On Vacation!

This is why people have trouble with physics

I'm doing an online problem set. The question is about a vacuum cleaner. The diagram the question refers you to is of a bicycle.

what

...Anyway, I think my favorite part of Christmas is not so much getting presents as buying presents for other people and watching them go "WOW THIS IS AWESOME" when they open it. To that end, I've been looking for Christmas presents for pretty much everybody I know and have found some awesome stuff:

1) Thinkgeek. Nuff said
2) 1TB hard drives can now be bought for <$200.
3) Desert Bus for Hope: The best charity ever, although it makes Zaheen think I'm even dumber than he thought

Let me explain #3 a bit more. A long time ago (1995 actually), Penn and Teller failed to release a video game called Smoke and Mirrors. It was completed, but the developer went under before it could be released; it then bounced around in licensing hell for years. The internet being what it is, eventually someone got ahold of it and distributed it widely among people with nothing better to do.
Smoke and Mirrors is actually a collection of minigames, the most famous of which is called Desert Bus. The aim of Desert Bus is to drive a bus through the desert. At 45mph. With no pauses. For eight hours straight. Even better, the bus lists slightly to the right, so you can't just put a book on the joystick and walk away. When you get to your destination, you get a point and the option to turn around and go back again. This continues until the bus runs off the road (where it gets towed back to its original destination, also in real time), or you hang yourself with the controller for wasting so much time. (Fun fact: this is why wireless controllers were invented. Now developers are free to make their games 300% more pointless without fear of being named pricipal defendant in a class-action lawsuit by the grieving families of people who played Assassin's Creed. RIMSHOT. Please kill me.)

Here's where the charity bit comes in. There's a "gamer" charity, Child's Play, run by Penny Arcade. Basically, the idea is that the more you donate, the longer these jokers have to play Desert Bus for. They're already up to 4 continuous days. And there are still 3 days left to donate. It's like getting to be a terrible person, but you end up doing good instead!

Laziness, and Twitter

Argh. I suck at this "regular updates" thing. Okay, here goes.

1. I HAVE A PHONE I HAVE A PHONE I HAVE A PHONE. It cost me 8 pounds at Asda. It is pay-as-you-go T-mobile (doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo). It can do three things: Call people, send texts, and get FM radio (what?). Exciting, huh? This is a good segue into #2, which is:

2. I drunk-dial. A LOT. I discovered this one morning when I woke up after a night at Revenge when I went to send a text and found that I had a balance of 9p. I've been told that I was really excited by the song that was playing (I have no idea what it was, but it was probably Disturbia) and wanted Pat to hear it too.
...
Pat's in Chicago.

3. I am going home on either the 12th or the 13th of December, depending on the suckiness of British Airways' changing-fee-fuckery / the University of Sussex's changing-exam-schedule-fuckery.

4. I have a weird cold that keeps disappearing and reappearing at odd times. So odd, in fact, that I turned down one two three four invitations to go out tonight because I was lying in bed, drooling, and hallucinating. Seriously. I dreamed I was a zombie made out of chocolate. What the hell?

5. I remembered Twitter exists and added it to my sidebar! I also added Stephen Fry as somebody that I plan to creepily stalk via the Internet "follow". Man, I think he might be slightly addicted to Twitter. Look at all those goddamn tweets.

Also, I must use this space to briefly complain about how much I hate the Chinese and the Spanish. Okay, so the one Chinese girl and the one Spanish girl who live in this flat are hardly a representative sample, but shut up because I want to complain.
Apparently it is acceptable social practice, in these respective countries, that if there is a kitchen available for use... any kitchen at all... no matter how many people share it... it is PERFECTLY acceptable to take it over for SEVERAL HOURS EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN NIGHT and sit around and LOUDLY COOK FOOD with your LOUD FRIENDS while YELLING LOUDLY in your LOUD NATIVE LANGUAGE. And then when you're done, it's also perfectly acceptable to LEAVE THE FOOD YOU PREPARED LYING AROUND FOR DAYS AFTERWARDS. ESPECIALLY IF RAW BEEF IS INVOLVED. GODDAMN I HATE YOU CHINESE GIRL.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Meteors and other small things

So the Leonid meteor shower is soon... the 17th, specifically. Unfortunately, because the shower is periodic, it's hard figuring when to go outside to stare at the sky and go "Look at that!" Fortunately, NASA solved this problem for us. All the way up to 2050.

The Fluxtimator is a Javascript applet which calculates when you should go outside based on your location and the date. In case your location isn't on the drop-down menu (which is pretty likely), it lets you put in coordinates. Which is useful if you've installed a GPS tracker inside your head or something, I guess. To be fair, though, I'd probably install a GPS tracker in my head, given the chance.

Anyway, I have also discovered the most perfect drink ever to be created. It is so good, I forgive England for the complete lack of sunlight and the fact that it gets dark at like 4:30. In fact, it is so good, the Muslim Law Council gave it a pass despite the fact that drinking it should technically be illegal under Sharia.
For the last few weeks, I kept noticing people drinking this stuff called Lucozade. I mean, they drink that shit more than Americans drink Coke, in that everybody, including my professors, are continually knocking back bottles of it. Curious, I bought a bottle. Excitedly, I took a huge swig.
My first impression was somewhat underwhelming ("What the fuck is this carbonated vinegar?!"). Not to be put off by this, I drank the entire bottle. The taste did not improve. I chalked it up to the English and their love for food that tastes like crap and went on to other things.
Half an hour later I had the most intense caffeine buzz than I have ever had in my entire life. I love you, Lucozade. More than you'll ever understand.

Woooooooo

Fun fact: When I went to my math lecture this morning, I was still kind of drunk. And my prof (who has now identified me as Knows Lots of Math Girl) decided to use me to explain to my row how to multiply matrices. Queue me trying to explain how to multiply nxn matrices through a haze of Fosters and residual "NA NA NA NA NA NA NA HEY HEY HEY GOODBYE"-type feelings and you'll see why nobody got much work done today.

Also (click for full image)


And that's all I have to say about that.

Ice IX: Electric Bugaloo-ine

I am now smiling the rueful smile of someone who's just watched her prof destroy one of her favorite books for reasons she really should have realized earlier.

The basic premise of Cat's Cradle (Vonnegut) is that there's a nuclear physicist who is brilliant, but easily distracted-- so much so that no one is allowed to ask him questions, because he will drop everything else to work on that problem until he's solved it (sound familiar?). Anyway, one day a general complains to him that his soldiers' boots are always getting stuck in mud, and if he's so smart can he think of a way to keep his men from getting stuck all the time? So the physicist goes to think about it, and for weeks he considers the problem, until finally he comes up with a solution.

Here it is necessary to know that water comes in different phases. Sure, everyone knows solid, liquid, gas etc. but at different combinations of temperature, pressure, etc., water will have different structures for complicated molecular reasons.

The solution is to come up with a phase of water where the structure is solid, i.e. ice, but would not melt at 0 degrees C-- in fact, the material he comes up with (ice-nine) melts at 45.8 degrees C. Because this is a Vonnegut book, of course, a seed crystal of ice-nine gets dropped in the ocean, destroying all life on Earth pretty much instantaneously. I asked Dr. Lawless, if this scenario were to actually occur for reals, how long would it take for the oceans to be converted to this new phase of water? Because I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be instantaneous.

Welp, turns out that it couldn't happen at all, because for water to actually become more ordered (to change from a fairly random liquid to a highly ordered solid) would require a HUGE amount of energy to be put in. Which, all things considered, is something I really should have realized before. It's pretty basic thermodynamics. Also, I have a huge blind spot when it comes to Kurt Vonnegut.

This post brought to you by "I have no lab today, therefore am spending my time thinking up silly things to post on the internet and considering how awesome it is to not have a lab today."

I have lots of work to do

For some reason I have a lab due tomorrow, which means I have to write it up and get my results ready to hand in. However, I won't get the final results until tomorrow morning. Which means I have to spend the day frantically trying to finish my entire report between 8 AM and 4 PM tomorrow. Excellent planning on the part of the demonstrators, I think.

Anyway, here is a video I like to call GET OUT OF MY HEAD COLLEGEHUMOR:



I mean, the guy's name is apparently Mr. Barnes. WHAT THE FUCK.

You know that stupid rumor that Inuit peoples have 100 words for snow? If someone told me that the English had 100 words for rain I would have absolutely no trouble believing that, since I experienced at least 5 different varieties walking to class yesterday.

Incidentally, if you have some spare time today, I highly recommend this:

Vice Goes to North Korea

Some beardy dudes who look like huge potheads got into North Korea (god knows how) and basically videotaped everything they could without being arrested while confusing the fuck out of their hosts. It's 14 three-minute segmets, which is annoying, but highly worth it if you're interested in seeing what the DPRK is actually like (depressing).

Also, to celebrate my horrible addiction to graphjam as well as my sheer helplessness in lab, I made this breakdown of how my fellow students and I generally spend our time. Click for big

More observations + SCHOOL DEATH

Walking to class every morning, I have noticed something about students here: they're goddamn slobs. Now, I'm not trying to be a hypocrite-- I mean, every space that I occupy invariably turns into a giant laundry hamper several times a week and you'll have more luck trying to find something with a divining rod than looking systematically-- but at least when I drink, I clean up the cans / bottles / carnage when I'm done. I've actually started a Daily Foster's Can Tally (what is it with that beer that shit isn't even that good): the most I saw was 12 empty cans, just lying on the ground, and my walk doesn't even take me anywhere near a residence. Seriously. Also, I recently saw an empty bottle of wine half-hanging out of a hedge. I have no idea how it got there. Well, I know how it got there. I guess what I mean is, I have no idea WHY it was there. I mean, as environmentally conscious as the British seem to be, there's garbage ("rubbish") cans ("bins") all over the place. Is it really that hard to put the bottles in the recycling? I mean, how drunk do you have to be to think that a hedge is recycling?

Anyway, you may have noticed that a significant amount of time has elapsed between my last post and this one. That's because SCHOOL ATE ME. I actually had to pull an all-nighter for the first time in years (well ok, a year) and all I did was write up a lab and do a problem set. I mean... what? I took a photo of my desk after I finished because literally every inch was covered in papers, textbooks, calculators, etc.:

And the mess continued for another two feet. Great.

...Fucking seriously?

Okay, quick poll. Which of the following did I learn in Numerical Methods today?

a) How to find the determinant of an n x n matrix
b) Basic integration
c) Factoring, i.e. (a + b)(c + d) = ac + ad + bc + bd
d) e^(i*pi) = -1
e) ?????
f) Profit!

Sadly, the answer is actually c). I wish I was kidding. Oh god.

Yes. Today, I sat in a UNIVERSITY LECTURE for an hour LEARNING HOW TO FACTOR. I'M A SCIENCE MAJOR. I WAS SURROUNDED BY SCIENCE MAJORS. THE CLASS WAS FOR SCIENCE MAJORS. DOES NOT COMPUTE (lol see what I did there)

So I went to my advisor and, in a very calm and reasonable manner, slapped him with a paperweight and screamed "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?!" (Actually I was very polite about it. There was no screaming and very few injuries.) After he recovered from his paperweight injuries, he explained: apparently in the UK, you can stop taking math at age 16. Fair enough, I guess in the States you can stop taking math as soon as you've done geometry and algebra, and quite a few people do... but... those people typically don't go on to pursue B.Scs. In fact, most of them usually don't even go on to pursue anything more ambitious than their next dimebag behind the Industrial Arts building. You might think I'm happy to have a math class I can pass by dipping my forehead in a puddle of ink and banging it on the exam sheet, but actually I'm really angry. See, I like math. I want to do more advanced math. I want to do differential equations and linear algebra and even, god willing, group theory. But no. I cannot do these things. Instead, I am stuck in a class where I am being taught that x * x = x^2 and (1/5)x = x/5. Sigh.

Incidentally, I had another "oh god I am going to die" moment a few days ago. I was sitting in Intro to Structure and Bonding, which is a neat inorganic-y sort of class, and the professor (who also happens to be my advisor! he's a really cool guy. his name is dr. lawless. he is not, as far as I know, a bond villain. unfortunately. derail over) was explaining how putting energy into hydrogen results in not a single continuous spectrum of excited electrons, but thin bands at distinct frequencies, and how that caused classical physics to shit itself and lead to the development of quantum mechanics. Now, this is a fairly basic concept. Electrons in hydrogen can absorb ONLY certain frequencies of light. They are ALWAYS the same. That's why quantum mechanics EXISTS.
However, there's always one guy (hereafter referred to as That Guy) who wants to have a Movie Moment. You know, the moment where, in a lecture of some sort, the Old Guard Professor will be explaining something and he'll say something like "It's always like this because that is how it is and it will never change because I am old." And then the Young Genius will raise his hand and say "But what if it's like this instead?" because he's young and has a fresh perspective and is also a genius, and the class falls silent and the professor stares at him, and then the bell rings (colleges always have bells to signal the end of class durrr) and everybody files out, and the Old Guard Professor asks the Young Genius to stay behind so he figure out where he came from. (For further examples, see pretty much any academic movie made in the last 20 years). Unfortunately, unless you're Russell Crowe or Matt Damon, it usually doesn't work out like that in real life, and it sure as fuck didn't here.
So back to the story. The professor has just explained the monumentally complicated concept of "bands here, not there, always like that" and this dude in the front sort of half-raises his hand. Like a total douchebag.
Professor: Yes?
Douche: You can't say the bands are ALWAYS there.
Professor: (lost for words) Uh... but it's been experimentally proven. It's the foundations of quantum mechanics.
Douche: But still, they might be somewhere else. It might not always be like that.
Professor: (clearly resisting urge to say "Yes it is, also you're an idiot") Uhhh... but... experimentally proven... I mean... uhhh...
Douche: You can't say that there's NO EXPERIMENT where the lines are different.
Professor: Um. Why don't we talk about this later.

It took serious effort not to slam my head into the desk.

Suddenly I understand

Looking out the window today, I suddenly get why all the music that came out of Manchester in the 80's was so ridiculously mopey. I mean, look at this:



Ew. Even the cows won't stand for this.

But yeah... as that one dude, the one with the ugly hair, from Pulp Fiction, said: It's the little differences. All in all, England's not so different from the States that I do a double-take every time I go outside the dorms... in fact, some of the dorms here could double for McMansions. But there are little things: the beer cans scattered around campus are Foster's; Burger King is more popular than McDonald's (so no Royale with Cheese yet); and even the exhaust from the bus I just missed smells different as it spews in my face, laughing at my hapless attempts to chase it down. (Probably because they have actual pollution controls here (except on food (ba-zing!))).

So... more clouds are rolling in off the horizon. This is a pretty shitty beach town, people.

Oops.

Okay, so more on the snafu I mentioned in my last post. Because if you're reading this, you're probably one of my parents, and if you're one of my parents, you care about this sort of thing.

See, when I got here, lost and confused, I was given a list of events for V&E (Visiting and Exchange) students to go to on the first week. Being that I am a good girl who is absolutely not hungover or strung out on coffee 90% of the time I'm awake (hi Mom), I went to every single one of them. That's right, even the ones at 9AM. Anyway, because of my diligence, I was rewarded with a schedule of events I needed to attend for my program, one of which was a list of introductory lectures for various courses. Only one of them was for a class I'm actually in, but oh well, I decided, and skipped merrily off to class (10 minutes late-- I overslept because my suitemates stayed up until 3am playing loud music and being drunk, which tends to preclude good sleep, but that's a different story).

You can probably guess where I'm going with this. Yes, I showed up late, to the wrong class. Awesome start, I know. And I would have continued in this awesome vein had Dr. Turner not been giving the next lecture, caught me after the first lecture, and said "Why are you here? You're not supposed to be in this class!"

Oh shit.

Yeah, I missed all the introductory lectures I was SUPPOSED to go to, went to one I didn't need, and caused everybody to think I'm a complete braindead moron. Pretty good for the first week, huh?

P.s. Mom, if this post worries you as I know it will, go lie down and repeat to yourself that it has all been worked out and everything is fine. In fact, you know what, you might wanna make that a mantra for the next little while.

Hi, my name is Sietske

I recently arrived in England to study chemistry at the University of Sussex. Watch my adventures as I try to puzzle out what people are saying to me! (People from the North actually say shit like 'sumfin'!) Admire my openmindedness as I accept alcohols from all different backgrounds! Laugh as I eventually succumb to end-stage scurvy because nobody has invented vitamin-enriched fish and chips!

So yeah, I haven't even been here a week (well, a few hours short of a week) and already I have picked up on the fact that if there's three things the English love, it's drinking, discussing each other's accents, and drinking. Oh, and messing up my course schedule because they can't be bothered to realize that I am not a pre-med student. Yeah.

Further bulletins as events warrant.