Escape Velocity…..

“What is escape velocity?” asked the teacher. One of the students in the classroom got up and answered, “Escape velocity is the speed where the kinetic energy of an object is equal to the magnitude of its gravitational potential energy”………
Woooffff..!!!! I don’t even remember in which class I studied all this. Was it 11th or 12th???? Anyways, let me get on with it…

Recently while having dinner with Debo and Vivek, the topic of ‘The Chandrayaan’ came up. This led to the concept of ‘escape velocity’. Suddenly Debo says, “yaar yeh escape velocity ka funda mujhe aaj tak nahi samjha… school mein toh ek definition aur formula rat kar ho gaya tha… par yeh actually hai kya?”. Then started the explanations (mostly by Vivek)…. And whoever knows Debo will agree with me that convincing Debo regarding a topic is an uphill task!!!!

Debo : Even if we leave a gas balloon in the air, it goes up even though its velocity is not 11.2km/hr.
Viv : But the balloon comes down when all the hydrogen in it blows out.
Debo : Hmmmmm….. but if I throw a tennis ball upwards and provide it with energy continuously, the ball will go into space… So Chandrayaan should go into space (without any restrictions of the velocity) as its fuel supply is continuous….
Me : It’s not like that…. Only the continuous supply of fuel does not propel the spaceship into the space….. there’s the aspect of the gravitational force of the earth too….. Ummmmmmm…. Maybe I’ll not be able to explain it properly…
Debo : What’s new in that???!!! That’s your patent answer… Vivek tu bata…
Viv : See, there’s the aspect of the gravitational force of the earth too….. to go into the space against the gravity an object requires an amount of velocity. Hence the concept….. wait I think I’ll give the answer to this… but after some research and then I’ll convince you.
Debo : Ok… let’s continue this some time later..

Why is everything so complicated??? Couldn’t life be much simpler.

But I guess that’s the beauty of life… I have realized (although a bit late..) , that complications, problems, hurdles, whatever the name, never let life become dull. Life would have been so boring if everything was as we wanted it to be….. Success tastes much sweeter after the initial failure. Someone truly said ‘Failures bring out the true character of a person’.

Hoping that our conversation over dinner will have a positive result and Debo finally understands the funda of ‘escape velocity’…

“Ke Aditi mana kabhi kabhi saare jahaan mein andhera hota hai,
Lekin raat ke baad hi toh savera hota hai”
(A. R. Rehman Rocks!!)