Top Mountain Peaks...!

Mountains are generally classified into four types based on the process of their formation. They are Folded mountains, Domed mountains, Volcanic mountains and fault block mountains. This classification is done based on their process of formation. The adjoining image gives visual representation of each of these types. 

Here is the list of top 10 mountain peaks in the world.

Peak	Mountain	Type	Height
Everest	Himalaya	Fold	8848
K2	Karakoram	Fold	8611
Kanchenjunga	Himalaya	Fold	8586
Lhotse	Himalaya	Fold	8516
Makalu	Himalaya	Fold	8485
Cho Oyu	Himalaya	Fold	8188
Dhaulagiri	Himalaya	Fold	8167
Manaslu	Himalaya	Fold	8163
Nanga Parbat	Himalaya	Fold	8126
Annapurna	Himalaya	Fold	8091

The Himalayas and Karakoram are thus the home of the highest peaks in the world with no exception. The list of top 100 also contains only Himalayan/ Karakoram peaks! 

The highest non Himalayan/ Karakoram peak in the world does not even feature in the top 100! It is mount Aconagua in South America and is below 7000 metres. Both the himalayas and Karakoram are fold mountains viz they are formed by relative movement of earth plates leading to their formation. Hence it is clearly evident that fold mountains are the ones with highest potential of high peaks.

Besides, all these peaks are located in the Indian subcontinent or adjoining areas. There is a theory which says that there was relative movement which actually lead to movement of Indian subcontinent from Africa into Asia and this collision led to formation of Himalayas. Had this relative movement not happened, the world might not have seen these big peaks getting formed.

The Earth plates keep moving un-noticeably and once in a few 1000s of years lead to formation/ destruction of some of the highest and lowest points in the world history.  Going to the extreme imagination, one should say, Don't take the land under you for granted, it didn't exist sometime in history and has a very high probability that it will not exist sometime in future!

Friction & Skiing

I had learnt about friction in school physics as the force which hinders motion. The official definition of friction is "Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and material elements sliding against each other." Delving deeper, we understand that it is basically the reluctance of any body to move. Hence one would need to overcome this frictional force to ensure that the body moves in the first place! And besides that once the motion begins, one has to continuously keep applying extra force to ensure that the frictional force is balanced and the motion continues.

Most times being an engineer, the focus is to reduce the effect of this friction to ensure easy motion. There are large number of lubricants available whose sole purpose is to reduce friction as it is in most cases considered to be an undesirable phenomenon in physics. However, it is often overlooked that the complete absence of friction could lead to uncontrolled motion and hence could lead to disasters. 

Last week, when I was at ski resort at a place called Auli, Uttarakhand, I encountered this dimension of friction. Standing on ski on an icy surface makes one realize how the complete absence of friction could make motion as difficult as the presence of it. The relative friction between ski and the ice surface to quote the least is minuscule and in most practical cases can be considered to be close to zero. 

The first encounter with this zero friction phenomenon came when I was wearing my ski. It is very common to see people slip even before they take their first step with the ski as the mind as well as feet are not habituated to motion without friction. I experienced a similar feeling and was on my knees even before I stood on my feet with skis on them.

After getting enough training, I learnt how to habituate yourself to this zero friction motion and also various techniques to ensure that there is some friction which is created either by weight transfers or the orientation of the ski which would later on come in handy in controlling as well as maneuvering motion.

To understand how to do this, one has to understand the construction of Ski . The main body of it is a flat surface which has almost zero possibility of generating any friction. The edges however are sharp and hence would cut into the ice and thus help in hindering motion and thus controlling it. Hence, the greater the exposure of edges to the direction of motion, the more will be the hinderance to it. Hence edges act as the braking force - Expose the edges more when you want to brake and reduce the exposure when you want to accelerate. It sounds simple but execution takes a little bit more time just like learning any other art.

The first lesson was to ensure that the ski pointing downhill are always in the shape of "V". The bigger the V, the higher is the friction as more of the edge comes in contact with the downhill slope and the smaller the V, the lesser is the friction and hence lesser is one's control. 

Next comes the management of body weight which is as important as management of the "V". When there is higher weight on one leg as compared to other, there is higher relative friction of that Ski which would lead to slower movement of that leg and hence lead to smooth turn in other direction. It is like drawing a circle using a rounder, The sharp edge fits into the paper and doesn't move and the one having pencil moves forming a circle. Same as the case with the ski. The only difference being that even the sharp edge moves too and so does the other edge! The only objective is to ensure that the other moves faster leading to a turn. So one can assume that your legs are the steering wheels of the ski. Turn left by putting more weight on left leg and vice versa.

So the next time you ski, Look how physics works and experience its magical impact on your movement!