Download Quest Tutorials Physics Practice tests

Here are a few practice tests on some topics in Physics. Each sheet contains approximately 50 objective type question with the answers at the bottom.

Measurements
Motion in one dimension
Motion in two dimensions
Motion in three dimensions
Friction
Laws of Motion
Rotational Motion
Work, Energy and Power
Gravitation
Oscillation and Waves (Questions asked in previous JEE papers)
Waves
Oscillations
Heat and Thermodynamics (Questions asked in previous JEE papers)
Kinetic Theory of Gases
Properties of matter
EMI and Alternating Currents

Download Quest Tutorials Mathematics Practice Tests Part II

Here are a few practice tests on some topics in Mathematics. Each sheet contains approximately 50 objective type question with the answers at the bottom.

Binomial Theorem
Permutation and Combinations
Funtions, Limits and Continuity
Differentiation
Determinants
Indefinite Integration
Differential Equations
Probability
Vectors
Exponential and Logarithmic Series
Coming up next: Physics Practice Tests.

Download Quest Tutorials Mathematics Practice Tests Part I

Here are a few practice tests on some topics in Mathematics. Each sheet contains approximately 50 objective type question with the answers at the bottom.

Topics: (Click on link to download)

3D Geometry
Quadratic Equations
Progressions
Trigonometric Ratios and functions
Properties of Triangles
Inverse Trigonometry
Pair of Straight Lines
Straight Lines
Circles and System of Circles
Conic Sections

More tests coming up very soon on topics like Binomial Theorem, Permutation and Combinations, Funtions, Limits and Continuity, Differentiation, Determinants, Indefinite Integration, Differential Equations, Probability, Vectors, Exponential and Logarithmic Series.

Facebook offers 70 lakh package to an IITian.

Facebook on Friday recruited one of its addicts from India. The website, which recently logged its 500 millionth active citizen, made an offer of about Rs 70 lakh for a posting in the United States, which has created a buzz on all IIT campuses where annual placements are on.

In the last three days, no other company, domestic or foreign, has come close to offering this kind of a compensation package.

While Facebook is still interviewing more IITians, the student in question, who gives his name as DKS — he is to graduate from the school of computer science and engineering at IIT-Kharagpur in 2011 and doesn't want his full name to be revealed — has received a '' join-us'' post from the website.

On his wall, DKS announces how he is hooked to Facebook, which cuts his day by half. He now knows that the social networking site, known as the Big Boss of the web-world, will eat up his days.

On the offer letter, officials from IIT-Kharagpur said Facebook offered a starting salary of $90,000, a relocation bonus of $10,000 and a one-time signing amount of $25,000 to the 21-year-old from Jamshedpur. But on the Kharagpur campus, students said DKS had also been offered ESOPs and the entire offer translates to about Rs 1.7 crore.

However, sources in the placement cell did not confirm this. DKS, whose father is a government employee, has in his time at IIT interned as a research assistant at the University of British Columbia and at Microsoft India.

Interviews were on till late Friday at IIT-Madras where Facebook shortlisted 10 students. But, after several rounds of interviews, it did not select anyone from IIT-Delhi. Close to 30 students were placed from IIT-B on Friday.

At IIT-Madras, the highest domestic offer on Friday came from Transocean, which offered Rs 28 lakh and the high point of the day was when Intel offered positions to 30 students.

At IIT-B, Tower Research which offered jobs to six students, was among the high paying companies. Several financial institutions — Goldman Sachs, Bank of American, Deutsche Bank, Citibank, Capital One — have made a come back after lying low in the recessionary years.

N Ramesh Babu, adviser (training and placement), IIT Madras, is both excited as well as in a dilemma of sorts with 250-odd recruiters comprising a mix of old and new economy having lined up in close slots till end-January 2011.

''We are in a position where, say, after 20 days you may not have enough students for recruitment. We have not been able to give dates for some companies.

Most companies which hire here, will also be going to the other IITs,'' he said. In the last two days, IIT-Delhi too has seen 110 students being offered jobs

Source : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/careers/job-trends/Facebook-offers-Rs-70-lakh-job-to-IITian/articleshow/7041790.cms

The six myths about Engineering you should know

Two incidents drove me to write this article. In the first incident, a woman wished that her son became a “Mechatronics Engineer” (Mechatronics deals with the mechanical and electronics principles applied together). She explained that “Robotics” is the future of the world (guess Steven Spielberg has had some influence over her) and “Mechatronics Engineers” would be in great demand in future. She thought her son could build a robot on graduating.


In the second incident, a student from my school got into an IIT recently. One of my schoolteachers mentioned this and added: “He is a brilliant student who is well-planned. He has started preparations to sit for GMAT after his engineering.” GMAT is an examination to get into management schools (primarily in the U.S. and several other English-speaking nations). My teacher believes that engineering, followed by a management course, is a good option.

In this article, I try to make clear some facts about ‘engineering' — facts which will prove the above (and some other) expectations and beliefs to be far from reality.
Engineers are super-humans

People do not understand the reality of ‘engineering.' For them, engineers are “super-humans” who build rockets, robots, electric vehicles and the like. The reason is that when a person says he works on a satellite project, people jump to the conclusion that he knows every detail of building a satellite. In reality, no engineer can know the entire details of projects. For example, it requires people from various disciplines such as electrical, mechanical, chemical and materials engineering to design an electric car.

Since the common man has the “super-human” view in mind, he generally does not accept or appreciate many of the “real” engineering works. For example, a home inverter might not bring about any awe to the common man as does an electric vehicle (though both might be equally challenging to build), because he often finds a technician setting right the problems in a home inverter. The technician just knows by experience what to do, whereas an engineer knows why it has to be done.
Engineering is more valuable than science

First, I will clarify the difference between ‘science' and ‘engineering' through a simple example. The study of optics of materials will fall under science. Scientists (physicists, in this case) will try to explain the optical properties which different materials possess. If someone tries to use the optical properties to make a microscope or a camera, he will be an engineer. Scientists establish facts which engineers exploit to make things useful to society. History would tell you that scientists did a lot of engineering work in the earlier days (between 1700 and 1900 when a lot of development really happened in science and engineering).

Today, with the vastness of the different fields, science and engineering have separated . Now, scientists rarely take up engineering work. Nevertheless, I would say scientists play a greater role as they have to establish the basic facts for engineers to build upon.

Unfortunately, since the result of engineering is the one that fetches money, people have a craze for engineering. It is disheartening to see a Ph.D. student in science getting a lesser stipend than a Ph.D. student in engineering. It should have been the other way round. Any nation that ignores the role of science cannot survive in the long run.
Management studies goes with engineering

A degree in engineering followed by a degree in Management is the much sought-after combination. Again, a ‘myth' that engineering and management are related is at work. Engineering (with science as the basis) has nothing to do with management (which does not involve science). A lucrative salary is what attracts people to management studies.

Furthermore, most institutes do not introduce engineering in a proper way, leaving students without confidence to pursue higher education.
We need more IITs

There are many IITs coming up, ostensibly to help the nation meet the requirement of engineers. Truly speaking, we have enough of engineers. Design, the work of engineers, requires just a few people.

The dearth is not in the number but in the quality of engineers we produce. It is enough if we are able to improve and maintain the quality of our institutes and retain the people graduating from them by creating ample opportunities for them to work in India with a good salary. It is better to improve and maintain the standards of the NITs, the IITs and other government institutes than creating newer ones and diluting the existing standards.
Foreign MNCs do best R&D engineering

Foreign multinationals that claim to have research and development centres in India do not do real engineering work in the country, as it is natural for any company to have real product development on home soil.

Here again, the salary is what attracts people (thanks to the dollar-rupee conversion). This is a case of brain drain, in which the brains are hired not to work. Though many might not accept, the basic aim of the foreign MNCs is to utilise the cheap labour in the developing countries to run their manufacturing units; product development is not their primary goal.

People generally end up doing tasks that are not as challenging as is the work in smaller Indian industries trying to develop products of their own.
A B.E/B.Tech graduate is an “Engineer”

With the vastness of technology, in the present day one cannot call oneself an engineer just on graduating. A B.E./B.Tech. graduate knows just the basics. I would say that post-graduation is a must. Or at least, one needs to work for a few years to understand and build engineering products. A lot of people believe that a B.E. graduate in aerospace would be able to build rockets on graduating. If it were so, there would be rockets flying everywhere!

I would advise people without an engineering background to talk to people who do real engineering work to take decisions before choosing the field for their children. The aim of education is not merely to land a high-paying job. It should empower you to find a suitable work for yourself.
Author : Arun Karuppaswamy

Some useful links for Organic Chemistry Preparation.

Here are a few links you might find useful in aiding you in Organic Chemistry.Contributed by Sbholo (sbholo@sify.com)


http://web.pdx.edu/~wamserc/C334F99/default.htm
http://web.pdx.edu/~wamserc/C335W00/default.htm
http://web.pdx.edu/~wamserc/C336S00/default.htm

PS: You might have noticed I have stopped posting here because I have been very busy. After May, an overhaul of this blog is planned to make it more user friendly.

Brand IIT: the people behind the image

IITs have justly been ranked as the top educational institutions in India and Asia. A little known fact is that more than 80 per cent of their products live and work in India. The next stage is to restructure and reinvent IITs so that they can become world-class centres of research.

A FEW days ago, I went to have my passport renewed. After waiting quite a while in a horribly cramped room, I finally entered the PRO's office and presented my application. He immediately informed me that I had filled in outdated forms and followed the wrong instructions and would have to come back later with the correct forms. I was crestfallen and pleaded that I had downloaded the forms from the Ministry's website and could not afford to take too much time away from my work at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

His expression and attitude underwent an immediate transformation. "Sir, please sit down. The website is outdated. It's not our fault. Here are the right forms. We can't afford to waste your time. IITs have done so much for our country." While I was filling in the forms at his desk, he expressed his unhappiness that so many of our students migrate to the United States and do not work for their own country. However, I was out of his office within 15 minutes with all the papers approved.

On my way home, I marvelled at how times have changed. Now brand IIT is recognised all over India and abroad and we can even get preference over others in government offices! However, some myths persist. Everyone believes most of our students go abroad and a majority of them take up management jobs. This is because very few people know the actual output of IITs and the career profiles of our alumni. We are generally known for the difficulty youngsters face in coping with our joint entrance exam (JEE) and the outstanding successes achieved by some of our graduates (B.Tech.) in the U.S.

What most do not know is that B.Tech. graduates constitute less than half the students trained at IITs and that the majority, in fact, are Masters and PhD degree holders. For example, over the years IIT Delhi has trained about 26,000 students of whom only 37 per cent graduated with a B.Tech., 53 per cent at the Masters level, and 10 per cent with PhDs. The profile is similar for all other IITs. It is this stress on postgraduate education that has helped IITs develop their reputation and expertise. It is this aspect that makes them different from other engineering institutions.

In the past few years, IITs have been ranked as the top educational institutions in India and Asia by national and international magazines. However, the only objective ranking of top 500 universities worldwide by research output has been done by Professor Nian Cai Liu and his colleagues at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. In this list, the only institutions to make it from India are the IITs and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. So what makes us tick and what do our graduates actually do in life?

Detailed scientific studies of the graduates from IITs Bombay and Madras show that about 35 to 40 per cent of them proceed abroad for higher studies, and about a quarter return to work in India. This means that only about a quarter of our graduates settle abroad. The pattern is roughly similar for all IITs. Now, remember that less than half our products are B. Tech. degree holders and that about 60 per cent are Masters and PhDs. All indicators show that the proportion of our postgraduate students going abroad is less than that of those with bachelors' degrees. Therefore, it seems that the total number of our students settling abroad may be less than a fifth of our total production. In other words, more than 80 per cent of our products live and work in India. These studies also show that those who go abroad represent the whole class profile and not just the toppers. This is quite reassuring.

What do our students do after they leave the IITs? Of those who go abroad, a significant number are in management jobs. Some hold top positions in multinational corporations. But what is very creditable is that almost every engineering department in most major U.S. universities seems to have an IIT graduate on its faculty. A look at the almost 200 students honoured by IITs as their distinguished alumni is instructive. Of these, about half work in India and the rest abroad; and technical researchers and professors constitute a little less than half of the total. Of the researchers honoured, 40 per cent work in India. What is interesting is that almost 70 per cent of the managers honoured work in India and most head technical companies. Of the entrepreneurs honoured, a vast majority of them come from the IT sector and live in the U.S.

What is even more interesting is that IIT students occupy the top rungs of R&D or management positions in almost all technical companies in the public and private sector in India. Many even hold senior positions in PWD, the Railways, and the Army. This should not surprise as a Department of Science and Technology sponsored study showed that a majority of those employed in the R&D departments of the top 20 public and private sector companies were Masters or PhD products from IITs. Similarly, a significant proportion of those working as teachers in engineering colleges received their higher degrees from the IITs.

What is clear is that the IITs have played a major role in the technical life of India — and this has come from their postgraduate programmes. The importance of postgraduate programmes and the availability of generous scholarships are sometimes lost on those not knowing the facts behind the image of IITs. If these institutions had not given this kind of importance to research and postgraduate education, many of our faculty members, who are well known, would have never joined these institutions. Involvement in research keeps the teachers updated and this upgrades the quality of undergraduate education. Finally, if postgraduate science and engineering education was not free along with adequate stipends (not loans), most of our students would not have opted for a research career.

Interdisciplinary outlook needed

The vision behind the establishment of IITs was that they would become centres of world-class research. A dispassionate analysis would show that we have done better than most people think, but are not good enough yet. However, a foundation has been established and we have to build on it. Like all structures, what is above the ground must be different from the foundation in form as well as function. To move forward in the 21st century, IITs will have to become much more interdisciplinary in their research outlook. This will require working with a much wider variety of professionals in the life sciences and social sciences. Leadership in research will require a much greater emphasis on theoretical work, as much of product development will be done in the secretive laboratories of large companies. Young faculty members will have to work in small tightly knit interdisciplinary groups in close interaction with national and international peer groups.

To achieve this objective, there must be a restructuring and reinventing of the IITs with a vision of the future, not the narrow immediate needs of today. And for this, there must be debate and discussion that captures the aspirations and dreams of the young Indian researchers in India and abroad.

(The writer is Professor and Coordinator, Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Programme, at IIT Delhi.)