Kaapi with Kuriosity


Kaapi with Kuriosity is a monthly public lecture series organised by the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS-TIFR), in collaboration with the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium and other educational institutions in Bengaluru.

The aim of the talks in this series is to stimulate the curiosity of the public towards the myriad aspects of science. The setting for these talks will be informal with a lot of scope for open discussions. The scientific background assumed will not be beyond the school level. As such, they are easily accessible to school/college students, families and working professionals interested in science.

Contact: outreach @ icts . res . in

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Past Talks
A History of Time
Spenta R. Wadia (ICTS-TIFR, Bengaluru)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Sunday, 23 February 2025
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium
Abstract: This talk will provide a brief overview of the history of the concept of "time," tracing its evolution from antiquity to the present day. We will explore how revolutions in physics have influenced and reshaped our understanding of time, examining the shift from Newtonian physics to...more
Quantum Mechanics: The Wild World of Atoms
Klaus Mølmer (Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Saturday, 25 January 2025
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium
Abstract: With the discovery of quantum mechanics in the 1920’es, scientists obtained a quantitative and precise description of all known microscopic phenomena from nuclear matter to molecules and solids. The formulas of quantum mechanics deal with waves instead of particles, and they make strange...more
Numbers: Are They Normal?
Malabika Pramanik (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Thursday, 19 December 2024
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium
Abstract: They say the only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well. What about numbers? Which ones are normal, and how well do we know them? The notion of normality of a number is related to the occurrence of different digits in that number. Roughly speaking, a normal number is one in...more
Understanding Animal Societies
T.N.C. Vidya (Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bengaluru)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Sunday, 03 November 2024
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium
Abstract: If we look at animals around us, we find that they live in different kinds of societies. Can we explain the diverse lives of social animals? Socioecological theory offers a framework to do so. In this talk, we explore the reasons for sociality and consider how ecological circumstances can...more
Dusty Flows in Nature (and Why Clouds Don’t Fall From the Sky)
Rama Govindarajan (International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bengaluru)
11:00 am to 12:30 pm Saturday, 19 October 2024
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium
Abstract: We will begin with some examples of what we will term as “dusty flows”, which include snow avalanches, dust storms, and clouds too! We will discuss why these are important to understand. I will then outline some open questions in this area and describe how we go about asking and answering...more
The ABC Mysteries
Minhyong Kim (International Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Edinburgh)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Sunday, 08 September 2024
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium
Abstract: In 2012, the Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki released a series of four papers, ‘Interuniversal Teichmueller Theory I, II, III, IV’, totaling over 500 pages and relying on several thousand pages of prior work, that claimed to prove the ABC-conjectures, a subtle statement about...more
Magnetic Reconnection: The Engine Behind Solar Flares and Aurorae
Pallavi Bhat (International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bengaluru)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Sunday, 25 August 2024
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium
Abstract: A few months ago, the entire world was enraptured by the celestial light show that appeared in the night sky. What is the origin of these aurorae? This phenomenon is intricately linked to a plasma physics process known as magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection involves the explosive...more
Hyperbolicity
Indira Chatterji (Université Côte d'Azur à Nice, France)
2:30 pm to 4:00 pm Sunday, 28 July 2024
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, Bengaluru
Abstract: We learn as children that when we draw a triangle on a piece of paper, the sum of the angles equals 180 degrees. We will explore a world where this is not the case and triangles have the total sum of their angles always strictly smaller than 180 degrees: this is negative curvature, also...more
Secrets of the Indian Savanna
Abi T Vanak (Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Sunday, 30 June 2024
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, Bengaluru
Abstract: The vast semi-arid regions of the Indian peninsula harbour some of the last tracts of savanna grasslands. This once extensive habitat was home to the Asiatic cheetah and the Indian wolf, vast herds of blackbuck and chinkara antelopes, and now critically endangered birds such as the Great...more
The Accelerating Expanding Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and Einstein’s Cosmological Constant
Bharat Ratra (Kansas State University, USA)
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Sunday, 26 May 2024
Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, Bengaluru
Abstract: Dark energy is the leading candidate for the mechanism responsible for accelerating the cosmological expansion. I will describe the astronomical data which persuade cosmologists that (as yet undetected) dark energy and dark matter are by far the main components of the universe’s energy...more

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