Saturday, 4 August 2012

My thoughts on the ‘paani wali gari’ and peoples reactions.

There has been much talk over the apparent new scientific invention of a car that can be solely run on water. If this was true it would surely be one of the greatest inventions in world history. I had my doubts and after watching the ‘paani wali ghari’ be revealed on a talk show I quickly realised this ‘invention’ by Agha Waqar wasn’t real. This was not new ground breaking technology that would revolutionise the world as it was being projected, it was simply electrolysis with a car battery.
Anyone with a little scientific knowledge knows what electrolysis is, I was taught back in G.C.S.E. chemistry. Electrolysis is an old discovery which is an inefficient process that splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The idea for this water car was to use hydrogen as the fuel to power it. The main fault with this is that the electrical energy put into obtaining the hydrogen is greater than the energy obtained by combusting the hydrogen itself to power the car. So the input energy is greater than the output, the greatest ever efficiency reached in electrolysis is 80% which is still low. This so called invention will just deplete the car battery very quickly, nothing new or ground breaking.
The reactions of various people on social media have been somewhat surprising. After criticising this apparent invention on social media I was faced with a backlash, people were telling me that we should give the guy a chance and to stop being a pessimist. I realised that people in Pakistan are emotional who have been deprived of hearing much good news and have a feeling of hopelessness. This gives space to conspiracy theories and false hopes so that anything positive people will latch onto it without thinking about it. Which patriotic Pakistani wouldn’t want their country to take credit for a revolutionary invention? This was only going to be another disappointment for those that had high hopes. Some people had already begun projecting Agha Waqar as a national hero and respected scientist and were rejecting criticism out of patriotism. Other people defending this apparent invention simply did not have enough knowledge on the subject and did not understand the magnitude of what it would mean if true. To all those criticising me, I am an idealist/optimist but on this topic I was just being honest with myself and my country rather than live on false hope and blind patriotism.
However ever since this ‘AghaGate’ story broke, the spasmodic reflex reaction of our twitter pseudo-intellectuals has been disgusting. Full time cynics including journalists, bloggers and football fans with a large twitter following began slandering Pakistani scientists and how rubbish the country is. Ironically these scientists (despite being wrong this time) have achieved a lot more in life than these twitter intellectuals have or ever will. These cynical ‘experts’ are the insecure ‘told you so’ types that always give themselves a sense of being correct. Cynics can never achieve anything great in life as their ambitions are severely limited and can never offer anything productive to Pakistan.
Inventing ground breaking technology is a long process which requires struggle, years of research and resources. Even once such revolutionary technology is invented there is a long difficult process of mass producing it efficiently. Ground breaking inventions will not be made overnight by scientists that are not that special as they claim to be, so I request my emotional people to not fall for fabricated optimisms. Neither will any inventions be made by our low aspiring cynical pseudo-intellectuals. Let us not overestimate our current abilities but lets not narrow our ambitions either.
“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by sceptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were. - JFK”

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