Two Quick Thoughts about Atoms

I had these two thoughts in Chemistry today:
1. I would love to see an action movie about a secret agent/particle physicist, if only because it would allow for a setup of the line "Get ready to have the wave function collapsed-on your head!"

2. Why does everybody describe plasma as "atomic soup"? First of all, it's a crappy metaphor, and doesn't really begin to describe what a plasma is. Second, all soup is atomic in that it is made of atoms.



Also, what is with this question from the online survey about the class?


The most glaring problem with this question is that there is no negative choice. Or even a neutral choice. Chemistry here is so good that you either LOVE it or you start a LiveJournal group with your 13 year old girl friends dedicated to extol the virtues of the class. That aside, the answers don't fit grammatically with the questions. "How well did the instructions help you?" would be answered somewhere on a scale between "Not at all" and "Very much," and "Did you enjoy the class?" should be answered with either "Yes" or "No," or else a similar scale. I get that you are the Chemistry dept. (nice abbreviation...too tired to type out the other 6 letters for a survey that will be sent out to hundreds of students? That's fine, just abbreviate it).

74,1,8,8,15,16 on their part. That's Tungsten, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Oxygen, Phosphorous, Sulfur. WHOOPS.

-Dave

Moderately Boring...Boringly Moderate

This was today:

Can you hear that hotlink sizzle?

Anyways, I just worked on some homework today. No big whoop. I did, however, eat the best bowl of French Onion soup I've ever tasted. My God. Whoever makes the soups here needs to be given a medal. A soup medal.




You know, I was really hoping that I could just start rambling and the post would more or less write itself. Looks like that worked out pretty well. I am a blogging genius.

-Dave

Look at the Time (...BOO!)

Sorry for scaring you with that title, there. The blogosphere can be a startling place sometimes. I actually almost missed putting up a post today because I lost track of the time. Never fear, though, as I am here. I have nothing to report. It has been an extremely slow news day, and I certainly didn't do anything worthy of note today.

For a couple of hours I got caught up on my back issues of Discover, but then got somewhat bored with it. I get it, I need to go green. Shut up. On a mildly amusing side note, one of their articles is already out-of-date, as it claimed that no telescope currently exists which could directly observe an extrasolar planet. As shown by the two images released on Friday, clearly this is not the case. You need to realign your telescrewed to better focus on Alfail Centauri (wow, that was definitely deserves a zing!).

Later in the day, I became so bored that I fired up (yeah, because it's gas-powered) Cabal for the first time in a few weeks. I play it whenever I'm especially bored, and today was just one of those very slow kind of days.

A week from this Tuesday, I'll be on a train back home for the week. That should be cool. Definitely need to play me some Fallout 3.

-Dave