Class 11 Physics - Chapter Physical World NCERT Solutions | The shells of crabs found around a parti

Attempt to formulate your ‘moral’ views on the practice of science. Imagine yourself stumbling upon a discovery, which has great academic interest but is certain to have nothing but dangerous consequences for the human society. How, if at all, will you resolve your dilemma?

Write in about 1000 words a fiction piece based on your speculation on the science and technology of the twenty-second century.

Though the statement quoted above may be disputed, most physicists do have a feeling that the great laws of physics are at once simple and beautiful. Some of the notable physicists, besides Dirac, who have articulated this feeling, are : Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Chandrasekhar and Feynman. You are urged to make special efforts to get access to the general books and writings by these and other great masters of physics.

(See the Bibliography at the end of this book.) Their writings are truly inspiring !

“Every great physical theory starts as a heresy and ends as a dogma”. Give some examples from the history of science of the validity of this incisive remark.

Some of the most profound statements on the nature of science have come from Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists of all time. What do you think did Einstein mean when he said : “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible”?

No physicist has ever “seen” an electron. Yet, all physicists believe in the existence of electrons. An intelligent but superstitious man advances this analogy to argue that ‘ghosts’ exist even though no one has ‘seen’ one. How will you refute his argument ?

“It is more important to have beauty in the equations of physics than to have them agree with experiments”. The great British physicist P. A. M. Dirac held this view. Criticize this statement. Look out for some equations and results in this book which strike you as beautiful.

Though the law gives women equal status in India, many people hold unscientific views on a woman’s innate nature, capacity and intelligence, and in practice give them a secondary status and role. Demolish this view using scientific arguments, and by quoting examples of great women in science and other spheres; and persuade yourself and others that, given equal opportunity, women are on par with men.

“Politics is the art of the possible”. Similarly, “Science is the art of the soluble”. Explain this beautiful aphorism on the nature and practice of science.

The industrial revolution in England and Western Europe more than two centuries ago was triggered by some key scientific and technological advances. What were these advances ?

The sign of work done by a force on a body is important to understand. State carefully if the following quantities are positive or negative:

(a) work done by a man in lifting a bucket out of a well by means of a rope tied to the bucket.

(b) work done by gravitational force in the above case,

(c) work done by friction on a body sliding down an inclined plane,

(d) work done by an applied force on a body moving on a rough horizontal plane with uniform velocity,

(e) work done by the resistive force of air on a vibrating pendulum in bringing it to rest.

A geyser heats water flowing at the rate of 3.0 litres per minute from 27 °C to 77 °C. If the geyser operates on a gas burner, what is the rate of consumption of the fuel if its heat of combustion is 4.0 x 10⁴ J/g?

Estimate the fraction of molecular volume to the actual volume occupied by oxygen gas at STP. Take the diameter of an oxygen molecule to be 3Å.

The unit of length convenient on the nuclear scale is a fermi : 1 f = 10 ^{- 15} m. Nuclear sizes obey roughly the following empirical relation : r  = r₀ A^1/3

where r is the radius of the nucleus, A its mass number, and r₀ is a constant equal to about, 1.2 f. Show that the rule implies that nuclear mass density is nearly constant for different nuclei. Estimate the mass density of sodium nucleus. Compare it with the average mass density of a sodium atom obtained in Exercise. 2.27.

Figure 14.27 depicts four x-t plots for linear motion of a particle. Which of the plots represent periodic motion? What is the period of motion (in case of periodic motion)?

Read the following two statements below carefully and state, with reasons, if it is true or false.

(a) The Young’s modulus of rubber is greater than that of steel;

(b) The stretching of a coil is determined by its shear modulus.

A transverse harmonic wave on a string is described by

y(x,t)  =  3.0 sin [36t + 0.018x + π /4]

Where x and y are in cm and t in s. The positive direction of x is from left to right.

(a) Is this a travelling wave or a stationary wave? If it is travelling, what are the speed and direction of its propagation?

(b) What are its amplitude and frequency?

(c) What is the initial phase at the origin?

(d) What is the least distance between two successive crests in the wave?

The velocity-time graph of a particle in one-dimensional motion is shown in Fig. 3.29:

Which of the following formulae are correct for describing the motion of the particle over the time-interval t₂ to t₁?

(a) x(t₂) = x (t₁) + v (t₁) (t₂–t₁) + (1/2) a (t₂–t₁)²

(b) v(t₂)= v(t₁) + a(t₂–t₁)

(c) v_Average = (x(t₂) – x (t₁)) / (t₂ – t₁)

(d) a_Average = (v(t₂) – v(t₁)) / (t₂ – t₁)

(e) x(t₂) = x(t₁) + v_Average(t₂ – t₁) + ( 1/2 ) a_Average (t₂–t₁)²

(f) x(t₂) – x(t₁) = area under the v–t curve bounded by the t-axis and the dotted line shown.

Three girls skating on a circular ice ground of radius 200 m start from a point P on the edge of the ground and reach a point Q diametrically opposite to P following different paths as shown in Fig. 4.20. What is the magnitude of the displacement vector for each? For which girl is this equal to the actual length of the path skated?

A ball is dropped from a height of 90 m on a floor. At each collision with the floor, the ball loses one tenth of its speed. Plot the speed-time graph of its motion between t = 0 to 12 s.

Toricelli's barometer used mercury. Pascal duplicated it using French wine of density 984 kg m^-3. Determine the height of the wine column for normal atmospheric pressure.

In changing the state of a gas adiabatically from an equilibrium state A to another equilibrium state B, an amount of work equal to 22.3 J is done on the system. If the gas is taken from state A to B via a process in which the net heat absorbed by the system is 9.35 cal, how much is the net work done by the system in the latter case? (Take 1 cal = 4.19 J)