Thursday, July 12, 2007

Quantitative Methods, Hand Grenades and Cafe TANSTAAFL

An interesting application of QM was related by my Quant Methods professor in class, his Belgian friend in the NATO forces told him this about hand grenades.

The grenades that they use have to have an optimum composition of chemicals. When you throw them at the enemy during war, if the chemical composition is more than the optimum level then it kills the enemy soldier and you can't get any information out of him or if he's alive then you need 1-2 of your own men to carry him. This reduces your force, hence efficiency.

If the composition is less than the optimum level and it doesn't do much harm, then its not of much use anyways. Therefore the composition has to be just right, where you incapacitate the soldier but to the extent where he is alive and can walk by himself but can't do any harm or run away.

The graph would be something like this.


Ignore the numbers and look at the trend. Imagine the efficiency on Y-axis and grenade chemical composition on the X-axis. Just the right composition at the single point or near about its vicinity where you see the curve at its highest point, would ensure maximum efficiency.

As for me, its 4 in the morning and I got to study QM. Feel thirsty but too lazy to go and get water in my bottle. Feel hungry too but no choice, CT (Cafe TANSTAAFL - There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, the cafe on my campus) has closed for the night/day/morning whatever, can't order anything.

Thinking about the days when I slept peacefully and why I am writing this post at this hour, when I should be studying. Tomorrow is going to be a hard night's day.

In simple language, I'll sleep in class. Hopefully.

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