The years that I spent chasing my dream of becoming an IITian were fueled by these words. 

People think competitive exams are about memorization, or formulas, or having your eyes glued to a book 20 hours a day. But it’s not entirely true. These exams have a higher purpose, a motive, far beyond just textbooks & classrooms. They are about a bigger picture.

They delve into your thinking, infiltrate your life & actions for years, these exams test not just your mind, but your mindset. 

It’s all about the mindset.

Not the number of hours you try to study, not the formulas you try to memorize, not the heavy textbooks you carry in your backpacks. It’s not about any of this, not until the mindset is in the right place, because exams would come & go, but a mindset is for life, and that’s exactly what these exams test you for.

WHY THESE EXAMS?

We often used to whine in class “Sir we are not interested in physics, why are we studying all this?” or “How am I going to use Moment of Inertia, or Titration, when I’ll be doing a job at an MNC, why am I even studying it?”

To this, one of my teachers always used to say that JEE is not about the 60 or 100 questions you’ll have to answer in those 3 hours. The questions, the curriculum, the framework, it’s just a medium. The motive, the purpose of the exam, is far beyond that.

It tests you on your tenacity, how persistent you are. It tests you on your out-of-the-box thinking, how can you use known facts to arrive at a conclusion. It tests you on your ability to spontaneously mould yourself, how well do you adapt to unprecedented situations.  It tests you on your dedication, how focused you can keep yourself. It tests you on your drive to compete, how well do you take the competition. 

All these qualities are what these exams test you for. The syllabus, the subjects, are a mere medium for it. Sure these would contribute to your life if you take up academics as a career, or if you’re purely in love with the subjects, but the purpose they serve in the exams, is to test you on all these parameters that you must have as a problem solver.

And this is where the mindset comes into the picture.

WIN FIRST, THEN GO TO WAR

Sun Tzu was a legendary Chinese strategist, who lived in ancient times. He wrote an excellent book, “The Art of War”, in which he wrote the famous quote, “Win first, then go to war”.

My teachers often used the analogies of war in our classrooms, not to shed bad light onto the exams, but to tell us how the preparation for the two is not very dissimilar. 

The keys to success in both situations is passion & preparation. 

In your heart, you have to have the drive, the passion, the burning urge & desire to accomplish something  & before you step into the battlegrounds, you have to be prepared, on all fronts. You have to have confidence in yourself, you have to have the belief, the surety, the assurance, that voice inside you saying :

“Yes, I want to do this, I am ready for it, and I can handle whatever comes my way”.

And here’s how you get there, in war, or in life:

• Passion : Have love & drive for what you do. Feel the process, let yourself be consumed by the passion you have for it & enjoy every bit of the grind.
• Strategy : The most crucial step, know what it is that you’ve got yourself into, research, talk to people, read, understand, and strategize. Understand the game & how it is played before you play it.
• Strengths & Weaknesses : Know yourself. Know what you are good at, know what needs improvement. This helps in allocating resources & time to the right areas, as well as formulating the plan of action.
• Plan of Action : It’s time to sweat! Devise a plan of action, use your strategy, gather all information about what is to be done & how, keep your strengths & weaknesses in mind, formulate a timeline, know the milestones, have checkpoints & assessments. Put the ideologies into action, one day at a time.
• Advice & Counselling : Talk to seniors, teachers, parents, colleagues. Seek advice & counselling from people who have relevant knowledge & experience in the field. Learn from their mistakes & failures. Let someone who has been there guide you.
• Introspection : Every now & then, introspect. See if you’re on the right track, check upon the milestones that were planned, look back & see if everything has went according to plan, incorporate necessary changes, reward yourself for what you achieved & improve upon mistakes that were made.
• Experience : Practice, practice & practice. 1 day of experience trumps 10 days of theory. Make sure to maintain a right balance of both. Learn & implement. 
• Love & Support : The most important of all, always spend time with your family and loved ones. Share your achievements, your failures, your goals. The support of loved ones is the most important thing, ever in life, ever, it’s beyond anything & everything and make sure you cherish it and have empathy & compassion for them in your heart.

As time passes, and you work & grow on all these fronts, these would dissolve into your personality & form the mindset I have been talking about.

(Source : https://cdn.lifehack.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/key-to-success-1024×768.jpg)

The mindset of having belief in oneself, of taking up challenges, of loving & feeling passionate about what you do, of knowing & respecting one’s capabilities & limitations, of learning from your experiences, of seeking advice and guidance, of having a structured, disciplined yet creative way of tackling problems & most important of all, of having empathy & compassion.

LOVE THE PROCESS

The challenges life throws at you can be tough, the failures can be heartbreaking & the road ahead can be hazy. But to move an immovable mountain, you need an unstoppable force.

The years you spend preparing for an exam, or preparing for life, are the years when you nourish that unstoppable force, that radiating belief inside you which fuels you to achieve greater ambitions as you pass through life.

And there is no stronger force in this universe than love & passion. To succeed at anything, you have to love the process. You have to fall in absolute love with the journey, the hustle, you have to enjoy the late nights & the early mornings, you have to appreciate the successes & failures alike, you have to do it because you want to, not because you have to, and then, before you realize, the journey would become a part of you and you would know exactly where to take yourself with it.

For more such videos : https://www.youtube.com/c/ExperiHub

For more Science related blogs and videos : https://experihub.com/did-you-know/

So, come let’s dig into this Game of Galaxies. Fasten your seat belts & brace for the impact!

THE JOURNEY

Andromeda is our closest neighboring galaxy, 2.5 million light years away from us. If I was to write this distance in kilometres, it would have 20 digits, so yes, it’s a huge distance!

Fueled by gravity, the galaxies are moving towards each other at a speed of 110 Km/s or 402,000 Km/h. To put this speed into perspective, moving at 110 km/s, you could go around the Earth in just 6 minutes. 

(Source : https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/milky-way-collide.html)

After 4 Billion years, the first contact between the two galaxies would happen, the galactic collision would begin, and would continue to take place over the span of another 2 Billion years.

THE SHOW BEGINS

As the galaxies would close in, one would see Andromeda getting bigger and bigger in the night sky. However, the magnificent spiral in the sky would be just the beginning, soon a show of cosmic choreography would begin, a dance of stars & planets on the rhythm of gravity would follow in one of the most ecstatic galactic collisions the human race might ever come to experience.

Below is an illustration by NASA on what a person on Earth would witness in the sky, during the course of 6 Billion years. Each picture differs by roughly 0.7 Billion years, which means the first picture is the night sky, today, and the last one is the night sky, 6 Billion years later.

(Source : https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/milky-way-collide.html)

During the course of 4 Billion years, Andromeda would keep getting closer and closer to us, until we have touchdown. Now the collision finally begins, we’re in the endgame.

ENDGAME

So, what happens next?

Well, simply put, now the two galaxies would “collide”. However, a galactic collision differs greatly from a collision of two solid objects, like footballs because of what galaxies are made up of and how they work. A galaxy is a gravitationally bound system of stars, dust, gas & planets. They generally also have a Black Hole at their center, which holds the complete system together. 

Enough with the theory, now let us visualize the collision. 

So, arrange two pieces of transparent paper, and make a disk outline on both of these. Fill this disk with tiny dots using your pen, make a lot of dots. Do the same for both the papers. Now, overlap the two papers. You would notice some dots overlap, while some do not. 

The disk is the galaxy, the dots are the stars. The overlapping dots are the stars that would collide into each other, while the non-overlapping ones are the ones who would survive without a scratch. 

This is a simulation by NASA where you can see how the showdown would happen.

(Click the image to open the link)

So, now the two galaxies & their central black holes would merge over the course of another 2 billion years to form a new central black hole & a new system of stars & planets around it. The two galaxies would combine to form a new galaxy!

But what happens to the stars and planets, wouldn’t all of them collide and get destroyed?

Yes, some would. But surprisingly enough, most stars & even our solar system might survive the collision, the reason is that stars have a lot of empty space between them, so it gets really difficult for two stars to land at just the right spot to collide. Most stars would pass right beside each other. 

THE AFTERMATH

The darkest of nights lead to the brightest of mornings.

After 6 Billion years, as the dust settles, things would start to calm down. The stellar cosmic choreography would come to an end and the two galaxies would become one, the “Milkdromeda”.

The galaxy would contain a much bigger, Super Super Massive Black Hole at its center and our solar system would probably be thrown out somewhere on the outskirts of the galaxy.

But where would we be?

It’s incredible how much our humankind has advanced into technology & space exploration. As time passes by, newer technologies arrive, discoveries are made, and we make one more step into deep space, far away from our Earth and Solar System.

But we would soon be put to a test. Much before the galaxy comes racing our way, our own Sun would end up consuming us. In 1 billion years, it would be so luminous it would evaporate all the water on Earth! LIfe on Earth as you know it, wouldn’t be possible and it’s evident that we need to leave!

Our survival is on the line, the humans to come would be the ones who’d have to make us an intergalactic race, they’d have to migrate to another stellar system, go out into the unknown, so that a kid like me, or a kid like you, would then be able to look up in the sky, and see what we would miss.

For science videos visit  : https://www.youtube.com/c/ExperiHub?sub_confirmation=1

For  Science related blogs visit  : https://experihub.com/did-you-know/

So, let’s dive in & see what our moon is up to!

MOONLIGHT OR SUNLIGHT?

Firstly, you can let go of the idea of the moon changing shape, The moon is a celestial, spherical body, of fixed dimensions, which is in constant motion around the Earth and the reason it “appears” to change shape is actually the fact that the moon does not produce light of its own, it merely reflects our sun’s light back to Earth. 

So, when you look up at the moon, and you notice how it lights up the night sky with it’s “moonlight”, that light is actually the sun’s light, hitting the moon’s surface and getting reflected towards you. The moon is kind of like a mirror in the night sky, trying to sneak in some of the sun’s light onto you, while you are on the dark side, away from the bright sun. 

MIRROR MIRROR IN THE SKY

So now that we know that the moon is essentially just kind of like a “mirror” reflecting the sun’s light on us, we can see how it “appears” to change its shape. The phases of the moon are just a simple consequence of how much of the surface of the moon is illuminated by the sun on a particular night.

The three musketeers, the sun, the moon & the earth, are in constant motion relative to each other at all times. The sun sits at the center of the solar system, the Earth goes around the sun, while the moon goes round the Earth!

(Source: https://media.proprofs.com/images/QM/user_images/2503852/New%20Project%20(78)(28).jpg)

As the moon moves between the Earth & the sun, the amount of area that:

• receives sunlight 
• And is also visible to us from the Earth 

varies continuously and it is this variation that leads to the phases of the moon..

PHASES OF THE MOON

So, now that we know how the moon moves relative to the Earth & the sun, and how it reflects the sun’s light, let’s see how our beautiful moon goes from a shining bright circle to complete darkness every month.

The moon completes one cycle around the Earth every 28 days. This means it goes from full moon to new moon & back to full moon, in 28 days.

When the moon is right in between the sun & earth, we cannot see it’s bright side, since it is facing away from us, towards the sun, so that is your “New Moon”, complete darkness as no light can be reflected from the moon, to you.

When it completes half an orbit from “New Moon” position, it is now away from both the sun & the Earth, Now imagine you are standing on the dark side of the Earth, the sunlight would fall on the moon & be reflected back to you, you would see the complete circle, the “Full Moon”.

When half the side of the moon facing earth is lit up, these phases are called first and third quarters.

When the visible lighted surface seems to be getting bigger, we say the moon is waxing, & when it seems to be getting smaller, we say the moon is waning. Also, when more than half of the visible moon is lit, we call it gibbous & when less than half of it is lit up, we call it crescent.

(Source: https://www.natgeokids.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Phases-of-the-Moon-Orbit.jpg)

So, that was all about how the moon “appears” to change shape. Remember, it doesn’t, it’s just a matter of how much of its surface is lit by sunlight and how much of that lit surface you can see at a time. 

TRY AT YOUR  HOME

Here is an interesting experiment from the wonderful team at NASA, which you can do at home to understand how all this works.

1. Use a pencil & a styrofoam ball for the setup, fix the ball on the pencil.
2. Go into a dark room & set up a source of light, a bulb, or a lamp.
3. Stand in front of the lamp, holding the pencil upright in your hand.

The light source is now the Sun, the ball is the Moon, and you are the Earth.

Now rotate while standing in your place, you would see how the ball would enact the phases of the moon.

(Source: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/activity/moon-phases/)

Have Fun!