How to use this page
This is a map, not a lesson: the whole course on one page, as what it lets you do. At each Pause and answer box, write something before you open the folded panel. The panel is one line of reasoning to compare with yours, not the official answer.
A grammar of control
We build on First principles. Lesson 1: every job has a floor, a limit set by nature. Lesson 2: state a problem as a function (a verb and an object), then ask a design question.
Practical power fits one sentence:
Subject (you, or a tool you build) + verb + object (matter, energy, or a flow of either).
There are five objects: matter & substances, heat, work & motion, fluids & flow, and living systems. And five verb families:
- Convert: change form. “Produce heat” means converting chemical, electrical or nuclear energy into heat. Energy is never created.
- Move: shift heat or matter. Heating and cooling are both moving heat.
- Contain: keep in, or keep out.
- Regulate: hold a quantity steady through feedback (measure, compare, adjust).
- Direct: get living systems to do work. You cannot command them; you guide them.
Are five verbs really enough?
- List three things you did today that changed matter or energy: making tea, washing clothes, charging a phone. Which verb fits each? Did any need two verbs?
- Heating milk and chilling water: the same verb or opposite verbs? Why?
- “Control the temperature of a room” and “control a team of people”: in what ways are these the same job, and in what ways not?
After you have written your answers — compare your reasoning
Most jobs chain verbs. Tea: convert gas into heat, move it into water, contain it in a pot, regulate the flame. Naming the chain shows the weakest link.
Heating and cooling are one verb, move heat, in opposite directions. Heat flows from hot to cold by itself, so heating is easy; cooling pushes heat “uphill”, which costs work (a fridge) or a trick of nature (a matka, Lesson 2).
Both control jobs use feedback. But a room has no wishes and people do: a team must be persuaded, paid fairly, trained and heard. So Direct is a verb of its own, and an ethics question as well as a physics one.
The map: five verbs × five objects
Each card is a ladder: Kitchen → Industry → Frontier (a documented case at ISRO, NASA, CERN or DRDO), then the floor nature sets and the design question. Each verb ends with its record on Earth. Cards that fit badly are marked, not forced.
Convert
Change the form of energy or matter. “Produce heat” means converting chemical, electrical or nuclear energy into heat. Energy is never created.
Themes: 04 Energy · 06 Thermodynamics · 03 Matter & mass
Matter & substances
- Kitchen Cooking dal: heat breaks down starch and protein. New substances, same atoms.
- Industry A cement kiln turns limestone into lime and carbon dioxide.
- Frontier NASA’s MOXIE split Martian carbon dioxide into oxygen: 122 g in 16 runs (2021–23).
Floor Mass is conserved; breaking a bond costs at least the energy it released (Lesson 1).
Design question Which bonds break, which form, and who pays?
Heat
- Kitchen An LPG flame under a tawa; an induction plate heats the pan itself.
- Industry An electric arc furnace melting scrap steel.
- Frontier NASA’s radioisotope heater units: decaying plutonium-238 gives about 1 W of heat each, keeping spacecraft parts warm.
Floor Heat out never exceeds energy in. More heat than you paid for means moving heat: another verb.
Design question Where must the heat appear: in the food, or the room?
Work & motion
- Kitchen A mixer-grinder motor.
- Industry A diesel pump set.
- Frontier CERN’s radio-frequency cavities turn electricity into the motion of protons in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC): 6.8 TeV per beam.
Floor Heat engines cannot beat the Carnot limit, 1 − Tcold/Thot (kelvin). Motors avoid it but still lose some energy as heat.
Design question Does the energy pass through heat on the way?
Fluids & flow
- Kitchen A pressure cooker turns water to steam; trapped steam raises the boiling point.
- Industry Power-station boilers raise steam to spin turbines.
- Frontier CERN liquefies helium (near 4.2 K), then makes it superfluid below 2.17 K: about 40 MW and 120 t of helium.
Floor Boiling 1 kg of water takes about 2.26 MJ. Liquefying a gas means pumping heat out, which costs work.
Design question Which phase do you need where, and who pays the latent heat?
Living systems Weak fit
Living things do their own converting; you only set conditions (see Direct). Floor: plants turn at most about 4.6% (rice, wheat) to 6% (maize, sugarcane) of sunlight into biomass.
- Hottest matter made: over 5 trillion kelvin, quark–gluon plasma from lead-ion collisions at the LHC (ALICE, 2012).
- Fusion ignition: 2.05 MJ of laser light in, 3.15 MJ of fusion energy out of the target, National Ignition Facility, USA, 5 December 2022 (the facility drew far more from the grid).
- Largest release of energy: the Soviet Tsar Bomba test, 30 October 1961, about 50 megatons of TNT (≈ 2 × 1017 J). A weapon: the same verb that cooks dinner can flatten a city.
Move
Shift heat or matter. Heating and cooling are both moving heat; cooling pushes heat “uphill”, from cold to hot.
Themes: 04 Energy · 06 Thermodynamics · 07 Fields & forces
Matter & substances
- Kitchen Lifting a full pateela onto the stove.
- Industry Conveyors and cranes at a port.
- Frontier ISRO’s LVM3-M4 put Chandrayaan-3, about 3,900 kg, into Earth orbit on 14 July 2023.
Floor Lifting costs at least m·g·h. Orbit 400 km up needs about 7.7 km/s (v = √(GM/r)).
Design question How far, how fast, against what force?
Heat
- Kitchen A fridge pumps heat from food to the coils at its back; a matka sheds heat by evaporation.
- Industry Cold stores; air-conditioning.
- Frontier The International Space Station (ISS) pumps liquid ammonia through two 35 kW loops to radiators that shed heat into space.
Floor Heat flows hot to cold by itself. Pumping it back costs at least (Thot − Tcold)/Tcold joules per joule. In space, only radiation removes it.
Design question Where can the heat go, and by which path?
Work & motion Partial fit
- Kitchen A hand egg-beater: gears trade force for speed.
- Industry Bicycle chains; belt drives.
- Frontier NASA’s Webb telescope unfolded its sunshield (2022) with eight motors, about 400 pulleys and 90 cables.
Floor No linkage gives out more work than goes in; friction takes a share. (This is transmission; it overlaps Convert.)
Design question Which linkage trades force for distance?
Fluids & flow
- Kitchen Water runs from the overhead tank to the tap.
- Industry Borewell pumps for irrigation.
- Frontier In ISRO’s CE20 cryogenic engine (LVM3 upper stage), turbopumps force liquid hydrogen and oxygen into the combustion chamber.
Floor Lifting 1,000 litres by 10 m takes at least 1,000 × 9.8 × 10 ≈ 98 kJ.
Design question How much, how high, and what drives the pump?
Living systems Partial fit
- Kitchen A spoon of yesterday’s curd (jaman) moves the culture into fresh milk.
- Industry Ambulances; saplings to the field.
- Frontier ISRO’s TV-D1 (21 October 2023): Gaganyaan’s crew escape system pulled the crew module off the rocket near Mach 1.2.
Floor Living cargo has limits of temperature, oxygen, time and acceleration. Keeping it alive is Regulate.
Design question What does the passenger need to arrive well?
- Fastest object made: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, about 692,000 km/h, 24 December 2024.
- Fastest humans: Apollo 10’s crew, 39,897 km/h (24,791 mph), 26 May 1969.
- Coldest matter: 38 picokelvin, an effective temperature of rubidium atoms in free fall at the Bremen Drop Tower, Germany (published 2021). Heat, moved out almost entirely.
Contain
Keep something in, or out: vessels, seals, insulation, shields, fences, and fields when no material will do.
Themes: 03 Matter & mass · 06 Thermodynamics · 07 Fields & forces
Matter & substances
- Kitchen Lemon pickle goes in a glass or ceramic barni, not an aluminium or iron tin: acid attacks reactive metals.
- Industry Acid in plastic drums or glass- or rubber-lined steel tanks.
- Frontier CERN’s ALPHA experiment held antihydrogen for 1,000 seconds (2011) in a magnetic trap: antimatter destroys any wall it touches.
Floor The wall must not react with the contents. When everything reacts, only a field can be the wall.
Design question What will the contents attack?
Heat
- Kitchen An insulated casserole keeps rotis warm.
- Industry Refractory bricks in furnaces.
- Frontier ISRO’s CARE capsule returned from 126 km (18 December 2014) behind ablative tiles; NASA’s Parker Solar Probe flies behind a carbon-composite shield.
Floor No perfect insulator exists; heat always leaks, only slower. Ablative shields protect by burning away.
Design question How long must heat stay out, and how much leak is acceptable?
Work & motion
- Kitchen The cooker lid holds back the steam’s push; the safety valve lets go first.
- Industry Helmets; machine guards.
- Frontier DRDO’s Kanchan composite armour, from DMRL Hyderabad, protects the Arjun tank.
Floor The energy ½mv2 must go somewhere. Stopping over a longer distance lowers the force.
Design question Where will the energy go?
Fluids & flow
- Kitchen A sealed steel tiffin; an LPG cylinder holding gas as liquid.
- Industry Pipes and pressure vessels.
- Frontier ISRO’s C25 stage carries 27.8 t of liquid hydrogen and oxygen; the hydrogen sits at −253 °C under multi-layer insulation.
Floor Wall stress grows with pressure × radius ÷ thickness. Everything leaks a little; hydrogen most.
Design question What pressure, which molecules, how slow a leak?
Living systems
- Kitchen Airtight tins keep weevils out of dal.
- Industry Isolation wards; fenced pastures.
- Frontier NASA built the Perseverance rover in a cleanroom, sampling it for microbe spores so Earth life would not ride to Mars.
Floor A few survivors can regrow a population: sterility is a probability, never a certainty.
Design question What stays in, what stays out? (Confining animals or people is an ethics question too.)
- Hottest plasma held: Korea’s KSTAR kept plasma at 100 million °C for 48 seconds (2023–24), held by magnetic fields.
- Strongest steady magnetic field: 45.5 tesla, US National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (reported 2019).
- Strongest pulse a magnet survives: 100 tesla for about 15 milliseconds, same laboratory, Los Alamos (2012).
Regulate
Hold a quantity steady by feedback: measure, compare, adjust, repeat.
Themes: 09 Systems & feedback · 08 Information & measurement
Matter & substances
- Kitchen Salting dal: taste, compare, add a pinch, taste again.
- Industry Chlorine dosing at a waterworks.
- Frontier The ISS life-support system scrubs carbon dioxide from the cabin air and recovers about 98% of the crew’s water (2023).
Floor You cannot regulate better than you measure; delay causes overshoot.
Design question What do you measure, and how often?
Heat
- Kitchen The thermostat in an iron or fridge.
- Industry Kiln and incubator controllers.
- Frontier CERN holds the LHC’s magnets, around a 27 km ring, at 1.9 K: colder than outer space (2.7 K).
Floor Heating is cheap; cooling costs work, more the colder you go. Heat moves slowly, so loops lag.
Design question What if the sensor fails?
Work & motion
- Kitchen Rolling a roti: eyes watch the edge, hands adjust.
- Industry An engine’s spinning-ball governor.
- Frontier Hubble’s gyroscopes, guide-star sensors and reaction wheels hold it on target to 0.007 arcsecond.
Floor A loop is no faster than its sensor and actuator; over-correcting makes it oscillate.
Design question Which error matters, and how fast must the loop act?
Fluids & flow
- Kitchen The LPG regulator holds burner pressure as the cylinder empties.
- Industry Float valves; pipeline regulators.
- Frontier Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander throttled four 800 N engines, guided by altimeters and a hazard camera, to land on 23 August 2023.
Floor A valve can only hold back flow; it cannot add energy.
Design question What is the set point, and what disturbs it?
Living systems
- Kitchen Wrapping the curd pot on a winter night.
- Industry Hatchery and newborn incubators.
- Frontier Gaganyaan’s crew module carries a life-support system to give a crew of three an Earth-like environment in orbit.
Floor Life survives only in narrow ranges; a life regulator must fail safe.
Design question What is the safe range, and what happens when a part fails?
- Finest control of a length: LIGO’s feedback-controlled detectors, with 4 km arms, sense mirror movements of 1/10,000 of a proton’s width; that is how gravitational waves were first detected (2015).
Direct
Get living systems (people, animals, microbes, plants) to do work. You cannot command them like a valve; you guide them with conditions, incentives, training and feedback. Ethics, as well as physics.
Themes: 10 Agency without wages · 09 Systems & feedback
Matter & substances
- Kitchen Idli batter and curd: you set warmth and starter; microbes do the work.
- Industry Gobar-gas plants: microbes turn dung into methane.
- Frontier ISRO’s CROPS module (PSLV-C60 POEM-4, launched 30 December 2024) sprouted cowpea seeds in orbit.
Floor Organisms keep part of the energy for their own living.
Design question What conditions does the organism need?
Heat Weak fit
Bodies give off heat whether directed or not: a cattle shed stays warm on a winter night. That is not really Direct.
Work & motion
- Kitchen Taking turns at the sil-batta: persuading, sharing, swapping jobs.
- Industry Bullocks ploughing on many Indian farms.
- Frontier Gaganyaan’s four astronaut-designates, Air Force test pilots named on 27 February 2024, train in simulators, parabolic flights and survival drills.
Floor An adult can keep up about 75 W over a working day (Lesson 1). People and animals tire, and need food, rest and reasons.
Design question What does each want, what do they get, and can they say no?
Fluids & flow Weak fit
Bullocks once turned the rahat (Persian wheel) to lift water; pumps do it now. No frontier case found.
Living systems
- Kitchen Sharing the cooking fairly; teaching a child to cook.
- Industry A shepherd and dog; a site supervisor.
- Frontier NIH’s Tissue Chips in Space grow human tissue on chips aboard the ISS: a human-cell model meant to predict better than animal tests alone.
Floor People and animals have their own goals; no law of physics makes them obey. Force is unjust, and it breaks down.
Design question Who benefits, who bears the cost, and who can refuse?
- Longest single spaceflight: Valeri Polyakov, 437 days on Mir (1994–95).
- Longest continuous human presence off Earth: the ISS, crewed without a break since 2 November 2000.
Down any column the floors repeat: conservation, heat flowing downhill, things that react, leak, tire or want. Along any row, the climb from kitchen to record is gap being closed: better materials, pumps, feedback, more energy. The floors never move. Every frontier case is a kitchen verb done closer to its floor.
The Kardashev scale: how much power, in total?
In 1964 the astronomer Nikolai Kardashev sorted civilisations by the power they command. Type I: about Earth’s use then, 4 × 1012 W. Type II: its star’s whole output, about 4 × 1026 W. Type III: a galaxy’s, about 4 × 1037 W. In 1973 Carl Sagan gave a formula for the steps between (P in watts):
K = (log10 P − 6) ÷ 10
Sagan’s Type I is 1016 W (2,500 times Kardashev’s), Type II 1026 W, Type III 1036 W.
Facts: world total energy supply in 2024 was about 592 EJ (592 × 1018 J). A year is about 3.16 × 107 s. Earth intercepts sunlight at about 1.7 × 1017 W (1,361 W/m2 on a disc the size of Earth).
- Turn 592 EJ a year into watts. What is humanity’s K?
- What K would using all the sunlight reaching Earth give? Where does every watt we use end up?
- Is a higher K always better? Which verbs must grow alongside it?
After you have done the sums — compare your reasoning
P = 592 × 1018 J ÷ 3.16 × 107 s ≈ 1.9 × 1013 W (about 19 terawatts). log10(1.9 × 1013) ≈ 13.27, so K ≈ (13.27 − 6) ÷ 10 ≈ 0.73. By Kardashev’s 1964 yardstick we are already past Type I, about five times over; Sagan’s Type I needs about 530 times more.
All the sunlight reaching Earth: log10(1.7 × 1017) ≈ 17.24, so K ≈ 1.12; Sagan’s Type I is about 6% of it. Every watt we use ends as heat, which Earth can lose only by radiating it to space: Move × Heat at planetary scale, a floor no cleverness removes.
A bigger K is just more Convert: a bigger flame with no lid and no regulator. Power becomes useful and safe through the rest of the map: Contain the waste and danger, Regulate the planet, the cabin and the body, Direct work and benefit fairly. That is this course’s aim: power over mass and energy, used for shared power, not domination.
The scale is a model, not a law. One number hides who uses the power, and for what; and the 592 EJ counts traded energy, not food or the sunlight that grows it.
Using the map
For any practical problem ask: which verb, on which object? What is the floor? What is the design question?
- The power goes off on a hot evening and the milk must last until morning. Place the problem on the map: which cells? Find one floor and one design question for each.
After you have written your answer — one way to place it
Milk spoils because microbes multiply, faster when warm. Contain × Living systems: boil and cover it, killing most microbes and keeping new ones out. Move × Heat: stand the vessel in water under a wet cloth, in a breeze, as a matka works; floor: evaporation cannot cool below the wet-bulb temperature, barely below the air on a humid night. Regulate: check and re-boil. Design question: how cold, for how long, and which verb is cheapest tonight?
Review & discussion questions
- Explain why heating and cooling are one verb, and why one direction costs more than the other.
- Walk one row from kitchen to record. Which steps closed a gap, and which floor never moved?
- Rebuild humanity’s Kardashev number without notes. What does it leave out?
- Why is Direct an ethics question by nature? Give a case where guiding beats forcing, and say why.
…you can take any practical job, name its verb and object, find its floor and design question, and say which part of the ladder above your kitchen is gap and which is floor.
Where the facts come from. Rounded values are used throughout. Kitchen and industry examples are everyday practice; frontier examples and records are cited below.
- MOXIE, 122 g of oxygen in 16 runs: NASA, “NASA’s Oxygen-Generating Experiment MOXIE Completes Mars Mission” (6 September 2023).
- Radioisotope heater units, about 1 W each from plutonium-238: NASA Science, “Thermal: Radioisotope Heater Units” and RHU fact sheet.
- LHC: RF cavities, 6.8 TeV per beam: CERN, “The Large Hadron Collider” and “Accelerating: Radiofrequency cavities”. LHC magnets at 1.9 K (space 2.7 K), 27 km ring; helium liquid near 4.2 K, superfluid below 2.17 K; 40 MW; 120 t helium: CERN, “Cryogenics: Low temperatures, high performance”.
- Latent heat of vaporisation of water, about 2.26 MJ/kg at 100 °C; Carnot limit: standard references, e.g. CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics; NIST / IAPWS steam tables.
- Photosynthesis, at most about 4.6% (C3) and 6% (C4) of sunlight to biomass: X.-G. Zhu, S. P. Long and D. R. Ort, “What is the maximum efficiency with which photosynthesis can convert solar energy into biomass?”, Current Opinion in Biotechnology 19 (2008).
- Hottest matter, over 5 trillion K (ALICE, LHC, 2012): Guinness World Records, “Highest artificial temperature”; CERN Courier, ALICE direct-photon measurement.
- Fusion ignition, 2.05 MJ in, 3.15 MJ out, 5 December 2022: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, “Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieves fusion ignition”; US Department of Energy.
- Tsar Bomba, 30 October 1961, about 50 megatons: Atomic Heritage Foundation / National Museum of Nuclear Science & History, “Tsar Bomba”; IAEA, “Nuclear explosions in the USSR: the North test site” reference material. Energy: 1 megaton of TNT = 4.184 × 1015 J.
- Chandrayaan-3 on LVM3-M4, 14 July 2023, about 3,900 kg; Vikram lander’s four 800 N throttleable engines, altimeters and hazard-detection camera; landing 23 August 2023: ISRO, “Chandrayaan-3” and “Chandrayaan-3 Details”.
- Orbital speed: v = √(GM/r), with GM = 3.986 × 1014 m3/s2 and r = 6,771 km, gives about 7.7 km/s.
- ISS ammonia cooling loops, each rated 35 kW, and radiators: NASA, “Active Thermal Control System (ATCS) Overview”.
- Webb sunshield: eight deployment motors, about 400 pulleys, 90 cables: NASA, “Sunshield Successfully Deploys on NASA’s Next Flagship Telescope” (4 January 2022).
- CE20 engine: gas generator and turbopumps, LVM3 upper stage: ISRO, “Successful Demonstration of Boot-Strap Mode Start of CE20 Cryogenic engine” (November 2025).
- TV-D1, 21 October 2023: crew escape system test near Mach 1.2: ISRO, “Gaganyaan TV-D1 Mission”.
- Parker Solar Probe, about 692,000 km/h, 24 December 2024: Johns Hopkins APL / NASA, “Parker Solar Probe Makes History With Closest Pass to the Sun”.
- Apollo 10, 24,791 mph, 26 May 1969: NASA History, “Apollo 10 Clears the Way for the First Moon Landing”. (Guinness World Records lists 39,937.7 km/h from a slightly different figure.)
- 38 picokelvin: C. Deppner et al., “Collective-Mode Enhanced Matter-Wave Optics”, Physical Review Letters 127, 100401 (2021); Guinness World Records, “Lowest artificial temperature”.
- ALPHA, antihydrogen confined for 1,000 s: CERN press release, 5 June 2011; ALPHA Collaboration, Nature Physics 7, 558–564 (2011).
- CARE, 18 December 2014, separation at 126 km, ablative tiles: ISRO, “Crew module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment (CARE)” and LVM3-X/CARE mission brochure. Parker Solar Probe carbon-composite heat shield: NASA, “Traveling to the Sun: Why Won’t Parker Solar Probe Melt?”.
- Kanchan armour, DMRL, Arjun: DRDO, “Armour Materials & Modules: MBTs and Other Combat Vehicles”.
- C25 stage, 27.8 t of propellant, liquid hydrogen at −253 °C, multi-layer insulation: ISRO, “ISRO Successfully Tests C25 Cryogenic Upper Stage of GSLV MkIII” (2017).
- Perseverance cleanroom assembly and spore sampling: NASA Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, Planetary Protection, “How to build a clean spacecraft”; NASA Planetary Protection Handbook (2024).
- KSTAR, 100 million °C for 48 s: Korea Institute of Fusion Energy news release (2024).
- 45.5 T steady field: S. Hahn et al., “45.5-tesla direct-current magnetic field generated with a high-temperature superconducting magnet”, Nature 570 (2019); National MagLab. 100 T non-destructive pulse, about 15 ms, 2012: National MagLab, “Meet the 100 Tesla Pulsed Magnet”.
- ISS water recovery about 98% (2023): NASA, “NASA Achieves Water Recovery Milestone on International Space Station”.
- Hubble pointing to 0.007 arcsecond: NASA Science, “Hubble: Pointing Control”.
- Gaganyaan: crew of three, life-support system for an Earth-like environment; astronaut training in simulators, parabolic flights, recovery and survival: ISRO, “Gaganyaan”. Four astronaut-designates named 27 February 2024: Reuters; The Hindu (27 February 2024).
- LIGO, 1/10,000 of a proton’s width; first detection 2015: LIGO Lab, Caltech, “Facts”.
- CROPS: cowpea germinated in orbit on PSLV-C60 POEM-4: ISRO, “CROPS: A Leap in Space Biological Experiments”.
- About 75 W of sustained human work: see the sources of First principles Lesson 1.
- Tissue Chips in Space; tissue chips as a human-cell model alongside animal studies: National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NIH), “Tissue Chips in Space” and “Tissue Chip Frequently Asked Questions”.
- Valeri Polyakov, 437 days: Guinness World Records, “Longest spaceflight”; FAI record 2512. ISS continuously crewed since 2 November 2000: NASA, “The International Space Station Marks 25 Years of Continuous Human Presence”.
- Kardashev types: N. S. Kardashev, “Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations”, Soviet Astronomy 8, 217 (1964). Sagan’s formula: C. Sagan, The Cosmic Connection (1973). World total energy supply 2024, 592.22 EJ: Energy Institute, Statistical Review of World Energy 2025 (total energy supply, physical energy content method). Solar constant, about 1,361 W/m2: G. Kopp and J. Lean, Geophysical Research Letters 38 (2011); Earth radius 6,371 km.
Attribution. Page structure (Foundation, questions, observations and deductions, refined models) adapted from John S. Hutchinson, Concept Development Studies in Chemistry (Connexions / Rice University), licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 (CC BY 2.0). The topic, examples, and text of this page are original to learn.curiosta.com.