I never got a chance to read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (by Lewis Carrol) but I saw all the chapters in animated form on TV during my childhood days. It took me a few years to realize that Lewis had actually mixed physics and mathematical concepts in the story line, and I had to watch the series again (I love cartoons and animated movies!) so that I can relate to the integration and differential mathematical principles, which I had learnt in school with Caroll’s imaginative story. And I was amazed to the core! The Cheshire cat, my favorite character in the story, can not only be related to higher mathematics (limit of a number tending to 0 and infinity) but also quantum mechanics (proton matrix element of the flavor-singlet axial current). This particular cat was famous for its gradual disappearance and re-appearance at a different location, the exact behavior of electrons in an atom observed by scientists.
Quantum mechanics revolutionized science and opened a whole new world of opportunities for humans, leading to plethora of modern age devices of common use like TVs, LCDs, GPS, iPhones, laptops, Microwaves etc. And now we are not very far away from quantum computing, a concept which will radically affect the way we use our computers today. Quantum computers will be millions of times faster than modern day super computers and may store much more data than today’s biggest hard drives.
It is known that quantum mechanics and Chaos Theory are closely related, with the appearance of organized chaotic patterns in an electron’s state at sub-atomic level. That means the principles of self-similarity and self-organization (fundamental postulates of the Chaos Theory) are validated not only at cosmological scale but at the sub-atomic level too. Physicists are already using these principles to create the next generation devices. As we move towards dissecting the fundamental building block of this universe, an atom, we will get more closer to new mind-boggling inventions and theories, which will affect the very world we live in. I can already visualize my grand children carrying mobile phones which would be 10000 times faster than the current world’s fastest super computer, the IBM RoadRunner!
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Interesting. I like the way you draw the attention by relating cartoon strips to science. But it would be quite more curiosity generating if we could see a good example on the blog page itself on how you connected the character to mathematics.
@kavi: this definitely requires another blog post where I will talk about the connection in detail!
A few of the mathematical references can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wonderland#References_to_mathematics