Monday, October 27, 2008

Mpemba effect

I would ask you a simple question; if you had two water containers, one at 35°C and the other at 5°C, and you want to freeze both of them, which one would freeze faster? The trivial, simple and logical answer would be; the one in the 5°C container would freeze faster. However, I would be happy to tell you that this is not true , and that’s called Mpemba effect. Although the 35°C container is further from freezing, it would reach it faster.

Actually, Scientists have no final explanation for this observation, but what is interesting is the idea itself; feeling far away from your goal, but reach faster. In most of the cases, the hard situations that we face in our lives, that make us feel moving backwards, is nothing more than a shortcut for our dream.

There is another example for this idea; If your are trying to move forward in your way, and suddenly you faced a big hole in the road, to cross this hole, most probably you would move some steps backward, move quicker and jump. Do you think that you should get depressed for moving those backward steps? Mpemba effect is a good answer.


Mohamed Al-Khazendar

Friday, October 10, 2008

Kraal

Do you know how they tame an elephant? They use a training system called Kraal. The idea is very simple. They tie the baby elephant legs with strong chains to a large tree or to a fixed ring in the ground. The wild baby elephant tries to escape and to run, but in vain. After a while the elephant gets used to his life, it knows that its move is only allowed as long as it doesn't exceed the chain length.

At this time, and only at this time, they untie the chain from the tree and leave it in the elephant leg. As the elephant still feels the chain it won't try to escape and will continue moving with short steps that never exceed the chain length. By this way they got the elephant tamed, and they can use it to do what they want.

I think that the kraal is not only used with elephants, but with humans as well. A lot of political systems use this method to control their people. They put restrictions for a while and then leave things to move as they want. This is not only used in politics, but in a lot of human relationships. Someone put limits, force the others to move within, and then leave things to time.

As a final point, this is not the only training system for elephants. The more strange method is training an elephant by elephants. They use special tamed elephants, called “Kumki” to train the wild ones. I think you know that this method is used for humans taming. And this is the most effective way. Most of dictators use this method perfectly nowadays. As they already have a lot of “Kumki” they don’t need to waste time in “Kraaling”. this categorize their people in three categories, few wild, a lot of tamed, and some “Kumkis” and the last are the worst.

Notes:
- In these methods, there is only one difference between elephants and humans, that’s taming female elephant is normal while taming males is an exception. And that’s the opposite of what happens in humans.
- For those who follow USA president election news, I was wondering why the Republican Party uses an elephant logo, and now it’s clear, but it didn’t take me that time to know why the Democratic Party uses a donkey logo.

Mohamed Al-Khazendar