 the environmental geomechanics would be. What is your reaction to this? Reshmi, you are not spoken. What comes to your mind after seeing all this background? I am pretty excited like as an engineer I just want to give something to society. So, this is a real life problem and we will be learning like. Yes please. When you are dealing with radionucleides I specifically want to ask like whenever you set a nuclear power plant they already have a unit that deals with waste and there are very stringent rules like regarding how to keep it and how to transport it. So, why are you getting into this thing because there are already nuclear plants operating in the India and all over the world and they have specifically for each plant they have unit to control them. Try to find out this answer yourself from the net and number two is that when I started my career these people came to me to help them. So, that means it is understood that they do not have any answer to their questions. So, in the process I started guiding I guided three PhD students from atomic energy employees and the very first one was in almost year 2002-2003. So, I am sure you must be realizing that in 2000 plus also India was not having answers to the questions that how the waste should be disposed and how it should be buried and what should be done with it. Because you are slightly mixing up your own question radio physicists and the atomic physicists do the experiments in the reactors. Clear by the time experiment is over they take off their globes and they throw it in the dustbin and they walk out of the place. Now the question is where this waste is going to be disposed and how. So, the story starts from there. Number two whatever the waste is being dumped or generated in a big manner from the fuel cycle how to take care of that. So, these are the questions which still people do not have the answers for. So, we will talk about all these issues and then how all these concepts were assimilated in the environment of geomechanics this you might. So, let me talk about the prerequisite for the course. Pre-requisite I hope you understand the word that what is required from your side so that there is a synchronization between our thoughts. So, I was also like you you know few years until few years back and then I realize that if you have to survive in today's world as a professional these are the two main subjects which we have very conveniently ignored as engineers so called. So, I am sure those of you who are inclined towards R and D or those of you who are going to deal with the problems which are prevailing the society. You cannot solve any problem keeping biology chemistry in abeyance. Why? You will realize this very soon because most of the issues which we are dealing with they are heavily related with the bioprocesses. Why do you age? It is a biological activity and when you age what happens with biochemistry changes ok we will discuss about there. So, sufficient exposure of the basic science is a must in today's technology and this is what we have very conveniently ignored until now all of us you agree or not. Our teaching has been you know mug up X and Y and red and that is it equations. The situation is like this that there are no equations to help you because you do not know the parameters even if you know the parameters you do not know how to estimate the parameters how to determine the parameters. How to put them into an equation to get the answer so everything is not known clear. We will deal with lot of situations like this. So, physics concepts are required we were talking about the atomic physics what type of radionuclide is coming chemistry, radiochemistry, biology what type of flora fauna is existing in the subsurface agreed. So, very hot topic for environmental geotechnical flushing of pathogens in porous media migration of you know radionuclides in porous media. Fate of nucleates in porous media from sewage treatment plants whatever affluence are coming they must be having lot of pathogens, sediments have lot of pathogens. So, how do these pathogens migrate from one place to another place subsurface. How microbial activity changes from one place to another place over a period of time alright. Are you realizing this or not and then comes the materials different type of materials which requires a approach of material scientist. You have mastered concrete, you have mastered steel, you have mastered glass, you have mastered plastics. Have you mastered soils? Very soon you will realize that you have talked about only one attribute of the soil which is mostly physical attributes. Your particle size specific gravity, compressibility which are engineering properties but truly speaking all of them are related to the physics of the material. So, 90% of the gamut of the activity that is still not been fathomed has not been explored and unless I explore that I cannot give the right answers to the problems is this okay. So, basically you required lot of exposure to civil and environmental engineering which all of you are having adequate concepts of soil mechanics, rock mechanics, geotechnical engineering. What is the difference between rock mechanics, soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering? Why I have written it separately? Any idea? Various forces okay. So, what is the difference between 1, 2 and 3 or there is no difference? You see you have to understand all these things, you know why? Why it is important to understand the difference between 1, 2 and 3 yes. So, actually in the soil mechanics we generally deal with the behaviour of soil okay and in rock mechanics I think we deal with the with the tunnel we can. Not tunnel in the object. No, we deal with the how to read the behaviour of big boulders or how to deal with the behaviour. Okay, good. We are quite close we are next and geotechnical engineering? Geotechnical engineering with the help of technologies how to deal with the soil maybe I am not sure, broader term. Yes, please give it to him very nice. Application. Yes, you are right absolutely. Application of what? Soil mechanics. Very good. So, soil and rock mechanics are the mechanics of the materials and when it comes to the application geotechnical engineering. You have understood now the difference between how the material behaves is what you have studied. Now you have joined a geotechnical engineering division of IIT Bombay you should have questioned this. Why geotechnical engineering? Why not soil mechanics division and rock mechanics division clear? So, geotechnical engineering is mostly application oriented. So, whatever you have studied until now in terms of the material and its behaviour. Now I am going to use it for different applications. One of the applications could be making a tunnel. Another application would be making a tunnel in the sub zero climatic conditions. Another application would be making a tunnel beneath the sea. You know how many situations I have created. The tunnel remains same, the material remains same or might be different but the circumstances have got changed. Agree? So, when you deal with the geotechnical engineering is a very larger or the wider as spectrum what is talking about is correct. Where you are talking about the applications of the material and its response clear in terms of creation of something. Is this fine? Now this is very important for this course. What I have written? What is the meaning of this? Not in the literal sense. What comes to your mind? An inquisitive and thoughtful mind. Knowledge of whatever we have studied and we should be ready to think beyond that. Yes, very good. Anyone else? What do you understand by an inquisitive and thoughtful mind? Maybe like we should not accept everything what thought, we should inquire in everything like what is what, what is what. Good, okay. General awareness of what is happening in our surroundings. We should be very, we should live in present. Okay. We should watch everything around us. That is thoughtful mind and inquisitiveness question. You are right. Question everywhere. This is a prerequisite for this course or this discussion. You should have lot of questions in your mind. Why something is being said whether I should follow it or not. I would like to confront it. I do not agree with this. I have another logic. So, create parallax between what is being said, what is being told, what is being discussed and maybe your own ideas. So, then you create a situation, another situation. As I said, this discussion is mostly situation oriented. You know, take a simple case of tunnels, I created different situations. So, when you are doing something beneath the sea, it is a different situation. Whatever precautions we will be taking to do tunnels, can you blast? What you could have done in the mountainous regions, where you could have done blasting, controlled blasting. If you do, let us say in a tunnel which is underneath sea and if you do the blasting was going to happen, you are right. Correct. So, look at the situation. There is nothing as x plus y equal to z. You have to understand x operator plus y and operator equal to and z. We will create these type of situations several. This is also very important. What I have written here? Because, yes, what is the meaning of this? With that inquisitive and thoughtful mind, we have to see the nature. I will speak loudly, nobody can hear. With that inquisitive mind, we have to see the nature unconditionally. Okay. No matter what others are saying or what I am saying. Okay. In a different perspective. Very good. The perspectives matter a lot. All right. Those of you might be aware of the legal system. We call them as the criminal proceedings, CRPCs. You know, in the court of law, both the advocates have read the same book. You agree? But the logics are different. So, what logics do to the court of conduct? This is something related to unconventional observations. So, what are unconventional observations which 99.99% people might have ignored? They could not observe them. Why? Were they myopic? What happened? Sir, actually what happened? Most of the things they listened up and believed that they are not self-analysing the things. Okay. So, why didn't self-analysis, self-analysis, maybe the things may be different or... That is an interesting analysis of the statement. Yes, nice. The things which are, which is in actual behavior is not in that manner that we see. So, we can think beyond that. The thinking must be important in this case. Yeah, so, I mean, I do not know how to explain it further, like unconventional observations. So, what appears? What the thing that generally appears is not that true. So, we can think beyond that. Good. So, why this is required for studying environmental geomechanics? I think 2-3 minutes back somebody said perspectives. Perspectives are important. Clear, what are perspectives? This is also unconventional observations or observing a fact in a different way. So, is this okay? I think I gave you enough ideas. This is the thing which proves that we are different from others. So, this subject is mostly, you know, situation dependent, number 1, number 2, more of the logic dependent. Why? You will realize soon. When there are industrial activities and industrial activities are going to be detrimental to the society, what is going to happen? The way of looking at things is going to be changed by different people. So, I am running my industry, I am producing the products and I am producing enough byproducts which are polluting the environment and the geoenvironment and disturbing the neighbors. So, I am very happy with the scenario, but suppose if I am sitting in the neighbors area, for me what is happening? It is not a very dosing situation. So, this is one of the ways of realizing how the perspectives might get changed from one side to another side of the fence. As long as I was within these fences, I was producing something, but if I am on the other side of the fence, I am producing and discharging most of the pollutants, the context has changed. So, some of the references which I have listed over here, the first thing is that I would say that your interaction in the class should be as good as possible because it will be difficult for you to, you know, refer to lot of books and all. So, the best thing is the lecture notes and the interaction which you are having in the classroom that you should make more perfect, all right. Try to make it a habit of doing net surfing. Also, you should start checking, you know, various international conferences, proceedings and the symposia which are happening. International journals, I do not know how many journals you have really gone through until now. There are ASC journals, Canadian geotechnical journal. ASTM is there, so many, you know, Soil Science Society of America. And incidentally, I launched this journal about 6, 7 years back, Environmental Geotechnics. I do not know how many of you are really aware of this or not. It is an international journal which is published by ICE of UK. Are you aware of ICE of UK? Institution of Civil Engineers of UK. So, they are the publisher of this journal. Go through the editorial which I wrote long back, all right. So, if you check the editorial board of this journal, this is ICE. We call it as ICE, the cousin brother of ASC, American Society of Civil Engineers or ASPM, American Society of Testing Materials. And if you check the editorial board, you will get a complete list of this is myself. So, I am the editor-in-chief. I started this journal about 6, 7 years back. And I have several advisors and editorial board members, a very big team. And these are the guys who are the front runners in the subject internationally. All right. So, what you should be doing is whenever you get time, please read the editorial which I wrote. And that would be in volume 1, issue 1. So, if you click over here, you would get this editorial which I wrote, all right. This will give you a fair idea about what is happening in the world, okay. And this would be a good starting point for the subject, all right. Another thing is make it a habit to read the editorials which I invite different professionals all over the world for every issue of the journal. So, like if you see volume 1, I had written. If you go to volume 1 issue 2, you will find editorial by Lara Kosagulu. So, these are the leaders, as I said, a geotechnical engineers perspective. So, these editorials are available online. You can easily go through them. And they are not very big. They have only one page right up. Vents and where to of the environmental geotechnics, all right. Very interesting titles. I am sure you will love to go through them. If you see the importance of the environmental geotechnics by Arul Arul Raja from Australia and so on. So, each volume and issue, I appoint one of the leading professionals in the world to write about what is happening, all right. So, this is just to give you an idea about what is happening. So, like theme issue on flow and contaminant transport. I do not know how many of you know KK Phoon is in Singapore. And he has written the editorial on flow and transport in porous media in the face of uncertainty. We publish 7 papers only per issue, all right. You can also refer to some of the books on environmental engineering and geotechnical engineering, which might help you. This is just for your reference. See minerals play a very, very important role in environmental geotechnics. So, most of the discussion would be revolving around the minerals and the mineralogy, clear. And because mineralogy is guided by the chemistry of the material, so we will enter into the chemistry. And ultimately, the mineral is in a physical state. So, we talk about the physical attributes of the minerals also. So, we talk about physical and chemical attributes which are dictating the mineralogical attributes of the material or the minerals. So, this is a special series on minerals in soil environments. I mean, look at the title of the book, Minerals in Soil Environments. Very tricky, is it not? We should read this sometimes. It is not a very straightforward title. You are finding something interesting or something very non-interesting. So, this is from Soil Science Society of America. There is another book by John Riff's Contaminant Land Treatment Technologies. But these are all specialized books. So, as I said, please do not venture to buy these books. Just whenever you become an expert in the subject or you want to do practice of environmental geomechanics, at that time these books will be very, very useful for you. There is another interesting conference, environmental 2000, which was held in 2000. Characterization, Containment, Remediation and Performance in Environmental Geotechnics by Akkar and Daniel. And there is a book by Hari and Krishna. This is Geo-Environmental Engineering, Site Remediation, Waste Containment and Emerging Waste Management Technologies. There is another interesting book on Geo-Technology of Waste Management. This is very specialized on the waste management, this one and the previous one. Ovis and Kira. There is a book which I was a co-author for, you know, Fundamentals of Geo-Environmental Engineering. Most of the part has been written by my co-authors, Abdel Mohsen and Ivan Penyogolos and Valeria Grimerez. So, these are the guys who have worked in this area, Understanding Soil, Water and Pollutant, Interaction and Transport. There is another interesting book which I have written since long, but it is not complete yet. And so, this is myself and Afshin Asadi. We are writing a book on Environmental Geo-Technology, Meeting Challenges through Neat Base Instrumentation. A little bit on the topics and syllabus, I will be talking about the general principles of the subject, production, nature of soil and environment. Have you heard about nature of soil? I mean, nobody talked about nature of soil as such, but for us nature of soil is very, very important like human beings. You know, they say it is a very good natured person, is it not? Similarly, we have to say here soils are having good nature, affinity, liking, disliking, orders, disorders, emotions, no emotions and so on. We will discuss all these things and the environment. We will talk about the soil technology. Normally, people talk about soil engineering. So, you have to understand the difference between the engineering and technology also. What is the difference between engineering and technology? We are talking about, you know, how the soil as a material can be used to create some techniques out of it or how to create techniques which can be employed for betterment of the society. Now, from this point onwards, we will start discussing about the soil-water interaction, which you were talking about as three-phase system, but you are not very close to the interaction term. So, even if the three phases are present, how these three phases are interacting with each other is a big question because once you start understanding the interaction between the three phases, then the geomechanics part gets clubbed through the environmental issues. We will talk about the shrinkage phenomena. Until now, shrinkage has been supposed to be a curse in the subject, clear? But now we will see that shrinkage cannot be a curse, it could be a boon also. What are the, we will talk about swelling and cracking characteristics of soils. So, the deviation starts from the conventional geomechanics where you thought that if a soil mass shrinks or swells, it is a curse, it is not so. There are many industries, there are many situations where this property becomes a boon, we will go into the details of that. And one of the applications of these properties would be what we were talking about, how to handle the high toxic, highly, you know, at elevated temperatures and hazardous waste, which could be a nuclear waste. We will talk about the hydraulic conductivity and mass transport phenomena. So, hydraulic conductivity have already done, mass transport you might not have done. We will discuss this quite in, from this point onwards, we will be talking about the thermal and electrical properties of soils. That means when soils and geomaterials get exposed to electric field, how do they behave? There are ample situations where this might happen. And this concept, how it will be utilized for in today's technology, clear? For detection of something or for creating something and so on. Then we will talk about the radiation effects on soils, how the radiation is influencing the properties of the soils. So, in short, this is what the focus of my discussion would be. It might not be in a very structured manner, but I will try to cover up all topics, you know, either randomly or one by one or in the form of a story. It is okay, but broad outlook of the entire course would be of this type. And of course, we will be talking about that. So, where all these situations are being handled, in what way? And that forms the applications part. Is this part okay?