(It is Week 10 as I am writing this, which means that I have fallen a little behind. Such are the compounding effects of procrastination! However, expect Week 8 and Week 9 to come along very soon :))
It has been seven weeks since I started writing this newsletter, but there is still one very important project that I haven’t talked about: The UIUC Talkshow.
Last semester, we celebrated one year since we first started this project, and looking back, it feels surreal how many doors it has opened for us. I spent a lot of time this week finishing up and getting the next episode of The UIUC Talkshow ready. The episode is finally out, and it is all about Maps!
Maps are such an integral part of our lives. From navigating our cars to our spacecrafts, there are maps EVERYWHERE. It is quite fascinating to see how they have evolved over the years as technology has advanced and brought in new ways to model and observe our world and the universe. The level of fidelity that are able to get today with satellites is simply unmatched.1
We are used to reading a top-down view (also known as a “satellite view”) of a map. We are able to create them today because of airplanes and satellites that can take aerial images that can be stitched together to convey position and distance. But what is even more impressive is that we figured out a way to do that way before satellites or airplanes were invented! Try visualizing your city from the top without ever having looked at it from that vantage point. That is what Leonardo da Vinci did for a small town in Venice, called Imola, in 1502!! This is four centuries before the first plane took flight! How did he do it?!2
We are spatial thinkers. Human exploration has depended a lot on our ability to chart waters and convey distances through something physical and visual like maps. As rudimentary as maps might have been earlier, they still showed a way to get from one place to another. The world became a lot smaller after the first map was created. And this is what makes them so powerful and special.
Today, we are able to travel between cities, countries, and entire continents because of maps. It blows my mind that we are able to travel between places so far apart with such ease and accuracy today. When you sit on a plane that is supposed to go to San Francisco, you land in San Francisco, not Seattle! This is no small feat.
The world of maps is as fascinating as any and I consider myself fortunate to have been able to get the chance to share a glimpse of it with everyone.
Weekly updates!
Music
Time for another soundtrack!!
I made this track back in the summer of 2021—during my first summer in the United States. It was initially called Inception because it signaled the start of something new for me. It was the first song I had composed since coming to the U.S.
When I was listening to it last week, I felt that the name was doing it a disservice. It didn’t feel like an ‘Inception’ kind of song. It was something more funky and eclectic. It had a harmony that could re-energize someone—make them bop their head to its beats! ‘Inception’ gave slightly darker, broodier vibes.
So, I decided to change its name.
At the stroke of midnight, I sat down to create a teaser for the song, its artwork, and announced its premiere scheduled for the next day.
It gives me great joy to present to you the song that jumpstarted my GarageBand Library and one that I proudly call, Sunny Side Up ☁
On another exciting note (pun intended), I have an Artist Label now!3 (peep the ♪ next to the name on YouTube). This allows me to upload songs on ALL streaming services, such as Spotify and Apple Music, as an official Artist.
This means that you can also find this song (and all the ones that will be coming in the future) on your choice of streaming service!
Here’s the link for Spotify for ‘Sunny Side Up’!
THIS IS SO COOL!!
Follow on Spotify or subscribe to the channel to support :)
Reading
“A successful nation has three attributes: politically, it is free and democratic; economically, it is prosperous and equitable; and socially, it is peaceful and cohesive. The Indian nation enters the twenty-first century with considerable strengths in all three areas.”
I finished reading “India Unbound” this week and it was the perfect book to jumpstart my journey in understanding India better. From India’s long history of oppression to the period of its political and economic freedom, there are countless stories and lessons scattered throughout the pages of this book. It is filled with examples of pioneers who dared to build industries that could improve people’s lives at a time when the odds were heavily stacked against them.
While this book only follows the thread till 2000, a lot has changed in the country in the last two decades. From the rise of nationalistic and extremist values to greater instances of corruption, there are some things that have amplified with time. As noble as the founding ideas were, they failed to get the country to where they promised.
If one had the ability to change something today, what would they change and why? This is what I will be focusing on next. There are still many flaws in the system and I want to understand them.
There is so much potential in the country and its people—today more than ever before. I have great hope for the time to come, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to get to that stage. It is hard to comment on and create an opinion about everything that is happening in India while living in a foreign land. But, I will try my best to seek the right people and information to get closer to fully understanding my country.
“India, thus, enters the twenty-first century on the brink of the biggest transformation in its history. The changes are more fundamental than anything that the country has seen, and they hold the potential to transform it into an innovative, energetic economy of the twenty-first century. We have realized that our great strength is our people. Our great weakness is our government. Our great hope is the Internet. Perhaps at last we have found the right policies, and there is a growing will to implement them.
It is not going to be easy, for the old statist policies have enriched the vested interests, especially the state personnel-elected, appointed, or their hangers-on. But change will take place because too many know too much—through television, cable, and increasingly the Internet. Millions talk to their relatives overseas. They may not be able to articulate economic policies, but they see clearly enough who has power and who does not, and whose is legitimate and whose is not. While the impulse to control will diminish slowly in a country with a vast bureaucracy, the flood of information that will wash every village will force transparency in the government and lead eventually to prosperity.”
Onward we go!
Learning Spanish
What did I learn in Spanish this week?
It’s honestly hard to remember because all the lessons have started to blend into each other. So, I’ll give a concise summary: progress has been steady and my proficiency is increasing. No other major revelations for this week!
However, we did cross a milestone. Our streak just hit 50! Happy half-century, guys :)
The Solar Desalination Project
There is one very important project that I still haven’t talked about yet. It is a project that I have been working on since the beginning of summer and one which has met with some hopeful results recently. It is time to finally talk about the Solar Desalination Project.
I am working on this project with Dr. Jont Allen4 —a man of many talents and interests—who has been trying to figure out this technology since the last 3 years. When I joined the project, it still had nothing to show for it. The claims were still theoretical and the scaled model of the system did not have any conclusive data to prove whether it would work or not. My task was to get to the bottom of the problem and get the system running as soon as possible. Three years’ worth of efforts solved in under three months. Sounds simple, right?
I was introduced to this project because of another professor—who I share a deep connection and passion for sustainability with—who thought I would be a great fit for this project5. I quickly jumped at the opportunity to work on this because it was something that I deeply resonated with me.
Water has been a very close subject to me growing up. One of the first papers that I ever wrote was about India’s Water Crisis and ways to tackle it. During the pandemic, I spent a fair share of time trying to understand the country’s water system—following freshwater’s journey from the rivers to our taps, to the rivers back again.
I was deeply troubled by how recklessly water was being used all around me. I believed that if people could gain an appreciation for how they got their water, and how precious it was, maybe they would become more conscious of its usage.
Our planet is 71% water. Thinking that we have a water crisis seems absurd! However, what we have is not a water crisis, but a freshwater crisis. Most of the water available on Earth is unfit for consumption because of the fact that it is salinated, i.e., salty. The concentration of salts in water is a mere 3%! As small as this number may seem, it is still significant enough to make the water unfit for human consumption.
Desalination is the process of separating salt from water to make it potable for consumption. It is not a new idea. If you have an RO (Reverse Osmosis) filter at your house, it is doing exactly that. By forcing water through a semi-permeable membrane, it is effectively removing salts and impurities and making the water safer to drink. And this is also how most desalination plants around the world work.
However, one drawback of this process is that it is quite energy intensive. Countries are burning oil and gas to power systems that can give them freshwater. Hmmmm. Does something sound wrong about this?
So, it is not the perfect solution. But, there is a cleaner way to do this, and nature shows us how.
Solar Desalination draws inspiration from a very critical natural cycle that regulates water across the globe: The Water Cycle. The Sun is an excellent source of energy— one that can be directly harnessed. The goal isn’t to create an RO system that runs on solar power, but a system that can recreate the conditions of the water cycle: through evaporation and condensation.
Here’s a short video that explains how.
We already know that this works! The challenge is to figure out a way to replicate and scale it in regions that are in desperate need of freshwater. Imagine sections of deserts and arid regions being completely converted into thriving forests with a well-sustained ecosystem, all made possible with the newfound availability of freshwater. This technology has the potential to change the world, and this is not an exaggeration.
For the past 7 weeks, we have been working hard trying to solve all the problems that the system was facing. We were losing a lot of water in the form of vapor that was not being condensed. After some modifications and updates, we finally ran our first test this week.
The result had us at a loss for words— a beaker full of fresh water.
The system worked!! From an efficiency of less than 10%, we had gotten it up to about 30%! And we know that we can do much better than that. Now that we have proved that our model works, we need to remove all inefficiencies that could affect its output. We need to run more tests, collect more data, and finally compile our findings in a research paper.
We are reaching an exciting point in this research and I am optimistic about what we might find at the end of the road.
Time to run more tests! (Wish us luck)
Photo of the Week
I had a very important realization this week: I take a lot of what I have to offer for granted. Not just internally, but also externally. I was made aware by some people of my wide-ranging abilities and my concurrent lack of effort to do something more meaningful with them. If I could fully appreciate and value everything that I have to offer, I would be a very different person—someone much more capable of doing all the things that he wants to and more.
I asked myself a question—“What is the purpose of my life?” What is it that I am uniquely capable to do?
I have been spending a lot of time doing things that excite me: from music and art to reading and coding. But, it has never been keeping any single goal in mind. As much as I enjoy the things that I am doing, I do not want to spend my time just following my whims without any goal or sense of purpose.
The truth is that there is no right answer to the question. I do not have any one life goal, to begin with. I want to be able to contribute in many fields over the course of my lifetime: Science, Technology, Ecology, Society, Entertainment, and Education, to name a few. I cannot focus on any single field and leave out all the rest. As tempting as the idea of a “life goal” may be, I derive meaning from each of these fields, and together they give me a collective sense of purpose.
However, what I haven’t figured out is how to use my interests and talents in these fields to my advantage (spoken like a true capitalist). I enjoy creating value for others but at some point, I will inevitably need to think about how it can support me as well. I am still a product of our society at the end of the day, as much as I like it or not.
I know that I have a lot of potential to create and prosper. I simply need to get better at its execution.
Water, water everywhere.
Nor a drop to drink.
¡Adelante!,
Aaryaman
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Try going to Google Earth once and picking a city that you like. Study its streets, intersections, buildings, and parks. The level of detail will boggle your mind. I have spent countless hours doing this and it still never fails to amaze me.
Learn more about ichnographic mapping here:
Thank you, Vyom :)
He was one of the earliest guests on our show! (back when I was still behind the camera)
Thank you, Prof. Liebenberg :)