Capacity of the sun a a virtually limitless source of energy

"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."
~Thomas Edison (1847~1931)

Buildings as Power Stations: a new vision for the built environment

"Every day we get enough energy from the sun to power our planet for 27 years...yet nearly all of this goes to waste."
~Research project SPECIFIC by Swansea University

Solar light for the base of the pyramid

"Did you know that breathing kerosene fumes is the equivalent of smoking two packets of cigarettes a day and two-thirds of adult females with lung cancer in developing nations are non-smokers.Yet globally, an estimated 500 million households still rely on kerosene or other liquid fuels for lighting." By yours trully

Energy: A multifaceted divide

“ Access to electricity is fundamental to opportunity in this age. It’s the light that children study by, the energy that allows an idea to be transformed into a real business. It’s the lifeline for families to meet their most basic needs, and it’s the connection that’s needed to plug Africa into the grid of the global economy.”
US President Barack Obama

Sustainability development

"In a few decades, the RELATIONSHIP between the environment, resources and conflict may seem almost as obvious as the connection we see today between human rights, democracy and peace"
~Wangari Maathai (1940 - 2011)

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Schrodinger`s cat

Have you heard of Schrödinger's Cat ?
One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges, and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.  
This can be applied to real life situation.Not just quantum mechanics.Suppose you are faced with something lets take for example you wanna date someone and you are not sure whether he/she is the right person for you..Just like Schrödinger's cat being alive and dead at the same time, the date with the person has both  “good and bad” probabilistic outcomes. The only way to find out is to “open the box”, in other words collapse the wave-function of an uncertain date into a specific outcome. kapish!