A Not-So-Grand Finale

Today was my last SHP class ever, and I missed all but the last 40 minutes of it. My wallet somehow managed not to be in my bag when I got on the train. I didn't get my ticket checked until the train was in Stanford, which meant that I waited 50 minutes for the next train, then rode another half hour back to home, where I removed my wallet from the truck--my parents, blessed beings that they are, had found it and brought it to the station for me--and sprinted to the tracks in hopes of catching a train that had just arrived.

I was, unfortunately, unable to catch that train, but I managed the one about 15 minutes later, so that was alright. However, in the process of chasing after it, I discovered that I am, in fact, very much not in shape. This means that, if ever I run after something important, I will not be able to reach it, which is, of course, undesirable. I am going to attempt to use this as an impetus for further athletic activity. Whether or not I am successful remains to be seen.

Regardless, I was able to meet two of my future charges after class--they are adorable. I am already mentally babying people less than a year younger than me! So excited!

So I meant to go to sleep

I told James that I was, and it'd be rather rude for me not to, now that I said I did. Particularly since I was up well past midnight last night. I'm not sure what I was thinking with that--probably that my body doesn't seem to care, and that Mafia and the subjunctive tense are more entertaining than whatever else I was up to.

I still haven't made a "sleep" tag for posts. I refuse to. Sleep is for the weak, as Becton would say.

It's ridiculous, isn't it, how frequently I talk about RSI people, months after the fact. I still hang out with them, too--I almost got lunch with Gopika today, I spent so much of those preview weekends with Rickoids--I feel bad about how many awesome people I'm not meeting, but whenever I'm not with my summer buddies I miss them. I've turned into a "One time at band camp..." person, but it's science camp, instead.

I went looking for "This one time at band camp" on tvtropes, since I assumed it must be something of a trope, and it turns out it was repeatedly used in American Pie. Or, it's frequently referenced from there. The line in question is "And this one time, at band camp, I stuck a flute in my pussy." I'm telling you this so that next time Cammie launches onto the topic, I won't be the only one feeling somewhat uncomfortable.

SHP is still fun, even though I barely comprehend cosmology and I'm alone on the train because no one else bothers to show up. It's good to see Gopika. It's occasionally even good to see Rube, though not usually.

I haven't really talked about any of the college previews here...I need to remember to talk about James and his complex manifolds, though I've already told most of my readers it, I think. Ah well, it rarely hurts to repeat a funny story, and there could be people I don't actually know who would appreciate it! Right? Right...

On the plus side, James is coming to college with me, bringing [my school] to 2 more committed Rickoids than [other school]. Which means that we're way more awesome. Duh.

This Has Been

A lovely weekend, all told. Nyx came over on Friday, and we lolled about, chattered, and made origami. On Saturday, I went to SHP for the first time in ages. I was placed in cosmology along with Gopika, Rube, Sarah, and this random talkative girl who seems really familiar (there was also a girl from Rube's school who had heeled rainboots (no comprendo) who sat next to a different girl who looked really familiar (I think she was at Math Prize for Girls, and is one of those people who is all into math competition gossip, because that was the discussion while waiting in line for the bathroom)). I don't know if Rube signed up for cosmology because of me, or if he landed his second choice, but I'm not going to ask. I was kind of late (I wanted a latte more than I wanted to be on time), so I ended up between him and this adorable girl from New Jersey (not Gopika, actually). It should also be noted that I really wished the namesake for the Gopika I usually talk about was still around (she's two years older than me, sadly), because our instructor is quite cute. Based her comments to the 15-year-old me back in our neurobiology days, she's the sort to appreciate a good-looking teacher.

I've also been devoting much time to rereading Anathem, which is every bit as engrossing the second time around (I'm hoping to finish it up today, in keeping with the three days I managed it in last time...I also don't think I'm going to get any homework done until it's finished, so I ought to take advantage of this brief period of no-homeworkness).

After class on Saturday I took the 1 line really really far to meet Chao in Chinatown. Her family took me out for dim sum, which was just as yummy as I remembered, though she was on the whole very disappointed in my inability to identify or remember what I'd eaten in the past. I always figure I'm not allergic to anything, it smells halfway decent, I might as well eat it (we discovered, however, that chicken claws (or whatever those were) kind of weird me out). It was nice to meet her family, and the food was yummy. After that, we spent a few hours wandering through Chinese groceries. I saw fish (alive, dead and whole, dead and chopped up, dead and dried, dead and dried and chopped up...I could go on), and all sorts of unusual (to me) fruits and veggies, including something that looked like giant grapefruit. On the whole, though, it was mostly just nice to see Chao.

Since then, I've been at home. I messaged with Gaea a little bit last night, and I think I sent her some ramblings around midnight (though probably before...it was before I left bedcheck (where "bedcheck" refers to "discussing international politics with James in a forum visible to members of the RSI '10 community")) regarding my current internal debate, which is what I want to do with my life. For some reason, "SCIENCE" is insufficient. I have this urge to find a meaningful place in society. I could probably do this by having children, but I was sitting on the train last night and listening to a group of mothers discussing how they managed to get their children enrolled in public school gifted programs (because, as we all know, those are designed to assist whichever students had the most outside help...), and it struck me that I couldn't do that. I am not a person who will be capable of making her family into her life--I love family, I think I want to make my own someday, but that will never be enough for me. I need more--I need science.

But what sort of science? I love physics, but where in physics. Do I do something that has the potential to actually change the world--nuclear fusion, for example, the plasma physics Julie so adores--or do I follow the piece of my heart that wants me to leap off the deep end into the math-heavy world of something like particle physics. I'll probably end up in the former--I love math, and it's beautiful, but I put it under a header more like art, and while art is beautiful, I probably will never create a masterpiece, and I don't want to sit at the edge of my life and realize that for decades of work, I've created a few small pieces of a few small formulas that will be rendered obsolete by the tides of history. But who's to say I'd make a mark anywhere else--how do I know? Why am I so obsessed with creating something enduring when nothing truly endures in the first place?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I found out yesterday that I'm still in the running for the Thiel Fellowship. I think, if I land it, I'll take it, because it might be a chance to do something. But I'm also terrified that I don't have the expertise, that the funds won't be enough, or that living by myself would do me in, or that my ideas have no merit, I'll find that out within a month and then be stuck twiddling my thumbs for two years (realistically, I'm not the sort of person to do that, but I worry nonetheless). It would mean going to college while feeling like an adult--I'm not sure how well that would work--and also heading into one of the most rigorous undergraduate curriculums in the country while not having done any schoolwork in two years. But if I actually accomplished something meaningful, it would be worth it, I think.

But that argument is likely irrelevant, as it's highly probable I won't land the fellowship and it won't matter. I'll still be stuck under wondering how I want to change the world--I'm a bit worried my daydreams of academia have become another microcosm of the "what if I just gave up all of this ambition" question--but then, getting to a point where I'm doing research is ambitious.

I have a feeling when I'm older I'll look back at this and laugh, regardless of whether I'm doing theoretical work or telling a large group of engineers what to do.

Unattached Musings

This is, *ahem*, a serious post. Somewhat unusual for me, I suppose, but I've been feeling rather moody all day (whether this is due to the comment we're about to discuss or to the fact that I'm back at school after a phenomenally luxurious break is currently undetermined) so this post gets to bear the brunt of it.

What set it off was a conversation with a certain Nyx regarding a certain Warburton (I'm currently trying to ignore the fact that it's entirely possible that Warburton will read this and recognize the description of himself...I'm still adjusting to the fact that people legitimately read this thing). Warburton is one of the many individuals who have emailed me in search of RSI assistance (my last count is 26 total); his email was one of the more memorable, though, as it was about four pages of sleep-deprived babbling, followed by an offer to play scrabble. I spent a couple of days pointing and laughing at the email, the read it closely enough to work out what he was asking and try to respond to that. After we had worked out that he was not, as I originally suspected, completely batshit crazy, I gave him Nyx's email because she wanted a scrabble buddy. She reportedly stayed up way too late talking and playing scrabble with him, and they reportedly had a bit of a nerd cred contest.

Nyx defines nerd cred as indie cred for nerds. Indie cred does have a wikipedia entry, so I suppose this is legit. I define nerd cred as "that thing I am always trying to get more of. Bryant probably defines nerd cred as "that thing I have so much of that I don't bother trying anymore." Bryant has an amount of nerd cred comparable to the level of indie cred held by a band that only its members have heard of. Warburton's nerd cred, from what I can tell, is more along the lines of the band that doesn't exist yet--so, basically, dude is a completely, ridiculously smart. I'm exaggerating a bit, but for the sake of the analogy, it is at least somewhat funny.

As I was saying, Nyx and I had a conversation on the way to school (it should be noted just how terrible I am at sticking to a serious topic). She said Warburton has more nerd cred than me. I agreed, saying that he should get into RSI as a result, but one never knows. She agreed with me, and I said that I wonder sometimes how I got into RSI when there are all of these awesome people out there. She gave me the look that said that I was missing some important point.

"You're a girl," she said, as if that was all the reason that was needed.

I can't find it on the website (so maybe it's not true) but I recall being informed, multiple times, that for those selecting an RSI class, affirmative action is not used. This is how we end up with 1.5 minority students and only 1/3 girls (I just checked flipped through my summerbook at counted the American students--30%. I cannot imagine it would be that low if affirmative action was used). The website does say that students are selected "solely on the basis of their accomplishments and intellectual potential," but this was in reference to costs rather than gender/race/what have you, and I'm not the sort of person who will seriously quote out of context.

Regardless, it hurts. It hurt when Dino said the only reason I was selected for SHP at the end of freshman year, when he was not, is that I was a girl. Because obviously my test scores are lower, or the same--I couldn't possibly have a greater level of scientific knowledge beyond the biology that I will freely admit he is better at. It hurts that when I am sitting at the top of my AP physics class (well, I'm not certain my grade is actually the highest, but that's because I'm being lazy and not working as hard as I should), class that has 25 boys and 2 girls (though I grant you the vast majority of these guys are jocks who probably should not be in the class), and people continue to think that I got into college because I'm a girl, that I had this opportunity and that opportunity because I'm female and not because I am a very intelligent person who has spent years working my ass off.

But I'm a secure individual. I know that shouldn't bother me, because satisfaction rests within the self. I believe that I am both capable and deserving, so it shouldn't matter what others think. The only reason that it should bother me is the same reason that the previous sentence says "believe" instead of "know." I am not as certain as I think I am. Nyx's words troubled me because she is among my closest friends, and is one of those I've known the longest and know the best. It makes me wonder: if my best friend doesn't believe in me, who will? And if she doesn't it, is my belief in myself unwarranted?

This is the insecurity that gnaws at me. It continues to live partly because most of the things that people regularly dispute can be attributed to affirmative action, so I can't quite tell myself that they aren't true--but I can't totally blame an outside source. Much of it is a case of "imposter syndrome", the feeling that, no matter what I've achieved, I've cheated somehow, and one of these days, someone is going to notice that I don't deserve my current position. It's common, from what I can tell, among women in the sciences, and I'll discuss it later, but I went on a huge tangent below, and I think that a discussion of that idea deserves its own post.

The insecure feeling is similar to that which troubled me when Kathrya assumed I wouldn't land something because I'd be competing against international students, and they'd all be better--though in that case, it bothered me less, because I'm well aware that the best of the rest of the world is substantially better than me. I'm well aware that a lot of students in this country are better than me--but in what I've dedicated myself to, the number is damn small. There are probably tens of thousands with my grades, but if you throw in research and everything else--there are a number that do better, but from what I can tell, there are a few hundred of us that are about on par with each other (maybe closer to 1000 or so, I'm not entirely sure), maybe a bit more or less--though I'm getting stuck on this one, because while it's easy to make sweeping judgements, I don't know what everyone else is capable of, and I still don't know precisely where I stand.

However, any of these people would be qualified, overall, for RSI. These are the people that will do research at Caltech, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford (though a smaller number of them will end up at other schools). I don't really know what separates those who got into RSI from those who didn't--RSI is literally too small of a program to accept all of the qualified applicants, particularly if we take to heart MIT's constant statement that it, too, cannot accept all who are qualified--but regardless, there are more people sitting at the level of "totally awesome" than there are people at RSI. And at this point, I no longer remember what the purpose of this discussion was--something along the lines of being the best here, but not the best everywhere, which doesn't totally make sense. My 1000 estimate of people who are really into research--well, that's not a very conservative estimate. I would probably be better off with a few times that. And if "the best" includes that many people, what really qualifies me to say that I or anyone else is the best? If we make our definition broad, we pick up people who are good at many things. If we make it narrow, we discount the most intelligent.

I think I just made a point, but it has no relation to anything else I've talked about. I wanted to say something about affirmative action, I think. About how horrifically bitter Gretchen is because, from what she can tell, being an asian female puts her at a disadvantage in the college process. About how worried I feel that I've been receiving things I haven't deserved, even as I am fuming over the fact that others don't believe I deserve them. So where does it help?

It helps the statistics. It makes schools have the right numbers. And as I said before, with the huge numbers of the best, you could quite possible fill an MIT class with asian females and have the whole class be amazing. You could probably do the same with white Europeans. I don't know enough about the numbers to say if one could do the same with blacks, or with hispanics--I have a feeling that there aren't enough total people in research positions already. You could probably fill a class with people capable of succeeding, but it's quite likely that they wouldn't have had the same training. Just like I wouldn't have had the same training if I hadn't been accepted to the programs I was accepted to--because that's what enabled me to be one of these best people.

I feel like my reasoning is going in circles. The problem is that any equality in receiving an opportunity can go two ways--you can try to equalize people based on what they've had access to, and accept based off of that. Or you can actually take the people who have done the most, sum total, to be the most qualified. It's confusing, and I don't totally get it, and I'm tired, and I have a feeling that I'm going to offend people, and I'm a bit annoyed about the fact that I'm no longer anonymous, so I'm probably going to offend real people.

*insert curse word here*

Super Hot Physics

AKA learning about stars...at SHP! (am I clever or what?).

I took the train in with Clara, who is by far the calmest person I know about college decisions (well, it might be close on Kathrya, but she is nonetheless very chill). This is in marked contrast to my own behavior...which we're going to try not to think about. Because if I don't write it down, it didn't happen.

For your entertainment, I've compiled some quotes by my astro professor:

"The moon looks like a barren Italy...sort of like Afghanistan. I mean, really, why is anyone fighting over that place? Its three major food groups are metamorphic, igneous, and sedimentary."

"Fools and Galileo do not suffer each other gladly."

"The Galileo spacecraft looks like someone put it together with an erector set while drunk."

"Atoms are like tuning forks."

"Thermal physics is kind of like Sweden."

"So, if I assume that the sun is made of doughnuts, I can use this assumption to calculate its lifetime."

"Rivers are instrumental to the gradual destruction of life as we know it."

The Difficulty of Remembrance

Delayed my train by 23 minutes. Quite a nuisance (though I hope whoever was unwell has improved). This, of course, meant that we got stuck behind a local train, which in turn meant that I was really, really late to class.

Which I care about. Clara and Helga care less, so I bid them goodbye at the campus gate and proceeded at a very brisk walk, mostly because I couldn't take another minute of not talking. As I was approaching Pupin, I heard the slapping sound of someone running in flip-flops and thought to myself "well, at least I'm not as hurried as whoever that is."

Moments later, a slightly breathless (which means he was probably running for a good while) Rube pulled up (yes, I'm using vehicular terminology) next to me.

"Hey," he said.

I blinked. "Hi."

"I'm late."

"Me too."

"I woke up really early, and I assumed that my parents were going to make me breakfast, so I lay down on the couch for a few minutes--"

I wished that I didn't know what his couch looked like, that my mental picture was less vivid.

"--And then I woke up, and it was 9:47," he continued. "So I got a cab, and here I am."

"There was a medical emergency on the train. Before I got there."

"I didn't eat breakfast."

"Oh."

We continued walking, his pace slightly faster than mine, because my shoelace was undone and I didn't particularly want to stop long enough to fix it. I looked down.

"Your feet must be freezing," I said, because, as I'd thought from the sound, he was be-sandaled (yes, that's a word).

"Eh."

"My toes would be blue. Or purple. Probably purple."

"When they go numb I can't feel it."

I believe I snorted. Let us pretend that it was a lady-like snort.

Anyways, we eventually got inside, and I went for the elevator, to which he said "elevator, really?" and I said "I'm on the thirteenth floor" and he said "reasonable, then."

Because it is reasonable. Eight flights of stairs is a lot.

He entered the elevator with me, even though he didn't need to. He'd held the door, too, when we entered the building. I can't think when that trait stopped annoying me when present in males. Perhaps when I realized that there are better outlets for feminism.

I flopped against the wall of the elevator, and he did the same, against the other. I realized, abruptly, that we were alone, and then, just as suddenly, that he wasn't wearing a hat. It was messy, too long, curling while flat against his head in that horribly adorable way, and I wanted--I squelched the thought.

"I'm sleepy," I said, though I wasn't.

"I'm not," he responded, as the elevator stopped for him. I stood in the elevator by myself as it rose the last six floors.

I walked out, across the hall, stood in the bathroom, alone. I began to laugh, perhaps just because of how fittingly him the exchange was, but also because I didn't need it. It was interesting, yes, fine, good, but uncomfortable. More comfortable than that last night, but not something I wanted more of.

I'm trying to reclaim the music he sent me. I went down to the beach last night, after leaving Cammie's. I played the Los Campesinos song that is so much fun, You! Me! Dancing!, with its wonderful exclamation points. The one that I played whenever I missed him over the summer.

I stood on the cannons, the song loud, looking at the sky. I thought about him, briefly, but then about the stars. About the sky, about the world, about where I wanted to be and how, in a moment, in this chill cold air, I could just feel. I jumped from the cannons to the ground, then danced, as erratically as if I were drunk, down to the water, singing lines that felt right. I thrust my hands into the water, splashed it on my face, then twirled back up to my truck.

It sounds like a baptism, now. I'm going to call it that. A new beginning. A fresh start, not for him, not with him, but for me, for myself, with, well, anyone other than him.

I am made clean.

I'm Skipping some SHP

because, in the scheme of things, prom is more important.

We will ignore the fact that prom has already begun to fade into a distant memory, and, instead, pretend that is was today. Or, yesterday, or whenever you would like to pretend that it was.

I was going to transcribe either Archie and Rube awkwardly meeting or my feminism and gender-equal education discussion or debate-esque conversation with Archie on the train ride home, but it is now vague enough in my mind that I doubt I could properly explain his opinions and statements without some really huge misrepresentations, so I shalt not doeth so.

Anyways, I got home, and my dear, darling mother set me to cleaning. By that, I mean that I put a few dishes away, took one look at the mess that was my room, freaked out that Genie was putting things away without telling me where she was putting them, convinced myself that it was so messy at this point that it really didn't matter, took a shower while Genie finished my room, and then sat, completely patiently, on the stool that goes with my keyboard, a stool which I am loath to call a piano bench because it is, really, rather small, although quite comfortable.

But I digress. Genie spent a considerable quantity of time blow drying my hair, as well as running up and down the stairs to our mother's room to obtain a wide variety of blow drying implements and sprays. I had no idea how much tech it took to get my hair to look "just like it normally does, but better." I am very glad that I don't do this blow-drying beeswax on a regular basis, because, again, so time consuming!

Next I put on mismatched clothing and proceeded to rush madly about the house in a fruitless attempt to get everything ready. This included vacuuming. I love to spell vacuum. It is a fun word.

More to come.

It's going to be June by the time I get to prom

but who cares?

Onto the next page of SHP! In the left margin is scribbled, in Teaish, the lyrics to the chorus of Mr. Brightside, because it is still stuck in my head.

According to Newtonian physics, we would have a static universe, because everything would just staying in its prescribed gravitational orbits and nothing would change. By relativity, the universe should have been expanding and contracting, but the currently accepted belief was a static universe, so Einstein added a fudge factor, the cosmological constant, to make the shifting size go away.

However, Einstein (or Ein-schtein, as my teacher calls him) will have the last laugh. Please note the foreshadowing.

Tralala, moving along. Hubble telescope (20 year anniversary whoooo) results showed that distant objects have more red shift because they are moving away. Conveniently, I had learned this in physics three days prior to class, so I was able to twiddle my thumbs and fidget for an interval of time considerably longer than Planck's. Anyways, redshift means that objects are moving away, because their wavelength is increased. Apparently more distant objects are more red, or that is what I have in my notes, but one would think that it is actually ones that are moving away at a faster rate.

Then our teacher said, "Surprisingly, with some notable exceptions, all stellar objects were redshifted. This meant that-"

At least half the class put a hand up to ask about these exceptions, so he expanded. Some local galaxies, including that one that is on a crash course to slam into us a few billion years after the sun goes nuclear (that way of saying "blows up" works better when not talking about a natural nuclear generator), are moving towards us, and these are blue-shifted.

Then we have a couple of equations. I'm going to ignore those. Using the redshift data from Hubble, a graph can be generated demonstrating that the velocity with which objects are moving away is directly proportional to distance. However, it was graphed as a line on a logarithmic scale, so I think there was some sort of issue, but we can ignore that for the time being. So, Hubble shows that the universe is expanding from Earth, but Copernicus's Law is that it is never all about us (stop being so gosh-darned self-centered), so ALL points in the universe are moving away from each other.

Then I took a bathroom break, because I couldn't sit still and was being fidgety, so that is all for today.

Rube's Eyes Are Brown

I have that written down in Teaish on the upper right corner of my first page of notes. It had been bugging me for quite some time, but I know now that Rube's eyes are brown, a shade lighter than Archie's but darker than Mario's. It really is odd that I expected them to be blue, just as I always expected Mario's to be. I think it's residual from Sturken, as I really spent far too much sum total time looking at his eyes.

Stay tuned, those of you who ignore these sorts of science-y posts (I'm looking at you, Kathrya), for the story at the bottom.

And so, we have Cosmology, the Universe, and Particle Physics. Because, naturally, we can cover all three topics in a single class. In case you were wondering, there is a standard model of both cosmology and particle physics, because, when in doubt, scientists choose the most confusing name possible.

The universe is a pie chart. Quarks, leptons, and photons together are less than 5% of total stuff; the rest is dark energy and dark matter. Our universe is 13.7 billion years old. Now, personally, measuring the age of the universe in years strikes me as rather silly, when you consider the mutability of our orbit, but, alas, it is a commonly accepted unit of time despite its unwieldy nature.

Fun fact: if the universe were infinite, the sky would be white, because, anywhere you looked, somewhere, you would hit a star. Now, personally, I think that if light dims with distance, than this wouldn't be true, but it apparently is.

And now, the funny story.

Teacher: The universe is most likely curved, so if you go in a straight line, you can never reach its edge.

Rube: What if I go in a curved line?

Teacher: That's what I said- it makes you travel in a curved line.

Rube: but if I curve the opposite direction, wouldn't I technically be going straight? And, then, couldn't I get somewhere?

Teacher makes a thinking face and crosses his arms.

Other Student: His argument makes sense geometrically.

Rube: See?

Teacher: Ah. I'm not certain. How about you try it and report back to me next semester?

Other student: Wouldn't it make more sense for him to report back to you last semester?

The entire class laughs and Teacher returns to his lecture. "This is how you know we're geeky," Rube says to me after said teacher has resumed talking.

"Hmm?"

"If we weren't so geeky, we definitely wouldn't have laughed at that."

"It was funny. Wouldn't anybody laugh?"

"You're overestimating the world, I think."

Moving Along to Saturday

Most unfortunately, I was up bright and early Saturday morning. The alarm went off, I smashed at it, it stopped beeping, I got up, I stumbled about- I can go on, but I can assure you, it is both repetitive and predictable.

And besides- How Not To Write A Novel advises not to start stories with waking up.

Nyx was already awake, and she looked tired. Come to think of it, Nyx has looked tired for quite some time. I blame Saltine. It is all his fault.

By the time I got out of the house, I was running late, although I am still uncertain of how that always happens. I then discovered that my dad had been the last one to use the truck, and he has an absurdly odd manner of parking, so I of course got stuck, and I would have taken out another two or three bushes if Mom hadn't shown up and helped. By helped, I mean "sit in drivers seat and drive." I am totally competent.

I made it to the train station at a time that was, overall, very close to on time. This week, Helga and Archie were there, but Archie was sitting with his Dad, so I sat with Helga. The three of us went outside, Archie left his Dad to stand with us ("That's my Dad." "Cool." "He's working." "Okay.") and we made idle prom related chitchat. Helga was going with someone I hadn't heard of, Archie was, naturally, going with Renna, and I said "with friends," as I wasn't in the mood for more confused glances. I complained about the time crunch, Archie looked confused, and Helga said her parents were picking her up so that she could go get her hair done, or something to that effect.

The train arrived. We sat in some order that I no longer remember. Wait, no, I do. It's all coming back to me! We lucked out and got one of those five-seaters, so we all got a bit of leg room, which is always appreciated.

I took out an English multiple choice packet and tried to do it, but every time I got more than a sentence or two in, conversation would resume. Archie, it seems, is quite good at regulating small talk, and Helga, who can do nothing but stare into space on the train, is always a willing participant.

By the time we reached Harlem, it was raining a significant amount. Even just walking from the station to a cab, by shorts were speckled with droplets. This week, the driver was friendly, spoke a bit of Spanish, and made no racist remarks. It was, all and all, a relatively wonderful cab ride.

Upon arriving, I left to forage (i.e. buy a snack from Nussbaum and Wu). I waited in line, and they guy in front of me was speaking Spanish, so I was only half thinking in the right language. I ordered a cranberry muffin, the guy working there said "cranberry?" and I accidentally responded with "si," so he responded with "quiere cafe," at which point I figured I couldn't not order a coffee, so I said "un latte," but I didn't know how to say decaf in Spanish, so I ended up with a caffeinated beverage. "Para llegar?" "Si."

You have no idea how proud of myself I am for that exchange.

Another Round of Particle Physics

A certain someone (i.e. Tea) is rather confused, but doing her best to keep up. As a result, you get to listen to (watch? read?) me go through my notes this week.

My header, outlined to make it bold, is SHP notes, as I had my new notebook, which was supposed to be electrical engineering notes but has already become something of an everything. On the top is a note to self: ask Rube about imaginary particles, which he was kind enough to explain during the break. Apparently, particles can borrow energy from nowhere, so long as they give it back quickly, and this energy sometimes generates new particles, but, in doing so, imaginary particles end up briefly carrying mass. Or something like that.

There is then a large drawing of a flower. Following that is "Unification" with a squiggly line under it, with unpredictable variables underneath it (and I mean "unpredictable variables." I don't know what the variables were). Oh, wait, I remember. It's saying that the standard model can't predict all variables.

Next we have "SYMMETRIES - explain everything." I must take the least informative notes ever. Ooh, now we move onto Field Thoery: must incorporate special relativity, quantum mechanics. At that point, my instructor hadn't yet explained what, precisely, field theory was, so I nodded along quite nicely. Fields are, as I later discovered, functions defined at all points in space time. They can be scaler, like temperature on the Earth, or a vector, like in magnetism. In quantum mechanics, this field oscillates sinusoidally, (like a mattress!), simulating particle interactions, as particles are the waves on a spring. It is at moments like these when I truly appreciate that Mr. Mubble taught us about waves on Thursday.

Then we went into Langrangians, which went completely over my head but had some relation to spring constants that was identified on the powerpoint by "(this is suggestive!)" at which I snorted at poked Allana to point out the ridiculousness of the exclamation point, at which point Rube tutted at my immaturity (this from the boy who attempted to argue with me last year that the penis game is not at all immature).

So, there are infinite waves, which work together like probability waves with particle motion. At places where the waves are added together due to constructive interference, particles propagate. Then there was some math stuff I didn't understand, and I learned that (cursive O) O(x^n) is "x of order n." Apparently whatever I just learned from that math can be applied to a crystal lattice, and the word phonon can be used to describe it.

Page 2! This has a series of notes on it between Allana and I. There was a short asian guy with bowl cut hair and glasses and an MIT shirt in front of us who, I swear to deities, looked exactly like Andy. Rube actually pointed to the guy and said "I be he's going to RSI with you." Anyways, I told Allana that if I guy who looked like that came up to her at Quiz Bowl nationals, he was my friend. She asked me his name, I said Andy, she said what?, so I spelled it on the corner of my page.

"I'll introduce myself as Shaniqwa," wrote Allana.

"I told him you were Allana."

"Names that Asians should not have: Andy and Shaniqwa!"

"Like Allana isn't Catholic" (this works better in reference to her actual name).

Beneath that, in Tea-code, is written "silly instrument," which, second to Wino, is our new favorite euphemism, and is from Canterbury Tales. My use of code to record it prompted both Rube and Allana to poke me repeatedly, trying to figure out what the hell I was writing.

Anyways, back to class....Langrangians, whatever they are, have symmetries called gauge symmetries, but pronounced gage symmetries, unless gauge is pronounced gage and I've been doing it wrong for all of these years. These symmetries apply to the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces, using an equation that includes circles with xs in them that make absolutely no sense. Anyways, the apparently predicts particle size, but this bit is rather boring so I shall skip it. There was something about minimums and partial derivatives (cyrillic d). Anyways, nothing forces a particular ground state, whatever a ground state is, hence it doesn't need to be an even function, so there can be SPONTANEOUS SYMMETRY BREAKING, which yes, is written in all caps in my notes and followed by wooooo!

I believe the wooooo is there because after Allana, Rube and I got back from stealing oreos from orgo and class resumed, the teacher said "and now, how that symmetry breaking occurs," Rube said "yay!" I said "whoooo" and the teacher laughed.

"So, mass comes from the Higgs field," but I still don't know what the 'so' is referencing. And a table! Look, logic. I shall copy this down into my notes so as to give myself the appearance of absorbing the information. Electromagnetism has one photon and is massless, neutral, has infinite range, and is calculated using QED. Weak nuclear has the plus and minus W and the Z, all three of which are imaginary, have gauge symmetry that has been hidden by the Higgs field, and are massive bosons with weak electric charges and zippy decay. Then there is the strong nuclear force, with its eight gluons, which are massless but self-interacting, colored, and calculable using QCD.

The next page starts with another fun euphemism, wino, as in a hypothetical symmetric pair to the plus or minus W. Now, a graph, with lines. "Theoretically, high energy scales will combine forces due to the effect on coupling constants as QED increases rapidly, strong decreases, and weak decreases slowly, finding a common value at ten to the sixteenth giga electron volts." Sure, yesterday's Tea, whatever you say.

Grand Unification Theory can be abbreviated as GUT, in case you were wondering.

Anyways, this one would be tested by searching for the decay of a proton, which would have a lifetime of 10^30 years, so if you watch enough, some should break down, creating observable Cherkov cones. But, after 1/5 a century of searching, we have nothing, so this particular GUT is likely useless, unless we have....

SUPERSYMMETRY (SUSY), which, yes, must be written like that. This would require an operator to switch between fermions and bosons, so there is an equal number of each. However, none of the knowns have pairs, so half our particles are missing. So, let's make up names for the particles that we haven't yet found.

Bosons become bosinos (photon becomes photino, etc.). Fermions become sfermions, including sparticles, squarks, and sleptons.

Allana then turned to me and said "You're such a slepton."

"Huh?"

"Whore."

"Well, you're a strange squark who can't get any."

She laughed. "So which is a better euphemism, wino or silly instrument?"

I said silly instrument at the exact moment that Rube said wino. Soon after that, I began playing tetris with myself on the side of the paper and shading in all the shapes, so there are no more notes, aside from Allan insisting that I am secretly called M.C. Tea, which is note true.

Particle Physics Careens Towards Boringness

I went to SHP today and, for the most part, completely ignored my class. I tried to pay attention, I really did, but then I decided to take a break to do a math problem, and by the time I was paying attention, the lecture had advanced so much that I no longer could follow it.

Whoops.

The train ride there was relatively boring. It was just Helga, Archie and I. I sat between them, and we managed a little bit of conversation before Helga pulled out her book, I untangled my ipod, and Archie fell asleep. At one point, Archie actually started to snore. I could hear him through the music, so I started cracking up. Helga laughed a bit before returning to her book, which was for English and, according to her, incredibly boring.

Interestingly, both Helga and Archie are looking forward to the end of SHP, whereas I am dreading it. How utterly fascinating, how different people can experience some of the same events and have such entirely different reactions.

I had originally planned to meet up with Rube for Mariokarting, but he had done badly in something and requested a raincheck (Allana was actually confused by the whole thing, which is kind of odd, but, hey, I get by). I texted Helga when there were about 10 minutes left in class to ask where to meet, and she and Ariadne were already outside, so I met them there.

Archie was still in class, they had no clue about Mario, but Ariadne had texted him, so he, of course, called me. To be perfectly honest, I'm still not following that logic.

We as a group had a horrifically large number of awkward silences. It's really remarkable how it's easier to avoid them when with just one other person than when with four. I think that with one person, you feel pressure to actually carry on the conversation, but when you have a lot, you typically let someone else handle it, and when nobody does, it just kind of dies.

I'm going to relate a couple of conversations, but be aware that both are interspersed with a considerable number of unpredictable and unnecessary pauses.

Archie: Middle schoolers are nasty.

Mario: Sorry, what?

Tea: He doesn't like middle schoolers. What was the phrase you used?

Archie: They're awful.

Mario: To who? Us? Each other?

Archie: Everybody.

Tea: This is true.

Helga: Middle schoolers are just nasty. I mean, looking back at it, people were so mean.

Tea: It makes high school look better in comparison.

Ariadne: I hate high school.

Tea: Really?

Ariadne: Yup.

Helga: It's so short, though.

Tea and Ariadne: But it feels like forever.

Helga: Really? It seems like it's only just started.

Archie: Agreed.

Conversation Two:

Ariadne: So, where do you want to go to school? Like, a city or a country?

Tea: I don't know. Somewhere other than here.

Archie: Not a suburb.

Helga: Definitely not a suburb.

Tea: How would you define school suburb, then?

Ariadne: Yale.

Tea: I believe New Haven is a city.

End Conversation

You may have noticed Mario's lack of participation. This stems from the fact that I'd given him my math packet #4 and requested help, and he had been staring at factoring problems (no writing implement, just staring) for about twenty minutes. I then spent the entire forty minutes in which we were standing because the entire train was packed, passing him various math problems, watching him stare at them, and then listening to his explanations.

Once some seats freed up, we moved over there and spent the remainder of the trip trying to determine the number of possible ten-unit strips that could be created out of green three-unit rectangles and red one-units. We had to do out all of the possibilities, and it took a ridiculously long period of time, but we eventually arrived at the correct answer, with minimal weirdness on his part (ex: "It's odd that we arrive at the same conclusions at the same time." "What?" "Never mind." "Sure. Where did you get that 6 from again?" "I divided twelve by two." "Oh, right. That makes sense.").

We had just moved onto the collinear candles when Helga had the decency to remind us that we were at our town's stop, so we disembarked.

Quantum Mechanics Confuses Me

This is primarily comprised of bad jokes and quotes, as, unfortunately, I really, really didn't understand the material.

In case you were wondering, photons make atoms excited. I suppose this is because atoms are jumping up and down, kind of, but not really.

Quantum mechanics focuses on particles and waves. I just missed the "map of the next two lessons" because I was zoned out looking at the really cute Asian boy on my right. Oops. I think he's Chinese, cause his eyes have a similar folding thing to Gretchen's, but I'm always awful at telling. Quantum mechanics is also when things are really small, like Planck's constant, which is also really small, 6.6 * 10^-16 eVs, although I'm not sure how big an eVs is, so that doesn't mean much.

Electric charge is quantized in multiples of e, which is the charge on an electron, not (1+1/n)^n. Light is also quantized and corpuscular, which according to Julie means occurring at dawn or dusk, which makes no sense, so I suppose we'll just ignore it. Angular momentum of electrons is also quantized, and I feel like that may be indicative of the various orbitals, but I really don't know.

Particle spin describes behavior of particles in magnetic fields, and it has "spatial quantization," in which vector arrows associated with the particles only point in specific directions with respect to magnetic field. Bosons and fermions are the two classes of particles. Bosons are whole integer numbers of a constant, and fermions are half, so it's basically like taking our odd/even numeric system and dividing by two.

Now, imagine a magnet. They line up north to south because that is the lowest energy configuration. Likewise, when in uniform electric fields, particles like to go in particular directions. I'm still not precisely certain why this isn't exactly the same thing as charge. Also, imagine electrons are spherical, like cows.

Moving electric charges reduce magnetic phenomenon. I have no clue what that sentence means, but it sounds profound, and it was in my notes. Now, I'm not going to talk about this equation, so let's discuss it in depth. Ah, well, that's confusing, let's not write it down. Also, everything about the spherical electrons is a lie. Moving along.

De Broglie found that massive particles (i.e. having mass, not big) exhibit wave properties, as does anything with momentum, its just that the wave-like nature decreases as objects get larger. A wave is a disturbance.

Also, my back hurts, and I want to lie down and sleep, so this will be finished at a later date.

Six Weeks

It was six weeks before I really got him to talk. Six weeks of nothing more than hi and hello and I’m fine and it was good and I’m going to get a coffee, I’ll see you after class.

It was pathetic, really, the entire situation. I’d arrive at the platform a quarter of an hour before the train arrived, and he’d show up twelve minutes later, clutching a paper bag, a newspaper, and a briefcase, looking for all the world like a businessman who had woken up one morning in an adolescent’s body and a teenager’s clothes. We’d exchange the slimmest of pleasantries before staring desperately into the distance in search of escape.

When the train arrived, he’d find the seat, but I’d sit first. He’d extract a bacon egg and cheese sandwich and a bottle of Tropicana orange juice from the paper bag, flip open The Wall Street Journal, and, aside from the greasy shifting of the sandwich, and the crinkling of the newspaper, and the rumbling of the train, there was remarkably little noise. The news was bad, and school was good, and his weekend was fine, and his class was interesting, and there was no statement that could not be compressed into a single word.

I hated it. I loathed him for ignoring my search for other students to sit with and I fumed every time he merely nodded in response to a question or comment. I stared pointedly out the window until the trees whipping past became too much for my eyes, and I let them shut, but I stayed awake, too angry to sleep.

I’d deliver a fast paced monologue on how awful he was each day when I arrived at class, the words exploding out after being pent up for so long. Before I started the final one of those twelve silent rides, I was ranting about how utterly obnoxious he was at the exact moment that he appeared behind me. I didn’t swear. I didn’t drop my bag, or start stuttering. I didn’t give any indication that all that he’d just interrupted a conversation centered on how annoying he was.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hey”

“You’re late.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” I said, but it wasn’t really.

We got in a cab and stared out the windows while the cab-TV blared, and we arrived at the station and stood on the platform, and he fingered his worse-for-wear newspaper, and I stared desperately into the wind, my hair flying about my face, hoping for a train, and soon there was a train, and we walked on and sat down and pulled out our ipods, and not one word was said.

I stared out the window as we tilted over the first bridge and rode through Rye and Mamaroneck and Cos Cob, strange towns that sounded like the bread in those disgusting heart-attack sandwiches he ate each week.

I was angry at him, so angry, and all he’d done was do nothing.

We passed over the second bridge, and the river glistened with the light of the low hanging sun, and the little boats stood in the water, and the houses sliced the threes into carefully ordered lots, and the docks broke the water into cells. A boy stood on a dock, wreathed in a pale gold light. He was gone before I could see if he was moving, before I could tell if he was even a he, before I could see more than that he was all that lived within the perfectly cut squares, and in that moment, I loved him. I loved him, and I would jump from the train and chase down the dock and run to him and hold him because his little bit of golden life was perfect.

An instant later, the boy and river and the houses were gone, and I looked back over at him, the him on the train who didn’t speak, and I hated him, and he hated me, but here we were within the aisles and the windows and the businessmen, and I knew that, next week, the seventh week, we were going to talk.

Me? Obsessed? Nah...

I finally turned on my phone last night to find the following:

From a texter who I still don't know who is, on Feb. 23rd: I know you don't text but ski cross is on now. i thought you should know.

From Mario, on Thursday night: I sent you an email. Did you get it?, referencing, of course, his Moody's related email.

And from another number I didn't know, but figured was Nia: Did the bus come yet?

I, in turn, sent out three text messages. To the ski crosser, I wrote "I don't know who this is from but im very sad that i didn't get this until now"

To the probable Nia I wrote: I don't know who this is but you should know that I rarely have my phone on me.

To Mario I wrote: As you now know I did get said email its just that i go to sleep at ten so you cant expect a prompt response after that. Also if u didnt see no class tomorrow.

For anyone who's interested, although I smiled way too much while typing it, I didn't agonize over my response at all. Both of them, despite the late hour (almost 11!) responded promptly.

From Nia, two minutes later: it's Nia lol

From Mario, three minutes later: I will take note of both.

Julie told me the next day that she was the ski-crosser.

The "I will take note of both" made me squee, so I immediately called Kathrya to tell her about it, because that's just the sort of person I am. It particularly helped as I was rather grumpy that class had been canceled due to snow. After all, I love SHP, and I enjoy the train rides a good bit more than I should, and I didn't see why a little snow should stop me.

I may have possibly gone to Starbucks today with the sole goal of appeasing my grumpiness over not seeing a certain somebody. However, I hadn't had a latte in two weeks, and I needed to get out of the house to study for the ACTs, as I just can't really focus when I'm in my room and my computer is about ten feet away.

I went to Barnes and Nobles to buy the ACT book first. I may have possibly checked the Barnes and Nobles Starbucks three times to make extra certain he wasn't there.

I think we all know who he is.

I turned the wrong way on Rt. 1 when leaving B&N, and took the most circuitous route ever, but did eventually arrive. I debated texting Vicky to tell her I was in Starbucks studying ACTs, cause it seemed like something she would be doing already. Lo and behold, I saw a telltale glimpse of glowingly orange hair (it actually wasn't glowing orange, it was more of a copper-y orange-red, but I just like the way glowingly orange sounds) and had a nice chat about ACTs with Vicky while her mother nodded along. Once my latte arrived, I spilled some coffee on my prep book while trying to remove the cap, and I'm fairly certain they both laughed, and Vicky made fun of my two packets of sugar.

I still contend that the presence of actual coffee in the drink makes it require more sugar. And I still don't get how a Starbuck's addict doesn't drink coffee.

I settled down at a little table in the sunlight and pulled out Beloved, by Toni Morrison, which I'm reading for A.P. English. I'm glad I wasn't at home alone in my room while reading it, because it was disturbing. Ghosts, rape, bestiality, and slavery in one chapter was a little bit more than I could handle. The bit about abusing calves still makes my insides squirm. I was about midway through the chapter when Vicky and her mother left, Vicky taking a moment to point out the fact that despite my brand new ACT book, I was not actually studying for the ACTs.

"It's for English!" I retorted as she walked out the door.

A bit after I finished the chapter one of the big comfy armchairs freed up, so I moved over there and dug into the ACT book. It was a lot of "this is worth this many points, that is worth that many points, this section tests your understanding of grammar, what is the capital of Swahili?"

I'm kidding on the last one.

I may have possibly looked up every time the door opened. Well, I definitely didn't, as I didn't notice Mario and brother (who is another always angry looking person, in case you (Ginny) were wondering) until they were in line.

Mario gave me "the nod." I nodded back. I have no clue what his brother did because, to be perfectly honest, I wasn't looking. Mario accepted one of those awful sandwiches with a patty of scrambled eggs in them and whatever sort of coffee he's drinking these days. His brother did the same and went to sit down, and Mario walked over towards me.

"So this is what you do when you aren't in class," he said.

"Oh, I hadn't had coffee in two weeks, and I just felt like..." I trailed off, and he nodded. I think it's the sort of sentiment a caffeine addict can understand. "Oh, and we actually did have class, apparently. Like, it was canceled, but it still happened, for the people who showed up, you know?"

He frowned. "I doubt they'll penalize us for not showing up, then."

"I suppose, but I still would've liked to have gone. I enjoy it," I shrugged.

"Me too. I think I like the routine of it."

"It's nice to get out."

This time he shrugged. We kept talking for a while. About the Challenge, about ACTs verses SATs, about SAT subject tests, about Moody's. Unlike Dino, he gave absolutely no indication that he thought our team was bad. He seemed confident, and excited, and felt like it would be more fun than the Green Super Student Challenge, or whatever it was called. We'd stop and pause every so often, and he'd sometimes start to step away, but I wouldn't look down and away the way I always do when I got nervous from talking- I mean I did sometimes, but, to be perfectly honest, he's a hell of a lot more riveting than my ACT book- and he'd just say something else and we'd keep going. By the time he left- I feel like it was about ten minutes, but it may have been far less or a bit more- I had a feeling that his sandwich was cold.

Good riddance. Anything involving bacon inside of bread is, in my opinion, better off not ingested.

A Continued History of Particle Physics

Our atmosphere is constantly bombarded by high energy particles, also known as ions. These cosmic ray showers include muons, which are heavy, not-very-stable electrons.

Neutrinos were discovered because Beta-decay violates energy conservation. For instance, a neutron decays into a proton and an electron, but the products don't have enough mass, and their energy isn't enough greater to compensate. Momentum, as well, is not conserved by this reaction. Pauli hypothesized that there is a particle that we aren't seeing. This particle is electrically neutral (so undiscovered) and very light, with few interactions with other stuff. Fermi decided to call it the neutrino. In the 1950s, the search for the neutrino began.

Lots of fancy stuff happened, and it was found that there are neutrinos and anti-neutrinos, even though the particles are neutral. Reactions with neutrinos were measured outside of a nuclear reactor, because these produce copious quantities of beta-decay. Even with this increased decay, there were still only 2-3 reactions observed in a given two hour period. This low rate was in part because anti-neutrinos were not reacting as predicted.

To explain this, a new law had to be created, as Feynman declared that if you aren't seeing it, it's not happening. This new law was lepton conservation, and lepton numbers are negative for electrons, muons, and neutrinos, but neutral for everything else. Anti-electrons, anti-muons, and anti-neutrinos have opposite lepton numbers. No, I don't know why this is, but it does explain that the anti-neutrino reaction didn't occur because lepton number wasn't conserved.

Then, the strange conservation principle was added. Strange particles, including kaons, were found in the late 1940s. These particles were strange because their production is mediated quickly by the strong force, but their decay occurs slowly and is mediated by the weak force. These mesons were found by scientists at the leading accelerators of the time, at Columbia, Berkeley, and the USSR. Then baryons, heavier particles, were found later as accelerators grew. Protons are the only known stable baryons. The discovery of baryons led in turn to the baryon number, a value that prevents proton decay. Meson number, however, does absolutely nothing. Strangeness explained the strange particle behavior.

Then I went to the bathroom. When I got back, we had embarked on the eightfold way, which is like Mendeleev's table, where you can use it to predict elements, but is much more Buddhist-y. Or, in my words, "if you do a lot of crazy mathematical shit, you end up with cool geometric patterns." The fact that particles were categorizable like this indicated an internal structure, in the same way that the periodic table implied protons, neutrons, and electrons. These substructures are called quarks. They come in different flavors and colors, but only sometimes taste good. They also have partial charges, but they can't exist in isolation, so don't defy quantization.

Baryons have three quarks. Antibaryons have 3 anti-quarks. Mesons have a quark and an anti-quark. All particles have colors that add up to white. My favorite quark is an anti-red strange quark. A particle and its antiparticle can chill out for a short period time without mutual annihilation, and their interactions are probabilistic in nature. Another particle was found, called the J/Psi particle, because no one could agree what to call it.

The End.

Particle Physics is Basically Awesome (historical overview)

Yes, another Columbia SHP related post. I seem to have a lot of those.

I've got particle physics this semester, and it's going to be good. My teacher (I could call him a professor, but the teachers are grad students, so it seems a bit weird) is British and drawls his words just enough that's it's very easy to consign him to the background and zone out but, when I actually listen, he's really very interesting.

As proof of it's interestingness, I actually took notes. He started the class with three particle physics related websites we should check out, but they also have other physics related stuff, and I think Julie would find them interesting. The sites are Interactions.org, CERN Courier, and Symmetry. The second site is reportedly the most "substantive," whatever that is meant to mean.

During the class itself, we took a somewhat circuitous route through the development of particle physics. I always like learning science like that, because it makes you see the thought process of how and why the science works, rather than just what it is.

The lecture opened with the end of the 1800s, at which point atoms were considered as small as it got. These various atoms were categorized by the properties, and the periodic nature of these categorizations hinted at some form of internal structure.

During the 1890s, radioactivity was intensely studied by Curie, Becquerel, Rutherford, and others. Radioactivity is the emission of particles. The existence of radioactivity implies that atoms must have an internal structure, as they are able to be broken into bits. There are three particles associated with radiation: alpha, beta and gamma. Alpha particles are the equivalent of a helium nucleus and have a charge of +2 and a mass equal to that of four protons. Beta particles (electrons) have a charge of -1 and a mass of 1/1800 protons. Gamma particles (photons) are electrically neutral and don't have mass. These particles were identified using deflection in a magnetic field (electrons, protons) and film sheets (gamma).

At this point in the lecture, Allana and I took a break to pass notes:

Tea: the clock is 1 hr fast

Allana: shh don't tell him. his face is smug.

Then we returned to 1897, when electrons were discovered by analyzing cathode rays responses to magnetic fields. These responses found that the electrons responeded to Loretz's force law, indicating that they were particles. This law can also, by breaking force into mass*acceleration, be used to find the charge/mass ratio of various particles through the measurement of only acceleration. This ratio was obtained by establishing the energy equilibrium of charged droplets of oil when they were suspended over electric fields, a concept which, two days ago, I would not have understood. These charges are always integer multiples of a fundamental charge, the charge on an electron. The mass was then able to be calculated.

The mass of an electron is .511 MeV/c^2, or a really fucking tiny amount, or 500000 electron volts. This unit of measurement is derived from the famous E = mc^2, and, when written in literature, the c^2 is often implied, because typists are lazy.

Then we move onwards to the plum pudding model (!!!), which Julie and Gretchen will remember from chem. This was created by Thomson, and involves raisin studded pudding. The model was tested by Rutherford's graduate students, who spent long, painful hours in dark rooms waiting for their eyes to adjust to dark enough conditions for them to observe the changes in a sheet that fluoresced when hit by particles. When alpha particles were accelerated at a gold sheet, those that didn't hit the nuclei of the various atoms went through with only slight deflections, but those that collided were refracted at angles greater than 90%, demonstrating that the negative charges could not feasibly be scattered within a positive goo, as Thomson had predicted.

This motion is represented by the equation N(theta) is directly proportional to sin (theta/2) to the negative fourth power. How they derived this equation in a time before the TI-89 is entirely beyond my ability to comprehend.

In 1911 the nucleus was discovered, with hydrogen atoms standing as some elementary particle. The we went into photons, and I got a bit lost, since I only vaguely comprehend sinusoidal motion.

in 1914, Bohr did stuff about electrons moving in circular paths.

Centripetal Force= m v^2 / r, as we learned in physics, and it is directly proportional to e^2/r^2 (the coulombic attractive force between the protons in the nucleus and the electrons). What Bohr tried to examine was why the electrons didn't simply spiral in towards the nucleus. He also did some quantization, noting more things that come in discreet chunks/packets, indicating that a particle of a constant mass is involved.

Quantize is my new favorite word.

1927 was antimatter, by P. Dirac. He used to full form of E = mc^2 to show that equations have positive and negative energy solutions, but that, rather than negative energy existing, antimatter had positive energy. In 1932 C. Anderson observed the antimatter equivalent of an electron, the positron. This particle had the same mass as an electron, but opposite quantum numbers such as charge, lepton number, and spin. The positron is notated using an e with a bar over it.

1932 was the discovery of the neutron, as elements were heavier than their protons. Still- what holds them together? Some other force must be involved, and the particles that carry it buts be neutral but massive. This neutral charge made them difficult to detect experimentally, as one can't simply measure deflection in an electric field.

This force was the strong force, which is "strong" in the nucleus but decreases in strength very rapidly over distance. This was predicted to depend on an exchange of particles between the protons and neutrons, and these particles were called mesons, as the mass was between that of protons and electrons.

Then we went into Heisenburg's OTHER uncertainty principle, and light waves, and I got rather lost, and class ended.

It was all jolly good fun.

Doodles

A few weeks ago, at SHP, I was doodling on my course calender, my typical swirly swirls of awesomeness. Then I realized that I'd accidentally drawn a penis. Then I spent at least ten minutes drawing other swirls and polka dots in a way that masked said penis without actually making it look like I was engaged in a massive cover-up job. It was pretty fantastic.

Dino refuses to believe that I actually doodled the spirals on the back of my assignment planner, for instance. Whenever anybody says "cool planner," he says, "she didn't draw that." Because he's a liar. And the derivative of acceleration.

Julie says that she thinks she missed out on the doodling thing. I think it's a life skill, acquired slowly over years and years of practice. Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours, and all that schtick.

This Week At SHP

I got to the station rather ridiculously early because I had to buy a new ticket, and I really wasn't in the mood to move quickly. I stood around for about seven or eight minutes by myself, growing progressively more worried when no one else showed up. I then texted Melissa and called my house. Neither responded. A couple minutes later, pretty much exactly at the time when the train is supposed to show up, Mario walked out of the station.

"Oh, good," I said, and walked over to him. We exchanged the typical perfunctory greetings. "I was beginning to think I didn't have class."

"Oh." He frowned for a moment. "I dunno. I didn't check."

"I called my Dad, but he didn't pick up. I texted Melissa, also."

"She didn't text back?"

"No. I can only assume that she must be asleep, cause she always has her phone with her."

"Yeah." We looked awkwardly around and try to think of something to say. He put his notebook on the ledge. I took my hat off. He picked his notebook up. I put my hat on. He counted the number of pages in the folder. I looked to the direction the train was coming in. I looked the other direction because the sun was too bright.

"Do you think anyone else is going to show up?" he asked.

"I dunno. I think Archie said he had ACTs."

"Irving never comes."

"Melissa's sleeping."

"I dunno about Ariadne."

"Me neither and oh! that's me!" My purse had begun to play Mozart. I pulled out my phone.

"Hello?"

"Hi. Why'd you call?"

"There wasn't anyone else here so I wasn't sure if I had class."

"What?"

"There wasn't anyone else here so I wasn't sure if I had class."

"I can't understand you."

"There wasn't-"

"What?"

"I wanted you to check the class schedule."

"Oh. Why didn't you say so?"

"Well it's fine now, Mario's here- it's my dad- and so you don't really need to-"

"He probably should. I'm not certain that we have class," said Mario.

"Could you check? It's on the bulletin board and the internet."

"Sure. I'll call you back when I find it. It'll be a couple of minutes. I'm upstairs. I was in the bathroom."

"Great, Dad, thanks." I hung up. "He has to walk downstairs to check," I told Mario.

He nodded.

"Do you know what time it is?"

I've just come to the realization that if I don't stop myself, I could probably easily reiterate the entire days conversation right now. Well, it'd probably take me an hour or two- we definitely spent at least that long talking- but I'm pretty sure I remember all of it. I guess I'll try to give a highlight reel. We spent a good amount of the time, both up and back, doing colleges. I think that since it's a clear, overlapping interest, and Mario's slightly obsessed, it works reasonably well. What's really funny is when I relate his own opinions back at him, using different words, from things he's told me before, and he just nods along in agreement, sure that I came up with it myself, and not that I'm just trying to fill in his words so he doesn't have to strain himself thinking of them. During the cab ride back, he was talking about the repetitiveness of people's college essays and I mentioned that he sounded like he could work in a college admissions office already.

"I know." He paused. "It's kind of pathetic."

I didn't respond. I wasn't really sure how to.

Miscommunication

This week at SHP, it was just Mario, Melissa and I on the train both ways. We were sitting in a three across, with me at the window (although there wasn't actually a window, so I was rather claustrophobic), then Mario in the middle, and Melissa in the aisle seat because it doesn't have a little headrest thing, but she's so short that it doesn't matter. As always, Mario still managed to take up about half the space, because he sits that stupid way guys always do, with about a foot and a half between their knees so that they can air out the junk, or something.

We were having a perfectly reasonable discussion of Irvingisms (things that Irving says frequently, a term coined by Mario, who got an English paper back saying that he lacks control of language, which is basically true, as Vicky can attest to after reading his US portfolio, but he went and talked to his teacher, who couldn't articulate quite what she meant by that, so he doesn't like the teacher, and he's decided that he's going to use his unholy amount of free time to write a book, but you and I know it probably won't be a very good book, seeing as he's not the greatest of writers, but have fun with that, Mario) when Mario broke off mid-sentence and turned to Melissa.

"Melissa," he said, patting her knee. "No matter what you hear, I want you to remember that I am your friend, and that I like and respect you, as a friend."

"What?" she said.

"Just remember that. Also, know that I sometimes like to show off around Irving."

"Mario," she said warily. "What happened with Irving?"

"Just remember what I'm telling you-"

"Mario, we're friends, right?"

"Uh, yeah."

"So if you tell me this, it won't bother me, but if I hear it from Irving..."

"Well, you'll find out on Tuesday either way, because he said he would tell you at math team unless I told you before hand."

I laughed. "It must be really bad then, if he gave you a warning period."

"Mario, you have just got to tell me now."

"It won't make a difference if you hear it now or later," he said.

"It makes a difference to me. If it's later, I won't hear."

"Don't worry, I'll tell you," said Melissa.

"Besides, you'll be in math team."

"Yeah, but I'm generally on the other side of the room."

"You sit with the people who actually work," said Mario scornfully, which is such a lie because I know he does his math packets.

"Well, I just feel like Ginny and I would be invading if we went and crashed the other side of the room."

"I wouldn't mind. It'd free me from the boy's club," said Melissa.

"Boy's club?" asked Mario, oblivious as always.

"Well, maybe you don't notice it cause you weren't really there last year, but Irving and Dino and Owen and Tybalt-"

"Did you hear Tybalt's doing different rounds this month? He's giving up on breaking into the 4-5-6 thing."

"Yeah, I know, he told me," I said. "He's probably going to take my spot."

"It'll either be yours or mine," said Mario.

"B Team is way cooler," said Melissa, who, along with Owen, rules the B(ench) team.

Mario shrugged. We sat in silence for a moment, before he said, "Alright, I'll tell you."

"Ooh!" I grinned and turned in my seat so I could observe both him and Melissa's reaction.

"Just, remember what I said before alright?" He put an arm over her shoulder. I laughed because the foreshortening of the angle made his hand look weird, but neither of them noticed. "Well, last week I sent Irving a text message that said 'Melissa and I aren't going on the train this week,' and then I realized that it sounded like, well, you know. So he said why and I said because she had a long night."

Melissa and I laughed when we realized where he was going.

"So he goes where are you, and I go where do you think? And then he tried to call and I was like, I can't talk, she's sleeping."

"And he believed you?"

"Yeah. I went into school on Monday and he was like Duuude! I'd tap that and oh my god this is our stop."

The doors had already been open for a half a minute, so we jumped up and rushed off.

"That would have been bad," I said.

"That's a bit of an understatement," said Melissa. "And he really thought we were having sex?"

"Well, I strung him along for a couple of days, and he literally had no clue I made it up."

"Are you serious? He never said anything to me," said Melissa. We started into the tunnel that goes under the tracks.

"I just can't believe he believed me."

"Maybe he just wouldn't expect you to lie," I said.

"Seriously, though. I mean, you can't just sleep around in high school. Your dad comes home in the morning and sees the car and doesn't think anything of it? Please."

We reached the other side of the tunnel. I turned to go left, Melissa began dialing on the phone which hadn't left her hand, and Mario looked around, confused. "Why am I on this side of the tracks? I'm parked over there."

"I dunno. I'll see you later," I said, and started walking.

"Wait, you drive?"

"Yeah."

"Where'd you park."

"Over there."

"There are spots on the other side."

"I know, but I drive a truck, and I don't like taking that turn."

"Oh."

Melissa waved goodbye and started walking the other way. Mario turned to leave. "Bye, Tea."

"Bye."

I was still laughing when I reached the truck.