Model of scientific framework

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. 

-Carl Sagan

 

This article is not a technical account. This is an attempt to understand the fundamental sciences (Physical science, chemical science, and biological science) as models of different ideas and concepts. As this is an amateur (lay) approach to these concepts any ideas or thoughts might need to be better formalized.

This is also a continuation of the "Model theory" (click here, click here) whose main objective is to understand how we think and understand things.

This is divided into four parts. A minuscule introduction to all the parts is provided in this blog. A detailed explanation of each piece will be dealt with at a later time. 

Part - 1:  Physical science

Physical science in short is the study of the fundamental ideas of non-living things. If forms the basis of all other sciences. most of the physical science is based on the mathematical formulation and the physical certainty of things around us. It broadly involves the study of the universe through cosmology, the study of atoms by quantum mechanics, the study of moving bodies by classical mechanics, the study of an ensemble of particles by statistical mechanics, the study of energy through thermodynamics, the study of subatomic particles by electrodynamics and so on. Almost everything in science can be understood through the basis and approaches of physical science. 

Part - 2: Chemical science

Chemical science is the study of materials and their properties thus it gives a good understanding of the material universe. It uses the concepts of physical science to understand how materials combine, how they exist, and how they are formed and modified. In a very broad view, they have three different branches; Organic chemistry - deals with the study of compounds that are mostly made up of carbon and hydrogen as a base otherwise an organic compound. ; Physical chemistry - deals with the study of chemical systems with the help of the concepts of physics (A specific study of chemical systems using physics). ; Inorganic chemistry - deals with the study of all other

chemical species that don't have a carbon-hydrogen compound.  Thus chemical science deals with the composition of substances and their properties and reactions.

Part - 3:  Biological science

Biological science is a bit complex field to understand. it's like a living being studying a living being. In a formal way, it is the study of life. It has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, it is a coherent field. It is a complex blend of the above two parts and other significant small parts. Medicine is one of the most important applications of biological science. Chemically it is the atoms, molecules, water, organic compounds, and macromolecules; signaling, Inheritance, development, and self-sustaining. We can always apply any science we discover to study life. It is difficult to give a short technical overview of biological science. In a codified manner, it is the study of us. 

Part 4: Model of  system

The above parts can be combined and put under the same roof which is generally call them as natural science which is the study of everything around us. As scientifically sound, we are able to combine them all into a single system and understand things in a related way.  Mostly this model of system can be a base for engineering like mechanical, civil, biotechnology, chemical, electrical, electronics, etc. This model of system is not a constant

system it is a feedback system so as far as we know the physical world exists because the system flows in and out of itself. The way of thinking and understanding it is a task that should be provided with time, thought, and information from which we can have an emergence. 

This is inspired by the work of  Barbara Minto (Pyramid Principle), N. Seshagiri, Richard Feynman, Henri Bergson (Matter and Memory), and others. 

This is an open problem to think about and analyze. My views and thoughts will be shared at a later time after getting some experience. 

HOPE YOU LEARNT A NEW THING AND CHANGE THE WAY OF LOOKING AROUND YOU.

If you have any questions regarding this you are free to express them in the comments or you can chat with me on my Instagram page to discuss this.  https://www.instagram.com/phy.sci/?hl=en.

Music, Enrtropy, Neurons and Information

Music, Enrtropy, Neurons, and Information

“I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts, are the keys to learning” 

― Plato 

Music is something that we listen to every day in many forms. Entropy and Neurons are yet to be understood by the people who work on them but they provide interesting insights about things around us. It is really interesting how we are moved by music and with that feeling, we can understand ourselves in a scientific way.  To understand it we need to know something about each word in the topic and interpret it in our own way. This will be a long read but will be fascinating once you understand it in your own way.  

Brain, neurons, music sheet, disorder

NOTE: The audio and the video will take a few seconds to load. wait till it load or open it in a new tab. 

Click the play button and wait for a few seconds.

If the video and audio is not playing. Refresh the page. 

Music

Music can be academically defined as an arrangement of sounds. There are some technical terms that one should be familiar with. When the sound gives a pleasant and harmonious sensation it is called consonant, if the sound gives an inharmonious feeling then it is called as dissonant. 

The sound of a trained singer singing a song, the sound of a temple or a church bell, when a student plays piano we get a consonant. When a normal person sings a song, the sound of hitting metal utensils, when a cat walks on a piano we get a dissonant. One can easily recognize this, whether he knows music or not. Sometimes in nature, we get these sounds like birds, cows, and fish make consonants (not always), whereas bugs, bees, and donkeys made dissonant. 

The first audio is the ringing of the tuned bell the second is the hitting of metal utensils. Now you can find the difference between consonant and dissonant.

REFRESH THE PAGE IF THE AUDIO SHOWES AN ERROR,

From a musician's point of view, jass is mostly dissonant but gives a feel that depends on the player (not mocking jass, just a fact), metal and rock music is not pleasant but harmonic so it depends on the listener. Other than that all are consonant. Generally, consonants are predictable sounds.

Music is evolved through the ages among that classical music is the most ordered and has strict rules about music and the free-going type is jass, yet people like both the music. It is a question of why people like music? (Think it yourself)

This is a classical music sheet. See how the notes(the black dots on and in between the line) are ordered and simple. (when the dots go higher and higher the pitch increases) 

This is a Jass music sheet. This piece of music is one of the famous compositions. Even though it is good to hear it trumpet players see it as a difficult piece to master. See how the notes are organized it looks more complex than earlier sheet music.   

Technically a piece of music has rhythm, harmony, and melody. We normally combine them to produce music. We can sense them easily. 

The sense of rhythm

The best example of rhythm is our heartbeat or a ticking analog clock. It produces a sound in equal intervals of time or it is silent in a particular interval of time. 1,2,3,4:1,2,3,4;1,2,3,4;1,2,3,4... now if you count this pattern in your mind and repeat it the make a sound in everyone or in any pattern when which you wish you are producing rhythm ( technically a 4/4 rhythm pattern). 

By nature, we have a sense of rhythm, we tap our legs, nod our heads or clap our hands while listening to a song which is nothing but our sense of rhythm. From nature, we can grasp the rhythm from The rustling of leaves, the sound of rain, the sound of water flowing, the sound of waves on the beach, the song of birds, etc. 

Some of the rhythmic sounds. The first two are computer generated. The first is used in music and the second is the dile tone in a telephone. The last two mimics the natural world. like a heartbeat and walking on a hard floor. 

The sense of harmony

In a very general meaning harmony is the existence of things together. So in music, it is the existence of different sounds together. The sets example is the "gooood mooorrrninggg" of kids in school. Is harmony sounds as a single sound but has various tones in it. Another example is the audience singing a song in a concert or a group of people in a choir. We as social beings sense and produce hormones in our daily life but we do know how. 

The sense of melody 

In general, a melody is a tone that produces a consonant. A bird singing is a melody, our random hummings are a melody. It has a certain pitch to be filled and follows a rhythm. The " Happy birthday song" is a good melody. So a melody is a set of notes which make a consonant. 

Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale at the world science festival. The audience are singing harmony and Bobby is singing melody. 

The walking humans - music producers

As physicists approximate a cow as a cylinder (not a joke it is real check it here), we can approximate a walking human as a simple pendulum. As we walk we exhibit a harmonic motion i.e., an up-down motion, back-and-forth motion, extension, and compression. 

The walking human represents a simple harmonic motion similar to a pendulum.

A pendulum produces a sine wave similar to the movement of human feet and hands. 

NOTE: Click the video and wait of few seconds to load. Then again click the play button.  

All this is associated with a sound like a taping of feet, swinging of hands, and breathing. So a walking human can produce a piece of music.

When a group of people walk we can create a good random consonant. From this, we can obtain a predictable sound. By doing this we have different predictable sounds in harmony and when we can synchronize them we get spaces of silence that have two adaptations.  we can filter our unwanted predictable sounds, and we can effectively find a tempo (time frame of a rhythm) and follow it and form a convincing melody or a beat. 

The amplified sound when a human walks. You find a rhythm in it and a jass melody too.  

So our natural activity can produce a piece of good music so people get inspiration from themself and from nature. Different cultures have different types of sounds and music but the feeling that they convey are universally understood? Which is again a question that we have to think about. I also have another question about this we humans do not need music to exist ( Like a human can exist without pizza) then why do we need music? (Think about these questions by yourself).

Basics of harmony 

To understand the pattern of harmony in a physical and a mathematical way I encourage you to do a small activity. Make something as shown in the figure. Frequency ratios, Now take a model that was proposed by Pythagoras, in the following arrangement the white border is a slider so it can dived the string into two different parts and creates different sound when it is moved differently. 

Now when the slider is kept in such a way that the ratio of their lengths or the frequency is a simple integer we will get a consonant (like 1:2, 1:2, 2:3, etc). Other frequencies like 1:13, 3:19, etc are normally dissonant. You can check it by yourself by making such an apparatus. These sets of notes are in different frequencies form chords and all the major and minor chords are composed of the simple frequency ratio. 

The first three sounds are in simple integer ratio as in the figure so they make consonants (Which are the basic chords as mentioned earlier). The last two sounds are in a higher integer ratio so they are not consonant. ##

We generally like chords with lower integer ratios. The question here is why do we like chords with lower integer ratios?

The auditory system - The place where neurons play their game.

Once Sound reaches your ear it vibrates your eardrum which in turn vibrates the three bones that pass these vibrations along to your cochlea, inside the cochlea is the basilar membrane and which is a strip of tissue that runs along the length of the cochlea the basilar membrane is designed so that the stiffness and other properties vary along its length so different parts of it resonate at different frequencies near the base of the cochlea responds best to high frequencies and at the tip it responds best to low frequencies all along the basilar membrane are these sensors called hair cells because they're each in a different position on the membrane they each respond best to a different frequency so effectively the cochlea performs a Fourier transform it separates audio signals into different frequencies each connected to a neuron which sends a signal to the brain saying that it heard this frequency neurons communicate primarily through electrical signals. 

When a neuron receives chemicals called neurotransmitters from a sensory cell or from another neuron those trigger ions which move positively charged potassium and sodium ions inside and outside of the neuron so there's a flow of current into the neuron at the same time all the charges that are accumulating on the inside and outside of the neuron are only separated by the thin cell membrane so this forms a capacitor on the edge of the neuron and the current source is charging up this capacitor (of course the cell membrane isn't perfect at holding back the ions so some of the calculus is going to leak through this means that the membrane acts as a resistor so now we've turned our neuron into an RC circuit) and we can analyze it just like we would in a physics class, the key value that we are interested in is the voltage across the membrane. The reason that we're interested in that is that once this reaches a certain threshold it will trigger voltage-gated ion channels to discharge the neuron and then it'll send neurotransmitters to the next neuron and repeat the whole process so here's the equation for our neuron the input current which again depends on the other neurons and sensory cells that our neuron is connected to equals the leakage current plus the charging and both of these depend on the voltage which is what we want to solve.

Let's say you're listening to a chord with three notes and they're both frequencies that means that two of your hair cells are being triggered and each one of those sends a signal to one sensory neuron we'll say these two sensory neurons hook up to one interneuron which takes a signal to your brain what we're going to do is we'll take our neuron equation and apply it to these three neurons the hope is that once we solve it we'll be able to plug in different frequencies for different chords and hopefully we'll see some difference in the signal that goes to your brain between good chords and bad chords so we'll start with neuron number one since it's connected to a hair cell the input is just a sine wave, at whatever frequency the node is but there's also a lot of noise in our brains there's so many random factors that could change the input current so we'll also add a term here that represents random noise neuron number two is exactly the same but with a different frequency for a different note neuron number three gets its input from the first two neurons and again the way it works is the input neurons will normally send close to zero current until they fire then they'll instantaneously send the pulse of current so we'll use a Dirac Delta function to model this it's a function that's zero everywhere except at the moment the neurons fire of course we'll have to solve for neurons one and two to figure out those times this system of equations can be and has been solved and the solution is obtained as follows. 

I don't think it's particularly enlightening (If it is enlightening do read about it) so instead of solving it let me walk you through what typically happens and I say typically because that noise that we included makes the solution slightly random the current signal coming from the hair cell is generally not high enough to trigger the sensory neurons on its own so it takes the addition of our noise to actually fire during the first cycle of the sound wave that we're listening to the neuron is charging up so the moment that it's most likely to fire first is at the peak of the sine wave when the current input is highest if it didn't happen to fire at that time then the next most likely cancer is going to be at the next Peak so if we make a probability distribution of the sensory neurons firing times it'll look something like this a high peak after one cycle of the sound wave and then they get smaller after that on round number three the input from a single sensory neuron is also generally not high enough to trigger it and because of the resistor or charges leaking across the cell membrane if there's no constant current input then it'll eventually discharge so in order for neuron number three to fire it needs to receive a signal from one neuron and then really soon after receive a signal from the other neuron this needs to happen before it has time to discharge so the more often the signals from neuron 1 and neuron 2 line up the more often neuron 3 will fire and send a signal to your brain we can use this to make a probability distribution of neuron number three's firing times but of course it depends on the relationship between the two frequencies that you're hearing.

Entropy and Information

Entropy and information are big words in the modern academic world because we don't understand it to a full extent but the basic definition and insight will provide us a good understanding of the thing that we are dealing with. 

Entropy is the measure of disorder. A well-arranged room has lower entropy because the thing that room is already stable to our senses and we don't do anything about it. whereas a messy room has more entropy because things can be arranged in more ways, so the things in a messy room can be arranged in different ways, unlike a well-arranged room.  

Information is knowledge of facts. Facts are something we know, so we can know something by seeing, hearing, feeling, reading, writing, practicing, etc. Now when we take the above room case we have information from both rooms, It is easy to get detailed information from a well-arranged room because we can easily navigate things and understand them. A messy room will have information but not in the way we like, normally in a very short time we will say a well-arranged room gives more information than a messy room. It is true and false depending upon some factors. 

Music, Entropy, and Information

So here are some probability distributions for small integer chords you can see that they're pretty regular the signal that your brain gets is organized and predictable but here are some probability distributions for large integer chords as you can see they're much fuzzier it's not predictable when that neuron is going to fire we actually have a way of measuring this fuzziness it's called information entropy or Shannon entropy (after its inventor to introduce it let me show you this picture this is the Arecibo message).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/Arecibo_message.svg/150px-Arecibo_message.svg.png

Arecibo message

In 1974 we sent this picture through radio waves into the cosmos I guess as an attempt to introduce ourselves to whatever aliens might find it but pretend that you're an alien and your job is to watch the data from a radio telescope and notify someone.

If you see a signal that looks like it's from Aliens most days you'll just see something like this random noise.

Then one day you see one of these signals gives you more information clearly.  It is so organized that it must be an intelligent message, see you already have an intuition (Even if we don't know the meaning of the signal we can grasp this from the analogy of the messy room earlier.) For entropy, a signal that appears more organized is more likely to contain information a high entropy signal like this is probably just noise but a low entropy signal like this tells us something if you were just shown each of these signals then the low entropy one carries more information.

Now here's the counter-intuitive part let's say that you know that both of these signals are from Aliens they're both intentional, now which one gives you more information this one does the one with higher entropy see the low entropy organized signal follows simple rules you could recreate it by only knowing a few things but to recreate the high entropy signal you would need to know each bit so you actually gain more information by understanding the messy signal is ambiguous but decoding It ultimately gives you more information.

The entropy of neural signals reaching your brain is low for consonant low integer chords it's high for dissonant High integer chords and this makes sense in a lot of ways. I mean if you hear a C major chord on a piano then of course it was intentional it carries a simple message and it's unlikely to happen by chance somebody is probably reading music and playing it.  On the other hand, if you hear three adjacent chromatic notes then it could just be that something fell on the piano on the surface you might not gain information from it but if somebody was reading music that directed them to do that then it would carry a profound amount of information because there are hundreds of bad chords and only a few good chords.

When it's less organized you have more to work with nevertheless our brain prefers the unambiguous case and that's why we like certain chords and we will easily have to connect to the musical and what feel it is delivering. Like a C major: Innocence, happiness with a spiritual feeling; Cm: Innocence, sadness, heartbroken and evokes yearning (Search them meaning in Google); D major: Triumphant and victorious. Feels like war marches or holiday songs; Dm: serious and melancholic. Brings on feelings of concern and contemplation; Em: Restless love, grief, and mournfulness; F chord: Optimism and the will to explode, etc.

When we hear a melody, we still need to think and figure out what the musician wants to say and that's the definition of high entropy. It is not a coincidence that according to our analysis of neural firing times, this is a high entropy interval. It is easy when we have low integer frequency chords that form consonants and are predictable & ambiguous to us. 

When Claude Shannon introduced the concept of information entropy, he called it that way because the disorganization of information is clearly analogous to the disorganization of matter which we call entropy and thermodynamics and statistical mechanics but maybe there is another similarity between the two. 

In matter entropy always increases on a global scale and this is just a result of statistics. If you drop food dye into the water there is only one state where all the dye molecules form a particular shape but there are trillions of states where the molecules look random so over time they'll tend to look random, This is the second law of Thermodynamics. 

https://vinacanete.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/coolwater.gif

Maybe human culture follows a second law of information, I mean modern films, music, visual art, and literature all of it depend on ambiguities that are left up to us to understand them. A single spoken sentence can contain so many layers of information that are completely absent from something like a computer programming language even day-to-day functions like determining whether somebody is lying or if they understand you. 

All (sound made by a human) is difficult to process because human speech has such high entropy but listening to music might be our way of training our brain for that. So, jazz music and indigenous drumming really aren't that different they both train us to process difficult information that might be the best benefit that music gives us. Of course, you can't listen to Hard music all the time because it might be white noise which has a very high entropy that we can not comprehend. 

This is a connection to model theory (click here)

NOTE:

## Audio is made by John Paul J

• The rest of the audio is taken from "Sound Effect from <href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=linkattribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=29388">Pixabay</a>"
• The pictures and equations are made by  GIMP and "a paper" mobile application by John Paul J. The equations are not exact and are referred from the following. 

• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21981535/
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20481757/
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27134038/

  

Hope this article was useful and I hope you learned something from it.

If you have any theories or questions regarding this you are free to express them in comments or you can chat with me on my Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/phy.sci/?hl=en.

See my previous posts 

Science of pencil

Empiricism and Rationalism

Water and life

Why do remotes work when we smack them?

Vibration - Eternal motion

Scientific values of water

IF ANY DOUBTS AND CLARIFICATION YOU CAN COMMENT HERE.

IF ANY INFORMATION IS INACCURATE I AM READY TO CORRECT IT

 

 

Pressure around us

 PRESSURE AROUND US 

Courage is grace under pressure. 

-Ernest Hemingway  

Here I am going to mention a pressure that is experienced by all living entities and even plays an important role in their life. It is " Air pressure". 

What is air?

Air is a mixture of many gases and tiny dust particles. Air can only exist inside a closed boundary like a bottle, cylinder, atmosphere, etc for life forms to exist. Surprisingly air is a perfect mixture of all the gases i.e air is homogeneous even though it is made out of different gases. So air can be considered a single entity.  

How do we interact with air? Without air we can't breathe, plants can't survive, we can't have a stable temperature, we can't fly, and many other interactions that we see, experience, and study it. 

What is pressure?

Pressure is the force that is produced when something is pressed by you or something is pressing you. Force is pushing or pulling, in this case, we can consider force as pushing. In science pressure is a physical quantity that is very useful in many concepts like hydrostatic pressure, thermal pressure, fluid pressure, differential pressure, gauge pressure, vacuum pressure, atmospheric pressure, water pressure, etc. 

Fluids

Water and gases are called fluids because they exhibit similar behavior that is they can take the shape of a container, are loosely packed, have thermodynamic properties, and can flow. With physical observation, we can say that fluid is a medium in a space that occupies the space and life exist in the fluid or with the help of fluids.

Water and life 

As humans, we can't see our faces with our senses but can see others' faces and learn from them in a similar way we don't realize our surroundings. Now let's learn from the life form in water. Take a fish in a pond, a pond has a closed boundary and the fish can move inside it. Now the fish needs oxygen and it gets the oxygen from the resolved oxygen in the water. As we see the fish moves freely in the water without any resistance because the fish lives in that environment. we can see fish living near the surface of the water and fish that go deep as 10000 feet quite interesting right!

Now the water at a depth provides some pressure because some amount of substance is above it. (when a pile of pillows is on your chest we feel pressure in a similar way there is a pile of water above that point). Now lets us do a little calculation to understand what is happing.

Consider a cuboid pond of the following dimensions  

10×10×200            (Length×Width×Depth )

Its volume is then given as a 20000-meter cube 

Now consider a fish at 10 meters depth. So it has 10 meters high water above it. 

So, The volume of water above it is a 10000-meter cube which is 10000000 kg of water or 980 KPa of pressure, Now with a sound mind, we can see the fish should be crushed with that weight but it does not, (We don't usually think this in this way but it is really interesting). A pressure of around 100 KPa is enough to crush a soda can. Here the fish does not get crushed because it doesn't have air inside it and it is mostly fluid so it will balance its body pressure with the water pressure and move around.  

Humans, fish, and air

As land-living creatures, we move around the land in a medium filled with air which we don't notice because it is a part of us. 

We don’t even realize we are experiencing air pressure until we actually look for it. The things we don’t see at first, and take for granted, like gravity and air pressure, turn out to be among the most fascinating of all phenomena. It’s like the joke about two fish swimming along happily in a river. One fish turns to the other, a skeptical look on its face, and says, “What’s all this new talk about ‘water’?” from the lectures of Walter Lewin. 

We live at the bottom of the ocean 

From the above discussion, we should come to the idea that we live at the bottom of the ocean which is made up of air, which exerts a huge amount of pressure on us every second of every day. Suppose you hold your hand out in front of you, palm up. Now imagine a very long piece of square tubing that is 1 centimeter wide balanced on my hand and rising all the way to the top of the atmosphere. That’s more than 7000km (More precisely 10000km). The weight of the air alone in the tube (forget about the tubing just think of air or the jube is made up of air). That’s one way to measure air pressure: 1.03 kilograms per square centimeter of pressure which are called the standard atmosphere or 100Kpa. Which is huge. (From Walter Lewin Lectures and demonstrations)

Another way to calculate air pressure is with a fairly simple equation. Pressure is force divided by area: P = F⁄A. So, air pressure at sea level is about 1 kilogram per square centimeter. We know the relation between force, pressure, and area. The larger the area, the lower the pressure, and, conversely, the smaller the area, the larger the pressure. 

Now stretch out your hand (palm up) and think about the force exerted on your hand. The area of your hand is about 10 square centimeters, so there must be a 70-kilogram force, about 70 Kg, pushing down on it. Then why you are able to hold it up so easily?  Because the pressure exerted by air surrounds us on all sides, and there is also a force of 70 Kg upward on the back of your hand. Thus the net force on your hand is zero. Then why doesn’t your hand get crushed if so much force is pressing in on it? Clearly, the bones in your hand are more than strong enough not to get crushed. (From Walter Lewin Lectures and demonstrations)

How about my chest? It has an area of about 1,000 square centimeters. Thus the net force exerted on it due to air pressure is about 1,000 kilograms: 1 metric ton. The net force on my back would also be about 1 ton. Why don’t my lungs collapse? The reason is that inside my lungs the air pressure is also 1 atmosphere; thus, there is no pressure difference between the air inside my lungs and the outside air pushing down on my chest. That’s why I can breathe easily. Take a cardboard or wooden or metal box of similar dimensions as your chest. Close the box. The air inside the box is the air you breathe—1 atmosphere. The box does not get crushed for the same reason that your lungs will not collapse. Houses do not collapse under atmospheric pressure because the air pressure inside is the same as outside; we call this pressure equilibrium. (From Walter Lewin Lectures and demonstrations)

So it is really fascinating to think about the things around us. 

Hope this article was useful and I hope you learned something from it.

If you have any theories or questions regarding this you are free to express them in comments or you can chat with me on my Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/phy.sci/?hl=en.

See my previous posts 

Science of pencil

Empiricism and Rationalism

Water and life

Why do remotes work when we smack them?

Vibration - Eternal motion

For previous articles on this follow the following link

TAU1: https://jjohnpaul.blogspot.com/2021/04/mysteries-of-fountain-pen.html

TAU2 : https://jjohnpaul.blogspot.com/2021/06/tau2-egg-is-violating-physics.html

TAU3: https://jjohnpaul.blogspot.com/2021/07/tau-3-color-of-clouds.html

TAU4: https://jjohnpaul.blogspot.com/2021/07/tau-4-peace-be-with-elements.html

TAU 5: 

https://jjohnpaul.blogspot.com/2022/02/tau-5-why-do-remotes-work-when-we-smack.html

IF ANY DOUBTS AND CLARIFICATION YOU CAN COMMENT HERE.

IF ANY INFORMATION IS INACCURATE I AM READY TO CORRECT IT

  

 

UHB1: Common Cold

 Common Cold 

Both doubt and certainty are contagious as the common cold.

- Kathryn Schulz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsqCA50d7BM

The common cold is something we all experience in our life. It is very uncomfortable and exhausting to experience this. With a reasonable amount of time spent with the common cold, we have our own remedies to treat it. In reality, we do not know what a common cold really is. 

This writing will focus on understanding the common cold with the help of science, it does not give any medical advice. Simply it explains the common cold with the help of known facts. So it will provide an understanding of the common cold and help to act accordingly. 

What is a virus?

A description of human Rhinovirus 

Virus: An Illustrated Guide to 101 Incredible Microbes Front Cover Marilyn J. Roossinck

"A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism".

Decoding this sentence will provide a lot of information. 

The word virus is originally a Latin word that translates as a thick unpleasant liquid or simply slime. This might give some intuition in this context of the common cold, one can relate "thick unpleasant liquid " to the common cold. So, in a literal way, one can relate a virus as an "unpleasant liquid " from one's body and it is hazardous for fellow humans (This is not entirely true but in some sense it is considerable).

"Submicroscopic refers to something which can't be seen using conventional microscopes which work with a visible light source. So a virus is smaller than the wavelength of light. Which is really small. 

These graphics will give a better understanding of the size of the virus compared to other particles

https://assets.weforum.org/editor/VA3n8eC_pHvbZGL13lARzzkBw7h-xyOBM4E48Mf_yjw.jpg

Infectious or infection is derived from the Latin word "infectious" which means to put in or to dye or to stain. So it is an action to put something in our case the something is a virus. In a more apt manner, infection is an invasion of some disease-causing microorganisms. So an infectious agent is something that can be quickly passed on to another person.

The virus is a confusing and interesting organism because it can only live in a living body and be pseudo-dead outside a living body.  It is like some kind of superpower it can freeze itself outside a living body and can attack once it is inside a living body. 

Understanding the nature of the virus

We human beings are very much capable of creating our own energy, we are not actually creating energy but we transfer energy from our surroundings like plants create their own energy to live from the sun and soil we create it using plants, animals, sun, and soil. The same applies to bacteria, insects, and other living organisms. To put forth assume what will happen if plants do not have soil, sun, and air to live can they live? The answer is no. 

As mentioned earlier viruses are pseudo-dead outside the living body which means they are not capable of making energy on their own but once they find a host which can supply the energy they can then act independently.

Viruses are very intelligent they can reproduce rapidly, they and easily adapt to any environment, they can co-opt with the host and evolve easily, and they can spread easily. This might give you a very overlooked understanding of viruses but that is enough. One important note is that viruses exist since the evolution of cells.

Common cold

The common cold is a viral infection in our nose and throat simply the upper repository tract.  It is the most common human disease. The technically common cold is called "Upper Respository infection (URI)". Then the question will be why it is called the common cold? It will be answered later. 

In a non-technical tone, the common cold can be understood as follows. When a virus or a group of viruses come and live in the lining of the nose, throat, sinuses, and larynx. Basically when the virus chooses the upper respiratory part of our body to live and reproduce. 

What does the common cold cause?

The simple answer to this question is that it causes discomfort to us. Broadly speaking it causes many things. Cough, sore throat, runny nose, sneezing, headache, and fever are some discomforts caused by a cold and this can be considered as a sign or a symptom of a cold. 

<a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/common-cold-symptoms-cartoon-style-infographic_9741943.htm">Image by brgfx</a> on Freepik

What causes the common cold?

As we know the common cold is caused by viruses. There are many kinds of viruses that cause the common cold and the most dominant of them is Rhinovirus which literally means nose in greek. This type causes almost 30% to 60% of the cold along with other commonly implicated viruses including human coronaviruses, influenza viruses adenoviruses, human respiratory syncytial viruses (RSV), enteroviruses other than rhinoviruses, human parainfluenza viruses, and other 200 types. But mostly different variants of the Rhinovirus family.  

It is because Rhinovirus infection increases quickly in temperatures from  33 to 35 °C, which is the average temperature found in the nose. These are one of the smallest viruses. on average, it is 30 nanometers  in comparison an RBC (red blood cell) is 5000 - 8000 nanometers. Which is an advantage for Rhinovirus. 

Rhinovirus along with other viruses is transmitted through various means. They spread via airborne aerosols, respiratory droplets, and contaminated surfaces, including direct person-to-person contact. The viruses may survive for prolonged periods in an environment (over 18 hours for rhinoviruses) and can be picked up by people's hands and subsequently carried to their eyes or nose where infection occurs. So as a consequence of this poor hygiene can also cause the common cold.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/cold-causes-4689139

What  "The common cold" really is?

So far we have some understanding about the common cold that is caused by viruses and other but what is the common cold really? The common cold that we experience is our body's reaction to the habitants a.k.a viruses in our body.

The common cold is caused by viruses but the thing that we experience is the reaction of our body to the virus in our body and the virus does not cause a runny nose rather it is our body's coping mechanism in a defensive mode to survive.

What actually happens

The virus has a very comfy environment inside the lining of our noses and sinus. They enter through various means. 

Now after they enter and take their place our body senses something new and sends a signal to the brain about it.

The brain starts to react. First, our body makes the blood passage wider to increase blood flow. This is the reason we feel and look inflamed (Swollen and sometimes red) during cold

Next, the body releases more white blood cells (WBC) in the blood. WBC is a part of the immune system that prevents us from external and internal attacks of infections and other things. As the blood passage is widened more WBC flows in the blood and reaches the sites of attack (mainly the upper respiratory tract).

Next, our body starts to produce mucus due to the triggering of the chemical called histamine in our body. This caused the overproduction of mucus in the lining of our respiratory tract which can travel to our digestive system, sinus, mouth, and lungs. mucus is like a goo so it is sticky. This mucus can also be triggered due to fine dust (Which is a dust allergy very similar to the discomfort of the common cold). As the mucus is like a goo it traps the virus in the inner linings of the upper respiratory system.

Already the blood passage is inflamed and the overproduction of mucus will cause it to press our sinuses and this caused the headache mainly in the outer four heads. So the compression of the sinus causes headaches. 

The WBC physically fights the viruses and the nucleus flushes out the virus by mouth, nose, or by digestive acids. So this causes runny nose, sneezing, cough, and vomiting. So, what we experience as the common cold is our body's reaction to the virus in our body. 

https://www.pennmedicine.org/for-patients-and-visitors/patient-information/conditions-treated-a-to-z/common-cold

Scientifically what can be done during the common cold?

As WBC is the primary defense mechanism which is made up of protein, taking protein-rich food will be useful as it boosts our immune system, during this discomfort we will also feel fatigue. Basically, protein helps us to build antibodies (like WBC) and helps to maintain strength by which the duration of the common cold might be significantly reduced. 

Taking a lot of fluids without sugar because sugar triggers the production of fatty acids in livers so will cause more discomfort by causing more swelling thus it causes more problems. Including electrolytes in the fluids will help to gain strength. Taking a lot of fluids will help to keep us hydrated and keep mucus production. By taking a lot of fluids mucus can easily come out of our body.

The other scientific thing that our body does is to cough and sneeze, by which the mucus and the virus can physically come out of our body through mouth and nose. Both coughing and sneezing help to relieve the congested airway and help in releasing mucus from the body.  

Taking rest helps to overcome these discomforts. Doing heavy physical work and mental work will cause more discomfort. 

Myths related to the common cold

Applying Vicks during a cold can relieve clogging inside the sinus. The reality is that the odor of menthol tricks us that we are breathing through an unclogged nose.  Menthol is an organic compound that produces a cooling sensation when applied on the skin that can relieve light pain. Naturally, this is found in peppermint.

Eating ice cream can cause a cold. This is not entirely true, it depends on the situation. When you are already infected by the virus eating ice cream which is essentially made up of dairy products and sugar will make the mucus thick and cause more discomfort. When you are not infected by a virus ice cream can't cause a cold. 

Taking antibiotics can speed up the process of recovery. People use mild antibiotics while they have colds thinking that it will provide relief but in reality, it will do nothing because antibiotics are against bacteria they do not affect viruses. 

Over-the-counter, medicines can help to get relief. It is true but always relying on these medicines to overcome the symptoms will be a bad idea in the long run because our body will become resistant to them and will produce no effect in the long run.   

You can catch a cold by wet hair and spending more time in the water (at least in my home). Wet hair can't be a possible reason to catch a cold but spending time in water can cause it because water might contain viruses so it can affect us. 

Why is Upper Repository infection called the common cold?

The name is common cold for the upper repository infection because this infection is mostly observed during cold weather. The reason can be justified using science. 

During cold weather, the air is moist and humid so the possibility of virus trapping in the moist is high and it can persist for more time can be easily transmitted. During cold weather, people tend to stay indoors so the possibility of transmitting the virus is high because we get exposed to it for a longer period of time. 

Why do children get the common cold more often? 

The reason for this is that children do not have fully developed immune systems, they are in the developing stage so they experiment and react with new inhabitants like viruses and bacteria. This is the reason why children are more easily affected by the common cold. Also because of poor hygiene children catch a cold.

In the worst-case scenario, we can expect the body temperature to increase to kill those viruses and any other inhabitants and we call it a fever. The best way to overcome this is to take rest, have hot tea, sleep well, have more fluids, and eat light food and protein-rich food. Even taking a hot bath will help with the symptoms of the common cold. 

https://images.everydayhealth.com/images/your-day-by-day-guide-common-cold-722x406.jpg?w=768

Cure for the common cold

As it is mentioned earlier the virus are intelligent pseudo-living beings. They evolve in every possible environment so any medication that we give to fight it will actually help in the evolution of the virus we can not cure a common cold but can prevent it by having a proper diet to have a good immune system and good hygiene. 

For better understanding, you can watch the video by TedEdu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsqCA50d7BM

Hope this article was useful and I hope you learned something from it.

If you have any theories or questions regarding this, you can express them in comments or chat with me on my Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/phy.sci/?hl=en.

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Hope this article was useful and I hope you learned something from it.

If you have any theories or questions regarding this you are free to express them in the comments or you can chat with me on my Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/phy.sci/?hl=en.

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