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TheMonthly Journal of The Indian Society for Technical Education
ISSUE 01 August 2011
New hopes….
...new challenges.
...One undying spirit
ISTE enters the new academic year
….600+ participants
….5 papers…
….1 hour
An epic journey to find the brightest new minds in campus
….7.5 K prize money endowed
Abdul Kalam Scholarships!!!
AKS Winners
An engineer’s saga...
4 years>> Placements>> intern-ships>> GD’s>> GRE >> GATE >> CAT >> Civil Services >>….
Career workshop conducted
…a quarter year into the
making, we present to you..
Oracle
ISTE interviews our own
campus IAS Top Ranker
Please spare a moment to fill
our feedback form
this issue
ORACLE : Exploring the new horizons
P4. How two amateurs built an A-Bomb
P2.forget about glass houses, now
transparent cement is the way...
P5. Spotlight
P2.Robotics Tips
How to build your first
Robot
P7.The man behind the Rank... Exclusive
interview
Gokul G.R. Gokul G.R.
IASIAS
Cyborgs
Exist!!
“3D Printing”: a mission Impossible
I magine creating a solid 3D
object – a toy, a gift to your
buddy, the components and circuit
boards for your next cool project or
perhaps robot parts, with just a
mouse click! Well, this is not just an
impossible concept popped out in
Star Trek. Printing has acquired a
new dimension. With the Rapid
Prototyping/ 3D printing technolo-
gy, it is possible to transform a 3D
model from CAD software into a
real solid object by building up the
model layer by layer. With this, you
can simply run your own factory
and see your models materialize
right in front of your eyes! You
needn't go anywhere else to make
the stuffs you want.
In Rapid prototyping technology,
you first create a blueprint of the
3D object you want to make, in
CAD software. The interface
between the machine and the
software is the STL file format.
Converting the model to STL format
will transform it into a number of
thin horizontal slices which is then
fed to the prototyping machine.
This process of creating 3D objects
by laying successive layers of the
material is called additive manufac-
turing.
There are a large number of RP
technologies in use- Stereo
lithography, Fused Deposition
Modeling, Laminated Object
Manufacturing, Selective Laser
Sintering etc. Though these have
complex names they are all based
on the same theme, with variations
in the methods and materials used.
They build models out of different
materials like epoxy resins and
other polymers, ABS plastic,
plaster, paper and even metals.
The 3D printing technology spans
several industries and applications.
You can print a wide range of
consumer products, architectural
models, medical diagnostic
equipment, prosthetic limbs,
automotive materials and many
other complex parts. Other
applications include reconstructing
fossils, replicating ancient artifacts
etc. It is also being studied by
Biotech firms and academia for its
possible use in tissue engineering.
This technology has been around
for some 30 years. But it started
penetrating in India and other
Asian countries only recently.
What's more, 3D printing has gone
open source. One such open source
3D printer is the RepRap, devel-
oped by Adrian Bowyer at the
University Of Bath, UK. It is a self
replicating printer that spawns
new, improved versions of itself.
3D printing offers immense
possibilities. The ways in which
Rapid Prototyping technology could
change future manufacturing and
industrial engineering are amazing.
With 3D printing leaping forward,
you can imagine a future in which
there is a 3D printer in every home-
in the list of consumer's 'must
have' home gadgets.
Now the art of printing enters the third dimension...
@ Arun M, Suparna S Nair & Dileep R
ADDSPACE
>>
“TRANSPARENT CEMENT”: forget about glass houses, now transparent cement is the way... @ Amala Maheshwari
I n the general sense of the word
cement is a binder that sets and
hardens by itself. It is one of the
basic and essential materials in con-
struction. In a recent breakthrough
Italian architects have developed a new
transparent cement. It will enable
daylight to flood in and make the walls
appear like giant windows.
It was created by researches at Italce-
menti group, by bonding special resins
in a nex mix. The material called I. Light
has dozens of holes and thereby lets
light through. However it is very well
capable of retaining the structural
integrity.
On a sunny day it creates an effect
similar to light mesh filtering light
coming in. This has so far been used
only in one building, the Italian pavilion
at last years Expo in Shanghai.
It is believed that the usage of transpar-
ent cement could save considerable
amount of electricity that
would be required for
daytime lighting. Similar
effect is generated using
fibre optics cable through
concrete. However the
transparent cement made
from plastic resins is much
cheaper than one made
from optical fibres.
So friends, what's your
choice of concrete ??
Why build a robot? What are your motivations?
Do they look cool? Want to join a robotics contest
such as those in Tathva? Robotics can teach you
so much. Irrespective of your branch, you will
learn skills from electronics, mechanics, control,
programming, and even as broad as understand-
ing animal behavior and human psychology.
Following are tips from some of the experienced
pros (on and off campus)
The first robot is always the hardest. So
take KISS approach: Keep It Simple, Stupid!
Don't reinvent the wheel! Search the web for
how other people did things, and copy them!
It may be unoriginal, but on your first robot,
don't expect to develop the theory of
relativity on your first try.
Ok I am ready, what do I need to start?
Obviously the first is MONEY. Robots can get
expensive. Expect a decent budget of Rs. 5 to
6K, so form a group…(You may also approach
us @ ISTE)
The basic parts in a robot are: Body,
Microcontroller, Motors, Servos,
sensors and Wheels, Batteries etc.
Ok now you got all this stuff, but still no robot.
Now it is time to DESIGN, THEN BUILD, a robot
chassis. Every hour spent on design is one less
hour spent on construction.
This article is to be continued...
“Robotics”: tips
Tips on building your first robot
@ Jibin Rajan
Discussions: …our portal to discuss science
From now on, every issue of oracle will feature a scientific
discussion on topics, wherein the readers could send in their
views in not less than 50 words. The best entries will be
published. This time for instance we have taken a sample of
discussions from
www.absoluteastronomy.com/discussionpost/
Is_time_travel_possible_353
We're all time travelers, of course. We're all
traveling forward in time at the same rate - the question is-
is it possible to travel a lot faster or slower than this rate?
Theoretically it is possible by use of worm holes
in space , which are allowed by Einstein's theory of special
relativity...of course none have been found till now but once
upon a time black holes were ridiculed as science fantasy
hype
I think it is reasonable to assume that since we
have not been visited by time travelers from the future - time
travel will never be possible.
<you get to continue this discussion in the next issue guys>
The Google - ies
Wondering what this is all about?
You are seeing one of the first 3D generated world population
maps projected demographically onto the surface of the planet!
Powered by groundbreaking research into the new WEB, This
Google development app is an amazing presentation tool for
software developers, college students and researchers alike to
add some 3D spice to their presentations. Sources at Google
have confirmed that the source codes of the app have been
made available OPEN SOURCE for such purposes, as with other
open source offerings available from Google labs. Visit the above
website with Google ‘s Chrome browser for the complete
Web2.0 experience.
Googlies: http://data-arts.appspot.com/globe
EyeOnIt: What engineering students in India are doing now!!!
This is a good place to briefly, but
effectively, describe your product or
services..
ADSPACE!!!
Put ad here
Acyut Rocks on!!
Remember this crowd
puller of Tathva10??
It is impossible for any of
us to forget the humanoid
Acyut which enthralled us
during Tathva. Dancing to
the catchy tunes, Acyut
had become an overnight
star at NIT-C. It looks like Acyut has achieved a
lot more since Tathva10.
Humanoid Acyut4, developed by students
of BITS Pilani has won prizes at Robocup Iran
2011 and Robogames 2011. In the Robocup held
in Tehran from April 5 to 9 Acyut won a special
technical award. It grabbed silver medals both in
autonomous and non autonomous categories of
Robogames in San Francisco, conducted from
April 15 to 17. Robogames is the biggest
robotics competition in the world. Engineers
from 17 countries participate in around 50
events this year.
More achievements in the making: The BITS
Pilani team has successfully achieved a walking
algorithm that is close to human beings. The six-
axis inertial measurement unit is the technology
that helped in realizing this fete. It detects the
external forces the humanoid faces from the
environment and balance accordingly. Acyut
now runs on two microprocessors, giving it a
processing power of about 1.72GHz. One of the
microprocessors is used for processing image.
This helps the humanoid in detecting objects of
different shapes and colours. After processing
the surrounding environment the information is
passed on in the form of data packets to the
other microprocessor which decides on the
robotic movement.
@ Amala Maheshwari
Kepler Mission: Quest for earth like planets. @ Amala Maheshwari
Named after German astronomer Johannes
Kepler, Kepler mission was launched by NASA on
March 7, 2009. It has a mission lifetime of 3.5
years.
It is a space observatory designed to discover
Earth like planets orbiting other stars. It monitors
main sequence of stars (about 145000) in a fixed
field of view. The photometer attached takes
note of the periodic fluctuations in brightness of
these stars. This indicates the presence of planets
that cross the face of these stars. This is how the
study on extra solar planets is carried out.
Kepler 10b
Kepler 10b is the first rocky planet that was
discovered outside solar system. The discovery of
this planet is based on more than eight months of
data collected by Kepler spacecraft from May
2009 – Jan 2010. NASA said that as of now we
know little about the planet. Most of the
knowledge was gathered from he star it orbits
i.e., Kepler 10. The high frequency variation in the
star’s brightness generated by stellar oscillations
or star quakes was studied. Further analysis
shows that Kepler 10b is a rocky planet with a
mass 4.6 times that of earth with average density
of 8.8 grams per cc. However Kepler 10b is more
than 20 times closer to its star than mercury is to
our sun hence is not habitable.
Kepler is NASA’s 10th Discovery mission and is
funded by NASA Science Mission Directorate. It is
a mission under NASA’s Discovery Program of low
cost, focused Science missions.
@ Jibin Rajan
SCISTORY: How two amateurs designed an A bomb
To design an A-bomb from scratch would seem a Herculean task, but amateurs did it, 45 years ago...
D ave Dobson, now 75, is a modest
man, and once he had discovered
his vocation - teaching physics at
Beloit College, in Wisconsin - felt no need
to drop dark hints about his earlier life. You
could have taken classes at Beloit with
Professor Dobson, until his recent retire-
ment, without having any reason to know
that in his mid-20s, working entirely as an
amateur and equipped with little more
than a notebook and a library card, he
designed a nuclear bomb.
"It's a very strange story," says Bob Selden
co-partner , then a novice soldier drafted
into the army and wondering how to put
his talents to use, when he received a
message that Edward Teller, the father of
the hydrogen wanted to see him. "I went to
DC and we spent an evening together. But
he began to question me in great detail
about the physics of making a nuclear
weapon, and I didn't know anything. As the
evening wore on, I knew less and less. I
went away very, very discouraged. Two
days later a call comes through: they want
you to come to Livermore."
Today their experiences in 1964 - the year
they were enlisted into the Nth Country
Project - suddenly seem as terrifyingly
relevant as ever. The question the project
was designed to answer was a simple one:
could a couple of non-experts, with brains
but no access to classified research, crack
the "nuclear secret"? In the aftermath of
the Cuban missile crisis, panic had seeped
into the arms debate. Only Britain,
America, France and the Soviet Union had
the bomb; the US military desperately
hoped that if the instructions for building it
could be kept secret, proliferation - to a
fifth country, a sixth country, an "Nth
country", hence the project's name - could
be averted. Today, the fear is back: we
cling, at least, to the belief that not just
anyone could figure out how to make an
atom bomb. The trouble is that, 45 years
ago, someone did.
Livermore was the Livermore Radiation
Laboratory, a fabled army facility where the
institution's head offered them a job. The
work would be "interesting", he promised,
but he couldn't say more until Dobson and
Selden had the required security clearance.
And they couldn't get the clearance unless
they accepted the job. They only learned
afterwards what they was expected to do.
"My first thought," said Bob, with charac-
teristic understatement, "was, 'Oh, my.
That sounds like a bit of a challenge.'"
And thus, on April 1964, the duo—Dave
Dobson and Bob Selden were enlisted into
the A-bomb project.
They would be working in a murky limbo
between the world of military secrets and
the public domain. They would have an
office at Livermore, but no access to its
warrens of restricted offices and corridors;
they
would be
banned
from
con-
sulting
classified
research
but, on
the other
hand,
anything
they
produced
-
diagrams in sketchbooks, notes on the
backs of envelopes - would be automatical-
ly top secret. And since the bomb that they
were designing wouldn't, of course,
actually be built and detonated, they were
to explain at length, on paper, what part of
their developing design they wanted to
test, and they would pass it, through an
assigned lab worker, into Livermore's
restricted world. Days later, the results
would come back - though whether as the
result of real tests or hypothetical calcula-
tions, they would never know.
The operating rules read — "A working
context for the experiment might be that
the participants have been asked to design
a nuclear explosive which, if built in small
numbers, would give a small nation a
significant effect on their foreign relations."
Dobson's knowledge of nuclear bombs was
rudimentary, to say the least. "I just had
the idea that *to make a bomb+ you had to
quickly put a bunch of fissile material
together somehow," he recalls. Bob Selden
found a book on the Manhattan Project
that culminated in America's development
of the bomb. "It gave us a road map,"
Dobson says. "But we knew there would be
important ideas they'd deliberately left out
because they were secret. This was one of
the things that produced a little bit of
paranoia in us. Were we being led down
the garden path?"
They faced one key decision, Dobson says:
whether to design a gun-style bomb, like
the one dropped on Hiroshima, that used a
sawn-off howitzer to crash two pieces of
fissile material together, or a more complex
implosion bomb, like that dropped on
Nagasaki. By now they were beginning to
enjoy the challenge, so they went for the
harder,
more
impres-
sive
option.
"The gun
device
needed a
large
amount
of
material,
and
didn't
make a
very big bang," Dobson says. "The other
one was more bang, less material."
Dobson and Selden assumed that their
fictional Nth Country had already obtained
the requisite plutonium (the rules weren't
as strict then) by some means . "But the
process of designing the weapon - I'm
always careful to point out that many
people overstate how easy it is. You really
have to do it right, and there are thousands
of ways to do it wrong. You can't just
guess."
The two amateurs were ironically aided by
information published as part of President
Dwight Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace"
program, which spread word of the
benefits of non-military nuclear power
around the world.
Eventually, towards the end of 1966, two
and a half years after they began, they
were finished. "We produced a short
document that described precisely, in
engineering terms, what we proposed to
build and what materials were involved,"
says Selden. "The whole works, in great
detail, so that this thing could have been
made by Joe's Machine Shop downtown."
Agonisingly, though, at the moment they
believed they had triumphed, Dobson and
Selden were kept in the dark about
whether they had succeeded. Instead, for
two weeks, the army put them on the
lecture circuit, touring them around the
upper echelons of Washington, presenting
them for cross-questioning at defence and
scientific agencies. Their questioners,
people with the highest levels of security
clearance, were instructed not to ask
questions that would reveal secret
information. Finally, after a valedictory
presentation at Livermore attended by a
grumpy Edward Teller, they were pulled
aside by a senior researcher, Jim Frank.
"Jim said, 'I bet you guys want to know how
it turned out,'" Dobson recalls. "We said
yes. And he told us that if it had been
constructed, it would have made a pretty
impressive bang." How impressive, they
wanted to know. "On the same order of
magnitude as Hiroshima," Frank replied.
"It's kind of a depressing thing to know,
that it could be that easy," Dobson says.
"On the other hand, it's far better to know
the truth." And the truth today, he is
certain, is that for terrorists, obtaining
sufficiently enriched fissile material could
be difficult but, when it comes to creating
the bomb, "It turns out it's not overwhelm-
ingly difficult. There are some subtleties
that are not trivial ... but an awful lot has
been published. If you were a grad student
today, and you reviewed the literature, a
lot of pieces would fall into place."
It was, relatively speaking, easy - so easy
that both Selden and Dobson seem to have
emerged from the Nth Country Experiment
deeply troubled by their own capacities.
Selden stayed in the military, and he has
since been closely involved in planning how
the US might respond to a nuclear terrorist
incident. Dobson, meanwhile, felt so
uncomfortable that he left the sector
entirely
Einstein was famously said to have
commented that if he had only known that
his theories would lead to the development
of the atom bomb, he would have been a
locksmith. Dave Dobson, having designed
one, got a job as a teacher.
Einstein said that if he had only known that his
theories would lead to the development of the atom
bomb, he would have been a locksmith.
Dave Dobson, having made one, got a
job as a teacher.
@ Jibin Rajan
Spotlight: Todays emerging technologies , innovations and discoveries
Hearing the Bang
T he ‘echo of the big bang’ is
not audible on a normal radio, cosmic
microwave background radiation peaks
at a frequency of 160GHz ,which
corresponds to a wavelength of 1mm.By
comparison .the VHF band has a
frequency of 100MHz and wavelength
of3m ,ordinary radio aerials are not at all
suitable for receiving the Big Bang’s
residual radiation.
Cyborgs already exist…
S o far, half man, half machine
creatures, such as the TERMINATOR, or
the Borg from the television serial STAR
TREK ,are still the stuff of science fiction.
However , advances in modern pros-
thetics are pointing the way for-
ward ,with mechanical limbs controlled
by brain waves already boosting the
mobility of amputees. However ,cyborgs
of an entirely different type have already
seen the light of day in a German
laboratory .Peter Fromherz of the Max
Planck Institute for biochemistry
combined living snail cells to a silicon
chip .It is possible for electric impulse to
be transmitted between this two
worlds ,and work such as this is laying
the foundations for great improvements
in prostheses.
Freezing point of water 1
atm , room temp, …
U ntil recently ,this always
seemed to be true in case of fresh
water ,although sea water only freezes
when the temperature drop slightly
lower .However Korean scientists have
now discovered that fresh water can
turned to ice even at room tempera-
ture .Water molecules inside a strong
electric field of above 100 volts per
meter arrange themselves into ice
crystals at temperature well above o
Celsius. It is believed that electric field
@ V Ruthvik
<ADSPACE>
Name of Item or Service
Expiration Date: 00/00/00
Describe your location by landmark or area of town.
ADSPACE
ORGANIZATION NAME
Tel: 555 555 5555
TECHTOONS @ ???
Adspace This is a good place to briefly, but
effectively, describe your product or
services.
This is a good place to briefly, but
effectively, describe your product or
services.
TECROSSWORD @ Amala Maheshwari
Anything...else some quotes will do...
Opportunities
Outreach: Your portal to a successful career @ Amala Maheshwari
The GRE revised General Test is coming in August!!! The GRE General Test is changing. The GRE General test has become an important step towards achieving the goals of millions of students across the world. Now with the new GRE pattern the students will have a better testing experience. Here is what you can expect from the GRE revised General Test:- A new test-taker friendly design:
The computer-based test now lets you edit or change your answers, skip questions and more, all within a section, giving you the freedom to use more of your own test-taking strategies.
Another new feature: An on-screen calculator. (Calculators issued by ETS are allowed and the scoring range for each section will be 130-170, with score increments of one point instead of 200-800 (with score increments of 10 points)) New types of questions: In the Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning sections, questions include the real-life scenarios that reflect the kind of thinking you require in present graduate and business school programmes. All the 3 sections of GRE will be revised, (verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning and analytical writing). More questions on data analysis and from reading compre-hension will be added. Analogies and antonyms will be removed from the test. Special savings of 50% when you take the GRE revised General Test.
Choosing Between the Current Test and the Revised Test:
To help you decide which of the two tests to take, start by
selecting which schools you're most interested in, then find
out when they need your scores. Different schools have
different admissions deadlines, so knowing when your
prospective schools need your scores is an important part of
making the decision between the GRE General Test and the
GRE revised General Test. If you need the scores before
November then you will have to register with the current GRE
pattern or else go for the new one as it gives you a better
testing experience.
@ Arjun R Nair
When did you start your preparation for Civil Services?
I started my preparations towards the end of third year. I started it in the third year End-semester vaca-tions to be exact.
Selection of optionals is a crucial process in Civil Service exam. What did you look for while choosing an optional, or what made you choose Public Administration as one of the optional subjects?
The concise and manageable syllabus was the main reason besides, the optional would aid me in the career of administration too.
Another optional was physics; please tell more about that choice. What all should we take care while selecting a technical/ science topic?
Well technical topics generally tend to lose out in the moderation stage compared to humanities. However my hard work paid off as I did well in the physics paper.
How did you strike a balance between electronics and Civil Service preparations? Did you have to sacrifice on extra-curricular activities?
I am very grateful for the support extended by my department and teachers without which things would have been difficult. I had to miss some classes towards the end of fourth year for the preparation. However I
was very active in the club activities during my college days.
Did you take the help of coaching institutes?
No I didn’t take any coaching.
How was the experience in the interview?
The interview board was very cordial. We must watch out for the thin line between confidence and complacency. Be honest to the board.
How did you tackle G.S. (General Studies) which is a concern for most candidates?
Well, G.S. syllabus is very broad. I read newspaper regularly giving emphasis on the relevant articles. I referred many
standard books and also used Wikipedia.
What do you look forward from the job?
I am looking forward to serving the society by staying within the limits set by constitution and political elements.
Would you like to offer any advice for our juniors?
Whatever be your passion try to develop a social outlook, because at the end of the day you should serve your society.
Whatever be your passion try to develop a social outlook, because at the end of the
day you should serve your society.
MEET GOKUL IAS!!
Meet Gokul G.R. IAS.
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An initiative of ISTE NITC Students Chapter Newsletter Design: Jibin Rajan
Monthly Journal of The Indian Society for Technical Education, ISSUE 01 August 2011