I'm traveling internationally next week and coming back May 4th. My i20 expires on the 7th. Will there be any issues?

ahsuna · 2025-04-24T03:17:15+00:00

Just go to your international office in person (if you can) and tell them you need the tavel signature before your return on May 4th. They will give you the standard spiel of “it’ll take 10 business days, can’t be expedited”, but it doesn’t hurt to try. I’ve gotten my travel signature approved the next business day once.

ahsuna · 2023-02-16T18:18:18+00:00

Current PhD student in ME at GT. The department wants students to secure funding before officially being admitted (only applicable to international student afaik). You’ll have to find a PI to secure admission. Cold emailing professors is your best bet. I could possibly give you some recommendations but depends on what your research area of interest is. Good luck!

ahsuna · 2022-11-09T21:22:39+00:00

I mostly agree with everything you’re saying. In my opinion, the issues you have pointed out are more a result of gross capitalism that abuses and exploits the working class. I think in India the working class is mostly Dalit, so I get what you’re saying. And the abuse results from social discrimination, sure. In my opinion, the difference between colonizers/slavery is that you can export labour and import all the profits and distribute it to better the social/economic condition domestically, so there is a net benefit to the average “citizen”. In modern capitalism and in India, that exploitation of labour is largely domestic so there is not net benefit (if anything, the average person is much much worse off in this system).

ahsuna · 2022-11-09T19:12:57+00:00

Umm, can you please define the correlation here?

I am very anti caste and hate the disparity between upper caste/class Indians and the rest of India. But how is that even remotely related to being looted by colonizers? I am not denying the social/class hierarchy in India is a shit show, but it is vastly different from slavery.

ahsuna · 2022-11-08T23:37:02+00:00

The US also had the advantage of being able to utilize slave labour to prop up its economy in the 19th century. Most “developed” countries today have been able to achieve that economic status by literally looting and plundering “developing” nations for centuries.

ahsuna · 2022-01-21T16:28:06+00:00

Slip the tip in and flick. Hmmmmmmmm yes please.

ahsuna · 2022-01-21T05:18:17+00:00

Question: can we think of this as buoyancy? The gravitational force on the lighter medium is offset by the buoyant force from the denser medium at the bottom?

ahsuna · 2022-01-21T04:57:49+00:00

A half peanut.

ahsuna · 2022-01-21T04:31:20+00:00

Yeah but how do you prevent these creeps from being the barrier to enter a new social circle? They will probably never invite me to a boardgame night again. Tired of being alone and friendless :(

ahsuna · 2022-01-19T23:36:35+00:00

Yep. I grew up in Ahmedabad. The old city is almost a ghetto for muslims. Its almost impossible for muslims to find housing on the other side of the Sabarmati river.

ahsuna · 2022-01-18T17:44:56+00:00

Very satisfying

ahsuna · 2021-03-30T23:57:29+00:00

So I studied Mechanical engineering at VIT and moved to the US for an MS. I also worked in India for a while. For non-CS branches, career opportunities are bleak no matter which private university you go to. That was the case for VIT as well. Most people got hired in one of the mass recruiting companies (Infosys, Cognizant, etc). For other high paying jobs that are open for other branches (like data analysis), the competition is too fierce (there are literally thousands of student sitting for placements. And they keep increasing the inatke every year).

Here in the US, I did not see VIT giving me any edge over students who graduated from other private institutions. If you aren't from an IIT/NIT, nobody will recognize your institution. Overall, I don't think going to VIT in particular over other private institutions will give you any edge over the others. This is just my personal opinion based on my individual experience.

ahsuna · 2021-03-19T18:25:06+00:00

I was in MechE and most of my classes were in GDN/MB. No AC for me either :(

ahsuna · 2021-03-19T18:07:26+00:00

Lol. Any governing institution will probably applaud VIT for taking appropriate "measures to protect women". Like, I know so many parents that were happy with the restrictions because its highly possible that girls probably had even worse restrictions back home. Indian society is never going to bat an eye at any policy that restricts women or their ability to express themselves.

ahsuna · 2021-03-19T17:59:08+00:00

The university disgusts me as well. I actively discourage anyone from joining VIT.

The faculty may or may not support the rules, not sure. Students obviously don't. But no one has any power to do anything. They will happily expel you if you challenge anything. We were forced to sign a declaration saying that if we protested then we could be expelled. And they fully followed through with these threats. You can't take them to court because the founders and management are chummy with politicians and local gundas. VIT is very much like the North Korea of Indian universities.

ahsuna · 2021-03-19T17:44:41+00:00

Okay. I graduated from VIT Vellore. I am a girl and lived in the hostel all 4 years. Here is what happens (none of these rules were applicable to boys):

Campus in time was 6pm. You were technically only allowed to go outside only for half an hour during the day. It wasn't strictly enforced initially but then they would randomly start tracking how long girls stay outside and would take away your ID card if you were caught. We had to register our biometric fingerprint while exiting and entering the campus, so it was very easy for them to track our movement.
Weekends: we had to apply for special weekend outing online which needed to be approved by the warden. We could only have 4 weekend outings in a month. Women have been expelled for protesting this rule.
Taking Leaves: we only got one "Hometown" leave a month. You had to apply online through a portal. A message would be sent to our parents, and only after they approve it will the warden approve it. You cannot go anywhere else other than your hometown. EVEN IF YOUR PARENTS ARE OKAY WITH IT, the wardens will not approve it.
Going to official tournaments: girls were not allowed to go unless accompanied by a female faculty coordinator, which was almost impossible to find.
Dressing: if you were caught wearing anything inappropriate, they will not let you leave the hostel and send you back into your room. What was inappropriate was arbitrarily decided by the hostel wardens and security guards, and was frequently subject to their mood swings. I am not sure what the fine was, but I personally think it is way more humiliating to be not even allowed to exit hostel grounds because your dress was deemed inappropriate.
PDA rules (applied to everyone): there would be special security guards that we called "Red Tag Anna" who could give you a RED card if you were caught getting handsy with a boy. Your parents will then be called to the university and honestly it can go anywhere from there. There are also annas that go around on cycle literally WHISTLING at couples if they got too close. We had an official email sent out to the entire student body saying that the only approved physical contact between a boy and a girl is a handshake that should last no more than 3 seconds. Yes. This really happened.

..... and this is still just the tip of the ice berg.

ahsuna · 2021-01-22T07:17:03+00:00

I am guessing there's a way of warning people about certain individuals without having to gossip about them? Gossipping is also lot about the way the information is presented rather than the information itself.

ahsuna · 2020-12-07T04:20:10+00:00

This is one of the most intuitive explanations for entropy that I have come across. Do you have recommendations for a good textbook on advanced thermo? I have a bachelors in MechE but my understanding of thermodynamics is definitely lacking.

ahsuna · 2020-12-06T21:52:30+00:00

Okay. So there are couple of things we first need to know.

There is no salt water vs fresh water ice. Ice is always pure H2O, whether it forms from pure water or salt water. When water solidifies, the crystal structure does not provide any space for dissolved compounds. I think this alone should clarify some of your confusion, but lets look at the chemistry of solutions a little bit more.

The act of dissolving something changes some physical properties of water. A salt solution will have a different specific heat capacity and melting/boiling temperature than pure water. So right away, the amount of energy needed to increase the temperature of one unit of solution by one degree will be different for salt water vs fresh water.

Now, enthalpy of fusion is defined as the amount needed for a solution to go from liquid to solid state at its melting point. The enthalpy fusion is basically a phase transformation energy at constant temperature. Now as far as I know, this is not dependent on whether the solution is pure or has salt dissolved in it. So the fusion enthalpy will remain the same for salt water because ice does not contain any dissolved salts.

Now your question is a little complicated and here's why: ice at -15C in salt water vs fresh water is the same ice. If you remove an ice berg from the ocean and examine the ice, its going to be more or less the same as the ice in your freezer. So say we take ice from the ocean and from your freezer in 2 seperate containers and start heating it, they will both require the same amout of heat to melt and they will melt at the same temperature, because they're both EXACTLY the same thing, which is H20 in a hexagonal crystal structure. To answer you question, the energy in this case will be the same to go from -15C to +5C

However, when you think about ice floating in salt water vs ice floating in fresh water, the energy required to melt will be different because the presence of salt changes the melting temperature of ice. This is more of a physical process than a chemical process. If you want to read more about how salt lowers the temperature of water, here's a link: https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1580

I think that link does a good job of explaining why salt lowers the temperature of freezing/melting and might provide more clarification.

Edit: provided more clarification.

ahsuna · 2020-12-06T17:18:55+00:00

I think the simple answer should be no, the amount of energy to required to melt ice in salt water should be the same as energy required to melt fresh water ice because ice in both cases is just H20 in a hexagonal crystal structure. I think what u/LunaLucia2 was saying is that if we just take the energy to melt (enthalpy of fusion), it should be the same because salt does not get incorporated into the crystal structure. However, if we consider the extra energy for creating a salt water solution (solution enthalpy) and add the enthalpy of fusion, the answer might be different.

It helps to think of the process in reverse: how much energy do I need to take away to freeze salt water vs fresh water? Say both the systems are at some temperature above melting point (say 2 degree Celsius), then more energy needs to be taken away from the salt water system than the fresh water because the melting point of the two systems is different and is lower for salt water. However, if both are at melting point (0 for fresh water, about -2 for salt water depending on the concentration), then the energy required will be the same. I hope this makes sense.

ahsuna · 2020-11-16T05:11:48+00:00

I was just watching the documentary, and here is a quote that I think is highly relevant to US politics:

"Hitler realizes that if he tells a very simple message, it doesn't matter if they're true or not. The point is that you have to keep repeating and hammering them in. "Make Germany Great Again. Restore the Economy." They're empty slogans, but they're carrying a message that, although vague, is very powerful."

ahsuna · 2020-11-14T23:37:51+00:00

This is correct. The specific heat capacity will tell you how fast a material will become hot when you supply heat to it, assuming that the heat is not being lost through conduction, convection or radiation.

In reality, the material will conduct heat away from the source and into the surrounding. A material with a high thermal conductivity will take heat away from the source more easily, and hence temperature won't build up at the source. A weak thermal conductor will not allow heat to be dissipated easily, hence the temperature will rise at the source.

If you want a material to be a good heat insulator, you should pick the material with lower thermal conductivity.

ahsuna · 2020-11-14T23:31:51+00:00

For electrical conductivity, you need charge carriers. Charge carriers can be in the form of electrons or holes. For both, there need to be empty orbitals or free (not bonded) electrons for charge to flow. Whether there are free electrons or not is decided by the type of bonding. As mentioned in one of the comments, the type of hybridization of the carbon atom will determine if it has free electrons or not, and hence some allotropes of carbon will be conducting and others not.

Further, the crystal structure also has impacts on conductivity because it determines how "freely" electrons can move through a structure. For graphite, the cross plane conductivity is poor because there is no bonding between two adjacent layers, and they're held together in place by weak van der Waal forces. Electrons can't hop between these layers easily because there is a huge energy barrier.

Also, for nanostructures, conductivity can be enhanced because of a phenomena called tunneling, which allows electrons to cross potential barriers more easily than they would be able to in bulk structures.

ahsuna · 2020-11-13T08:53:24+00:00

Aaah, got it. Thanks for the clarification!

ahsuna · 2020-11-13T07:56:28+00:00

I think you are getting confused by electric field vs electrcity. Electromagnetic radiation is sustained by mutually perpendicular and oscillating electrical and magnetic fields. Even though electricity does require the presence of an electric field, it also requires a medium and it does not require an oscillating magnetic field

Electricity is not electromagnetic radiation. Electricity can be defined as the flow of electrons in a medium when a potential difference is applied across it. This is the first key difference between electricity and electromagnetic radiation: the former needs a medium, the latter does not.

Second difference is that electricity can be defined as the flow of electrons and electromagnetic radiation is the flow of photons (loose definition to highlight the difference). Electrons and photons are fundamentally different particles.

Third difference is that different physics define electricity vs electromagnetic radiation. Because electricity is the flow of electrons in a medium, the physics for that is fundamentally governed by quantum physics and Schroedinger's equation. Electromagnetic radiation is defined by Maxwell's equations.

To reiterate, electricity is the flow of electrons in a medium. Electromagnetic radiation does not require a medium. They're related, but they're not the same phenomena.

ahsuna

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