Friday, March 26, 2010

Crustal fragmentation -Rifting - Huge Oil Deposits in India

In Herndon’s view, virtually all major geological activity is the consequence of a single process: Earth-crust fragmentation – splitting the Earth’s crust to form new surface area to accommodate decompression-increased planetary volume.
Crustal fragmentation, called rifting, provides all of the crucial components for petroleum-deposit formation: basin, reservoir, source, and seal. Rifting causes the formation of deep basins, as presently occurring in the Afar triangle of Northeastern Africa. Augmented by heat channeled upwards from deep within the Earth, uplift from sub-surface swelling can sequester sea-flooded lands to form halite evaporate deposits, lead to dome formation, and can make elevated land susceptible to erosion processes, thus providing sedimentary material for reservoir rock in-filling of basins. Moreover, crustal fragmentation potentially exposes deep basins to sources of abiotic mantle methane and, although still controversial, methane-derived hydrocarbons.

Drawing upon an understanding he developed with respect to the East African Rift System and the underlying rifting and extensive petroleum and natural gas deposits associated with the Siberian


Traps, Herndon predicts the extensively rifted region beneath the Deccan Traps of India will become the site of important energy-resource discoveries. In fact, the first discovery has already been reported.
For more information: http://www.NuclearPlanet.com/oil.html
For pdf of paper: http://www.NuclearPlanet.com/boost.pdf
Herndon, J. M. (2010) Impact of recent discoveries on petroleum and natural gas exploration: emphasis on India. Current Science, 98, 772-779.
Source:
J. Marvin Herndon, Ph.D.
Transdyne Corporation

For decades, an unsuspected geological blunder has limited crucial technical understanding of how, where and why petroleum and natural gas deposits form. Exposing and correcting that vital mistake offers the promise of new insights and potentially vast new energy-resource discoveries.
Since the 1930s, the idea of mantle convection has been inextricably rooted in common geological interpretations of Earth’s dynamics. In a paper just published in the March 25, 2010, issue of Current Science, San Diego geophysicist J. Marvin Herndon of Transdyne Corporation discloses a very serious problem with the prevailing concept of convection in the Earth’s mantle and reveals the profound implications on oil and gas exploration.
For decades geologists and geophysicists have assumed that convection occurs within the Earth’s mantle. But according to Herndon’s discovery, Earth-mantle convection is physically impossible. As he explains in his paper, the mantle is compressed by its own weight and the weight of the crust, so that its bottom is about 62% more dense than the top. The negligible amount of thermal expansion that might occur at the bottom, less than 1%, cannot cause bottom-mantle matter to float to the surface or make the mantle top-heavy, necessary conditions for convection.

Herndon’s discovery has revolutionary implications for geologists, who have for decades misapplied mathematical convection-justification relationships to the gravity-compressed mantle; such relationships are only valid for incompressible fluids.
Familiar topical names, such as Pangaea, Gondwanaland and Plate Tectonics, will begin to fade into history, replaced by a more correct 21st Century understanding of geology and geodynamics without mantle convection.

Source: A relealse from Mr. Herndon

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Avogadro and His Constant

Read an intersting account of the development of Avogadro's constant in a 16 page article.

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/chemistry/documents/the_constant_of_avogadro.pdf

The interseting point in the article is the paragraph.


Our current interpretation of gas structure has its origins in a chapter in the book
‘Hydrodynamik’ by Bernoulli, published in 1738, but this work was overlooked for
more than a hundred years. Also, in 1845 J.J.Waterston, a school teacher in Bombay,
submitted a paper to the Royal Society with the title ‘On the physics of media
composed of free and perfectly elastic molecules in a state of motion’, in which many
of the currently accepted concepts of kinetic theory were set out. Unfortunately this
paper was rejected by the society as “nothing but nonsense, unfit even for reading
before the society”. However, the manuscript was rediscovered in the archives by
Lord Rayleigh who deduced that it was essentially correct, and the paper was
published in the Philosophical Transactions in 1892 (15). Rayleigh wrote a preamble
to the paper describing its treatment, in which he says that the referee of Waterston’s
paper was one of the best qualified authorities of the day, and that the failure to
publish the paper probably held back the subject by 10 to 15 years. In the meantime
there had been major developments of the theory, particularly by Clausius, Maxwell,
and Boltzmann.

I came to know of Mr. Waterston from a talk delivered by Dr. M. Bama, director of TIFR on 10.3.2010 on the occasion of Foundation day of IIT Bombay.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

IIT JEE 2009 Physics Paper II Question Paper Topics

1. Photoelectric effect I-V graph

2. Velocity acceleration

3. Frequency of oscillation of a spring

4. Oscillation of a spring

5. Charge moving in an elliptical orbital - Angular movement variables

6. Rolling motion of a sphere. Velocities at various points.

7. Thermal cycle - Processes of the cycle and work during various processes

8. Resonance air column method - Measuring speed of sound in air

9. Force induced in a solenoid

10. What happens in these processes of systems?

(p) System : A capacitor, initially uncharged
Process : It is connected to a battery
(q) System : A gas in an adiabatic container fitted with an adiabatic piston
Process : The gas is compressed by pushing the piston
(r) System : A gas in a rigid container
Process : The gas gets cooled due to colder atmosphere surrounding it
(s) System : A heavy nucleus, initially at rest
Process : The nucleus fissions into two fragments of nearly equal masses and some neutrons are emitted
(t) System : A resistive wire loop
Process : The loop is placed in a time varying magnetic field perpendicular to its plane

Matching alternatives provided

(A) The energy of the system is increased
(B) Mechanical energy is provided to the system, which is converted into energy of random motion of its parts
(C) Internal energy of the system is converted into its mechanical energy
(D) Mass of the system is decreased

11. Young's Double slit experiment with screen at various places

12. Charge inside a sphere

13. Current through a triangular wireloop and magentic field due to it.

14. Combination of elastic and inelastic collisions

15. Surface tension - soap bubble

16. simple pulley work done

17. Water coming out of an orifice of a sealed vessel kept in water. How much water will go out?

18. Vibrations of a string

19. Conduction of heat through a rod


Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Topics Asked in IIT JEE 2009 Examination in Physics - Paper I

Specific Topic Asked in IIT JEE 2009 Examination in Physics - Paper I

1. Static coefficient of friction and inclined plane.

A block of base 10 cm × 10 cm and height 15 cm is kept on an inclined plane. The
coefficient of friction between them is square root of 3 . The inclination θ of this inclined plane from
the horizontal plane is gradually increased from 0º. Then
(A) at θ = 30º, the block will start sliding down the plane
(B) the block will remain at rest on the plane up to certain θ and then it will topple
(C) at θ = 60º, the block will start sliding down the plane and continue to do so at higher
angles
(D) at θ = 60º, the block will start sliding down the plane and on further increasing θ, it
will topple at certain θ

Answer; B

2. Simple harmonic motion graph and acceleration of the particle at an instant in time.

3. Spherical shell, Electric Charges and Charge densities

4. Electric flux on a specified surface due to multiple charges of various types: Point, wire, disc,

5. A system of bodies of different shapes with specified masses: Finding the centre of mass of system of bodies.

6. Wire body or frame in a magnetic field. Direction of current and amount of current to be specified.

7. Problem of apparent speed when somebody watches from under the water above.

8. Collisions between particles on a circular path.

9. Current and voltage in electric circuit of resistors.

10. Question on inertial frame

If the resultant of all the external forces acting on a system of particles is zero, then from
an inertial frame, one can surely say that
(A) linear momentum of the system does not change in time
(B) kinetic energy of the system does not change in time
(C) angular momentum of the system does not change in time
(D) potential energy of the system does not change in time

Answer: A

11. Errors in measurements

A student performed the experiment of determination of focal length of a concave mirror
by u-v method using an optical bench of length 1.5 meter. The focal length of the mirror
used is 24 cm. The maximum error in the location of the image can be 0.2 cm. The 5 sets
of (u, v) values recorded by the student (in cm) are : (42, 56), (48, 48), (60, 40), (66, 33),
(78, 39). The data set(s) that cannot come from experiment and is(are) incorrectly
recorded, is (are)
(A) (42, 56) (B) (48, 48) (C) (66, 33) (D) (78, 39)
Answer. C, D

12. Cv and Cp, the molar specific heat capacities of a gas at constant volume and
constant pressure for monoatomic gas and diatomic gas

(A) Cp – Cv is larger for a diatomic ideal gas than for a monoatomic ideal gas
(B) Cp + Cv is larger for a diatomic ideal gas than for a monoatomic ideal gas
(C) Cp / Cv is larger for a diatomic ideal gas than for a monoatomic ideal gas
(D) Cp . Cv is larger for a diatomic ideal gas than for a monoatomic ideal gas
Answer: B, D

13. Fusion reactor and Lawson Number

14. Standing waves and de Broglie relation.

15. Arrangement of six point charges. Various properties.

16. Velocity and acceleration of bodies in various arrangements