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Sports of Ancient India
Sports in Ancient IndiaThough not much has been written on sports in ancient India, there is enough evidence to infer that sports and games were an essential part of the culture. A L Basham, in his book the wonder that was India, states that both polo and hockey, in some form, were played in ancient India.Boxing and wrestling were also popular, though they were not general hobbies of respectable young men “but the preserve of low professional pugilists, who performed for the amusement of the audience.”Archery, however, was a much – loved sport of the warrior class, and vivid descriptions of such contests occur in the epics.In classical sources, there is a reference to gladiatorial contests at the court of Chandragupta Maurya (321 BC-297 BC) and later in the medieval deccan, when dueling became frequent. Fern Nuniz, the Portuguese traveler in the mid-fourteenth century, mentions in his writings that when to nobles of Vijayanagara quarreled, they would fight to the death in the presence of the king and his court. Despite the doctrine of non-violence, animal fights remained a popular sport. Indian quail, cocks and rams were the animals commonly used for the fights.There are also references to fights between buffaloes and elephants.Another form of animal contests, which was confined to south India was the bull fight. Unlike the Spanish bullfight, were the scales are heavily weighed against the bull, here the bull appears to have the advantage. The fights were popular among herdsmen who entered the arena unarmed, and embraced the bull in an attempt to master it, rather like the cowpunchers of an American rodeo. The bull fight was looked on as an ordeal to test the manhood of young men, since it is stated that the girls who watched the performance would choose their husbands from amongst the successful competitors.The game of chess (Shatranj) probably also evolved in this period. Basham states that certain board games were played with the help of dice. With time, one such game developed into a complex game “ with a king piece, and pieces of four other types, corresponding to the corps of the ancient Indian army – an elephant, a horse, a chariot or ship and four foot men”. As the game was played with pieces representing military forces and its strategy suggested that of campaigning armies, it was known as Chaturanga or four corps. In the 6th century, the Persians learnt the game, and when Persia was conquered by the Arabs it quickly spread all over the middle east, under the name of Shatranj.However, the most famous sport in ancient India was gambling. The plot of the epic Mahabharata revolves around a gambling tournament of chausar (a game of dice), at which Yudhisthira loses his kingdom to his cousin Dhuryodhana.
Patri Divya Chandana
The Lunar Journey
The Lunar Journey· India’s second mission on to the Moon is Chandrayaan-2 which means Moon Vehicle (from Sanskrit, an ancient Indian Language)· It was launched on July 22, 2019· This mission has two major parts: i. The Orbiter: a 2,379 kg satellite. It is designed for a life of one year. ISRO expects it to function for seven years.- It studies the lunar surface from a distance of 100 kms. ii. Lander – rover system: Lander weighs 1,471 kg while rover weighs 27 kg. It was to be positioned on the moon’s surface and was to operate for one lunar day (14 earth days from sunrise to sunset on the moon).· On 2nd September, the lander with the rover inside it was separated from the orbiter for its journey towards the surface of Moon.· A soft landing was attempted on September 7th but communication was lost at the height of 2.1 km above the Moon’s surface.Landing:· System For any planetary exploration, landing on the surface of a planet is the most challenging part for the mission. The chairman of ISRO, Mr. Sivan had actually pronounced on various occasions that the last part of the mission which involves the controlled (powered) landing is going to be terrorizing! This involved the travel of lander for last 35 kilometers. This travel was to take 15 minutes, and became known as the “15 minutes of terror.”· Everything was supposed to happen in autonomous mode during this 15-minute period. A deviation in the trajectory, 12 minutes into the descent, was visible. The system failed during the autonomous mode. Possibly, the velocity was higher than required at that height.· The strength of autonomy of any system would depend on the basic design factors. The design would be mainly based on what the scientists and technologists anticipate as possible inconsistencies and feed them in the system. Normally, autonomous systems operate in complex and open-ended environments with high levels of independence. They are expected to learn and reason with themselves. In addition, they are designed in such a way that they would identify the unforeseen changes in time and respond accordingly.· The rover was supposed to be a totally AI(Artificial Intelligence) -based product. However, since it did not have an opportunity to operate, no judgment could be made in that regard. It could be very difficult to quantify the role, if any, played by AI during last few minutes of the mission. AI works on data inputs and for such unique missions it is unlikely that required data would have been available in abundance. If this mission was to success India would become the 4th country to land on the Moon after US, Russia and China. It would also become the 1st country to land close to Lunar south pole on its 1st attempt.Aim of Chandrayaan 2 is :i. To improve our understanding of the moon discoveries that will benefit us.ii. Stimulate the advancement of technology.iii. Promote global alliances.iv. Inspire the future scientists and inventors. Launching:· Chandrayaan 2 was launched by Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark-III (GSLV Mk-III) M1 Launch Vehicle on July 22, 2019 from Sriharikota (ISRO).· The lander of Chandrayaan 2 is named Vikram after Dr. Vikram A Sarabhai, the father of Indian Space Programme.· It is designed to function for one lunar day (14 earth days).· It’s rover is a 6-wheeled robotic vehicle named pragyan (meaning-wisdom). It can travel upto 500 m and leverages solar energy for its functioning.
Laws of Motion
Laws of MotionThe three physical laws that lay the foundation for the classical mechanics are the Newton’s Laws of Motion. They describe the relationship between a body and the forces acting upon it, and its motion in response to those forces.Broadly· the first law defines the force qualitatively· the second law offers a quantitative measure of force.· The third states that a single force doesn’t exists.Newton’s First Law:In an inertial frame of reference, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force.In simple words, an object tends to be remain at rest or motion until and unless force acts upon it.Newton’s Second Law:In an inertial frame of reference, the vector sum of the forces-F on an object is equal to the mass-m of that object multiplied by the acceleration-a of the object.F=maNewton’s Third Law:When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body.In simple words, every action has its equal and opposite reaction.These three laws of motion were proposed by Sir Isaac Newton in his mathematical principles of natural philosophy which was published in 1687. Newton used them to explain and investigate the motion of many physical objects and systems.For example in the 3rd volume of the text Newton showed that these laws of motion, combined with his law of universal gravitation, explained Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion.
Water and its Importance
Water and its importanceSources of Water:1. Rain Water:Rain water comes from the clouds to the earth by dissolving some gases and minerals.2. Sea Water:Sea water mostly contains minerals and dissolved salts but it cannot be used for agricultural purpose. It can be used for industrial and household purposes.· In some countries sea water is used after desalination for drinking and domestical purposes.3. Underground water:One of the main source of water is underground water. It may contain many dissolved salts but it can be used for industrial, agricultural and household purposes.· It contains calcium, magnesium and in some cases silicon. These salts get filtered while penetrating into the soil by the layers of sand and rock.· The crust layers play a major role in purifying rain and river water.· Ground water is pure because water goes deep into the earth. It dissolves salts because of increase in temperature. It accumulate most of the water containing salts like calcium bi carbonate, magnesium bi carbonate, calcium chloride, magnesium chloride.4. Rivers, Lakes and Ponds:Rivers are the source of flowing pure water. The water from rivers penetrate into the earth’s crust to form underground water. River water doesn’t contain many impurities and it is considered as fresh water.Lakes and Ponds are the source of stable water used on regular basis. Many people depends on lakes and ponds for their survival like agriculture, fishing etc.Usage of Water:Water plays a major role in earth’s life style.Water is used for the following:1. Drinking2. Cleaning3. Domestic Purposes4. Agriculture5. Power Generation6. Fishing7. Aquaculture8. Salt Production9. Industrial usage:· Textile Industries· Paper Industries· Pharmaceutical Industries· Sugar Industries· Beverage IndustriesThe water is playing a vital role in our day to day life. Water covers 71% of earth’s surface mostly in seas and oceans. Small portions of water occur as ground water (1.7%). In the glaciers and ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland (1.7%), and in the air as vapor, clouds and precipitation (0.001%).Approximately 70% of fresh water used by human goes to agriculture. Fishing in salt and fresh water bodies is a major source of food for many parts of the world. But the availability of fresh water is only 17% on the earth. It should not be polluted and is used properly for preserving it to future generations.
Why learning C Programming is a must?
C is a procedural programming language. It was initially developed by Dennis Ritchie between 1969 and 1973. It was mainly developed as a system programming language to write operating system. The main features of C language include low-level access to memory, simple set of keywords, and clean style, these features make C language suitable for system programming like operating system or compiler development.Learning C programming has lot of benefits, but the foremost thing in which it helps is to understand the underlying architecture of how things works?Consider a situation where a person learns to drive a Car. In this modern era with advancement in technology, we have many options when it comes to buying car. There are cars with auto-driving mode, auto gear change features etc which reduces the manual overheads and makes driving the car easier. Suppose the person learns driving on a auto-gear change enabled car. After learning driving, the person applied for a driving licence for which he need to pass a driving test. The driving test is now on a manual car with no auto-gear change feature. The person was even not able to answer some basic questions related to gears as he was not even aware of it and eventually ended up getting disqualified.Learning C has a similar benefit. If the person had learned driving on a manual car, he could have easily driven the automatic car as well. Similarly, if a person learns C programming first, it will help him to learn any modern programming language as well. As learning C help to understand a lot of underlying architecture of operating system. Like, pointers, working with memory locations etc.Let us now look at some of the important advantages of learning C programming:C is a Middle-Level Language. The middle-level languages are somewhere between the Low-level machine understandable assembly languages and High-Level user friendly languages. Being a middle-level language, C reduces the gap between the low-level and high-level languages. It can be used for writing operating systems as well as doing application level programming.Helps to understand the fundamentals of Computer Theories. Most of the theories related to computers like Computer Networks, Compiler Designing, Computer Architecture, Operating Systems are based on C programming language and requires a good knowledge of C programming if you are working on them. In the modern high level languages, the machine level details are hidden from the user, so in order to work with CPU cache, memory, network adapters, learning C programming is a must.Fewer Libraries. C programming language has fewer libraries in comparison with other high-level languages. So, learning C programming also clears programming concepts to a great extent as you have to write lot of things from scratch. You will not be dependent on the programming language entirely for implementing some basic operations and implementing them on your own will also help you to build your analytical skills.C is very fast in terms of execution time. Programs written and compiled in C executes much faster than compared to any other programming language. C programming language is very fast in terms of execution as it does not have any additional processing overheads such as garbage collection or preventing memory leaks etc. The programmer must take care of these things on his own.Embedded Programming. C is extensively used in Embedded Programming. Embedded Programming is also referred to as micro-controller programming, where C program is used to control micro-controllers. Microcontrollers and embedded programming is widely used in auto-motives, Robotics, Hardwares etc.
Parts of Speech
Parts of Speech1. Noun:Naming words are called nouns. There are six types of nouns:i. Proper nounEx: Hyderabad, India, Asia etc.ii. Common nounEx: Lion, Cat, Mat, Sand etc.iii. Collective nounEx: Army, Flock, Fleet, Swarm, Herd, Class etc.iv. Material nounEx: Granite, Gold, Silver, Copper etc.v. Abstract nounEx: Happiness, Love, Anger, Dignity, Kindness etc.vi. Compound nounEx: Hand kerchief, Ice Cream, Water Bottle, Clock Tower, Sea Shore etc.2. Pronoun:The words used in the place of noun to avoid repeating are called pronouns.Ex: He, She, It, They, Us, This, That, Those, Him, Her, You, Our, My, Themselves, Himself etc.3. Verb:Action words are called verbs.Ex: eating, sleeping, listening, writing, running, teaching, learning, speaking etc.4. Adjective:The words which describe nouns are called adjectives.Ex: Wonderful, Beautiful, Bad, smart, handsome, honest, tall, a, an, the etc5. Adverb:A word that acts meaning to the verb or adjective are called adverb.Ex: Slowly, quickly, fastly, suddenly, spontaneously, abruptly etc.6. PrepositionA word that shows the relation of a noun with the remaining words in the sentence is called preposition.Ex: in, on, under, at, into, onto, up, down, beside, below, above, between etc.7. Conjunction:A word that joins two words or sentences is called conjunction.Ex: and, but, or, at, because, as, since, for, inspite of etc.8. Interjection:A word that expresses sudden feelings is called interjection.Ex: Wow!, Oh!, Ha!, Alas!, Eureka!, Oh God! etc.
The Queen of Music
The Queen of MusicThe pride, the inspiration, the goddess for many music lovers and vocalists, The Madurai Shanmukhavadivu Subbulakshmi popularly known as M S Subbulakshmi or MS was a renowned carnatic vocalist. Her birth took place on 16th September 1916 to Veena player Shanmukavadiver Ammal and Subramania Iyer at Madurai in Madras Presidency.She started learning carnatic music at a very young age under the guidance of Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer. Subbulaxmi made her debut at the age of eleven in Trichy. She later moved to Chennai (Madras) and made her film debut. Her famous films include:1. Sevasadanam - Tamil Movie2. Sakuntalai-Tamil3. Savithri-Tamil4. Meera-Tamil5. Meerabai-HindiShe also trained herself in Hindustani music and has sung many bhajans, devotional songs and hymns.Her famous works include· Bhaje Govindam· Sri Venkateshwara Suprabhatam· Vishnu Sahasranama Stotram· Hari Tuma HaroShe has performed in the Madras Music Academy and also in many other prestigious places all over the world like the Carnegie Hall and The Royal Albert Hall.She was called “The Queen of Music” by the then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam has also installed a bronze statue of her in the temple town.She has also received a lot of accolades and awards including· The Padma Bhushan in 1954[16]· Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1956· Sangeetha Kalanidhi in 1968· Ramon Magsaysay award (often considered Asia's Nobel Prize) in 1974· Padma Vibhushan in 1975[16]· Sangeetha Kalasikhamani in 1975 by The Indian Fine Arts Society, Chennai· Kalidas Samman in 1988· Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration in 1990· Bharat Ratna in 1998The Kancheepuram saree shade known as M S Blue was named after her.She was known for her humility and love for God and Music.She often used to donate a lot of prize money she received to charity.However sadly she passed away on 11th December, 2004. But she remains as the Queen of Music in our hearts and her music will always ring in our ears forever.
Kepler’s Law of Planetary Motion
Kepler’s Law of Planetary Motion· Kepler’s Laws describes the motions of the planets in the solar system.· They were proposed by a German Astronomer Johannes Kepler.Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion can be stated as follows:· First Law: All the planets of solar system revolve around the sun in elliptical orbits having the Sun as one of the foci.Second Law:A radius vector joining any planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal period of time.· Third Law:The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi major axis of its orbit.The elliptical orbits of the planet were indicated by calculations of the orbit of Mars. From this, Kepler inferred that other bodies in the solar system, including those farther away from the Sun, also have elliptical orbits. The second law helps to establish that when a planet is closer to the sun it travels faster. The third law expresses that the farther a planet is from the sun, the longer its orbit, and vise versa.Sir Isaac Newton showed in 1687 that relationships like Kepler’s would apply in the Solar system to a good approximation, as a consequence of his own laws of motion and law of universal gravitation.
Hardness of Water
Hardness of waterHardness of water is defined as the property which prevents the lathering or foam formation of soap. This is due to the presence of certain salts of calcium, magnesium and other heavy metals dissolved in water.Hardness is of two types:1. Temporary Hardness2. Permanent Hardness Temporary Hardness:Temporary hardness is caused mainly due to the presence of bicarbonates of calcium and magnesium ions Ca(HCO3 ) 2, Mg(HCO3 )2 will give temporary hardness.· It can be easily removed by boiling of water at 1000 C.· When bicarbonates are decomposed yielding insoluble carbonates which gets deposited as a crust at the bottom of the vessel, water is filtrated.· Temporary Hardness can be largely removed by the boiling of water on boiling bicarbonates converts into carbonates which are insoluble.· They can be removed by filtration.Ca(HCO3)2 → CaCO3 + H2O + CO2Permanent Hardness:Permanent Hardness is due to the presence of dissolved chlorides and sulphates of calcium, Magnesium and other metals. The salts responsible for permanent hardness are CaCl2, MgCl2, CaSO4, MgSO4· Permanent Hardness cannot be removed by boiling.· Permanent Hardness can be removed by using chemical agents.· Total hardness of water = Temporary hardness + Permanent hardnessCauses of Hardness of Water:With respective sources of water impurities found are different. Irrespective of sources water contains suspended particles and suspended solids. Solids may come from flowing water and it may contain organic materials coming from plants and animals.· Colloidal particles are because of traces of oils by flowing of water.· Disease causing micro-organisms are the biological impurities which are obtained from dead organisms and eggs of the insects.The major causes of hardness are :The natural water is usually contaminated by different types of impurities.1. Physical impurities2. Chemical impurities3. Biological impurities4. Colloidal impurities