Prologue

2009-09-30T15:46:00.000-07:00

Aum Bhur bhuva suvah tat savituh varenyam bhargo devaysa dhimahi...

He was taller than any other contemporary human alive on the face of Earth. In his padmasana posture, he was lost in meditation. He was travelling in the darkness of his closed eyes. He could see nothing, hear nothing but could only feel the speed at which he was going. All of a sudden he slammed into a glorious effulgent object. And now he could see. What he saw was inevitable. It will happen and he knows it. He digested the essence of what he had seen and slowly opened his eyes. He looked more worried. His smile was hiding under it, all the chaos and turmoil going on in his mind, infinite number of questions popping up and doubts depleting his faith. He was hurriedly walking towards the guru.

IIT Roorkee, S. N. Bose Block, Auditorium

'It is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Roshan Verma to you all. He completed his PhD in Physics from the University of Rochester, USA in 1994. He graduated from IIT Bombay in 1988 with Masters in Physics. He has published more than 200 papers in reputed, peer reviewed journals. He is no stranger to the physics majors. His book on 'Quantum Mechanics' is widely followed in the country and is even prescribed for graduate courses across many universities in the world. With out wasting much time, I invite Dr. Verma on to the dais'

'Thank you for your generous words, Dr. Gupta. Hello every one, this is Roshan. As I always did, I would like to begin with a question. Before that I would request you all to unlearn all the science, all the physics you know. Now we are completely ignorant. We know nothing about any theory in the world what so ever'.

'The question is 'what is Quantum Mechanics?' We will begin with questioning ourselves what science is. Is it our effort to understand the world around us? Yes, it is! But not simply to understand. It is our endeavor to understand, explain and most importantly predict.

His guru knew what was going on in his mind. He welcomed him with a smile.

'It is all in His divine plan. We are merely players. He plays for us. Worry not. If the war is inevitable, let us get ready to fight and protect. Let us prepare ourselves for it. We shall fight with every thing we have. '

He obeyed the guru's orders and bent in reverence. He was always prepared for this. He had faith and wanted to stop this war with it. Faith can work wonders, unfortunately, not this time.

Preparing for a war, which he has to lose, meant gathering a lot of courage.

'So, when Stern and Gerlach did the experiment with a jet of Silver atoms in a non uniform magnetic field, they had seen something which was never ever observed in macroscopic experiment. They called it 'the spin'.'

Quantized...

Prologue