A game of memories

Mandela Effect: Trickery Of Human Mind, Magic Or Simply Incorrect Recalling?

Kainaat Arif, AIS VYC Lucknow, VIII A

Has it ever happened to you that you think something to be true your entire life, but suddenly realise that it was false from the very beginning? Not only that but you also realise that you were not the only one to think so! The Mandela effect refers to a situation in which a large mass of people believe that an event occurred when it did not. The name ‘Mandela effect’ was first coined in 2009 by Fiona Broome when she observed that majority of people falsely remembered that the former famous personality Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s, and some even believed that they saw his funeral on television as well as a speech by his widow – when in reality Nelson Mandela passed away at the age of 95 due to prolonged respiratory tract infection in 2013.
The Nelson Mandela story, however, is not the only such case where people misremembered a fact. A lot of people wrongly remembered a black mark at the tip of the much-loved cartoon character Pikachu’s tail when in fact there was no such marking and his tail was plain yellow. Another instance is people falsely recalling the evil witch in the Disney movie Snow White saying ‘Mirror mirror on the wall’ when in fact the dialogue is ‘Magic mirror on the wall’! Many such examples exist where people wrongly remember something, especially a nursery rhyme.
Now the question is why does this happen. From a scientist to a conspiracy theorist, every person has come up with their own reasoning for this.  Some wide-eyed conspiracy theorists suggested that this phenomenon occurs due to alternate universes or the multiverse mingling with our timeline. While this theory may sound flabbergasting to many, the possibility of an alternative universe is ‘unfalsifiable’ –meaning it is impossible to prove the falsity of an alternate reality. Others believe that we are living in a simulation where Mandela effect is merely a glitch in the system.
Others, who wanted a more believable explanation for this phenomenon, argue that the flawed nature of human memory is behind this phenomenon, as suggested in a study by cognitive psychologist, Elizabeth Loftus. There are other studies that suggest that our memories are constructed based on experiences and are not an accurate picture of an event. Loftus took it a step further proving that it is very easy to confuse human mind by asking it leading questions or providing it with misleading information. Therefore, distorting memories is not a far-fetched idea as our mind is very open to manipulation. Of course, what the theorists came up with is much more interesting to read but maybe there is a more realistic and psychological explanation to all this, after all!

The unstable ones

A Lesson In Why You Should Never Trust Atoms Because They Make Up Everything

Aananya Pawar, AIS Vasundhara 6, XI A

An atom is the smallest constituent unit of all matter. Annoyingly, it is also the one with the largest number of models and theories. The torture starts in Class IX when you have to study the structure of an atom for the first time only for it to be proven wrong on the next page of the textbook. Here are some theories that have misguided us and will continue to haunt us for as long as we live and breathe the thing called Science.

Thompson’s model
Thompson gave us the first model of an atom, or rather just told us that an atom is actually a positively charged Christmas pudding garnished with negatively charged dry fruits. The only thing we learned from this was that an atom is electrically neutral, the rest was as useful as the bay leaf on top of the pudding.

Rutherford’s model
Rutherford actually conducted an experiment and then gave a model completely different from Thompson’s version, where he told us about a new subatomic particle called nucleus and that nearly all the mass of an atom resides in it. Rutherford also observed that electrons revolve around the nucleus but was unable to explain why they don’t lose energy in the process. Well, guess he and the mothers of all six-year olds have the same old problem to deal with.

Bohr’s model
According to Bohr’s experiment, electrons revolve in stationary orbitals around the nucleus and each orbital has their own fixed energy. These energies could be measured using a quantum number. His model could also measure the number of electrons in each shell. This model was considered correct for a long time, but it was obviously proven wrong later on because students still had a lot more to learn.

Heisenberg’s model
When Werner Heisenberg discovered that the position and momentum of any particle cannot be simultaneously calculated at the same point in time, Bohr’s model also failed. In fact, no scientist had noticed that the matter shows dual behaviour – particle nature as well as wave nature. This created the need for quantum mechanics.

Schrödinger’s model
He finally gave us quantum mechanical model ­of atom- a very long and complex equation that would give all the details we need to know about an electron. However, very few people in this world can successfully solve this complex equation.

Now you can ask – why not teach us the correct theory in the first place? That is because even Schrödinger’s equation is not 100% percent correct. Moreover, the irony is that not even one of these people have seen what an electron looks like, yet all of them have their own theories about it. It’s almost as if we’re talking about a ghost!