Dutch. Conclusion: Helemaal ja! God I'm bored.
Verstuurd vanaf mijn iPod
Pspspsecret
1 hour ago
Sunday, 15 March 2009
More from Examland
Sometimes I think my professors don't put a lot of faith in our abilities. I was going through the notes for my materials class when I found a slide that says "The Greeks used the same word, krustallos, to refer to both water and quartz". The next slide says "Water and quartz are not the same thing". There is also a diagram illustrating the difference.
...
also I refuse to tag this entry with "SCIENCE" because the ability to distinguish between a liquid that you drink and a hard mineral that you mine out of the ground isn't exactly Nature material
[edit] one quick thing. I was talking about textbooks with my materials/polymers professor and he told me Peter Atkins drives a Rolls. What the fuck?
...
also I refuse to tag this entry with "SCIENCE" because the ability to distinguish between a liquid that you drink and a hard mineral that you mine out of the ground isn't exactly Nature material
[edit] one quick thing. I was talking about textbooks with my materials/polymers professor and he told me Peter Atkins drives a Rolls. What the fuck?
Saturday, 14 March 2009
Chemistry trivia
Here's some random junk I found out today. Doubtless they will be the only things I can think of when actually facing exams.
1. The average adult human contains 25g of magnesium.
2. Owing to its weak metallic bonds and light BCC structure, sodium does, in fact, float.
3. Beryllium compounds are some of the most toxic substances known to man.
4. Below a certain temperature white tin changes to grey tin. White tin was previously used as a solder on cans; it's thought that bringing these cans on some arctic expeditions is what led (among other things) to the expeditions' failure.
5. Cesium and water make a very entertaining combination.
6. HF, being a weak acid, doesn't hurt when you spill it on your skin. It does, however, continue through your body until it reaches bone, where it leaches calcium from your bones and blood until you die of cardiac arrest.
7. Wouldn't #6 make an awesome House episode? House could figure it out like two seconds before the patient dies and then he dramatically rushes in and starts rubbing elemental calcium on the patient's feet or something while Cameron goes "HOUSE WHAT ARE YOU DOING" and then the patient suddenly comes back to life and all is well and then he and Wilson trade quips as the end credits roll. Oh wait that's every single episode of House ever.
8. The phosphorous is on the side of the matchbox, not the match head. Unless you have strike anywhere matches, then it's on the match head.
9. White phosphorous is so energetically unfavorable, it's like the most retarded allotrope ever.
More as studying warrants.
1. The average adult human contains 25g of magnesium.
2. Owing to its weak metallic bonds and light BCC structure, sodium does, in fact, float.
3. Beryllium compounds are some of the most toxic substances known to man.
4. Below a certain temperature white tin changes to grey tin. White tin was previously used as a solder on cans; it's thought that bringing these cans on some arctic expeditions is what led (among other things) to the expeditions' failure.
5. Cesium and water make a very entertaining combination.
6. HF, being a weak acid, doesn't hurt when you spill it on your skin. It does, however, continue through your body until it reaches bone, where it leaches calcium from your bones and blood until you die of cardiac arrest.
7. Wouldn't #6 make an awesome House episode? House could figure it out like two seconds before the patient dies and then he dramatically rushes in and starts rubbing elemental calcium on the patient's feet or something while Cameron goes "HOUSE WHAT ARE YOU DOING" and then the patient suddenly comes back to life and all is well and then he and Wilson trade quips as the end credits roll. Oh wait that's every single episode of House ever.
8. The phosphorous is on the side of the matchbox, not the match head. Unless you have strike anywhere matches, then it's on the match head.
9. White phosphorous is so energetically unfavorable, it's like the most retarded allotrope ever.
More as studying warrants.
Monday, 9 March 2009
Lab Photos
Continuing my trend of posting nothing but photos, I surreptitiously took some photos of the teaching labs today. They are cell phone photos so sorry for the quality, but you get the idea. :D
Some microscopes. You will notice that they don't have lights under the stage. We had to shine lights on the subject to get a picture. In this case it makes sense, though, because we were trying to buff cracks out of the surfaces of a few metals, and the microscopes were to check on our progress.
More microscopes and stuff. The blue putty in the syringe is diamond paste. Basically, the idea was to rub the metal sample (copper in my case, not pictured) first on the sandpaper in the upper left corner, then on the black velvet pad shown, to buff out any scratches on the surface. (Yes, it's very boring, yes, it makes your fingers ache.) After that, you etch with iron (III) chloride. In theory, this makes the grain boundaries appear very clearly under high magnification. (In practice, maybe if you're really lucky.)
This is an unrelated shot of some of the teaching labs' spectroscopy facilities at Sussex. The big grey box in the corner under the printer is one of the five frequently non-working IR machines. There's a UV-Vis spectrometer off to the right that you can't see.
At this point the head demonstrator was giving me the stink-eye so I had to put my phone away. Maybe next time I can sneakly get a picture of the TEM! (hahahahaha like they let the undergrads look at that)
Some microscopes. You will notice that they don't have lights under the stage. We had to shine lights on the subject to get a picture. In this case it makes sense, though, because we were trying to buff cracks out of the surfaces of a few metals, and the microscopes were to check on our progress.
More microscopes and stuff. The blue putty in the syringe is diamond paste. Basically, the idea was to rub the metal sample (copper in my case, not pictured) first on the sandpaper in the upper left corner, then on the black velvet pad shown, to buff out any scratches on the surface. (Yes, it's very boring, yes, it makes your fingers ache.) After that, you etch with iron (III) chloride. In theory, this makes the grain boundaries appear very clearly under high magnification. (In practice, maybe if you're really lucky.)
This is an unrelated shot of some of the teaching labs' spectroscopy facilities at Sussex. The big grey box in the corner under the printer is one of the five frequently non-working IR machines. There's a UV-Vis spectrometer off to the right that you can't see.At this point the head demonstrator was giving me the stink-eye so I had to put my phone away. Maybe next time I can sneakly get a picture of the TEM! (hahahahaha like they let the undergrads look at that)
Sunday, 8 March 2009
Why
...is it that the more I sleep, the bigger the bags under my eyes get?
I just took a nap, honestly!
Oh, haha, very funny.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH ok maybe I do need a nap.
I just took a nap, honestly!
Oh, haha, very funny.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH ok maybe I do need a nap.
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