Classroom - Resonance - January 2004

Classroom

In this section of Resonance, we invite readers to pose questions likely to be raised in a classroom situation. We may suggest strategies for dealing with them, or invite responses, or both. “Classroom” is equally a forum for raising broader issues and sharing personal experiences and viewpoints on matters related to teaching and learning science

Volume Effects in Potentiometric Titrations

C Basavaraja and V R Kulkarni

Chemical titration is one of the important methods in chemical analysis. The titration can be non-instrumental or instrumental. In the present day trend of automation, instrumental methods are preferred. In the undergraduate and postgraduate courses important instrumental methods employed are potentiometric and conductometric titrations. Usually changes near the equivalence point are used for identifying the end point and they need to be sharp for better utility.

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Address for Correspondence

C Basavaraja and V R Kulkarni
Department of Chemistry
Gulbarga University
Gulbarga 585 106, India.

From the Mathematics Olympiad to the Maximum Principle

K B Athreya

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Address for Correspondence

K B Athreya
School of ORIE
Rhodes Hall
Cornell University, Ithaca
New York 14853, USA.

A Note on the Formula C = pi*d for the
Circumference of a Circle

K P Ramakrishnan

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Address for Correspondence

K P Ramakrishnan
Karthik
Ravipuram Road,
Ravipuram Ernakulam
Kerala 682 016, India.

A Graph-theoretic Treatment of the
Amitsur-Levitzki Identity

Bharat Dravid

I like to ask my undergraduate students the following question: Consider a planet in a perfectly circular orbit around the Sun. Now take a celestial hammer and give it a slight radial knock. What happens? The answer, of course, is that the planet oscillates radially as it goes around the Sun. Radial oscillation combines with circular motion to give a plausible planetary orbit. So long as the eccentricity of the orbit is small, the radial motion is harmonic and determining the orbit is simpler than solving the general problem of planetary orbits. This approach is perhaps more insightful: it allows us to understand intuitively why a planetary orbit is closed, and why it is stable, and, with a little generalization, to determine the effect on a planetary orbit of the oblateness of the Sun and of corrections due to the general theory of relativity.

Address for Correspondence

Bharat Dravid
Fourth Year Integrated
M Sc. Student
Department of Mathematics
Indian Institute of Technology
Kharagpur 721302, India.
Email:bharat_dravid@yahoo.com