Research Bin

If your phone case is bulging or your laptop lid won’t close right, don’t ignore it. Battery swelling is more than annoying : it’s time to care for your device. Here’s what’s happening, why it’s risky, and what you can do about it...  

Highlands are an interesting climate zone with chilly weather and sometimes even snow capped mountains. Higher the elevation, colder the climate. But why does it feel colder in the mountains? Why mountaintops are cold even when they're closer to the sun? What causes coldness with altitude? These are fascinating age old questions, to which the answer is not quite straight forward. Let's explore how it happens.

How long can we keep data intact? Surely a very long time..? Not necessarily! A few events over the past few months got me thinking and it turns out that keeping data over long periods of time is pretty challenging. Let's see why.

Digital editions of books are rapidly gaining popularity. While some people still find it preferable to use hard-copy, more and more people move to eBooks in favor of added functionality and usability. When it comes to a book you own, it is nice to be able to commit your thoughts on to it. Highlighting, scribbling, commenting or making notes on your copy allows a more personalized feel to your books. And it makes reference a lot easier. Unlike in printed books, the original text is not ruined by user edits on a soft-copy. Such data introduced by the user are referred to as "annotations". They are actually an overlay of information over the book print.

When it comes to recording information, multimedia files have the obvious upper hand over plain text documents. They have a solid flow with a lot of accompanying data in addition to the objective information. For example, It's much interesting to listen to a narrative as opposed to reading the same information on text form. It's not quite the same. But it is difficult to move at our own pace through an audio unlike text or an image. This can be a headache when it comes to keeping track of contents in long audio/video tracks. Let's look at a couple of features we can make use of to make life easier.

The Earth have one natural satellite; the Moon. The moon is the closest natural celestial body seen to the naked eye from Earth. Scientists believe it has helped shaped life and climate of the planet over the eons. But is there really any use of it? If so, how can we make use of it? Let's look into some possibilities..

The Sun produces massive amounts of energy by a process called nuclear fusion where Hydrogen atoms are combined to form Helium atoms. This energy is emitted to space in the form of electromagnetic radiation. After 8 minutes of journey, a portion of it arrives on Earth with an estimated energy density over a 1000 Watts per square meter. About 30% of this energy is reflected back to space. The rest of it powers up the planet as we know it. On Earth, energy arrives in the form of electromagnetic waves including Infra-red (IR), visible light and Ultraviolet (UV). We refer to it as “ sunlight ”. The following list is a composition of the main forms of energies produced from solar energy and stored on Earth.

Our eyes perceive light. Our brains interpret it into shapes and forms that we are familiar with. What we see is lighter or darker depending on how much of light enters the eye (that is; intensity) and is applied with "colors" based on the flavors of light we receive. As vivid as they may be, these so called flavors of light are physically non-existent in nature. They are solely an interpretation that exists only within our perception.

There are 3 distinct states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. The molecular differences between these states are determined by the ability of their kinetic energies to overcome the forces of attraction among the molecules. Out of them, Gaseous state of matter exhibits the highest degree of freedom for movement in 3 dimensional space. This allows gases not only to acquire the shape of the container but also to adapt its volume to occupy the container as well. Interestingly, these moving gas molecules are responsible for three major phenomena distinct from each other.

Have you ever wondered why plants and trees growing at the margins of pools and lakes of water look magically beautiful? They grow branches and leaves towards the water. They grow along and across the water surface but never touch it. How is that even possible? Let's look at the processes involved in plants to produce this eye-catching scenery.

In our childhood, we are taught of counting with fingers. Regardless of the age, people continue to use these techniques to ease up calculations that come across in day to day living. While your fingers allow you to count and represent up to 10, did you know that there is an insane potential capacity of number representation by your digits(fingers).

Calculating area of geometry with curved lines is more challenging than shapes with straight lines. The area of a circle is typically calculated πr 2 with Calculus. It's the value we accept and use. But did you know that we can derive the formula A=πr 2  in a more easier way to see why it is the way it is..

Atmosphere is the layer of gases that surrounds the Earth retained by Earth's gravity. Have you ever come across the question; what is the shape of the atmosphere? It's fair to think that the atmosphere is shaped somewhat like the Earth itself. because of gravity. We know that the Earth is not a perfect sphere. So, We can assume atmosphere to have a similar shape. But amazingly, the shape of the Atmosphere is affected by a lot of factors and the deformation is even more. Lets see why that is..

Canned fish is a nutritious food, especially for protein and calcium. You can eat it right out of the tin. The fish bones are very soft and tender that they can hardly be noticed. It is a good source of easily digested and absorbed Calcium. But what made them so soft? Is it really safe to eat? because fresh Salmon bones look nothing like it!

Nightshades are a group of a variety of flowering plants(family Solanaceae ). It includes common and famous plants like tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplants(brinjals) and tobacco. Many plants of medicinal and pharmaceutical value falls into this family as well. This family comprises of about nearly 3000 different species in total. Origin of word 'Nightshade' is not clear. Lets look into some possible reasons why it is called so.

Everybody loves popcorn. Its smooth texture, crispiness makes us crave for more. Apart from being a snack, Popped corn is used in many decorative and experimental applications too. As its name suggests, 'popcorn' if made out of corn. Corn is heated up slowly until they pop out these ' flakes '. This happens because..

Tea is known as the the most popular and widely consumed beverage around the world. Consuming tea is believed to have various beneficial health effects. Day by day, more and more research discovers more of these effects of tea as a drink. One minor downside of drinking tea is its effect on iron absorption by the intestine.

Weather refers to the conditions of atmosphere at a given time. It is determined mostly by the Sun, the winds and the clouds. Of them, both the winds and the clouds are driven by the Sun. So basically, 'weather is driven by the sun' atleast for most of the time. Weather has a big impact on our day-to-day work and lifestyle. Knowing what might next happen is very helpful in our work. From Earth, we can look up to the sky and see this for ourselves...

Aging is common to all living things as far as we know. Every organism at some point in its life face this inevitable gradual deterioration of functionality and ultimately death. Is it a disease? or is it something really inevitable that we are programmed for it? For the past few centuries, scientists have been studying various aspects of aging to better understand it hoping that someday, we might be able to intercept this process. But, How does aging truly happens is yet to be confirmed.. 

Clouds are all interesting things if you take some time to think about them. We know that they contain water droplets because they bring rain. But, did you know that they exist in liquid and ice forms?. And..