Archives December 2006

When students all over the world feel that certain subjects in science are dry, there is a drastic need to change our outlook. Even medicines are sugar coated now. Bitter medicines could be stronger, but no child will take it. Apart from sugar coating the lectures, we have to perform a more serious operation to remove the "anaesthetic of familiarity" as Faraday put it. We had been insisting in our sister journal that "our long association with physics makes us insensitive to the contradictions" - "we are tempted to take things for granted". One has to go to roots to remove the apparent contradictions. When we teach, we expect a pre knowledge from the students. We assume that more than stories of scientists, one should concentrate on "doing problems" the whole period, to do justice. This is not what successful teachers were practising. Motivation, seeking inspiration by studying the lives more...

Polonium kills fast. Tobacco kills slowly. The two combine in Tobacco making it a worse poison. It has been found that in Tobacco  210Po is present in significant levels. It has been observed that the uranium daughter products are selectively absorbed by the tobacco plant where they decay into radioactive polonium. High phosphate fertilizers 'worsen' the situation as uranium tends to associate with phosphates, This is the second important observation. Containment of radioactive wastes is a very important problem and perhaps to contain nature's poison, another poison con be experimented. Conversion of uranium to phosphates and nitrates and using them as fertilizers for tobacco plantations and many other tested weeds In protected areas and destroying these plants by burning them to the ashes/ might dilute their effect and make them amenable to disposal in safe areas- One can also study the possibility of biological degradation of the secondary plant wastes. more...