Wednesday, September 10, 2003
Today was another fascinatingly learning-ful day.
I had chem lecture this morning. I dozed during the first half of it, despite my best efforts to remain wakeful. I was awakened, however, when the professor suddenly announced, "This is boring. We will do little experiment!"
There was a middlingly large balloon in the corner of the room, which everyone had ignored. Prof. Yaghi now had his assistant light the end of a long pole on fire. The assistant approached the balloon, while our worthy professor prudently retreated to the lecture hall stairs. The fiery tip of the pole neared the balloon.
A guy sitting in the row in front of me said to his neighbor, "This'll be good, I've never seen Hydrogen explode before."
Hydrogen?!?
The balloon exploded outward with such force that an actual shockwave shot through the room. We were momentarily blasted backwards into our seats by the wave of rushing air. The noise was incredible. It was the loudest damn thing I've ever heard in an enclosed space. I'm sure the yelling at a Michigan game is louder, but that's in an open area. This was ear-rending.
wha-RHOOOM! doesn't even begin to describe it.
As soon as everyone had uncovered their ears and risen back up into a proper sitting position, he went back to his desk and started the lecture again.
At one point during the lecture Prof. Yaghi displayed a slide that showed the space-filling molecular model of the Teflon monomer. I forget what point he was explaining to us, something to do with Flourine and nonstick properties, I think. He suddenly stopped, stepped back, and craned his head up to look at the projected molecule.
"The Teflon molecule... it looks like a headless baby, does it not?"
The class, already unnerved by the concussive blast recently suffered, broke out into nearly hysterical laughter at this.
The weird thing is, when you look at it, it does sort of look like a headless baby.
yeah, it's fuzzy. sorry, couldn't do any better. the gray is carbon, the green is flourine.
As a subject, I thoroughly dislike chemistry. And the class can be pretty damn boring at times. But every so often the professor will do something insane. Thusly, I have a certain appreciation for him.
Also, he says 'cumulative' as 'cue-MILL-uh-tiv', which is fun.
Not much else doing today... Human Being was pretty uneventful. We had to critique one another's 'manifestos', but the damn things are such rough drafts that it was impossible to critique any of them. Foolishness. The teacher seems to like me, she made me a group leader today. No idea why. Some teachers have odd tastes.
The kids who are in both my Drawing and Human Being classes: Shlomo, Joe, Alix, and José Thomàs. Luckily, I like all of them. All cool kids. I'm also starting to get to know the kids who are in just one or the other class. Today I conversed with Heather, who's living in Stockwell (next door to me), and Lauren, who smokes clove cigarettes (which smell very good).
I'm blasting Bis right now. People are a little confused, but they'll live. The girl down the hall was blasting gospel music (and singing along to it) earlier. I am amused at the fact that gospel music and pseudo-techno can cause equal amounts of confusion.
I got cornered by GreenPeace today on my way to the market. The woman harangued me about whales and Bush and solar energy. I got away by saying that I was a poor student who couldn't afford to give them any money. They also said that they let me go because they liked my hair (blue streak) and my shirt (Harvard: the Michigan of the East).
I did manage to avoid the Crazed Christians, though. They staked themselves out at either end of the bridge from the Hill to Central Campus, and tried to give out little copies of the New Testament to everyone who went by. Most everyone ignored them with an intensity born of extreme irritation, or, in a few cases, affront. I actually saw one Jewish girl flounce by them with her nose in the air. I always thought that was just a figure of speech, I hadn't ever seen anyone actually do it. It was fascinating.
New Weebl and Bob, for those of you who look at all the new Weebl and Bobs and are, therefore, cool. I am the Monkey, I can go Anywhere. Yes, it bears watching.
I hope I don't have any Drawing homework due tomorrow. Perhaps I should check the syllabus, because if I do, I shall have to do it right now.
Oh, but before I go. A transcript of the note my roommate left me on our door whiteboard today:
Sam-daddy,
went upstairs 4 a little, come up 2 play if u want otherwise I'll see you later
-B
Now picture it in red ink. I kid you not. I don't think I could make that up if I tried.
I mean... Sam-daddy?!?!?
9:27 PM
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