Month: May 2014
THE MOST POWERFUL AUTOMATIC GUN IN THE WORLD-METAL STORM
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The metal storm is an automatic weapon which is capable of firing one million rounds per minute yes you read it right 1 MILLION ROUNDS PER MINUTE . Metal storm has no moving parts at all & bullets are fired electronically .The bullets are pre-sealed in a barrel in stacked configuration .No reloading of magazines is required the operator just replaces the preloaded barrels .The video above shows the massive destructive power of this machine.
THE SOLWAY FIRTH SPACEMAN MYSTERY , SOLVED ? ?
So as i wrote about it yesterday i am now giving the currently most accepted explanation of the photograph . According to it the space man appearing like object is actually Jim’s life Annie with her back turned around . If you carefully look there’s the sleeves on her dress,there’s the little collar thing they used to have on the back of dresses in those days etc etc
Suddenly perhaps now the spaceman had disappeared for good and had been replaced by nothing more fantastic than Jim’s wife who had every reason to be in the photo or may not be . Lets look at the whole thing one more time.
This is Jim’s wife Annie…….
And this is Jim with his new Kodak SLR camera,and at this time SLR cameras were still something of a novelty…..
(The above isn’t really relevant to the mystery,but is included for completeness).
This photo again shows the photos were taken from a low down viewpoint looking up a slight incline with Jim’s wife Annie to the right.Notice the dress Annie is wearing,how short the arms are (like a capped sleeve t-shirt) and the just visible collar right at the edge of the photo……
This image is how the scene looks from the road (this is as good a guess as I can make as to where exactly this happened,but will be within about 50 metres in either direction)…..
They would have been quite some way across the grassy bit and probably at the bottom of the dyke that was made to keep the sea out during very high tides.
Now take a look at this close up of the alleged space suit wearing intruder…….
Red outline #1 looks to be the same as the collar in the earlier photo and #2 is exactly the right position for the sleeve of her dress to finish.She has dark (almost black hair) as shown in the photo of her and Jim which matches up with what we see in the original photo.Although not shown in any other photos taken that day,she appears to be wearing some kind of hat or headscarf.
As suggested earlier it appears white purely because that portion of the image is overexposed,from the shadows on the girls face the sun was probably about overhead at the time and film in those days was less tolerant to light and dark (dynamic range) than what we use today is.
The camera was an SLR which means the viewfinder actually shows the view through the lens.Modern SLRs normally show about 90% of the available scene and crop the outside edges,but in those days the viewfinder was a LOT more restricted and wouldn’t have shown much more than about 50-60% of the available scene.These cameras were of course manual focus and needed a lot of concentration on the very middle of the viewfinder to match up the halves of the split screen EXACTLY to assure perfect focus.All of this along with them being a lot darker than today’s viewfinders are would have meant that any activity in the background of the scene being photographed could well pass unnoticed .
Well despite this the spaceman mystery might never be solved as there is no decisive evidence for any theory yet this makes a lot of sense rather than a spaceman from a UFO suddenly posing for a photograph behind a little girl.
THE SOLWAY FIRTH SPACEMAN MYSTERY
This is almost certainly one of the most famous mysterious photos of all time.
For those who don’t know the story,here’s what happened.Jim Templeton who worked as a fireman in Carlisle was out walking with his wife and 5 year old daughter Elizabeth on May 23rd 1964 at Burgh marsh,an area of outstanding natural beauty which overlooks the Solway Firth on the north west coast of England . Jim was a keen amateur photographer and bought with him his Kodak SLR and took three photos amongst others of his daughter in relatively quick succession of her sitting on the ground.He took the film to his local chemist to have it developed and when he returned a few days later to pick it up,the chemist remarked before handing Jim the photos that it was a shame about the figure wearing what appeared to be a spacesuit in one of them spoiling a nice photo.This is the photo he was talking about
Before seeing the photo Jim remarked that this was impossible because he was absolutely certain that he and his family were alone on the marsh that day.This was the middle one of the three photos,and the strange figure didn’t appear on any of the others.Jim looked at the photos and still couldn’t recall seeing any other people on the marsh that day.
Word soon got around about this,and the film was given first to the Carlisle Police who then sent it and the camera to Kodak to be analysed and they confirmed that neither had been tampered with in any way. Kodak even offered a reward of free film for life if anyone could find definitive proof that the photo was a fake,a reward that to this day is still unclaimed.
Not long after all this happened,Jim was at work and received a visit from a couple of MIBs driving a dark coloured Jaguar.They wouldn’t show him any ID,and only referred to each other as numbers.They insisted he take them to the exact spot where the photo was taken,and when there asked very specific questions about the weather that day or any unusual animals he’d seen. When they’d seen enough,they insisted Jim had to claim it was all a big hoax,and when he wouldn’t they left him alone on the marsh with a 5 mile walk back to work.
A year or so later Jim want back to the marsh to take some more photos,and when he picked them up from the same chemist they had a note attached to them saying they couldn’t be processed.This carried on and the only way to get his films and photos back properly processed was to give his neighbours name.
To this day it still can’t be proven to be a fake,and Jim has never tried to make any money from it.
So what do you reckon it is? It certainly looks like a person wearing a spacesuit,but you’d have thought something that blatantly obvious would have been visible to Jim even when intent on composing the photo of his daughter?
I will share the most probable explanation to this mystery in the next post .
SOLAR ROADWAYS
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Solar Roadways is a modular paving system of solar panels that can withstand the heaviest of trucks (250,000 pounds). These Solar Road Panels can be installed on roads, parking lots, driveways, sidewalks, bike paths, playgrounds… literally any surface under the sun. They pay for themselves primarily through the generation of electricity, which can power homes and businesses connected via driveways and parking lots. A nationwide system could produce more clean renewable energy than a country uses as a whole They have many other features as well, including: heating elements to stay snow/ice free, LEDs to make road lines and signage, and attached Cable Corridor to store and treat stormwater and provide a “home” for power and data cables. EVs will be able to charge with energy from the sun (instead of fossil fuels) from parking lots and driveways and after a roadway system is in place, mutual induction technology will allow for charging while driving.
The project is currently in it’s second phase . Although it seems as a very promising concept yet the initial high cost of making miles of solar panel is a major obstacle to this project . Yet it may be rolled out in a phased manner as fossil fuels continue to get exhausted .
-Contributed by Sargam Aggarwal
HOLIDAY HOMEWORK FOR CLASS XI & XII
Dear students , As much as you hate it holiday homework is an essential component of your summer vacation . For class 12th students it is the best time for going ahead with syllabus completion . For class 11th it’s about exploring your own interests and building up of core concepts . The holiday homework for chemistry is as follows –
Holiday homework for class XII- CHEMISTRY
- Make a list of all the named reactions in chapters 10 -13 and write them in your assignment register .
2. Write all the reaction mechanisms in chapter 11 in your assignment register .
3. Complete your investigatory project (except the observation part if you haven’t performed your project ).
4. A word document on important viva voce questions for board practicals is uploaded in the PIL folder . Go through the questions and write the answers down in your auxiliary copy (Make one if you haven’t made it yet ) . Answers will be thoroughly discussed in practical periods after the vacations . This will be the main deciding factor whether you get 30 or not in your board practicals.
Holiday homework for class XI- CHEMISTRY
- One of the active areas of research in chemistry is Supramolecular chemistry . Prepare a project on Supramolecular Chemistry on loose A4 sheets spirally bound elaborating on the following points –a) Synthesis b)Structural Units .c)Applications as a catalyst d) Application as a drug delivery agent . e) Application as molecular switch .
2. Disinfectants are substances which are applied on inanimate objects to kill microbes (like floor cleaners) . You can easily prepare a disinfectant on your own. Take a litre plastic bottle. To it add 3 tbsp borax powder & then add 700 ml warm water & shake it well. Then add 4 tbsp of white vinegar & shake to combine . You can add some more things to make it more effective like neem oil, 1 tbsp of liquid dish washer or tea-tree oil You can search for other methods but do not use any chemical which may be corrosive .Choose a small corner of your house where you can apply it & observe it’s effectiveness. Compare it with the disinfectant you normally use like domex and lizol. Is it more effective ? Justify your answer with arguments.
3. Green Chemistry encourages the design of products and processes that minimize the use and generation of hazardous substances. Think of ways to introduce Green Chemistry in the practicals that are performed in Chemistry lab .Submit your suggestions and the best ones may be introduced in the next academic session .
THE DEEP WEB
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The Deep web refers to the content that can’t be accessed by regular search engines such as Google or Bing. Most of the Web’s information is buried far down on dynamically generated sites, and standard search engines do not find it. Traditional search engines cannot “see” or retrieve content in the deep Web—those pages do not exist until they are created dynamically as the result of a specific search. As of 2001, the deep Web was several orders of magnitude larger than the surface Web. In order to access the Deep Web, users need to use a dedicated software. Tor (The Onion Router) is the most commonly used, but there are alternatives such as I2P & Freenet . The video shows some of the most disturbing aspects of the deep web.
ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM – THE EARLIEST KNOWN ANALOG COMPUTER
The Antikythera Mechanism is an ancient, intricate machine found in a shipwreck near Greece that dates back to about 100 BC. The Antikythera mechanism contains gears and structures that were not found in devices again for 1000 years, and only then when the Muslims and Chinese were busy inventing non-sense while the Europeans were busy killing each other.
Things that make this artifact very mysterious are -first no one can agree on where the Antikythera mechanism was made or who designed it. Popular belief was that it was made by the Greeks due to its instructions all being in Greek (around a million dollars were probably spent arriving at that genius conclusion) but serious research published in serious places suggested the design came from Sicily.
The mechanism on the whole used 30 bronze gears something unknown at that time . It is believed that the device was used in the calculation of position of sun & moon , moon phases, eclipse cycles & theoretically the location of planets .
The problem with that is that at the time this thing was made, no one had yet discovered laws of gravity or how heavenly bodies moved.
In other words, the Antikythera mechanism appears to have functions that no one alive at that time would have understood, and no single mechanical purpose of that era (such as navigating ships) explains the crazy number of functions and settings this machine has.
ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CODECS
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Ever wondered why we do not use a single CODEC for playing all the media files , this interesting video provides the answer .
FOR CLASS XII-A & XII-B
The PIL material for amines is now available . Take a print out of the same . I have decided to take the topic of diazonium salts as a conversion chart since it includes reactions only & is very handy in conversions . Hence carry an A-3 sheet with you on Thursday & Friday .
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