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.

Science, like any knowledge, can be put to good or bad use, depending on the user.

Given below are some of the applications of science. Formulate your views on whether the particular application is good, bad or something that cannot be so clearly categorized:

A. Mass vaccination against small pox to curb and finally eradicate this disease from the population. (This has already been successfully done in India).

B. Television for the eradication of illiteracy and for mass communication of news and ideas.

C. Prenatal sex determination

D. Computers for increase in work efficiency

E. Putting artificial satellites into orbits around the Earth

F. Development of nuclear weapons

G. Development of new and powerful techniques of chemical and biological warfare.

H. Purification of water for drinking

I. Plastic surgery

J. Cloning

India has had a long and unbroken tradition of great scholarship — in mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, logic, and ethics. Yet, in parallel with this, several superstitious and obscurantist attitudes and practices flourished in our society and unfortunately continue even today — among many educated people too. How will you use your knowledge of science to develop strategies to counter these attitudes?

“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 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!