Vipul Jain

How to Stay Motivated by Using the Goldilocks Rule Imagine you are playing tennis. If you try to play a serious match against a four-year-old, you will quickly become bored. The match is too easy. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you try to play a serious match against a professional tennis player like Roger Federer or Serena Williams, you will find yourself demotivated for a different reason. The match is too difficult. Compare these experiences to playing tennis against someone who is your equal. As the game progresses, you win a few points and you lose a few points. You have a chance of winning the match, but only if you really try. Your focus narrows, distractions fade away, and you find yourself fully invested in the task at hand. The challenge you are facing is “just manageable.” Victory is not guaranteed, but it is possible. Tasks like these, science has found, are the most likely to keep us motivated in the long term. Human beings love challenges, but only if they are wi...

​​How does Airbag work in automobiles? When a car hits something, it starts to decelerate (lose speed) very rapidly. An accelerometer (electronic chip that measures acceleration or force) detects the change of speed. If the deceleration is great enough, the accelerometer triggers the airbag circuit. Normal braking doesn't generate enough force to do this. The airbag circuit passes an electric current through a heating element (a bit like one of the wires in a toaster). The heating element ignites a chemical explosive. Older airbags used sodium azide as their explosive; newer ones use different chemicals. As the explosive burns, it generates a massive amount of harmless gas (typically either nitrogen or argon) that floods into a nylon bag packed behind the steering wheel. As the bag expands, it blows the plastic cover off the steering wheel and inflates in front of the driver. The bag is coated with a chalky substance such as talcum powder to help it unwrap smoothly. The driver (mov...