Upgrading my goto telescope

Hello folks,
I am currently in the process of upgrading my goto telescope mount which I built last summer. I really enjoy building things and am rarely content with what I have made. As I was using the goto telescope, I kept thinking of ways to improve it and modify it. A few things that I learnt are:

• First and foremost the telescope should be very easy to set up and should be operable even without the motors. My first design was restricted to being controlled by a computer/smart phone(battery operated) at all times. There was no convenient way of manually using the telescope. If I wanted to tilt the telescope, I had to rotate the worm gear manually rather than directly move the optical tube by hand. This was a big bummer and it adversely affected my casual usage of the telescope. The newer mount will be very easy to use even without motor power as the motor will be disengaged when not in use. This will keep the optical tube free to rotate by hand. It will simply click into place when required and provide the drive.

Older telescope(grey) with the (black)goto telescope.
Notice the size difference..

View of the worm gear on the goto telescope

     

• Using my previous telescope, I could set it up and start viewing the moon or a planet (say jupiter) within 3-4 minutes. Whereas with the goto telescope, it would take me 15 min just to get started. 
• The goto telescope was too short and could not be used from the ground. It needed to be kept on a table-top to view anything. 
• The step angle was too large,ie when slewing the telescope slowly, the motion would become jerky rather than a nice smooth movement. I plan on fixing this by making a worm gear with a much larger gear ratio. The current gear ratio is 25:1 giving a step angle of 0.072 degrees. The new gear will give a ratio of 180:1 and a step angle of 0.01(upto 0.000625 degrees using microstepping).

So, to upgrade the telescope mount:

Step 1: Destroy earlier mount!

I will keep updating as I progress with the upgradation. 

Follow my blog to stay tuned!

NVS after 10th: Pros and Cons

To all the Nath Valley students interested in science,

After the 10th grade I faced a tough choice of whether to continue in Nath Valley in 11-12th or not. Hopefully this article will help you make that choice.

I am interested in Physics, Computer Science and Mathematics.
For my Undergrad. degree my first choice was(and still is) a good college in the US as they undoubtedly have better Basic Science courses due to much better facilities, funds and faculty. If I do not get admission to the top 10 universities in the US, in my desired field, I would prefer a very good Indian University such IISc or IIT.
Admissions in the US depend on a variety of factors. First of all you have to get very good SAT scores and SAT Subject Test scores. Further you can appear for AP exams to show that you are good at that subject and ready for adv. college level courses. Getting very good ranks in Olympiads such as the National Physics, Mathematics or Chemistry Olympiads(NSEP:-INPhO, RMO:-INMO, NSEC:-INChO, ZIO:-INIO) and representing your country in International Olympiads also definitely counts. Besides Academics, you need lots of co-curricular activities of significance such as participating in debates, MUNs cultural programmes, state/national level sports, volunteer work and so on. Also in your college application, teacher's recommendations play an important role.


Pros of continuing in Nath Valley:

• Colleges in the US would definitely prefer CBSE board, which is used in over 15 countries, over Maharashtra State Board(duh!)
• You can get good college recommendations from teachers in Nath Valley who have known you for many years.
• Preparing for SAT is much easier in NVS(esp. the English Section) as you can get your essays corrected and clear your doubts from the English teachers, who would definitely know a lot more than State Board English teachers(eg. the SB english teacher says, "I am English Post-Graduation")
• You get opportunities to participate in co-curricular activities
• You can get leadership opportunities such as becoming a part of the Student council.

However,
College admission in India is almost solely dependant on IIT-JEE scores(for eng. colleges) and JEE preparation definitely requires some tuition such as Bansal, Gurukul etc. If you do join a tuition, then school timings clash with class timings, what is done in school seems repetitive as it has already been taught in the tuition and you do not get enough time for self-study. Thus it is better to join a college like SB or Deogiri that do not require attendance. And this arrangement is really beneficial. You have 3-4 hours of tuition per day and can put in 5-6 hours of self-study and practice, and yet have time to play an hour every day or pursue your hobbies.


Cons:

• TAKES UP TOO MUCH TIME
• Not enough time for self-study
• Not enough time for pursuing hobbies/sports
• Tuition homework + School Homework becomes a burden. 
• Repetitive and boring
• Does not really serve any purpose as far as IIT-JEE preparation and college admission is concerned
• It is about 10x more expensive than state board schools. One month's tuition fee in Nath Valley is equal to the entire year's tuition fee in SB.

Here is my schedule with Bansal and NVS:

6:45                Wake up

7:40-8:30       Bus journey to NVS

8:30-1:00       School(+bansal hw + studying for olympiads) 

1:00-1:45       Bus Journey back home

1:50-2:10       Lunch at home

2:15-2:55       Study and Bansal HW

3:00-6:00/6:30 Bansal

7:00-9:00       Study(School+Bansal+olympiads/SAT)

9:00-9:30       Dinner

9:40-~10:30   Study or Astronomy

10:30              Sleep

This is how your schedule will be(more or less) if you continue in school and join a tuition. I would have liked to have more free time. It is fairly hectic and feels very restricted. 

That said Nath Valley+Tuition wont adversely affect your performance in either of them. I have been 1st in Nath Valley throughout 11th and have maintained a class rank <=3 in Bansal.

Ex-students, classmates and juniors, please comment and add your own pros and cons to the list to make this article more comprehensive.

 

How to prepare for KVPY

I appeared for the KVPY exam in 11th and cleared the written exam as well as the interview. So, I thought I should share my experience to help others who wish to take the exam.

The KVPY is a scholarship-exam for science stream students to encourage them to take up pure-sciences. The SA stream written exam has four subjects: Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. It is a 100 mark paper with equal weightage to each subject. In 2014-15 the pattern of the paper was as follows:

Part I (60 marks): one-mark MCQs 

• Maths:15 ques
• Physics:15 ques
• Chemistry:15 ques
• Biology:15 ques

Part II (40 marks): two-mark MCQs

• Maths: 5 ques
• Physics: 5 ques
• Chemistry: 5 ques
• Biology: 5 ques

At first it feels unfair that there is no choice between maths and biology, however I feel that if you are interested in science, then you should learn both of these at least till 11th.
The syllabus for maths is not very different from 10th grade, but the level of difficulty is higher. Thus Biology students will have to practice solving such questions.
The Biology section is fairly easy. Since I could not take both maths and bio in school, I was initially concerned. However, looking at the previous years' papers I noticed that the bio questions were not that difficult. Most of them are based on class 10 syllabus and the rest on life processes in cells and genetics.

Physics and Chemistry are fully 11th-12th based. You really have to prepare for just these 2 subjects.

In the summer after the 10th board exams, my friends and I started studying 11th std. physics from HC Verma's Concepts Of Physics. We were studying for KVPY as well as NSEP and so focussed most of our time on physics.
We would read and try to understand as much as we can from HCV and clear each others doubts or look up our doubts online. We made it a point to understand all the derivations and then try to derive the formulae ourselves. After reading up on a particular chapter, we solved the Exercises given at the end of the chapter and then solved further questions on the same topic from I.E. Irodov's Problems in General Physics. Solution books are available for both of these books and are immensely useful. (While solving Gravitation, we learned many substitution techniques required in calculus, using the solution book for Irodov!)
In this manner, we finished most of 11th st. physics in 2 months or so and then started 12th std. physics. For class 12 physics I referred to Sears and Zemansky's University Physics for better explanations along with HCV.
Having study partners really helped me as it kept me going at that pace. Sometimes my friends were ahead of me in the syllabus and thus I had to study even if I felt lazy or tired. Sometimes I gave them the incentive to study. Also, studying in a group and solving questions together is really fun. We would solve physics questions, maths olympiad papers and occasionally even watched movies.

The chemistry section is pretty hard. I am not very interested in chemistry and find it hard to study on my own. So I pretty much neglected it...(and paid for it. I lost only 3 marks in physics and around 12 in chemistry). The Chemistry section has a lot of questions from General Organic Chemistry. However, you also have to study other chapters like gaseous state, thermodynamics and equilibrium.


The written exam is what really counts. The weightage for written is 75% and 25% for interview. Usually the cutoff is low for the written exam(40s out of 100) but that is where you can really score. So one should prepare well for the written exam.


There are a lot of conflicting posts about the interview for KVPY. Many claim that it is very strict and the teachers are mean and out to there to get you and so on. Well, it isn't.
The interview was very friendly and casual. The interviewers were very amicable and supportive. There are 2 interviewers per subject, so 8-9 interviewers. The interview lasted about 40 minutes.  They asked me about 10-12 questions subject-wise. First they read my self-appraisal form and asked me about my science-exhibition project(Automated Telescope). Then one of the physics teachers asked me solve a question on the whiteboard showing all the steps. It was a simple question and I think he just wanted to see how I tackled the question rather than my ability. The question was find the total distance travelled when a ball is dropped from a height 'h' with coeff. of restitution 'c'. The other physics teacher asked me what I knew about Quantum Mechanics and why I liked it(self-appraisal form). When I made a mistake in something, the teachers did not say I was wrong but instead guided me to the right answer. The bio teacher asked me vague questions and the maths teacher only asked me one question(what are limits?) The chemistry teacher asked me a few questions which I was unable to answer to his satisfaction.

I felt that I could have done much better than I did in the interview. I was anxious about the outcome and kept thinking that the interview didn't go so well.
However, about 6 weeks later(mid March) when the results were declared online, I found out that I had cleared the exam with an AIR of 92.
Of the four of my friends, with whom I studied, 3 were selected.

I feel that the interview does not really affect the results by a lot. One of my friends said in the interview that he wasn't even sure if he wanted to do pure sciences! and he was still selected.

I hope this was helpful and informative.
All the best for KVPY aspirants!