a thermometer wrapped up in your winter coat. Do you

expect to find a difference in its reading after a couple of hours?
Now take two ice cubes. Keep one on a dish and wrap up the
other one in your coat. When the ice on the dish melts, unwrap
the coat. What do you expect to find?

45

The Paper Kettle

The picture shows an egg boiling in water in a paper pot.

Impossible, you might think. Won't the paper catch fire and the
water spill over and put out the fire? Try the experiment
yourself with a paper pot made of some stiff paper and attach
a piece of wire to it to enable you to hold it over the fire. The
fire will lick the pot but nothing will happen to it, and you can
boil an egg in it. What do you think is the reason?

The jumping Draught

Arrange afew identical draughts or coins in a straight line so that

the neighbouring draughts or coins touch. Hold the first
draught lightly with yourfingers and strike it sharply on its edge
with a ruler. You will see that the last draught or coin will jump
away, leaving the rest in their places. Why?

46

Which Is Heavier?

Take two identical glasses filled to the brim with water, but one
having a piece of wood floating on it. Which one is heavier?

Tearing Wet Paper

It is common experience that it is much easier to tear wet paper

than dry paper. Have you ever wondered why?

47

The Invisible Pin

Stick a pin into the centre of a flat, round piece of cork so that
it sticks out at right angles to its plane. Now float the cork in a
bowl (with opaque sides) with the pin hanging downwards into
the water. Provided the cork is neither too large nor too small,
you would not be able to see the pin, however much you try,
although the pin may be long enough for the cork not to hide
it. Try this simple experiment yourself, and you will be convinced. Can you figure out why?

48

Fact & Fiction

- In Movies & Novels
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it,
no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason
and your own common sense." - Gautama Buddha

49

The Humming Wires

Many of you, we presume, have seen Satyajit Ray's widely

acclaimed film Pather Panchali ('Song of the Road'). You would
recall the enchanting sequence where Durga and Apu are
running around in the field and listening with ecstatic wonder
to the humming of the telegraph wires in the wind. Peter Sellers
once wrote of this sequence, "It was so beautiful I could cry".
Durga and Apu were perhaps wondering whether the sound
was bringing any message from their father. What do you
think? Why do telegraph wires hum in the wind?

The Ben Hur Chariot Race

Have you seen tne classic film Ben Hur? Do you remember the
spectacular chariot race sequence? If you do, you would recall
that after the chariots picked up a certain speed, the wheels
appeared to turn slowly in the reverse direction. The same
thing also happens with rapidly rotating fans. Do you know
why?

50

The Invisible Man

H.G. Wells created the invisible man in his celebrated story by

the following trick: he made the refractive index of the invisible
man exactly the same as that of air. So light rays simply passed
through him without reflection or refraction. There is however
a catch, a scientific fallacy involved in this conception. Can you
figure out what it is?

Can Lightning Magnetise a Sword ?

There is adetective story (The Royal Bengal Mystery) by Satyajit

Ray in which the detective Pheluda solves the mystery by
arguing that the suspected victim was not murdered but was
struck by lightning. He used the following clue: the iron sword
held by the man had been magnetised. There was also circumstantial evidence that lightning had struck the neighbouring
area. Do you think it is possible for lightning to magnetise an
iron sword?

51

An Oscar-winning Problem

Have you seen Richard Attenborough's Oscar-winning movie

Candhi ? There is a scene in the film where Gandhi gives his
cotton wrapper to a poor woman. Candh i takes out h is chadar,
gathers it into a bundle and throws it into the river. The chadar
gradually stretches out beautifully on the water as it floats
towards the poor woman. Why does the crumpled chadar
stretch itself out on the water?

36 Chowringhee Lane

Recall the last sequence of the film 36 Chowringhee Lane ? Miss

Stoneham turns up at her pupil's house on Christmas eve,
wipes the frosty windowpane from outside and finds a boisterous party going on inside.
Did anything in this scene strike you as scientifically fallacious?

52

The Murmuring Brook

Mysteries of Nature
"Nature! Out of the simplest matter it creates most diverse
things, without the slightest effort, with the greatest perfection,
and on everything it casts a sort of fine veil. Each of its creations
has its own essence, each phenomenon has a separate concept, but everything is a single whole."
- Goethe

53

The Murmuring Brook

At some time or other in your life you must have spent a sunny
afternoon lying on grass, listening to the murmur of a brook. It
has a lyrical quality that has evoked creative responses in many
a poet and musician. Do you know why the brook murmurs ?

V Fly

One of the most beautiful sights is that of migrating birds flying

across the evening sky in V formations. Why don't nonmigratory birds fly in V formations?

54

Tyger! Tyger! Burning Bright

You must have noticed that the eyes of a cat or tiger shine
brightly at night even when very faint light falls on them.
This does not happen, for example, with human eyes. What is
the difference? And how does it help the cat or tiger?

The Elusive Cricket

Have you ever tried to listen to a cricket and locate it? The
moment you think you hear the sound comingfrom a particular
direction and turn your eyes towards it, it seems instantly to
jump away to give you the slip. How do you account for this
strange elusive character of a cricket ?

55

Ignorance Is Bliss

You must have seen birds happily sitting on dangerous high

tension electrical lines. Why don't they get electrocuted ?

Pondskater

Insects darting and skating along the surface of ponds is a pretty

sight. How do they manage to do that without sinking?

56

Darkness at Noon

Breakers continually washing the shores are a beautiful sight.

As the water rolls in and out, it leaves a mark on the beach. Wet
sand looks distinctly darker than dry sand. Why ?

The Shape of Ripples

When a stone is dropped into still water, it produces circular

waves that spread outwards. What shape, do you think, will the
waves take in the flowing water of a stream?

57

Sap in the Cap

How does sap move up tall trees ?

As is well known, a vacuum pump cannot lift water columns
beyond 33 feet because atmospheric pressure simply cannot
support a taller column. Yet many trees are more than 33 feet
tail. Some are two to three hundred feet tall. How are they able
to pull water from the ground to their crowns?

Blue, O Blue Sea

During his voyage to England in 1921 Sir C.V. Raman was

fascinated by the deep blue of the Mediterranean. Raman did
a simple experiment on board to test Lord Rayleigh's contention that this blue was due to reflection of the sky. What did he
do and what conclusions did he draw ?

58

The Winter Veil

Winter is a season of smog in many places. Travelling past

villages by dusk, you can see dense smoke hanging low over
the thatched or tiled roofs. This is a familiar sight in the late
autumn and winter but not in other seasons. Do you know
why?

The Ghostly Moon

A few days ago we witnessed a total lunar eclipse. When the

earth's shadow totally eclipsed the moon, it did not vanish out
of sight altogether - it was still visible and looked faintly reddish.
Why ?

59

Catch a Full Rainbow

On one occasion while travelling in a plane, Professor M.K.

Dasgupta, the eminent radioastronomer, happened to look
down and saw a beautiful sight - a complete and circular
rainbow with the plane's shadow (on the clouds below) at the
centre! Immediately on his return he related this to us. Why did
he see a full circular rainbow ?

The Moon and the River

X

One of our colleagues was recently flying on a moonlit night

high above a river. He looked out through the window and
noticed to his utter surprise that the moon's reflection on the
river was so large that it did not fit into the width of the river!
What puzzled him was that the width of the river appeared to
have decreased with altitude as expected, but not the moon's
reflection. What could that be due to?

60

Olber's Paradox

When we look up to the sky at night, we find it pitch dark

excepting for the stars. Can you guess what the darkness of the
night sky is really telling us about the universe we live in?

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

"Twinkle, twinkle little star,

How I wonder what you are,
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky."
Why do only stars twinkle but not planets ?

61

The Blue Dome of Air

The usual argument explaining why the sky looks blue is based
on the fact that the scattering of light by the particles in the
atmosphere increases rapidly with its frequency (Rayleigh's
Law of Scattering). Since blue light has a higher frequency than
red, it is scattered more than red and hence the sky looks blue.
But violet has an even higher frequency than blue. Then why
doesn't the sky look violet ?

The Blue Zenith

Have you ever noticed that the zenith (overhead sky) turns
deep blue just after sunset? Any idea why ?

62

Once in a Blue Moon

You must surely be familiar with the pi rase "once in a blue,

moon". Have you ever seen a moon or a sun which is deep blue
like the sky? Well, it is indeed an extraordinarily rare sight. To
the best of our knowledge, a blue moon and a blue sun were
last authentically reported way back in September 1950.
Robert Wilson, an astronomer attached to the Royal Observatory in Britain saw a blue moon and also a blue sun in Edinburgh.
He even made observations with a telescope and drew the
strange inference that the blue of the sun and moon was related
to forest fires in Canada. What could forest fires possibly have
to do with a blue moon?

Halo Moon

Have you ever seen a halo around the moon? You must have.
Do you know what causes the halo to appear ?

63

Give Your Brains a Racking

"In science we pay the highest respect to creativity, to originality ... we do not honour scientists for being right... it is never
given to anybody to be always right. We honour scientists for
being original, for being stimulating, for having started a whole
line of work." - Hermann Bondi
"Rouse up, Sirs !
Give your brains a racking
To find the remedy we're lacking."
- The Pied Piper of Hamelin

64

The Intriguing Cork

Take a small piece of flat cork, wet it in water, and float it in a

glass. You will find that it invariably drifts towards the walls.
Keep pouring water gently. As soon as the glass is full to the
brim, the cork automatically drifts back towards the centre of
the glass and remains there. Obviously, this is connected with
the reversal of the curvature of the water surface. Why does
this reversal take place ? And what precisely makes the cork
drift towards the centre and stay there?

65

Of Floating Blades and Wooden Sticks

Take two razor blades and two wooden sticks. First, put the
blades gently in a tub or bucket filled with water so that they do
not sink. Now slowly bring the blades towards each other by
giving a slight push to one blade with your finger. You will find
that when the blades are 3-4 mm apart, they will automatically
get attracted towards each other and will remain stuck till you
part them. The same phenomenon is observed if instead of
blades two wooden sticks are used. However, if you put one
blade and a wooden stick in the tub, they repel each other if you
try to bring them closer.
We urge you to repeat the experiment carefully with different
materials and shapes and try to see if a general pattern can be
established. Why do floating objects behave as they do ?

66

Tippy Top

Look at the photograph reproduced here. Can you recognise

the two bewildered men? Well, they are Niels Bohr and
Wolfgang Pauli, two of the most celebrated physicists of this
century. And the toy attracting their curious attention is the
well-known 'tippy-top'. If you spin this top on its heavy
spherical side, it quickly inverts itself and continues to spin
steadily on its thin stem. But isn't that baffling ?
Remark : The steady spinning of a top is essentially the result
of its inertia of rotational motion, referred to as the conservation of angular momentum in technical jargon. The flipping of
the 'tippy-top' implies flipping of its angular momentum direction, that is, a sudden change of its rotational inertia. It isfriction
which plays an important role here. Friction acts in a direction
opposing the spin and gives rise to a torque tending to flip the
top. But then, why doesn't it keep flipping again and again?
Why is the position with the heavier side on the top more stable
during spinning? Think about it.

67

Larger Looms the Moon

Have you ever noticed that the Moon looks larger near the
horizon than when it is at the zenith? You must have, but;
perhaps most of you haven't thought about it much. L. Kaufman
and I. Rock (Science, Volume 136, p.953, 1962) made a
detailed study and established conclusively that the lunar size
at the horizon is 1.2 to 1.5 times the size at the zenith: the moon
gradually appears to shrink as it ascends. This effect persists in
all atmospheric conditions. A protracted debate on this subject
has been going on in learned journals. Some think it to be a
naturally occurring example of the relativity of perceived size.
But a really satisfactory explanation continues to be elusive.
Perhaps you could now feel inspired to ponder over this?

68

The Green Flash

On rare occasions a green flash can be seen for a few seconds

just before the sun sets. Anthony Hewish, the discoverer of
Pulsars, confirmed to us that he had himself seen this rare and
striking phenomenon. Any idea what could cause such a
phenomenon ?

69

Hotter Freezes Faster

In cold countries like Canada and Iceland it is known that water

left in the open during winter freezes faster if its is initially
heated to a higher temperature. Isn't that counter-intuitive?
Francis Bacon had noticed this strange phenomenon and
commented on it. Recently G.S. Kell (National Research Council, Canada) made a systematic study of the phenomenon
(AmericanJournal of Physics, Vol.37, p.564). He points out that
the effect is more pronounced if ones uses wooden rather than
metallic vessels without lids. If you are sceptical, try the
following experiment. Heat some water and pour it into a
wooden or plastic vessel without a lid. Take the same amount
of water at room temperature in a similar vessel, and put them
both into the deep freeze of your refrigerator. Which one
freezes first and why ?
Remark:
We would only like to point out one important
factor - water at a higher temperature loses mass at a faster rate
due to faster evaporation, than colder water. Hence, if you start
with the same mass, by the time the temperature is equalized,
the hotter water has lost more mass and so has a lower heat
capacity (mass times specific heat). So it cools down faster
subsequently. It would be, of course, very interesting to make
a quantitative study of the relative importance of the various
other factors involved, such as the effect of convection currents, the difference in the conductivities of vessels, etc.

70

The Blue Mountains

While travelling in hilly terrains, do you ever wonder why

distant mountains often look blue ?

The Receding Blue

If you stand on a beach and look out into the sea, you will often
find that there is a sharp line near the horizon beyond which the
sea looks distinctly more blue. If there is a cliff nearby and you
start climbing it, you will find that this line of demarcation
appears to recede towards the horizon. Why? This problem
was suggested to us by Dr. Andrew Whitaker (Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland).

71

The Tumbling Can

One day Richard Feynman came into the kitchen where John
Wheeler's wife was cooking dinner. He took off the counter an
unopened tin can, and said to the children : "I can tell you
whether what's inside is solid or liquid without even opening
it or looking at the label. Do you know how?" "How?" asked
the incredulous children. Feynman tossed it up and watched it
turn and wobble. "Liquid", he announced. He was indeed
found to be right on opening the can. What was the 'trick' he
used?

Swimming in Circles

Richard Feynman was one day chatting with a group of

swimmers. He heard them say that it helps to swim faster if one
shaves ones legs and is nearly bald'. Feynman was curious to
verify whetherthis was indeed true. Hesuggested an ingenious
way of testing it: if a swimmer shaves just one of his/her legs,
he/she should swim in circles if shaving does indeed help to
swim faster. What do you think ?
72

The Impending Storm

Have you observed that a cloudy night sk / sometimes takes on

a faint reddish glow before a storm? What do you think is the
reason ?

73

Hop Along

Have you ever skipped a stone on water? If you have, you

would have noticed that it bounces in a series of successively
shorter leaps before stopping and sinking. However, Professor
E.H. Wright of Columbia University hit upon the ingenious idea
of skipping a stone on hard-packed, wet sand on a sea beach,
and he discovered a queer phenomenon. The first bounce of
the stone was short, the next a little longer, and then strangely,
this short-long sequence repeated itself (periodic behaviour)
until the stone came to rest. This behaviour has been found to
occur with all stones of a regular shape. Careful, detailed
studies have been made since Wright's initial observation,
including the use of high speed photography. We find all
attempts so far to explain it rather complicated. We would like
to have a simple qualitative understanding of it. Perhaps you
can help ?

74

Meandering Rivers

Rivers are found to meander rather than flow straight. Even

someone like Einstein was puzzled by this and wrote an essay
on the subject. He noticed that there was a connection
between the formation of meanders and "the tea cup phenomenon" (see Chapter 1). What is the connection ?
Remark :
It's essentially the secondary flow phenomenon
(see answer to "Einstein in Your Teacup", Chapter 1) that is
responsible for the formation of meanders. The river bed acts
like the sides of a teacup. In a river, of course, the water flows
along the channel. The river bed retards the flow along the
bottom and the sides. As a result the water along the centre and
near the surface flows faster than the rest. This sets up the
secondary flow which now occurs helically downstream. When
the river meets with an obstacle like, e.g., a hard rock on its
right bank, it is deflected to the left. The secondary flow then
keeps eroding the left bank and taking the debris and depositing it on the right bank a little further downstream. This makes
the river turn to the left until it meets with another obstacle.
Only the meandering would then seem to require that the river
meets with these obstacles quite randomly on its left and right.
Although this is plausible, an element of doubt still remains. The
actual explanation requires a more detailed enquiry.

75

Tap Dancing

Turn on the tap and close it slowly until you get a very thin but
steady flow of water through the faucet. Place your finger in the
stream and a standing wavelike pattern appears. Note that the
periodicity in the pattern depends on the distance between
your finger and the faucet. We do not know of any convincing
explanation of this intriguing effect. Can you help ?

J&StffcCH
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DEPARIMBIT
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THKlVMt

fsmzcu

Hi***

76

ANSWERS

1
Kettle Croon

It is the bottom layer of water in the kettle that gets heated first.
As the temperature rises, steam bubbles (not air bubbles) form
at the bottom. Being lighter than water, they rise and come in
contact with the cooler layers of water above, contract, and
eventually collapse. It is the collapse of a myriad steam bubbles
that produces the hissing soiind. The sound, therefore, increases as more and more steam bubbles form and collapse.
Eventually, however, when the entire mass of water is heated
to the boiling point, the steam bubbles do not collapse any
more because they no longer encounter cooler layers of water.
The hissing therefore ceases, and the whole mass of water in
the kettle starts boiling.

Spoon in a Teacup
A good housewife puts in a metal spoon because metals are
good conductors of heat. Can you work out the rest?

79

When hot tea is poured into a cup, first the inner layers of the
walls heat up and then gradually the outer layers. This uneven
heating leads to uneven expansion and the cup cracks. Thick
walls will therefore crack more easily than thin ones.

Don't Lick an Ice Tray

There is always some moisture on your fingers. When you
touch the frosted sides of the ice tray, this moisture freezes and
the pressure of your fingers makes the frozen moisture stick to
the ice crystals on the tray. If you try to lick the tray, your
tongue will stick to it and a layer of the skin may be ripped off.

Frying Food and Fermi

The answer lies in the simple fact that when food is fried, it is
not the oil that boils but the water in the food, and of course the
boiling point of water is lower than the melting point of tin !

Leaping Liquid
^LkjtZ

OF

N >

/UVWWWVV

Everyone knows that a layer of "skin" forms on the surface of

milk when it is heated. This is because some of the fat in the milk
separates. All the steam bubbles formed within the milk (milk
contains a lot of water) gettrapped by this skin. It is the pressure
of the trapped steam that eventually raises the skin and makes
some of the milk spill. The stirring breaks the "skin", releases
80

the pressure and prevents the spillover. The housewife has

discovered this technique through trial and error.

Soup Swirl

Soup flow reversal is a simple illustration of "visco-elasticity".

(An "ideal" fluid has no viscocity but all "real" fluids are
viscous.) Once you stop swirling the soup, the layers in contact
with the bowl come to rest because of friction. However, the
top layers of the soup that are not in contact with the bowl
continue to move, because real fluids are viscous. The stationary layers in contact with the bowl exert a visco-elastic restoring force on the moving layers which therefore slow down and
eventually reverse their direction of motion. An oscillatory
behaviour sets in, analogous to the oscillations of aspringwhich
is stretched and released. These oscillations are eventually
damped out by the soup's viscosity. If one is dealing with a fluid
which is highly viscous, such as a paste, the oscillations can be
damped to such an extent that only one reversal occurs.

The Kitchen Sink

The physics behind this common phenomenon involves the
propagation of waves (controlled by gravity) on a moving
stream of water. The crucial feature is governed by a quantity
called the Froude number which is the ratio of the stream speed
to the wave speed. Gravity waves on water surfaces can
propagate only if this Froude number is less than unity. It so

81

happens that the speed of gravity waves increases with the

depth of water. At the point of strikingthe sink, the water speed
is sufficiently high and it spreads out quickly into a thin sheet.
The Froude number in this region is greater than unity.
However, friction inevitably slows down the water and inhibits
its quick dispersal. Consequently, the water depth starts increasing with distance. Eventually it reaches a critical value
beyond which the Froude number decreases below unity and
gravity waves start propagating. This is where the water wall
forms rather abruptly. The greater the speed of flow from the
tap, the larger is the radius of the water wall. The effect is more
pronounced in a sink with a curved bottom because of the back
flow of water due to gravity. If you plug the sink and allow the
water to accumulate, you will find that the radius of the wall
gradually decreases and it eventually disappears altogether.

Honey of a Problem
We know that the surface of liquids behaves like a stretched
membrane and stores energy. This energy per unit area of the
surface is in fact a measure of the surface tension which tends
to reduce the surface area to a minimum. When the weight of
the accumulated honey exceeds the pull of surface tension, it
lengthens and comes down. The slicing reduces the weight of
the honey above the knife. If the slicing is not done toofardbwn
from the mouth of the pot, the surface tension is sufficient to
overcome the pull of gravity.
We have tested this by watching drops of water fall from the
mouth of a slightly open tap. We have found that water drops
too lengthen as water accumulates at the mouth of the tap. As
the drops get bigger, they become more and more elongated
and eventually break off from the tap and the remaining water
shrinks back.

82

Einstein in Your Teacup

In the words of Einstein himself : "The rotation of the liquid

causes a centrifugal force to act on it. This in itself would give
rise to no change in the flow of the liquid if the latter rotated like
a solid body. But in the neighbourhood of the walls of the cup
the liquid is restrained by friction, so that the angular velocity
with which it rotates is less than in other places nearer the
centre. In particular, the angular velocity of rotation, and
therefore the centrifugal force, will be smaller near the bottom
than higher up. The result of this will be a circular movement
of the liquid of the type, which goes on increasing until, under
the influence of ground friction, it becomes stationary. The tea
leaves are swept into the centre by the circular movement and
act as proof of its existence".
You must have noticed that the tea surface looks likea curved
surface turned upwards when the tea rotates. In this condition
the flow referred to by Einstein (called the "secondary flow")
acts in a direction that drives the tea leaves away from the
centre. When you withdraw the spoon and let the tea slow
down, the surface begins to flatten and the direction of the
"secondary flow" reverses, bringing the tea leaves to the
centre of the bottom.

83

1
Have a Drink
When we drink, we first expand our chest with the help of our
lungs. This expansion rarefies the air inside out mouth. Its
pressure falls and the atmospheric pressure outside forces the
drink to enter into this region of lower pressure.
If you cover the mouth of a bottle containing a drink with your
lips, you cannot suck in the drink because the pressure above
the drink and inside your mouth is the same. You have to raise
the bottle above your mouth and turn it upside down. Gravity
then makes the drink flow down into your mouth.

Soap and Dirt

Dirt particles are of two types, oily and charged ones. Simply
washing with water does not remove them because they tend
to cling to our bodies and clothes. To make matters worse, oil
does not mix with water. Soap molecules have the characteristic property (from their molecular structure) that they tend to
get attached to oily and charged dirt particles. Subsequent
washing with water then removes the dirt with the soap from
the clothes.

84

The Burning Flame

Contrary to expectations, the protected flame will move forwards, not backwards! This is because the flame, being hotter,
is lighter than the surrounding air. Now, when aforce is applied
to a body, it moves faster, the smaller its mass. (This is Newton's
second law of motion.) Being lighter, the flame moves faster
than the surrounding air and is therefore seen to be deflected
forwards.

Funny Funnel
As the liquid enters the bottle, it starts squeezing the air in it
which cannot escape. This goes on until the air pressure in the
bottle is high enough to hold up the weight of the liquid in the
funnel. You must then lift the funnel a little to let the compressed air escape. Then the liquid starts flowing down again.

Blow Out!
Newton's laws of cooling (not motion) are at work here. One
of these laws says that the larger the difference between the
temperature of a hot substance and its surroundings, the more
rapidly it cools down. This is why, for example, our tea cools
down quicker in winter. Also, when we blow over hot tea or
milk to cool it quickly, we replace the hot air that accumulates
over it by cooler air, and this helps more rapid cooling. There
is another law of Newton which says that the larger the surface
area of a hot substance, the more rapidly it cools. This is why
pouring tea into the saucer helps to cool it faster.
Both these laws operate in the case of the candle and cools
the burning wax vapour below its ignition point (the temperature below which wax vapour does not burn). When we blow

85

air at a candle flame, we (a) replace the hot air surrounding the
flame by cooler air, and (b) we distort the spherical shape of the
burning wax vapour (not the flame, which is not spherical) and
increase its surface area. Simple geometry shows that for a
given volume of a substance, the spherical shape has the least
surface area. Any distortion from the spherical shape therefore
increases the surface area of the substance.
Contrary to what you might expect, it is actually possible to
ignite coal or strip off paint by a jet of sufficiently hot air. Such
contraptions (called 'hot air strippers' or pokers) are now
commercially available abroad.

Iron it Softly
The starch in the cloth goes into solution when water is
sprinkled on it. This helps to soften the cloth. A hot iron is useful
because the heat helps to evaporate the water quickly, leaving
a stiffened flat surface.

Fire! Fire!
There are two factors which make water a good fire extinguisher. First, water absorbs a large quantity of heat from the
burning object (we say, its specific heat is high), and helps to
cool it. Secondly, the steam formed as the water boils in contact
with the burning objects occupies a very large volume and
envelops the burning object, shutting off the oxygen supply. As
you know, nothing can burn in the absence of oxygen.

86

Ice Fumes
When a large slab of ice is kept in the open, it gives out dense
fumes. They are not fumes of any gas but simply water vapour
that condenses in the cool air surrounding the ice. When the
air surrounding the ice becomes very cold, some of the water
vapour present in it condenses into tiny droplets of water. The
condensed vapour looks like fumes when it moves up and
down with the convection currents of air.

Coasting Along
The following points are worth noting :
(a)

The first point is that your hand holds the glass with the
drink in it. The weight of the glass is therefore balanced
and does not come into the picture.

(b)

The thin layer of water between the bottom of the glass

and the upper surface of the coaster removes all air from
this region. Therefore the only pressure that acts downwards on the coaster comes from this layer of water. In
order that the coaster gets lifted, the sum of the weights
of this layer of water and the coaster must be less than the
thrust of the atmosphere acting upwards on the bottom
of the coaster. No wonder heavy coasters do not get
lifted.

(c)

The upper surface of the coaster must be fairly smooth

so that no air bubbles can get trapped.

Of Doorbells and TV Screens

Whenever you press the door bell switch, an electric current

flows to activate the bell. The current is carried by accelerated
charges which emit electromagnetic waves. (Such waves,
predicted by James Clerk Maxwell in the nineteenth century on
the basis of his theory of electromagnetic phenomena, travel
through empty space with the velocity of light. In fact, light is
a form of electromagnetic wave.) These waves interfere with
the normal TV signals which are also electromagnetic waves
and give rise to the disturbances on the TV screen. Next time
you see such disturbances, think of Maxwell and his equations.

Tractors and Buffaloes

The answer lies in the difference between weight and pressure.
Although the tractor is much heavier than the farmer or his
buffaloes, its weight is distributed over a much larger area of its
bottom surface. Consequently, the load carried by each square
centimetre of its bottom surface (the "pressure") is fairly low.
On the other hand, the weight of the farmer or his buffaloes is
concentrated over the much smaller area of his feet or the
hooves, producing a much higher "pressure". An object
penetrates deeper not because it is heavier but because it
exerts a higher pressure (force per unit area) on its support.

88

Dropping a Bottle
Since it is safer to jump off a moving bus or train facing the
direction of motion, you might think that the bottle should be
thrown forwards. You are wrong. It should be thrown backwards, because its velocity of projection would then be opposite to its inertial velocity (the velocity of the bus or train) with
the result that it will strike the ground with a smaller impact. If
you throw it forward, its velocity of projection will add up with
its inertial velocity and it will strike the ground harder.
Why then is it safer for us to jump from a moving bus and run
forward? The answer is that we then avoid falling flat on the
ground and injuring ourselves.

Swimming Underwater
When we swim underwater, a layer of water covers the surface
of our eyes. The refractive index of water is approximately the
same as that of the substance of our eye lens. Hence no
appreciable refraction can occur when light enters our eyes
from the water. Consequently, no sharp images are formed on
our retina and we cannot see properly. But if we wear goggles,
then a layer of air is trapped between the water and our eyes.
Air has an appreciably different refractive index from the
material of our eye lens. This enables light rays to refract when
entering into our eyes and helps us see much better.

Blinding Light
The human retina contains two types of light sensitive photo
receptor cells called "rod cells" and "cone cells". Rod cells are
adapted to sensing low light intensities but not colours and are
involved in night vision. Cone cells are adapted to high light

89

intensities and can sense colours. When lightfalls on the retina,

the light energy is absorbed by a pigment (a protein called
"rhodopsin", earlier called "visual purple") in the photo
receptor cells to yield a specific photochemical product which
initiates the nerve impulses to our brain. The "visual cycle" is
completed when the light sensitive form of the visual pigment
is regenerated. We can adjust our eyes to a certain incident
light intensity by opening or closing the eyelids and controlling
the amount of light that falls on the retina so that there is a
balance between the amount of pigment that is bleached by
light and the amount that is regenerated. If the incident light
intensity changes suddenly, this balance is disturbed, resulting
in a temporary loss of vision until a new balance is achieved. If
the incident light is too bright, we have to close our eyes
altogether.

Hum with Your TV

When a person hums a particular pitch or frequency, his
eyeballs start vibrating with the same frequency. How this
occurs was first analysed in detail by W.A.H. Rushton (Physiological Laboratory, University of Cambridge) in an article
published in the prestigious science journal, (Nature, Vol. 216,
pp. 1173-1175). He gave a physiological explanation of how
humming affects the brain, and he suggested several experiments to demonstrate the effect.
Television pictures are formed by the recurrent line by line
horizontal scanning by an electron beam which excites the
screen. The frequency with which the electron beam sweeps
the screen from top to bottom is so high that the recurring
images appear continuous to our eyes. If a viewer hums with
the same frequency, his eyes start opening and closing with
that frequency, producing a stroboscopic image of the screen

90

on his retina. In other words, the image freezes on the retina.

If he hums with a frequency too high or too low, the image will
appear to move upwards or downwards. Obviously, the effect
is only visible to the viewer who hums.

Coiling Chocolate
The clues lie in the low surface tension, high adhesivity and high
viscosity of thick molten chocolate. The first two make it fall in
a continuous stream without breaking into drops. The high
viscosity prevents it from spreading too quickly on the plate
after falling. This makes the initial bit of falling chocolate
accumulate in a small heap which tends to keep its shape for a
while. Subsequent streams of chocolate form distinct layers,
one above the other, and these also retain their identities for a
while before merging into a single heap. It is the formation of
these distinct layers, one on top of the other, that is responsible
for the coiling. Incidentally, the same effect is seen with
shampoos.

Rest in a Hammock
When you sit on a flat-topped tool, your weight presses down
on a small area. A chair usually has a concave seat which helps
to spread out your weight over a larger area. In other words,
you exert less pressure per unit area. When we lie on asoft bed,
we make depressions that Conform to the uneven shape of our
body. Our weight is therefore more uniformly distributed,
decreasing the pressure everywhere. This is why we feel so
comfortable lying in a hammock or on a soft bed.

91

Play on a Ship
Neither has any advantage if the ship moves steadily in a
straight line. You might think that the person standing nearer
the bows recedes from the ball after it is thrown and the other
person moves forward to receive it. A little reflection will show
that this is not true. The ball as well as the two friends are carried
by the ship and therefore have the same speed as the ship. This
is called their inertial speed. Therefore the ship's motion (as
long as it is steady and in a straight line) cannot give any one of
them an advantage over the other.
In fact, to all passengers on board such a ship everything
would proceed as if the ship were at rest and the water and the
shore were moving in the opposite direction. There is no
physical way of distinguishing uniform velocity from rest.
Uniform velocity is purely relative. Believe it or not, this is the
famous principle of relativity.

Long and Broken

When the surface of a lake or pond is undisturbed, it behaves

like a plane horizontal mirror. The laws of reflection of light
(angle of incidence equals angle of reflection) operate and only
the light (from a point source on the opposite bank) reflected
from a particular point of the surface can enter our eyes. This
ensures that we see a clear image of the light.source. However,
when the surface becomes wavy due to the action of the wind,

92

there are multiple points on it that are so inclined relative to us

that they can all reflect the light into our eyes, and we see
multiple images. As the waves move, these points also change
and the images keep shifting.

Boot Polish
Polishing is such a mundane affair that we never bother to stop
and think about it. Yet the answer is not obvious. The surface
of leather is full of hills and dales and fine hair. The dimensions
of these irregularities are of the order of the wavelength of light.
Light can therefore "see" them and get scattered in all sorts of
directions. This makes the surface look dull. The effect of the
polish and the brushing is to even out the irregularities and
make the surface "look" flat to light. The laws of reflection then
make the surface look like a mirror.

Ride Along

The answer lies in a principle of mechanics called the conservation of angular momentum. A cycle at rest is unstable
because its base (the tyres) is narrow and its centre of gravity
is fairly high above the ground. So a little tilt makes the vertical
line through the centre of gravity fall outside its base and it
topples. When you give it a rolling motion, its wheels acquire
a rotatory motion. The material particles making up the wheel
all have a tendency to fly off tangentially in the plane of the two

93

wheels. In the absence of friction, the law of inertia would keep

them moving in the plane. Consequently, the moving wheels
tend to maintain their orientation in space. This gives them
stability against falling. Once their speed decreases due to
friction, they start wobbling and eventually fall.

Whistle Melodies
Whistling is produced by what is called a "hole tone" effect.
When air passes through a hole with sufficient speed, vortices
are formed and these produce the sound.
The tea kettle whistle is another familiar example of the "hole
tone". Such a whistle consists of two holes separated by a small
cavity. When the stream of air from one end impinges on the
other hole, vortices form which create a sound wave. The air
in the second hole vibrates like the diaphragm of a loud
speaker. For further details, you might like to read the article by
R.C. Chanaud in Scientific American, Volume 222, pp. 40-46.
Have you ever tried whistling under water? Is it possible?

Tear a Paper
Paper is made of cellulose fibres. When you tear a piece of
paper, these fibres snap one after another and set off vibrations
in the paper which produce sound waves in the surrounding
air. When you tear it up quickly, you snap a larger number of
these fibres in a given time and so increase the frequency of
vibrations and hence the pitch of the sound.

Woof, It's Cold !

The temperature drops with height because of two factors:
a) Althbugh air absorbs all the dangerous rays from the sun (like

94

ultra-violet, X-rays, etc.), it does not absorb the sun's heat very
much. It's the earth's surface (and our skin) which absorbs the
sun's heat and warms the adjoining layers of air by convection,
(b) However, the density of air and its pressure decrease with
height, and as a result, the air warmed by the earth expands and
cools as it rises. Consequently, it cannot rise very far and is
trapped near the earth's surface below the cooler layers above!

The Foggy Mirror

The answer is quite simple. Put a bit of soap or detergent on the
mirror (or the inside of the wind screen of your car during a
heavy shower). Afresh slice of potato will also do. Now, what's
really going on? It's all to do with surface tension and the angle
of contact (the angle that a liquid drop makes with the surface
on which it rests). No matter how clean you think your
bathroom mirror is, it is, in fact, quite filthy. This is why the
water that condenses on it cannot spread and wet it. Instead,
it collects as small droplets. In other words, the contamination
increases the angle of contact between the mirror and the
water. No matter how hard you try, you are unlikely to be able
to remove the filth, because even minute traces of it will affect
the angle of contact. You can, however, use a thin coating of
some liquid to reduce this angle. Detergents and the fresh juice
from a potato do this trick. Without them, the minute droplets
scatter light in all directions. This diffuse scattering results in the
fogging.

Roll a Coin
When we place a coin vertically on its edge on a table, it is
unstable because its base area is small and a slight tilt makes the
vertical line through its centres of gravity fall outside its base. It

95

is similar to tight-rope walking. When we give it a push, we

make it roll and it acquires angular motion about an axis passing
through its centre and perpendicular to its plane. Just as linear
motion has inertia, angular motion too has inertia. If no external
force acts on the coin tending to change its rotational state, it
would continue to roll forever. (This is technically known as the
'conservation of angular momentum'). In practice, however,
there is always some frictional force between the table and the
coin, which slows it down and it eventually topples. But before
toppling, it curves to the right or left. There is an interesting
feature here. The turning of the coin to the right or left is, in
practice, unpredictable, though its behaviour is, in principle,
deterministic, i.e., governed by causal laws of motion. There
are so many unknown and uncontrollable factors that can affect
its motion (for example, slight defects along the edge of the
coin, unevenness of the table, fluctuations in the breeze,
sudden vibrations of the table and so on) that it is impossible to
foresee them and take them fully into account. The moral is:
determinism does not necessarily imply predictability in practice.

96

3
Raman's Billiard Ball Problem
The answer is surprising - it is the backward direction, i.e., the
direction from which the striker ball comes. The reason is that
the striker ball drags the air around it. When it strikes the target
ball, it stops momentarily. This makes the air trailing behind it
get suddenly compressed and produces a kind of shock wave
with its intensity peaked backwards.

Play Cricket

When a bowler delivers a ball, usually a spin is imparted to the

ball. When a ball with a spin axis perpendicular to the vertical
plane in which it moves, hits the ground (pitching), there is
some friction between the surface of the ball and the pitch
(ground). On a smooth pitch this force of friction is just
sufficient to convert some of the rotational kinetic energy into
translational energy. This makes the ball move faster after
pitching but with a lower value of spin. As shown in the

97

diagrams, the frictional force reduces the spin when it is

clockwise as well as when it is anti-clockwise. Consequently,
the linear speed always increases.

Top Spin

The essential point is this. When the ball spins, it carries with it
athin layer of air (boundary layer) which sticks to it. This causes
a difference between the velocities of air flow at the top and
bottom of the ball (see figure) and consequently a difference in
pressure (Bernoulli's theorem). In order to make the ball dip,
it is necessary to create a higher pressure and therefore a lower
relative air velocity on the top. This can be ensured by making
the ball spin forward relative to its direction of motion. This is
an example of the Magnus effect in hydrodynamics.

Follow Shots
Although the translational kinetic energy of the cue ball is
transferred to the other ball, it retains its rotational kinetic
energy. It therefore continues to rotate after the collision, slips
for a brief while and eventually rolls forward because of the
friction between it and the table. Energy is therefore still
conserved, except for the effects of friction.

98

3
Smoky Swirls
The hot gases (smoke) from the burning cigarette first rise
slowly and have a laminar flow. They then accelerate because
of the buoyant force exerted on them by the cooler surrounding air. After a few centimetres the velocity is high enough for
turbulence to set in, and eddies form.

The Fluttering Flag

Imagine the flag perfectly flat and fully spread out in a strong
wind. Suppose a small disturbance develops in one part of the
flag that causes a ripple in it. The air stream flowing across the
flag must speed up as it crosses over the ripple. The faster
moving air has less (sideways) pressure (Bernoulli's principle)
and hence there is a difference in air pressure on the two sides
of the flag near the ripple. This happens randomly all over the
flag. It is these pressure differences that cause the flag to flutter
in the wind.

99

The Puzzling Balloons

The explanation hinges on the "Archimedes principle" and
"pseudo-forces". A helium-filled balloon experiences an upward
buoyant force equal to the weight of the air it displaces
(Archimedes principle). Since helium is less dense than air, this
buoyant force is greater than the balloon's weight. It therefore
floats upwards against gravity. Now, when a car accelerates,
say in the forward direction, a backward force is generated on
massive bodies inside it because of their inertia of rest. When
a car brakes, the inertia of motion produces a forward force
inside it. Such purely inertial forces which originate in the use
of accelerated frames of reference, such as an accelerated car,
are called "pseudo-forces" to distinguish them from "impressed forces". Unlike "impressed forces", "pseudo forces"
do not arise from the proximity of other physical bodies and do
not fall off with distance. These horizontal forward and backward pseudo-forces inside the car play the role of gravity, and
the helium-filled balloons move against them because of the
buoyant force resulting from the Archimedes principle.

An Anti-gravity Effect

The source of energy in capillarity is called "surface tension".

It is the energy that resides per unit area of the surface of a
liquid. The neighbouring molecules of a liquid attract one

100

another. Since a molecule well inside a liquid is sorrounded on

all sides by similar molecules, it is pulled equally in all directions.
Consequently, it does not feel any resultant pull in any direction. But think of the molecules near the surface. They have no
similar molecules above them. As a result, the downward pull
of the molecules below them remains unbalanced. This net
downward force on the surface molecules is called "surface
tension". If you want to take out a molecule from the surface,
you will have to spend some energy to overcome this surface
tension. This force makes the surface of a liquid behave like a
stretched elastic membrane tending to shrink as much as
possible. This is why in the absence of gravity, a liquid will
always take the form of a sphere, because for a given volume,
a sphere has the minimum surface area. Small quantities of
water therefore form drops. This is also why the water surface
curves upward whenever it comes into contact with the side of
the glass, making a definite angle called the "the angle of
contact". On the other hand, the surface of mercury which
does not wet glass, curves downward wherever it touches the
glass. When a capillary glass tube is inserted into water, its bore
is so narrow that the angle of contact between water and glass
cannot be maintained inside it, and the surface tension pushes
the water up the tube until gravity balances it.

Pour a Liquid
Believe it or not, it is atmospheric pressure in conjunction with
what is known as the Bernoulli principle that makes a liquid
stick and run down the side of its container. The Bernoulli
principle is a very general principle of fluid flows and has
numerous applications. It says that when a more or less
incompressible fluid flows, its pressure decreases wherever it
flows faster and vice versa. This is a consequence of the fact that

101

energy can neither be created nor destroyed (the famous

principle of the conservation of energy). Imagine spectators
crowding in the foyer of a cinema hall after a show. If you are
in the foyer you feel everyone pressing against you, and you
move slowly towards the exit. When you come close to the
exit, however, you start moving quicker and the pressure on
you drops. This is because pressure is generated by the
sideways pushes of people around you. When everyone
moves forward, this pressure drops. The same is true of the
molecules of a liquid. When they move slowly, they jostle and
collide against one another and the walls of the container,
creating a pressure. When they approach a narrower section of
the tube, they move forward faster because, being incompressible, the same amount of fluid has to pass through the
narrower sections in the same time. The pressure consequently drops.

When you pour a liquid out of a thin walled container, the

bottom layer of the stream in contact with the edge of the
container turns round much faster than the top layer. According to the Bernoulli principle, therefore, there is a pressure
drop across the width of the stream, and the atmosphere
presses the stream against the container side.
If you pour out the liquid fast by turning the can quickly, the
stream acquires an overall velocity, there is no longer any
appreciable pressure drop across its width, and the liquid does
not stick.

102

In order to prevent this sticking of liquids, soft drinks bottles

usually have a thick round skirt at the mouth which eliminates
the difference between the curvature of the bottom and top
layers of the flowing liquid; there is therefore no pressure drop
across it. Milk and tea pots have a spout or lip which makes the
stream run down it and drop straight into the cup without
sticking. These designs are there for a good reason.

The Tapering Stream

There is no force that squeezes the water stream and makes it
narrower as it falls. It is the conservation of mass at work. Since
water is incompressible, the same mass or equivalently the
same volume of water must pass through every horizontal slice
(cross-section) of the stream per second. Since water speeds
up as it falls, more water would pass through successive crosssections per second unless the cross-sectional area decreases.
You may say it is gravity pulling on the water that is responsible
for the narrowing of the stream.

The Expanding Smoke Ring

Let us first see why smoke rings are stable far away from walls.
The hot smoke ring (in a vertical plane) sets into motion
convection currents in the surrounding air which thread the
ring as shown in the figure. Since there is no preferred direction
in the space surrounding the smoke ring, convection currents

103

flow symmetrically all round it. The ring, therefore, experiences equal pushes and pulls from every direction. The net
effect is nil, and the ring is stable. However, as it approaches a
wall, the convection currents strike the wall. Since the layer of
air in contact with the wall is always at rest (viscosity), the
presence of the wall affects the convection currents which can
no longer flow symmetrically around the ring. The proximity of
the well spoils the isotropy of the space surrounding the ring.
The components of motion perpendicular to the wall get
cancelled, while those parallel to it get reinforced. Consequently, the ring expands. The delicate interplay between
symmetry and dynamics in such a common phenomenon is
indeed fascinating.

104

3
Through the Palm, Strangely !
When we look at an object, both our eyes get focused on it
automatically even when we keep one of them closed. This is
called "sympathetic focusing or adaptation" of the eyes. In the
experiment concerned, your left eye is focused on a distant
object. In sympathy, your right eye also gets focused on it,
although it is closed. When you bring your right palm in front
of it and open your right eye, your palm appears blurred or defocused. In other words, your left eye sees the distant object
dearly through the tube while your right eye does not see the
right palm clearly. This gives you the impression that you are
seeing the distant object through a hole in your right palm. In
order to verify this, do the experiment again and try deliberately to look at your right palm. The moment you concentrate
on it, the palm will come clearly into view and the distant object
and the hole in the palm will disappear.

It Does Not Pour Out

There is always a tendency for the water to flow out of the glass
through the space between the rim of the glass and the stiff
card. To observe this, use a thin metal in place of the card and
press it against the inverted glass. You will see a thin layer of
water bulging and skirting the glass rim. The moment you
release the pressure on the plate, you will notice that this water

105

will disappear into the glass and the plate drops a little. This is
enough to make the air above the water expand and make its
pressure drop sufficiently so that the atmospheric pressure is
able to hold the card with the water above it. To test that the
air above the water does indeed exert less pressure than the
atmosphere, you can make a hole in the bottom of the glass and
fix a glass tube through it so that one end of it is in the space
above the water. Do the experiment with the other end of the
tube closed with afinger. As soon as you remove the finger, the
card will drop.

Darting Pepper
The answer lies in the surface tension of water. You would
recall that the surface of water behaves like a stretched rubber
membrane and this helps pondskaters to move about on the
surface of ponds without sinking. Well, soap lowers the surface
tension of water. So, when you put a little detergent soap on
the water surface, its surface tension is lowered locally. This is
like making a hole on the surface of a stretched membrane - the
punctured membrane shrinks, carrying the pepper with it.

The Silvery Shadow

The splitting and silvery linings are caused by the refraction of

light by the curved surface of water around the fingertip or legs
of an insect. Usually our fingers and insect legs are covered by

106

an oily film. Since oil and water do not mix, our fingers and
insect legs make a dent on the water surface which acts like a
stretched membrane (surface tension). The curved water
surface acts like a lens which focuses the incident light along the
edge of the shadow.

Weigh Yourself
When you bend forward, the muscles that help you do that pull
up the lower half of your body. This is why your body exerts a
lower pressure on the weighing machine. When you lift up an
arm, the muscles used to do this push down on your shoulder
and increase the pressure on the weighing machine. Of course,
your mass does not change at all. It is Newton's third law that
operates. The sudden motion (or strictly speaking, the momentum) of your hand upward must be balanced by an opposite
movement downward.

Defying Gravity

Usually people say it is the 'centrifugal force' on the rotating

water that is responsible for its tendency to fly outward and
thus prevent it from spilling out when the bucket is bottoms up.
This is not correct. In the absence of gravity the water in the
rotating bucket would tend to fly off tangentially (parallel to the
horizontal path AK in the diagram) due to its inertia of motion
(Newton's first law). Gravity would, of course, bend it parallel

107

to the parabolic path AP if unobstructed by the bucket. So the

water does not at all seek to fall vertically. The "centrifugal
force" that physicists talk about does not act on the water but
on the rope attached to the bucket. It is the rope held by your
hand which prevents the bucket from flying off tangentially and
develops a tension which is balanced by your hand. Your hand
therefore feels this force. So this force does not act on the
moving body but on the obstacle that prevents it from moving
in a straight line - the string.

Weigh a Stone in Water

The balance is maintained. This is because, although the stone
should weigh less in water than in air because of the greater
upthrust the water exerts on it, it will also displace its own
volume of water whose level will rise. The water will then exert
an additional force on the bottom of tl ie glass exactly equal to
the weight lost by the stone - an illustration of the famous
Archimedes principle.

The Puzzling Rubber Band

Note that the quick stretching of the rubber band is an
"adiabatic" process in which no exchange of heat with the
surroundings can occur, and the work done by us in stretching
the rubber band goes entirely to increase its internal energy.
This raises the temperature of the rubber band. On the other
hand, when a gas expands rapidly, the gas itself has to do work
against attractive intermolecular forces, and it draws the required
energy from its own store of internal energy. Consequently,
the gas cools down.

108

Comb Your Hair

OPPOSITE. v<
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Attraction

When you comb your hair or rub the comb with a piece of
flannel, the comb is weakly electrified. The proximity of the
comb induces an opposite electric charge on water molecules.
The comb and the water therefore exert an electrical force on
each other. Since you hold the comb steady, it is the water that
gets deflected .The trickle becomes a steady stream because of
the change in the surface tension of water as a result of
electrification.

The Woolly Winter Coat

The reading of the thermometer will be exactly the same as
before, because the coat does not warm it, nor does the
thermometer generate heat. However, the ice cube wrapped
up in the coat hardly melts . Both these effects show that the
coat is a bad conductor of heat; it prevents heat from flowing
across it either way. This is why it helps to keep us warm. Our
bodies generate heat which it prevents from escaping into the
surrounding air.

The Paper Kettle

The reason is that in an uncovered pot you can only heat water
up to its boiling point, i.e., 100 deg. C. Water has a great
capacity to absorb heat. It absorbs the heat that would have
109

otherwise burnt the paper. In other words, it prevents the

paper from beihg heated to a point where it would catch fire.

The jumping Draught

You must have noticed that when a moving ball is made to hit
an identical ball that is stationary, the moving ball stops and the
target ball rolls forward with its velocity. This is an example of
an impact. In this case the impact occurs between two elastic
bodies. An impact lasts a split second. During this short time,
however, a whole process occurs. First, the two bodies compress each other at the point of contact. Internal restoring
forces are generated by this compression. When the compression reaches its maximum, these internal forces begin to push
the bodies out in opposite directions and restore their shape.
The moving ball is stopped by these restoring forces and its
velocity is transferred to the target ball. We may say that the
impact is, as it were, transferred from the first to the second
ball. This is an example of two fundamental laws of mechanics
- the conservation of energy (which states that energy can
neither be created nor destroyed) and the conservation of
momentum (mass x velocity). Exactly the same thing happens
with the draughts or coins. The impact is transferred from the
first draught through the intermediate ones to the last one
which has no other draught to transfer it to - so it moves away.

Which is Heavier?
The two glasses will weigh the same. This is because the floating
pieceof wood displaces exactly its own weight of water, and so,
although the glass with the piece of wood has less water in it
than the other glass, the weight of the piece of wood exactly
balances this loss. This is the Archimedes principle again.

110

Tearing Wet Paper

It is the adhesive force between the cellulose fibres of which
paper is made that must be overcome in tearing paper. In the
presence of water this adhesive force which is of electrostatic
origin is weakened, much the same way as when solubles like
salt (e.g., sodium chloride) dissolve in water because of the
weakening of the electrostatic attraction between the positively and negatively charged ions. In the case of paper the
effect is perceptible because water wets paper and water
molecules can flow into the spaces between the fibres, weakening the adhesive force between them.

The Invisible Pin

This vanishing of the pin is due to "total internal reflection" of

light. According to the laws of optics, light rays from a point P
(such as the tip of the pin) inside the water that are incident on
the water-air surface at an angle greater than 48.5 degrees to
the normal, do not refract and emerge from under the water
into the air, but are totally reflected back into the water. The
water surface behaves like a mirror to these rays. If the cork
subtends an angle of spread equal to or larger than 2 x 48.5 =
97 at the tip of the pin, no light ray from the pin can emerge
into air and enter our eyes. Hence we are unable to see the pin.

111

The Humming Wires

You might think that the vibrations of the telegraph wires in the
wind produce the humming sound. Although these vibrations
do produce some noise, they are not the main factors. When
a fairly high speed wind hits a telegraph wire, the air flow
becomes turbulent. Above a certain critical speed, two symmetrically placed stable vortices develop behind the telegraph
wire. These vortices become unstable when the speed of the
wind crosses an even higher threshold value. Then, if one of the
vortices is somehow disturbed, it starts oscillating and ultimately breaks away. This is followed by the formation of other
vortices in place of the earlier ones. This is technically known
as the "hydrodynamic feedback" mechanism. As a result, a
chain of alternating vortices flow away from the telegraph wire.
These vortices are accompanied by rapid pressure variations in
the surrounding air, which generate the characteristic humming sound. It was Lord Rayleigh who first made a systematic
study of such phenomena.

112

The Ben Hur Chariot Race

In film projection, 24 frames are projected per second. As a
wheel picks up speed, there comes a stage when the wheel
looks still. This is known as the "stroboscopic" condition. It is
realized every time the wheel speed increases to a point where
the configuration of the spokes remains unchanged over
successive picture frames. However, just before this condition
is realized, the wheel speed is such that the spokes just fail to
arrive at their previous configuration. The wheel therefore
appears to move backwards in spite of the increase in its speed.
As the stroboscopic condition is reached, the wheel comes to
rest, and then starts moving forward again as it speeds up
further.

The Invisible Man

In order for the "invisible man" to see, images of external
objects must form on the retina of his eyes. This requires
refraction of light at the outer surface of his eyes, which cannot
occur. Moreover, some light energy must be absorbed by his
retina in order for his brain to be triggered into interpreting the
image. But then his eyes would become visible to others. An
invisible man must necessarily also be a blind man! H.G. Wells's
"invisible man" could, however, see. This is scientifically
impossible - a fallacy is a fallacy is a fallacy.

113

Can Lightning Magnetise a Sword?

M*btHTIC UfttS 6F fOKC

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Lightning is discharge of electricity, and the resulting electric

current passing through an iron sword would produce magnetic lines of force coiled around it. What are needed for
magnetisation, however, are lines offeree parallel to and along
the length of the sword. However strong the current from a
lightning might be, it cannot magnetise a sword unless it
produces magnetic lines of force parallel to the sword. Moreover, even if the sword were somehow to acquire some
magnetism, it should be completely destroyed by the enormous
heat generated by the huge current arising from the lightning
discharge.

An Oscar-winning Problem
If you dip one end of a handkerchief in water, a large part of it
gradually gets wet. This is because of capillary action. A
handkerchief or any piece of cloth consists of a whole lot of
capillary tubes with a fine bore. Water rises through these capillary tubes due to the action of surface tension (a blotting
paper also works on the same principle) and eventually moistens a large part of the cloth. Exactly the same thing happens
when a crumpled cloth is thrown onto water. As it starts
soaking water, parts of it which are dry and above the water get
wet and heavier; gravity then pulls these parts down. This

114

combined effect of capillarity and gravity eventually straightens

out the crumpled cloth. You can see this effect vividly by
crumpling a piece of coloured tissue paper and dropping it into
a bucket of water. You will be able to see the colour of the tissue
darken as water soaks into it and the wet parts lower themselves on to the water surface.

36 Chowringhee Lane
The Director of the film was obviously overswayed by the
dramatic compulsions of the scene and did not realise that
wiping a frosty window pane from outside cannot help. This is
because the water vapour inside the room which is warmer
condenses on the colder window panes, and it is this moisture
(frost) that needs to be wiped. The ambient temperature
outside is obviously the same as that of the glass panes and so
no condensation can occur on the outside. You must have
noticed a similar effect during the monsoon on your car
windows and windscreen which get misty.

115

3
The Murmuring Brook
It is the volume pulsation of trapped air bubbles in the stream
that produces that murmur. The pulsating air bubbles behave
like oscillating systems (bells) and generate sound waves in the
audible range. You can create this murmur at home. Take two
glasses partially filled with water. Pour water from one into the
other and listen to the murmur. Notice that air bubbles form in
the water.

V Fly
When a bird flaps its wings downward, it forces updrafts of air
which trail beyond its two wings. A bird following it is able to
take advantage of these updrafts if it positions itself just behind
the tip of one of its wings in order to avoid coming into each
other's way. It is therefore most advantageous for migratory
birds to fly in V formations. In this way they spend the least
amount of energy. This is vital for very long distance flights
which migratory birds have to undertake for survival. How did
these birds learn this trick? We can only guess that evolution
through natural selection must be the answer. Those species
that did not develop the required "instinct" have not survived.
Would you agree?

116

Tyger ! Tyger ! Burning Bright

Unlike human eyes, a cat's or tiger's eyes contain a layer of

tapetum lucidum which reflects light. There is a curved semitransparent convex mirror of this substance in the cat's eye
which reflects back part of the incident light into a diverging
cone and makes it shine. If you are outside this cone, you won't
see the eye at all. Presumably, it helps the tiger to spot its prey
better at night by starlight.

The Elusive Cricket

Our ears can determine the direction of a sound source in two
ways: (a) by noticing the difference in the intensities of the
sound heard by the two ears, or (b) by perceiving the difference
in the phases of the sound waves reaching the two ears. Both
form the basis of stereophonic hearing. Intensity differences
are discernible by human ears only for short wavelength or
high pitch sound. This is because long wavelength or low pitch
sound can diffract or bend round the head and produce equal
intensities at the two ears. For low pitch sound, our ear have
to depend on their ability to detect the difference of phase at
the two ears. At intermediate pitches (~ 4000 Hz) which
roughly correspond to the sound produced by a cricket, the
location of the source becomes tricky - our ears then find it
difficult to differentiate between the intensities or phases at the
two ears.

117

Ignorance Is Bliss

FAjMySMH
The voltage drop across the two legs of a bird sitting on a high
tension line is fairly small. Coupled with the fact that the
electrical resistance of its body is high, this means that practically no current flows through its body. However, if an unlucky
bird happens to touch the pole while sitting on the high tension
line, it provides a short circuit from the line to the earth and a
massive current flows through its body, electrocuting it.

Pondskater

MAntz skfo1s:

The surface of water is like a thin stretched membrane or

"skin" which can support objects which are not too heavy, nor
wetted by water and do not prick the skin. Insect legs are
covered with an oily substance and are not wetted by water.
Their legs simply depress this water "skin" created by surface
tension. The skin tends to straighten out and support the
insects.

118

The feather of water birds like ducks are also covered with an
oily substance exuded by their glands. This is why water does
not wet their feathers.

Darkness at Noon
The real answer lies in the fact that water is closer to sand than
air in its optical properties. Light is scattered by the sand grains
but emerges fairly quickly after a few scattering events because
the average scattering angle is large. When the inter-particle
spaces are filled with water (even if it is pure) the average
scattering angle is smaller and light suffers a larger number of
scattering events and has to travel a longer distance within the
sand before re-emerging. It is this longer path and the consequent cumulative absorption by the scattering centres (sand
grains) that make wet sand look darker. It has very little to do
with absorption by water which is transparent to visible light.
To convince yourself, use washed and clean sand as well as
1
distilled water - the wet sand will still look darker,
i

The Shape of Ripples

You might think that the waves will take some kind of an elliptic
or oblong shape, somewhat wider along the direction of the
stream. This is not true. The shape will remain circular in
flowing water. The reason is this: the flow will translate the
entire body of water downstream. Consequently, the circular
waves will undergo a simple translation downstream without
suffering any distortion.

119

Sap in the Cap

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Sap is lifted up to the leaves and then flows down with the
products of photosynthesis. Water ascends from the roots
through tubes of dead cells in the xylem. Products of photosynthesis descend from the leaves through living cells of the
phloem. Experiments have demonstrated that the "motor" of
sap ascent lies in the crown of the tree and is powered by
sunlight. When the leaves are engaged in photosynthesis, they
liberate copious quantities of water vapour to the air, a process
called "transpiration". As water transpires a molecule at a time
from the pores on the under-surface of the leaves, they are
replaced by molecules pulled up from below by surface tension
forces. The water column is continuous all the way from the
rootlets to the capillaries in the leaves. It is therefore not the
atmospheric pressure that is utilised but the cohesive forces
within water and the adhesive forces between water and the
cell walls. These cohesive and adhesive forces can give a
continuous water column a tensile strength as high as 300
atmospheres. The formation of a single air bubble can however
ruin this mechanism and make the sap drop to approximately
33 feet. That such delicate a mechanism can work reliably in the
high, wind-tossed branches of a tree is because of the minute
subdivision of the chambered structure of the wood. If a gas
bubble forms in acolumn, the resulting break is confined to that
column alone.

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The mechanism of phloem transport, although mainly downward, is still not well understood. Osmotic pressure (the
universal tendency of solutes to come to equal concentrations
everywhere in a solution) could be responsible.

Blue, O Blue Sea

Raman used the polarisation of light on reflection to test
Rayleigh's contention. He used to carry a Nicol prism in his
pocket. He took it out and looked at the reflected light from the
sea through this polariser. He turned it round its axis to cut off
the reflected light completely. He was surprised to find a
beautiful blue light still emerging from the sea. This showed
that the blue of the sea could not be entirely due to the
reflection of the sky. This simple and ingenious experiment
suggested that the blue of tl^ sea must be essentially due to the
scattering of light by water molecules. This struck Raman, and
he started a whole series of experiments on the scattering of
light by various liquids, culminating in his discovery of the
Raman Effect (nothing to do with the blue of the sea as such)
which won him the Nobel prize.

Winter Veil
The reason lies in what is known as "temperature inversion".
There are no strong air currents in the winter to disperse
pollutants like smoke either in the vertical or horizontal directions. Also, the ground is not heated very much in the winter,
and as the sun goes down, the ground radiates the heat into a
clear sky and cools down fairly quickly. As a result, a layer of
cold air gets trapped near the ground below warmer and lighter
air above. This is the reverse of the condition that normally
prevails, namely, the temperature of air drops with the height

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above the ground. The cold air near the ground cools all the
smoke and other gases and traps them below the boundary
layer between it and the warmer air above.

The Ghostly Moon

The reason is that when the earth comes between the sun and
the moon and casts its shadow on the latter, some sunlight is
still refracted by the earth's atmosphere and falls on the moon,
an effect usually neglected in textbook explanations of the lunar
eclipse. This refracted sunlight is depleted of its bluer components because of the scattering of light by air molecules (called
Rayleigh scattering). Air molecules are smaller than the typical
wavelengths of light, and they scatter blue light much more
than red light. This is why sodium vapour light is much more
effective in lighting streets than neon light. Being yellowish, it
is scattered much less than the bluer neon light and can
penetrate deeper. This is why the light that falls on the moon
during a total eclipse is faint and reddish.

Catch a Full Rainbow

The centre of a rainbow is always in line with our eyes with the
sun behind us, so that standing on the earth, we are only able
to see semi-circular rainbows. The lower halves of the bows
(with their axes parallel to the earth) are cut off by the earth. A
complete rainbow can only be seen when it is formed parallel
to the earth's surface, as seen by the passenger in an aeroplane
flying above the water droplets with the sun high up above it
- a rare combination.

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The Moon and the River

The crux of the matter lies in the fact that the moon is a very,
very distant object and the height of an aeroplane above the
ground is negligible compared with this distance. Now, for an
image in a plane mirror, the image distance is the same as the
object distance. The image of the moon in the river is also
therefore very, very distant. Since the height of the plane is
negligible compared to this distance, the moon's image will
appear to have the same size from the ground and the plane.
However, the width of the river will appear to shrink as we go
up. Hence there will come a point above which the river will
appear narrower than the reflected moon.

Olber's Paradox
The darkness of the night sky is essentially explained by the
universe being still young and expanding. In an expanding
universe, the distant sources of light (the galaxies) are all
receding from us. This leads to a diminution of light from a
galaxy in two ways. First, there is a difference in the time scales
which operate on the earth and on distant galaxies. This
difference alters the rate at which light is received on earth from
a distant galaxy. The amount of light which is emitted by a
galaxy in a given period is received on earth over a longer
period compared to the galaxy clock. There is also an associated effect known as the "cosmological red-shift" (a consequence of the general theory of relativity) which shifts an
appreciable portion of the visible light into the infra-red region
which is not visible. These effects combine to ensure that the
distant sources of light in the universe do not make the night sky
bright. Thefinitenessof the universe in extent or in age reduces
the remaining brightness of the sky to the observed level.

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Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

The twinkling of stars is caused by the earth's atmosphere.

Stars are so far away that they act as point sources of light. Due
to constant movements of air in the atmosphere, the rays of
light from a star undergo random deviations as they pass
through the turbulent air currents. As a consequence, the
position of a star appears to us to fluctuate as well as the
intensity of light from it, giving rise to the twinkling effect. If you
were on the moon, for example, where there is no atmosphere, you would not see stars twinkle.
On the other hand, planets are comparatively nearer to the
earth and they look like small discs of light rather than point
sources. Although the turbulence in the earth's atmosphere
produces fluctuations of each point in the disc, these fluctuations cancel each other out over the disc and the total effect is
one of steady light.

124

The Blue Dome of Air

OO

Light from the sun spreads out through space like ripples on the
surface of a pond. These ripples or waves have very small wavelengths (the distances between successive crests or troughs) of
the order of 6!0006 cm. When they fall on air molecules in the
earth's atmosphere which are much smaller in size, these
waves scatter off these molecules in a particular fashion. Lord
Rayleigh was the first to show theoretically that the intensity of
the scattered light should increase sharply as its wavelength
decreases. In the visible spectrum of sunlight violet has the
shortest wavelength. It, therefore, follows that violet light
should be more scattered into our eyes than blue, green or red
light. But then why does the sky look blue rather than violet?
That is because of two other important factors. First, there is
more blue light in the sun's rays than violet. Secondly, our eyes
are much less sensitive to violet than to blue light. Through
evolution the human eye is adapted to be most sensitive to the
colour most abundant in the sun's rays, which happens to be
yellow. These two factors make the resultant visual sensation
dominantly blue.

The Blue Zenith

This enhanced blueness of the zenith is owing to the presence
of ozone in the upper layers of the atmosphere. Absorption of

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light by ozone is highest at the red end of the spectrum and is

least a\ the blue end. When the sun is just below the horizon,
the patfi length of sunlight through the ozone layer is the
greatest at the zenith, and consequently it is most depleted of
its reddish components.

Once in a Blue Moon

What Robert Wilson concluded from his observations was that
the blue sun and moon were caused by clouds of small particles
from forest fires in Alberta (Canada), which had been carried by
winds across the Atlantic to Edinburgh. These particles were
predominantly oil droplets formed from the combustion products of the fires. These oil drops had sizes comparable with the
average wavelength of light. Now, we know that if the scattering particles are much smaller than this, they preferentially
scatter blue light (Rayleigh scattering). If they are much bigger,
they scatter all colours more or less equally. When they are of
a comparable size, they scatter red light more than blue. It so
happened that the oil drops carried from the Canadian forest
fires to Edinburgh were just the right size to scatter red light
more than blue. Consequently the sun and moonlight that got
through looked blue. It was indeed a very rare combination of
factors. Such a combination occurs only once in a blue moon!

Halo Moon
The white band around the moon is called a halo. This halo
around the moon is caused by refraction and dispersion of light.
You might have noticed thin white clouds in the sky, so thin that
we can see the moon through them. These clouds are made up
of tiny hexagonal ice crystals. The rays of the moon coming
through the crystals are refracted as in a prism. The refraction

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is also accompanied by dispersion, that is, splitting into colours.

The halo looks circular because the crystals are uniformly
distributed around the centre of the halo. It actually looks
pinkish (not white) because of the central pink colour, which
can be seen distinctly, while the outer blue colour merges into
the background of the sky.

127

PARTHA GHOSE

DIPANKAR HOME

Dr. Partha Chose, of the S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences
and Dr. Dipankar Home, of the Physics Department of Bose Institute,
Calcutta, with their major research interests and activities in quantum
mechanics and fundamental particles, have collaborated with each other
and with others in the communication/dissemination of scientific
information and concepts through both the print and video media, such
as over the Doordarshan on which Dr. Chose was one of the anchormen
of the popular Quest series, and periodicals like 2001, to which they have
contributed the popular 'Inquiry' columns. To the making of their latest
collaborative endeavour, Riddles in Your Teacup, they bring a rich,
expertise gathered from their sustained experimentation in science
communication.

papcmAc*y

Science
ISBN SI 7167 014 8