Dhruv Apte

Dhruv Apte

Ph.D. Student at Virginia Tech

The beauty of mathematics

6 minute read

Published:

Hello down there, how you doin? Well there has been some good news along with this harrowing and bored up COViD quarantining. I finally passed my Ph.D. quals and am on my way to become a Ph.D. by 2024 (that means I will have the title of Dr. Dhruv Apte rather than Mr. Dhruv Apte). Geez, may sound dopey right? I honestly, don’t see the difference yet- it’s just me and turbulence waltzing and trying to find a suitable dance step. Nothing much in it. Although my family is quite happy at this, I have been shown how much knowledge I lack even after going through college. Damn, I could not answer questions a sophomore could have.If I was a faculty, there is a high chance I would have failed myself. How the hell didn’t I know what flux is? Well, I always tried to simplify things for myself (I had alwys been a bit dim) and that simplification though helped in other places, did not help in this case. But I learnt a lot about lot of things and not just about fluids, but also about myself- I can really crank hard once I get in the flow. Unfortunately, that cranking has apparently ended after the quals with me dingling and dangling around doing almost nothing despite having a journal deadline of March. I honestly, have lost the motivation and I feel I have to call Dr. Feynman’s thoughts to help again. Let’s see if they work now.

Before math, I had a fascination with biology. IF you ask me in secondary school, I wanted to become a herpetologist- study snakes and other reptiles. That is really an interesting option and quite dopey. But with the passage of time and opportunities, I took math, fell in love with it and then studied mech. and then decided to go in CFD.

I was recently watching this documentary titled My Octopus Teacher on Netflix. It is a pretty good documentary and you will love it if you love octopuses (Octopuses have often been symbolized for powerful and manipulative orgs). I particularly don’t like Octopuses much- I don’t dislike them for sure. I have seen the way it is cooked to make sannakji at the Noryangjin Fish market and the Tsukiji fish market(There is this interesting channel that shows seafood cooking in East Asia and it is quite interesting to seee how culinary delights have been made after centuries of cooking). However, I also feel it is stupid to eat these animals because we are upsetting Nature’s balance and that is plain stupid. Coming bac to the doc, I was fascinated to see the narrator describing the octopus behaviour and its locomotion in the sea. While you could see it has a unique way of moving with its tentacles propelling it in the opposite direction, there is another thing tht came to my eye- The octopus was moving in a moving body of water but all we were seeing was the octopus movement. I don;t know if this rings bells but this was technically the Lagrangian way of seeing fluid flow. You could assign a relative velocity to the damn water and see how flow is visualized in a Lagrangian way. Absolutely marvellous method to teach the distinction between lagrangian and Eulerian flows.

Let me consider another example. As the tentacles propell outwars, they release a wave. There is instability in the control volume there. What if a giant octopus propelles with such a speed, the pressure drops below the vapour pressure. Bubbles would be created and collapse creating sharp discontinuties in the water. We don’t know a lot about Octopi but hey you have something in Nature that uses fluid mechanics and rather math! And this is just from a characterstic of a single animal- the beauty of Nature is not just in the colours (technically math too since we see colors as we perceive their wavelengths) but there is math behind it! And this is so hidden it may be not visisble in general.

Dr. Feynman had this interesting anecdote:

I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.

There is math in the beauty of nature and it is hidden so perfectly that it is difficult to just relive it and enjoy it if we don’t have time to think (As he said). That’s all for today, adios!

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Rebonjour ! Ça fait environ quatre mois que j’écris quelque nouveau. Mais, j’était occupé avec beaucoup de choses à faire et j’ai pas l’inspiration à écrire quelque chose intéressant. En plus, cette fois, j’ai trouvé écrire quelque truc très difficile (vous connaîtrez bientôt !) L’été pour moi, c’était époustouflant. Je suis allé en France pour la première fois et j’étais complètement surpris que je parle français sans difficulté. J’ai souvent fait des conversations banales à l’arrêt du bus ou des restos ou des gares et beaucoup de gens m’ont apprécié. Ça me fait très encourageant et motivant. Quand j’aurais dit que je viens des États-Unis, on m’a souvent demandé si j’ai grandi en France car mon français était génial. Mais moi, vous connaissez si vous coupez ma main, à place de sang, vous allez voir le merlot qui vient de Bordeaux :P


Aujourd’hui j’apporte un poème qui je n’ai pas écrit. Le poème était originalement en espagnol par M. Federico García Lorca au nom de « Casida de las palomas oscuras ». C’était un très beau poème avec beaucoup de sens caché surtout sa sexualité. Pour moi, il représente l’idée du secret et comment on cache notre identité à s’intégrer dans un groupe ou car on ne semble pas comme faible ou sensible. Puisque le poème est écrit en espagnol, j’ai dû comprendre sa traduction, son sens et essaie à traduire en français mais pas perdre sa signification. Donc, pour les mecs qui comprennent tous les deux ou seulement espagnol, voici le poème original :

Casidade las palomas oscuras

Por las ramas del laurel
vi dos palomas oscuras.
La una era el sol,
la otra la luna.
«Vecinita», les dije,
«¿dónde está mi sepultura?»
«En mi cola», dijo el sol.
«En mi garganta», dijo la luna.
Y yo que estaba caminando
con la tierra por la cintura
vi dos águilas de nieve
y una muchacha desnuda.
La una era la otra
y la muchacha era ninguna.
«Aguilitas», les dije,
«¿dónde está mi sepultura?»
«En mi cola», dijo el sol.
«En mi garganta», dijo la luna.
Por las ramas del laurel
vi dos palomas desnudas.
La una era la otra
y las dos eran ninguna.

Les Amoureux

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Bonjour encore ! Ça fait longtemps que je viens ici mais vous me connaissiez : j’ai souvent l’air d’humeur changeante ou, comment est qu’on dit, peut-être lunatique ? Comme je m’ennuie et j’essaye de trouver quelques bons passe-temps, j’ai commencé à lire et, bien-sûr, à écrire de nouveau des poèmes. L’anglais, c’est une langue pour les insipides et j’ai trouvé la poésie de langues romans sont très belle- de quoi m’inspirer ! Ce n’est pas facile mais on trouve de faire quelque chose qui représente un défi, n’est-ce pas ? Et ce n’est pas mon premier poème en français (je vous dirai plus tard). J’espère que vous le trouvez satirique, comme je l’ai fait. Le rythme est inspiré par un poème du M. Georges Brassens, au nom de *Les Copains d’abord *. Il a pu l’air de sophistication mais si vous ne comprenez pas, ne vous inquiétez pas !

Les Amoureux de l’année

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New Year

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Hello, down there! Happy new year 2021! Well January 1 is just a date to start a new Gregorian calender but looking from the events of last year, it seemed 31st Dec 2020 11:59:59 would turn into 31st Dec 2020 11:60:00. That would have been insanely scary. But 2020 has vanished and off we are to a new year with new things on the bucket list piled upon the old things we have had and new ‘resolutions’ This resolution thingy seems not dopey for an undisciplined person like me- I don’t remember the last time I had made any resolution. Maybe it was because I decided to start on a resolution immediately when I thought of it and not wait for it on the 1st of January. And all over you see people being glad as if this Covid-19 virus will leave on 1st Jan 2021. We have had some variants of the virus now but thankfully science and the hard work of thouands of researchers and healthcare workers has won with some vaccines in the market and vaccination programs beginnning to happen and we might see some sort of the normalcy later.