Blue Capriccio

Femtosecond (fs) is a measurement unit of time, equal to 10 -15 second or 0. 000 000 000 000 001 second.   Femto is the unit from the SI (International System of Unit) scale.   We may feel 1 second is a very short length of time in our daily life. But in science, there are even smaller measurement units out of our imagination: 1 second =1000 ms (milli second) 1 second = 1,000 000 μs (micro second) 1 second = 1 000 000 000 ns (nano second) 1 second = 1 000 000 000 000 ps (piko second) 1 second = 1 000 000 000 000 000 fs (femto second) We know light travels about 300 000 metre per second, or 300 km per second.   By using smaller measurement like femtosecond, we can work out that light travels about 300 nano metre ( or 0.000 000 3 metre) in 1 femtosecond (300 000 / 1 000 000 000). In 1964 Dr Harold Eugene ”Doc” Edgerton from MIT used a high-speed camera filmed a bullet hitting through an apple.   At a million frames per second, the camera was a...

Many of us in our life time have experienced psychological sufferings.  Sometimes it could be so severe that we felt that we might even abandon our lives to get rid of the pain in our hearts. In these dark moments, we need hold the belief that although there are many obstacles and hardship, we can finally get through them, and time will heal the wounds. Let go of those who don't love you; let go the jobs you don't like; and let go the fame and temptation that don't belong to you.  You should know that nine out of ten times our expectations for life may not be fulfilled. The older we become, the more we realize that we are really trivial in this world.  Most of the time our promise to our families and our desire for self-realization may not be achieved. To live is actually a state of mind.  Don't let yourself fall into obsession. In our life time, it is certain that we get slapped by reality many times.  Even those who seem successful and smoot...

Andrew Marr  Broadcaster " I am not a deeply musical person - I don't play and have only the vaguest grasp of musical structures - so this cannot be intellectual, or mathematical, which is what people say Bach is all about. I find him calming, hypnotic, meditative, inspiring and, above all, consoling. Emmanuelle Haim Conductor I love Bach's music because it is so comforting. To me, it feels as if I'm coming back home whenever I play Bach. It feels so naturally written and genuine. There are hidden elements in Bach; for musicians it is very knowledgeable music, but what comes out of it is more of a spontaneity of expression. You can listen to Bach from many points of view: you can admire the science of it, the incredible intelligence of it, but even if you don't have any musical training or knowledge, you can still enjoy it for the incredible spontaneous life of the melody.

Mathematics modelling can help us understand how the pandemic Covid-19 spreads out. This infectious disease spreads from person to person. If, on average, every person who gets it goes on to infect two other people, then you have an epidemic. Two becomes four, four becomes eight, which becomes 16, which becomes 32……etc. This is exponential growth and it is exactly what we are seeing in places like the United States and some countries in Europe. In these countries, every person who gets Covid-19 is going on to infect two-and-a-half other people on average. The result is that the number of infected people in these countries is doubling every few days. This is the first time that humans have encountered the virus that causes Covid-19. As far as we know none of us have acquired immunity to it yet, which means the virus can infect all of us. With no immunity, the exponential growth of infections could go on for months. In mathematics, exponential growth means a quantity that ...

During a pandemic called Black Death , Isaac Newton had to work from home, too. He used the time wisely.   In London, a quarter of the population would die of plague from 1665 to 1666. It was one of the last major outbreaks in the 400 years that the Black Death ravaged Europe. Isaac Newton was in his early 20s when the Great Plague of London hit. He wasn’t a “Sir” yet, didn’t have that big formal wig. He was just another college student at Trinity College, Cambridge. It would be another 200 years before scientists discovered the bacteria that causes plague, but even without knowing exactly why, folks back then still practiced some of the same things we do today to avoid illness spreading -- Social Distancing. In 1665, Cambridge sent students home to continue their studies.   For Newton, without his professors to guide him, he apparently thrived. The year-plus he spent away was later referred to as his “year of wonders.” First, he continued...

J eremiah Clarke (1674-1707) was an English baroque composer and organist, best  known  for his Trumpet Voluntary, or the Prince of Denmark's March, a popular piece often  played at wedding ceremonies.   Beautiful music is always very uplifting. Enjoy the piece! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1088E6E2fY