A Talk on “Kepler’s laws of planetary motion from school-level geometry – part-II” by Dr Sushant Raut

ABOUT THE TALK
Richard Feynman delivered a lecture in 1964 in which he derived Kepler’s laws of planetary motion using school-level geometry, and minimal inputs from physics. The content of this lecture was almost lost over time, having not been included in the classic Feynman Lectures volumes. The arguments were reconstructed from handwritten notes and audio recordings three decades later. In this seminar, Dr Sushant will go over Feynman’s geometrical arguments to arrive at Kepler’s laws. This is a continuation of the talk on 12th August.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr Sushant Raut is a particle physicist, specialising in the phenomenology of neutrinos. After completing his PhD from IIT Bombay, he has held postdoctoral positions at Physical Research Laboratory (Ahmedabad), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm), Institute for Basic Science (Daejeon), and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Daejeon).
His current scientific goals involve the measurement of the neutrino mass and mixing parameters, and the discovery of potential Beyond Standard Model effects using neutrinos. To this end he has performed studies of the synergies between various current and future neutrino oscillation experiments, and of the symmetries of the neutrino mass matrix. He is involved with the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO), one of the proposed mega science projects in the country.
Dr Raut believes that science education can help in solving many of the problems in society, not merely through technological advances, but also through the inculcation of scientific temper and rational thinking. Therefore, he has been keenly interested in education and scientific outreach. Apart from regular university courses, he has taught at summer schools and has been a co-organiser of the `Science on Tap’ series of popular science talks in Daejeon. He is interested in starting and promoting other science vulgarisation programmes too. Outside of his professional life, his interests include travel, history and culture, books, cooking, and languages and scripts.