The Broken Pillar Hypothesis

The Broken Pillar Hypothesis states thus: "A structure held up by pillars will soon collapse should the load imposed on it exceed the summation of the load specification of the pillars supporting it. Stated in another way, the summation of the load specification, L = sum of operating load carrying capacity of all pillars + sum of safety margin for all pillars. Once this load limit is exceeded, the pillars will fail in turn, beginning with the weakest pillar, until all the pillars have failed and the structure then collapses. As each of the pillars fail, the remaining pillars will have to take up the load (which remains unchanged). As the load distribution profile changes with each failed pillar, the rate of failure of the pillars rises exponentially".

This concept should be familiar to all students of Mechanics - you would have encountered this in your Statics classes in your A-level/Sixth Form days. However, this concept in Physics can be extended into management theory. This has interesting ramifications, as it opens up a new way of treating human resources.

The modified version of the Broken Pillar Hypothesis can be thus stated: "An organisation or team supported by a group of pillar can only remain in optimal condition if the workload/stress level imposed on it does not exceed the total workload/stress level which can be supported by the team. However, once this workload/stress level is exceeded, the team members will break down in turn, beginning with the team member with the lowest stress tolerance level, followed by other members in turn until all members break down. As the workload/stress profile changes with each member who breaks down, the rate of failure of team members rises exponentially.".

For humans, breakdowns are manifested as low morale, absenteeism, illness, nervous breakdown and at the extreme end, resignation.

With human resources, this problem gets more interesting as the tolerance level of each member is non-constant. This is because the tolerance level is dynamic and depends on a number of factors, both external and internal. Examples of external factors are family pressure, environment, whereas examples of internal pressure are health level, sleep deprivation and mental stamina.

Hence, it will be prudent for team leads/supervisors to be always aware of the state of each team member, and to ensure that workload is effectively dsitributed in a manner that each team member is capable of handling, whilst at the same time ensuring that the team member is sufficiently stretched to enable him/her to grow.

By the way, the Broken Pillar Hypothesis was my own idea. Perhaps it could be further expounded upon into a topic for a thesis and eventually formalised into a proper management theory.

Black Holes

I have been thinking of black holes for the past few days. The more I thought of it, the more fascinating I found black holes to be.

Black holes are sometimes referred to as space-time singularities. This is because matter is concentrated into a small area (which could either be a single point, or a radius of a few kilometers) with infinite density that the space-time fabric around the black hole is so distorted that even light cannot escape it. In simpler terms, gravitational force is infinite, so dominant that even massless particles such as photons are unable to escape a black hole. This is ironic because among the 4 fundamental forces of nature, gravity is the weakest (coming after the strong force, the weak force and the electromagnetic force).

The space-time fabric inside a black hole is so distorted that if any matter were to fall inside a black hole, the gravitational tidal forces will crush it. Imagine a hypothetical scenario where a spaceship went past the event horizon of a black hole (and is thus unable to escape it) and falls into the black hole. As it descends, gravitational tidal forces will rip apart the spaceship and constituent molecules. As it descends further, even the atoms are ripped apart into protons, neutrons and electrons. Further down, even the protons and neutrons get torn apart into quarks.

Now I have a little speculation here. Quantum physicists (especially proponents of the Standard Model) have proposed that gravitational force is mediated by gauge bosons known as gravitons. In the standard model, every particle has an anti-particle version of itself. Thus, if the hypothetical spaceship were to issue a continuous stream of anti-gravitons against the direction of travel, it could be sufficient to counteract the effects of gravity, hence allowing the spaceship to escape from the event horizon and save the crew.

Anyway, back to reality. Black holes cannot be detected directly through conventional optical telescopes as they do not emit light. Thus they are detected indirectly using gravitational lensing or by detecting X-ray radiation emitted by objects when they fall into a black hole. Thus only advanced observatories will be able to detect black holes.

Dr. Stephen Hawking theorized that at the other end of a black hole is a white hole, where matter that is sucked into a black hole is spewed out (albeit in a different form) at the other end. This will then be used to form new universes at the other end. This is another instance of how black holes pose a paradox – an agent of destruction works simultaneously as an agent of creation. Isn’t our universe wonderful?