How High Altitude Wind is advantageous

Any motion in nature if tapped properly can be converted in useful electricity. Now over here I have mathematically explained how , high altitude winds can be advantageous.

where:

 = speed of the wind at height 

 = gradient wind at gradient height 

 = exponential coefficient

The Hellmann exponent depends upon the coastal location and the shape of the terrain on the ground, and the stability of the air. Examples of values of the Hellmann exponent are given in the table below:

location	α
Unstable air above open water surface:	0.06
Neutral air above open water surface:	0.10
Unstable air above flat open coast:	0.11
Neutral air above flat open coast:	0.16
Stable air above open water surface:	0.27
Unstable air above human inhabited areas:	0.27
Neutral air above human inhabited areas:	0.34
Stable air above flat open coast:	0.40
Stable air above human inhabited areas:	0.60

Now look into the above equation. For example someone lives in human inhabited area where at a height of 3 meters, he is getting wind speeds of mere 2m/sec , if the wind is stable the exponential coefficient is α = 0.60, A few blogs earlier I have mentioned about Google's Makani High Altitude Wind power.

Now suppose we have the Makani system stationed in this highly populated area. The Makani Kite can reach heights of 310meteres. Suppose that the Makani Kite is raised upto a height of 300meteres. So what windspeed it gets at this height?

Lets calculate;:

                               0.60

V300=2*(300/3)

V300= 31.7 meteres/sec

So at high altitudes the windspeed is always likely to be very high, if this was unstable wind still the wind speed would have been approximately 8 m/s at a height of 300 meters.

So at high altitudes most of the times wind speeds are likely to be high most of the times in almost all the regions of the world. 

Google Makani and Alteros BAT taps into this and produces electricity and there is indeed a lot of electricity that can be produced this way. Saving us from tonnes and tonnes of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions. 

With so much work going into green energy research and renewable electricity technology the world can look into a greener cleaner future. 

Hovercraft - Opportunity India lost

Hovercraft is a vehicle that can travel on land , water , mud, ice , sand and other surfaces. A hovercraft it a hybrid vehicle and interestingly it is operated by a pilot rather than a driver. When the hovercraft travels, it is above the surface by a few centimetres. This is achieved by blowing air below the hull, so there is a layer of air between the surface and the craft when it is in motion. Hence the craft travels with very little friction since it is not in contact with the surface at all. 

Today hovercraft is used in defense, in times of natural calamities, in sports etc. Coast guards and life guards on seashores use hovercraft to save people's lives. Hovercraft can be useful means of transportation in locations where seas or other bodies tend to freeze during winter. In England, there are hovercraft like pitch covers that are used in cricket fields, the covers won't touch the pitch, hence it does not do any damage to the pitches. The military uses hovercrafts to quickly transport ammunition and if needed launch attacks as well.

A Russian military hovercraft

A US Navy Hovercraft

In the late 1950s and early 1960s India's DTD&P started a project of building an indigenous Hovercraft. Dr APJ Abdul Kalam headed the team , they successfully built an hovercraft that was named Nandi. 

However APJ was left disappointed and disillusioned when this particular project was shelved. Even today India imports hovercrafts or manufactures hovercrafts jointly with some overseas company. Had the project not been shelved then, India would have been a leader in hovercraft technology. We would not only be manufacturing hovercrafts but also exporting them. 

This is the hovercraft developed by APJ Abdul Kalam's team.

Amir Khan - Not only an entertains but also spreads social awareness

Amir Khan

Movies show us how to reach the hearts and minds of people. Commercial cinema has a huge following in India. People not only visit multiplexes to see movies , but they are able to see a particular favourite movie many times over in their DVDs , mobile phones, tablets etc. There is great impact of movies on the psyche of people around the world, probably more in India than anywhere else. 

In Bollywood if anyone has tapped into this wonderful influencing power of movies positively, that's Amir Khan. 

During his earlier years Amir came across as a wonderfully talented natural actor. When he became a film producer his humanitarian and thoughtful side came into prominence. The film Lagaan actually became a case study for students at various management institutes and also the Indian Army. 

His film Taare Zameen Par created awareness among the masses regarding dyslexia in kids and also generated hope and optimism in the minds of parents of kids affected by dyslexia - that the condition can be overcome. 

The awareness created by this movie actually helped in early detection of dyslexia among thousands of kids and many parents and teachers took corrective steps  to overcome this disorder in their children and students.

Earlier in India, in most cases a dyslexic child was simply passed off as dumb and were often made a laughing stock. In India even now beating up a student with a cane is still practiced by teachers. This dyslexic children are often mercilessly beaten up by their parents or teachers for being weak in studies. This results in lower self esteem  and loss of confidence among such children. 

This compounds the already bad situation of a dyslexic child. However dyslexia can be overcome, some of the greatest scientists like Nikola Tesla, Galileo , Pierre Curie and the great painter and polymath Leanardo Da Vinci were dyslexic. 

He didn't stop there he started a television programme called "Satyamev Jayate", that took up various social issues and also showed various positive initiatives taken by people. The show was simultaneously broadcast on various TV channels including the national service broadcaster Doordarshan.

It was watched by millions across the nation , it was discussed widely in social media. It was shown in regional channels as well in languages other than Hindi. The success of this programmes bear testimonial to the fact that even knowledge based programmes can be commercially successful and at the same time spread awareness among the people as well. 

Meanwhile he also did two more movies, which were both entertaining and had an excellent social message as well. Both of the movies were super hit in the box office. The movies were 3 idiots(released in 2009) and PK(released in 2014) respectively. 

The movies 3 idiots encouraged youngsters to follow their hearts and warned students against memorising stuff without understanding them in a rather hilarious fashion. 

In the movie a student named Chatur (nicknamed silencer) memorises a speech that is to be given in Hindi. Now chatur does not know Hindi , he gets his speech written by the collage librarian. 
Rancho(the character player by Amir Khan) mischievously changes some of the words like chamatkar(miracle) to balatkar(rape) and dhan(money) to stan(breast). 

Now when Chatur gives the speech in front of a packed audience the speech not only embarrasses the principal, but it generates a laughter riot among the people present there. By this prank Rancho tried to give a message to his friend that only memorising things won't work one needs to understand what one reads.

The film also shows little innovations done by Rancho from the stuff available near him like on the first day of his collage, when the seniors were ragging the juniors ,he immediately ran into his room.When one of the senior student threatened that he would pee outside his door if he didn't come out, what Rancho did was he connected one end of a wire to a steel spoon and the other end of the wire to a power supply and placed the spoon right under the door so when the student urinated , his pee fell on the spoon and that completed the circuit and he got an electric shock. 

It also shows how he helped a woman into delivering her baby , with the help of an inverter made by him he generated power when power supply was snaped and his on the feet thinking of adapting a vacuum cleaner into a suction device of a lower force that helped pull the baby out was another such instance.  

I have already written a blog about the movie PK , which is a wonderfully entertaining movie that warns against getting under the influence of fake spiritual gurus. 

Both the movies are produced and directed by the duo of Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Rajkumar Hirani, but both movies seem to have a tremendous Amir Khan influence in them. 

If we have more socially responsible actors like Amir Khan it would be good for the country and the society. 

Makani Airborne Wind Turbine - Kite powered Electricity

High altitude winds has enough energy to power the world many times over. In this blog in the past I have mentioned about Alteros BAT and Kite Powered Electricity. Two years ago Google acquired a company called Makani Power .

The company is a green energy company that has built high altitude energy kites that can tap into the energy provided by high altitude winds to generate electricity. The advantage of using a kite to generate electricity is that one saves on cost of transportation of equipments required for setting up a wind energy tower and also the cost of setting up a wind tower with wind turbine is very high. 

While a wind tower can go up to the  the height of 120 metres. The Makani wind energy kites with a strong flexible teether can achieve a height of 80 to 350 meters. It is way cheaper than a wind turbine as no tower has to be built. Since these kites are aerodynamic they can access stronger winds and that is why every individual kite can generate 50% more energy. 

A single kite can produce upto 600 kW of energy at a wind speed of 11.5 m/sec. The system begins to generate power at a wind speed 4 m/s. At a height of 250 meteres such wind speeds are achieved very easily. 

More information about the revolutionary technology  can be obtained from this site http://www.google.com/makani .

The following video shows how the system works 

Knowledge in India - Past and Present

In India knowledge has always been sacred. In ancient times India was the global hub of learning. Students for all around the globe came to the Nalanda and Taxashila Universities for higher education. Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism  and Sikhism originated in India. The Buddhists monks were the most enthusiastic and spread the Buddhism across different countries that included Tibet,Burma,China, Japan, Thailand,Korea, Indonesia , Sri Lanka and many other countries of south east Asia also Afghanistan. 

An Indian monk Bodhidharma, who went to China , along with Buddhism also taught ancient Indian martial art called Kalaipattu (it is still practised in Kerala). This martial art was further developed by this countries that embraced Buddhism. That's why today there different forms of martial arts like Kung-Fu in China, Karate and Ju-Jitsu in Japan, Taekwondo in Korea, Muay-Thai in Thailand and there are of course many other forms of other martial arts in South East Asia. 

The science of yoga and Ayurveda originated in India. It was India that gave the world the first system of medicine Ayurveda.  The temples and buildings of ancient India bear a testimony to the fact that there were great architects in India. The sun temple at Konark  and other sun temples in south India are a proof of the fact that Indians were good in astronomy as well. 

The great scientist Albert Einstein once said  “We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.”

It was the great Indian mathematician Aryabhatta who gave the value of 0. It must be noted that without knowing the value of zero. Lots of scientific discoveries would have been impossible. The computer won't have existed at all and you the reader won't be reading this blog.

Science research took a backseat in India because the Indians were more focused towards spiritual learning. Indians believed that the ultimate target of life was to attain Moksha or Nirvana  i.e freedom from the cycle of birth and death.

 The caste system got rigid with times , earlier the caste of a person was based on his occupation. A cobblers son son if he took up learning the Vedas became a Bramhin or a Bramhin's son if he decided to become a soldier would become a Kshatriya. But later on caste became dependent on a person's birth. A Bramhan's son was a Bramhan and he had to take up study of Vedas and other religious texts whether he liked it or not. A Shudra's son was a shudra and he had to do the same menial work. 

The people from so called higher castes looked down upon the people of lower castes , the Bramhans stopped the education of lower caste people, as a result many were deprived education. The rigid caste system was the beginning of the decline of the nation. 

Later on when India was under Muslim rule, the education of women was stopped and people became conservative. The nation was mired with illiteracy and it was easy for British to come here and rule the Indians who were lacking in terms of education and were mired with blind beliefs and superstition.

The British rule saw the worst time India ever had to go through. India's cottage industry was destroyed, India had 33% share of total global trade before the British came in, but during the British rule the global share came down significantly and whatever little gains were made, was all pocketed by the British. 

The first census of India done in In 1900 show that a mere 7% people were literate and female literacy was a only 0.6%. This were figures for literacy and not education. The system of education introduced by British was expensive and its target was to produce clerks and lawyers that the British needed. In spite of that , in that era India produced renowned scientists like Dr Jagdeesh Chandra Bose, Dr Satyendranth Bose, Sir CV Raman, Dr Vikram Sarabhai,Dr Homi Bhaba, Dr Subramanyam Chandrashekar etc whose contribution to science are well known.

After Independence the educational system that was set up by the British hardly changed. There has been hardly any effort made to create researchers unlike other countries like China, South Korea and Japan.

Science education in the schools of India is theory based, there is hardly any practical experimentation shown to kids to increase their interest in the subject. In the schools of India its all about scoring marks by cramming the answers of the given questions. You will find kids memorising paragraphs after paragraphs of answer by repeating it like a parrot. 

 In India students are encouraged to take up engineering and then work for some multinational or PSU and after that move up the managerial ranks. In fact there are huge number of of graduates from IITs and lots of MSc degree holders who opt for studying management in some premier Management Institute like IIMs or XLRI. In India it has now become fashionable to hold a IIT - IIM combo degree. If students want to go for management why do the have to study engineering.

There are many cases where a computer science graduate from the IITs ends up in a liquor company making strategies for selling a few more bottles of beer after getting his IIM MBA degree. There are people who criticize MBA education calling it unnecessary. Most of the successful entrepreneurs around the world actually don't have a degree at all. So the need of a MBA is actually questionable. But the IIMs of India have given some excellent managers and business leaders and has incubated companies from the campus. 

But it is very vital for the Indian government to encourage and fund science and technology research. If we are to become a global superpower we have to have excellent scientists in in India. Right now many bright students actually migrate to Europe or America where they get way better opportunities. 

If India invests more in scientific and technological research , it would be immensely benefited. 

Movies can make scientists

Around the world movies are extremely popular and has tremendous influence on the public psyche. Can this influence be tapped into in order to arouse people's interest in science, specially kids. There are space scientists and astronauts who have said that it is the TV series Star Trek that influenced them into taking the decision to become space scientists and astronauts.

There have been scientists who were inspired by a book to become scientists. There have been doctors and scientists who have been in their childhood influenced by their parents, teachers or others and that had tremendous influence into them becoming doctors and scientists. 

Thomas Alva Edison was not liked by teachers in school because he asked a lot of questions , his supportive and strong mother allowed him to leave school and his entire education was done at home. His parents encouraged him to experiment, allowed him to follow his heart and intuition and that's why he became such a great inventor and entrepreneur that we know. 

Dr APJ Abdul Kalam was deeply influenced and curious about the flight of birds, the collage in which he studied had two decommissioned war planes kept in order to explain the various aircraft subsystems. In his biography Dr Kalam says that he felt a strange attraction towards the planes and would sit besides them even after everyone had gone back to the hostel. This are the factors that influenced him into taking up aeronautical engineering at Madras Institute of Technology and later on went on to become the father of India's missile technology and at ISRO he headed the SLV project.

The examples of Edison and Dr Kalam are from the pre-television and movies era. But there is one thing that is very common whether it be past or present. What people chose to become in life is owing to some influences of childhood or some inspiration in youth. 

Take example of the country Israel , with a population of mere 8 million people it produces so many scientists, engineers and innovators. The youngsters there are influenced by their own countrymen who have done well in field of science and technology and they want to follow their example. 

So in India where movies are so popular and with satellite television beaming hundreds of movies a day, there should be movies made that encourage the spirit of scientific enquiry and experimentation. Such movies must be made that encourages innovation and finding innovative solutions to problems. 

The 2009 movie "Three Idiots" is an excellent example in this regard. There are youngsters who developed a drone similar to the one they saw in the movies and named it "All Izz Well".  Watching someone innovate encourages the spirit of innovation in other people. 

The innovation need not always be in terms of a physical product but there can innovation in terms of doing things, that increases productivity. 

Movies like "Three Idiots" ,"A beautiful Mind" ,"PK" and TV series like "Star Trek" should be made more and more so that bright young students are encouraged and inspired into taking up science as a career and maybe some of them will end up being great scientists and inventors of the future. 

PK - The movie (Stay away from wrong numbers)

Its quite strange that I am posting a movie review on this particular blog, but the 2014 movie PK deserves to be here. The reason is that its a movie against superstitions and blind beliefs and exposes the so called middlemen between people and God. While people say that movies have a negative impact on the society , PK definitely is wonderfully educational as well as an entertaining movie.

The movie is about an alien who comes to earth to do research on the civilization here but as soon as he lands on earth the first thing that happens is someone steals his remote. Now without his remote it is impossible for him to go back on his planet. Interestingly though the alien lands up at Rajasthan in India.

The alien whose external features are exactly like a normal human being has to go through lots of hardships. First of all in his planet there is nothing called language people communicate through telepathy. He has this power to hold anyone's hand and download all the information from the person's brain.

Initially he moves around naked but funnily when he comes across a so called dancing car( a car that is moving because people inside are having sex in it) he realizes that the humans have exactly the same skin as them and they wear clothes. The dancing car actually becomes his source of clothes and beggars became his source of money.

But once when a barber was chasing him, he met an accident with a van that belonged to a local music band. Bhairo Singh the driver and leader of the band took him to the hospital where the doctor thought that this alien has lost his memory because of the accident. Initially Bhairo Singh tried to run away but he had a change of heart and decided to take the alien with him and keep it with him till he got well.

Now the alien tried to hold everyones hand so that he can download information about language and speak it. He got into lots of trouble trying to do that. Bhairo Singh thought that he was sex starved and took him to a brothel where he gets an opportunity to hold the hand of a prostitute -Phuljharia, in six hours he downloaded all information regarding her language , words etc and was now able to speak Bhojpuri.

After he learnt the human language he embarked on a mission to find his remote. He went to Delhi but was told by someone it is God who can help him so he went to different offices ( temples,mosques, gurudwaras, churches) for help from god. He listens and follows different advices( rituals) that the managers ( priests, pujaris, sadhus, maulavis etc) of Gods ask him to follow but to no avail. 

He finally found his remote with a so called spiritual guru named Tapasviji, the thief who sold the remote had sold it to Tapasvi. The Tapasvi claimed that it was given to him by God in the Himalayas. When PK came to get his remote , the Tapasvi used his guards to throw him out. 

Then he sees his friend Jaggu making fool of wrong number on phone and thought that it was the same problem with Tapasvi and other spiritual gurus. Their calls to Gods were going to wrong number and someone was fooling them by providing wrong information. The rest of the story is about how he exposes this godmen.

In India movies are very popular and this movie is a must see for all. This is the kind of movie that the nation needs today,along with entertainment its educates the viewers against the so called god-men who fool people in the name of God and make good money from them.

PK has been a global hit. Made for budget of Rs 850 million its has made over Rs 7400 million globally and what's interesting it is the first Hindi movie that did a business of Rs 1020 million in China. 

I hope this movie and other movies like PK that would be made in the future act as eye-opener to the people of country. Being free from blind beliefs, superstitions and fake spiritual gurus is very important for India.