Magnetic Money

Suddenly something hit my head when I got the change from the shopkeeper after buying some eatables. He gave me a Rs.5 coin and two Re.1 coins that are quite new with a silvery surface finish. That’s when I started to recollect few more instances at which few other shopkeepers gave me Re.1 coins which were quite new. I even found that the number of new coins in my nephew’s piggy bank was greater than that of the old ones, which was once the other way around. These new coins are dated between the years 1990-2007. I remember that the old ones are dated between 1965-1989, imprinted on them. Now, I wonder what happened to all those old coins and why is that I get only new Re.1 coins from the shopkeepers if they need to give me any change.

It’s been quite a long time since I saw the old Re.1 coins being used very frequently. They’re being replaced by new ones these days. The old Re.1 coins are made of 95% pure nickel and weighs around 9gms. The new One rupee coins are made of Ferratic Stainless Steel, an alloy that hardly gets corroded unlike nickel, and is at light as 5gms and are quite compact (25mm diameter). Some of the reasons, which I guess, would be responsible for the disappearance of the old Re.1 coins from the society are:

*The price of nickel (per tonne) has increased tremendously due to the fast depletion of the metal’s resources. The cost was around US$4000 in September.
*The probable idea of the Indian government to recycle the old nickel made-coins so as to utilize the metal judiciously for other purposes that would have great returns.
*To utilize the vast ferrous and stainless steel resources in the country instead of letting them become useless by rusting and other environmental effects which may take up these resources to the atmosphere and makes it a drain on the resources without even using them.
*As ferratic stainless steel is less vulnerable to mechanical forces that may deform the coins, which is the main drawback of old coins.

So, the government of India came up with a magnificent idea to introduce the ‘Call @ Re.1’ scheme, which uses only new Re.1 coins. Thus, the government was successful in bringing out the already produced Re.1 coins in the country. Also, it succeeded in its attempt to produce more number of new Re.1 coins and releasing them into the society. Since calls at just Re.1 sounded so attractive for the people, the citizens gave this scheme a very good welcome and gradually they started preserving the new coins for making calls at a rate as low as Re.1 probably. Because, this is the same idea that would run in my mind whenever I get to see a new Re.1 coin.

During the course, the government also succeeded in bringing out the old nickel-made coins into the market by other means, so that all these coins would be ultimately made to reach the hands of RBI through the coin depots maintained by banks and the government treasuries spread widely across the country. The RBI uses the magnetic property of the newly made coins to separate them from the old ones, which are non-magnetic in nature, so that the work could be made easy. Here are the coins made of Ferratic Stainless Steel:

Thus, the rate at which the new ferratic stainless steel-made Re.1 coins are released in the country will be probably equal to the rate at which the old nickel-made coins are disappearing from the society. The same trend is seen in the case of Rs.2 coins, where nickel-made old coins are being replaced by newly released ferratic stainless steel-made Rs.2 coins. Soon, we may even find the government releasing a new scheme to make International calls at the rate of just Rs.2 or a scheme to send FAX messages overseas at the rate of Rs.5 to eradicate old nickel-made coins completely from existence in the society.


I hope that soon the people of India would be filling their pockets with ‘MAGNETIC MONEY’.

Brilliance of Human Brain

I’ve heard people often telling that there is no faster processor in this world than the human brain. Before getting the facts about brain, I laughed at those who had such an opinion regarding brain. After I came across few magnificent facts about brain, I couldn’t avoid laughing at myself for underestimating the abilities of the Central Processing Unit of a human being, The Brain. It’s really astounding. The human brain works at a speed as much as 100 times faster than that of a Pentium 4 processor. This means, we need approximately 8000 P4 processors to match the processing speed of our brain which approximately shies around an amazing 16,800,000 MHz.

Another awesome feature of the brain is that it can process 100 million Computer Instructions per second against the 9000 MCIP of P4 processors. The recently released Duo core and Quad core processors, at the maximum, might reach 15,000 to 20,000 MCIP.

Another splendid feature of the brain is the capacity to store information, which, in the case of brain, are in the form of visual data (sight), audio data (sound) and the ability to sense the external contact with the body (feel). Apart from this kind of information, there’re also passive inputs like taste and other internal activities (For Example, Muscle pull). Considering all these factors, it’s estimated that the brain can store data up to or even more than 100 million Gigabytes. To tell the fact, brain has no limit on data storage. Have you ever heard of a brain crash? While on the other hand, modern PCs might be having storage capacity of, as you know, 40GB or 80GB. The world’s fastest super computer has a memory capacity of a million megabyte, which is just too far from the figures of the brain.

Just try doing this.
Think of all the operations you could do using your computer.
For example, Start-->Programs-->Microsoft Word.
Imagine that the new empty word document is open in front of your eyes.
How long would you have taken to do this activity? For a normally operating human brain, this wouldn’t consume more than a second.

Try doing the same operations using your PC, considering that you’ve got the best configurations in the world. Definitely, it would take at least 3 seconds for all these operations to be carried out.

Neither Bill Gates nor Steve Jobs can equal the creativity of God.

Thus, the world’s best hardware configuration is our brain and the world’s best software lies in our imaginations.

That’s the power of brain.

Frames of Life

Few days back, I was discussing something with one of my closest pals that fell in the region of our mutual interests. It was indeed interesting. During the conversation, we eventually found that the topic wasn’t restricted within a specific boundary and that we were talking about everything that sounds vivid to even the most uninterested person in the whole good world. We jumped upon a theory that actually related popular mythologies & beliefs and science. More specifically, time, which is the most bizarre topic, a brain could deal with. We ultimately found ourselves starting to believe in rebirth. Scientifically put, we agreed that one’s life has different frames.

According to the scientists who go with Frame theory, life has 3 basic frames namely the past, the present and the future frames. And these frames might be scaled on a convenient basis, like, hours, minutes, seconds or even micro-seconds. When drilled deep, we would find that there are uncountable countless number of future frames left in each one’s life and there are countless frames that have been sent to the past in our lives. I writing a blog on this topic was in the set of future frames and now it’s in the present frame and when I finish posting it, it goes to the past frame set.

The basic Indian mythology and belief is that everything happens every second. Simply put, there are worlds where the future frames are alive and there are worlds where the past frames are happening. This world, where we find things happening around us is a part of the big frame arrangements. What we’re here and what happens to us in this world become the median that divides the past and the future frames of life. This means somewhere down the future frames, say 20 years, we are living at an age 20 more than what we are now. Somewhere deeper down the future, we’re already dead. But, we’re still living here which is the median frame. We are dead. But, we are still living.

In the set of frames in the past that have been experienced by us, we would be living younger than what we are now in the present frame. 10 years down the past set of frames, I can see myself younger and more playful. 22 years back, I haven’t even born. But, I’m living now. So this is how it goes, putting all the three sets of frames together. I haven’t born in the past but I’m already dead in the future but still living the present.

We ended our conversation right there since things started contradicting each other. For instance, in the worlds that are in the past frames, say 100 years back, India wasn’t independent. In the present world, India is a free country. Our conversation takes this with the statement ‘India isn’t independent, but, it’s independent’. The difference is just the ‘Time’.

It seemed interesting to me because I imagined myself to be in some other world in the past where I’m younger and I was experiencing fun time. I was even more interested to imagine my future. Somewhere in the future, I am a grown up. Somewhere in the future I am an old man. Somewhere in the future, I’ve already lived the future. Life is indeed great!!