I was sitting on a bench in a platform in the Calicut railway station… waiting for the train that was about to take me to Bangalore… somewhere within I did feel bad coz I was about to bid goodbye to a place I stayed for the last whole year… made so many nice friends… spent some really nice time… but at the same time I was really excited that I had made it to iitd… that boy within me who was always in search of new horizons was finally getting a bit more wind beneath his own wings… with many such mixed feelings inside.. I just sat there enjoying the beautiful evening breeze… n waiting for my train…
The train arrived in some time n me n my dad boarded it… settled in our respective seats… mine was a window seat… had a book with me n just as I started reading it… Feynman lectures (awesome book, u guys should give it a try)… a boy of somewhere in the middle of 20s sat right opposite to me(23 or 24 or something…around 6 ft 2 with hair falling around… nice body texture… n got to say… a really different face… )
‘’Feynman lectures huh??... Sure takes me back in time… “
‘Yeah? …awesome read… I love it… I like physics… ‘
“Hehe… me too kid… I love physics too…i have done engineering physics from iitb… “
‘Wow... Bombay huh? Cool… I wanted to make it there too… but Bombay dreams have crashed real bad… have got iitd ep though… I hope it isn’t that bad…’
“Yeah? Great… congrats… n iitd ep’s aint that bad so don’t sweat it… n just in case… being an iitian with ep doesn’t make you passionate in physics kid… I like physics coz I like it… just like that“
‘Wow… powerful lines there…Huh? N just in case… I m no kid’
“Hehe… I m sure you are not… it’s just that seeing you just made me go back to my own jee days… that passion… that intensity… if only I could get those days back…”
‘Well even I have left mine too I guess… I still remember those nights of endless problem solving… n even how we used to spend the whole night trying to track down the logics n realizations behind the theories… how awesome it felt when we saw matter waves flowing before our own eyes… n how the dancing fluctuating electric fields used to give rise to magnetic fields…’
Just then I saw the dude staring at me like some biologist stares at an endangered alien from some other planet or something… kind of freaked me out if you ask me…
‘Dude… wassap??...’
“Hehe… nothing… Continue… how do the electric fields dance??… “
‘What the hell… c’mon… that was just one of my Shakespearian touches… I meant how a continuously fluctuating electric field gives rise to magnetic fields…”
“Really? Go on… tell me… how??”
‘Great… I have just made a joke out of myself, haven’t I… it’s alright… the jokes over… I am not saying a word now…’
“Kid… u don’t really get it... Do you? You are way too afraid to get it wrong… to make a mistake… it’s our mistakes that teach us… it’s our questions that make us who we are… people think Einstein knew a lot… how many of you know that he was the one to have the most number of questions too… n it doesn’t matter even if you get it all wrong… it’s the intensity of your attempt that keeps the momentum alive… it’s never about finding solutions kid… it’s about asking questions… the destiny doesn’t matter… it’s the ride that matters…”
Okay now… got to tell you… most of the part of that highO lecture of his did go 'over' my head… then I was like-
‘Umm… okay…. So like what should I do now??’
“Well… tell me about the fluctuating fields… “
Now I always like it when someone wants to know something from me… not really into giving awesome lectures… but I do love explaining things from my own perspective…
‘Wow… so you really want me to set it all up… huh??’
“Yeah kid… set it all on fire”
‘Cool… so it all works in this way… most of the time physicists try to come up with equations that can explain natural phenomena… but many times they seem to be less interested in the reasons behind their occurrence… just the way how electric fields fluctuate and why the magnetic fields apear aczactly of those specific properties…’
“Nice start… go on…”
‘Now imagine a charge continuously oscillating at its point… so the linear separations from every point in space is changing continuously and hence the fields are continuously fluctuating… but there will always be a time lag in space… so that’s how you can realize that a wave will continuously flow from the charge to all around… so if you can deeply imagine the picture you will find out that the continuously fluctuating electric field is very different from a static electric field…’
“yeah... you are right..But then kid... That still doesn’t explain how the magnetic fields appear right??”
‘Yeah I know… now here comes the twist… if you can imagine the whole picture… you will realise that we just cant imagine continuously fluctuating electric fields to be static but different eletric field at different instants… do you get it??... If you do it’s like imagining a continuously moving car to be a static car at different places at different instants… which doesn’t make any sense…’
“Yeah… u are right kid…It’s like quantizing time n breaking the time line into bits of time… but you can’t do that coz time is a physical realization n time is continuous… right??”
‘Absolutely… so we need to consider continuously fluctuating electric fields to be static but a different electric field at every instant ..p l u s …a field that can give rise to the continuity… the one that eventually gets named as the magnetic field…’
“Wow kid… you did make some sense over there…nice, guess what??... You are doing well for a kid… keep up the good work…”
'DUDE!!... FOR CHRIST'S SAKE STOP CALLING ME A KID!!... n even though I came up with a basic realization… but I kind of suck in mathematically modeling it…. So I guess there’s no use…’
“You are still a kid, aren’t you??… mathematicians play with logic and manipulations… but physics is just not about finding equations kid… its where we see the equations come alive… where every variable keeps a story hidden within it… mathematical modeling is important… but the physical realization is what it’s all about… n as for the mathematics… think with Fourier analysis….” [Winks… n tries to get the bottle from the bag kept underneath the seat]
‘Fourier??... what he has to do with all this??’[Kind of dumb question to ask… but I guess that’s what it’s all about… never stop asking!!!]
“Well… Fourier analysis helps us to look at non differentiable functions as a function which is ‘hardly’ differentiable by turning it into a sum of infinite differentiable component functions… n differentiability is continuity at the 2nd internal dimension of calculus… so might just help you out…”
'didnt quite get you... how can non differentiability be 'hardly' differentiable??'
"its like how you use limits... the differentiabily is so low with the vertical tangent almost getting perpendicular... that its like tending towards non-differentiability... got it??"
‘Are you kidding me??... That’s awesome… thanks.. it might just help me track down mathematically how the continuous fluctuations give rise to te magnetic fields… n guess what… it might even combine the two natures of light… by considering particle nature which is discontinuous into a special case of wave nature… bringing in the continuity…’
“Really??…never thought of that… Hehe!!... Seeing you I remember my own days i left behind… never lose the spirit kid... if you really want to stand before the mirror and be happy “
‘Well… thanks… n I sure hope that was a compliment [Felt I cracked a nicely timed joke over there in the train but now it seems so gay!!]
Just then the train started shaking and people around got a bit nervous n all… but he stayed calm… n said…
“Remember one thing… it’s not the world around you that can help you to break out someday… it’s the one that lies within you…”
it was getting a lil loud then... but after listening to that... i just kept staring at him... the line didnt make much sense but it did strike right within....
The train started shaking like hell after that… n then the next moment I saw Rahul shaking me n saying-
” DUDE!… WAKE UP!!… stop sleeping in the class… that math’s mam is like a whole big Hitler without the thing down there( ;-] )… she will kill you”
‘Oh shit man!!... Uaahh [yawning] ..stayed up the whole night to finish off magnetism… not much time left… jee is in 2 months… I don’t know how big an egg I am going to lay in iit-jee this time… AAAAaaauuhh[yawning again!!]…
“Hehe!!... Don’t worry… you will make it…
fuck you Fourier!!… eeuuuhhh!!"[While solving a problem going on in the class…]
‘Hehe!!… C’mon..Fourier’s not that bad…’
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