Shopping

Captain's blog, stardate 7384.2...
Yes, I went shopping! Well, not really. But I did buy something, so that sort of counts as shopping. I even get bonus points for it not being a book! Truly, I live up to the stereotype of the American teenager.

The day started out normal, if you call writing an English paper normal. It is normal for me, and here's why. You can tell if something is normal to a vector by seeing if the cross product is at a maximum. No school-related task makes me as cross as writing papers, so the cross product is maximized. Therefore writing papers is normal to me.

Anyway, I finished the paper and decided to take a walk down to Harvard Square. It's about a mile away, nice walk, the weather was great, so why not, I figured. Everything was pretty nice. I got some ice cream and ate it on the way back. Then I stopped in at a store called Pandemonium to read some D&D player's handbooks. Player's Handbook 3 was really cool, and I still didn't have it.

I bet you all think you know what happened next, don't you? But you're wrong. I didn't buy the book. If you were paying attention up top there, you'd remember I said I didn't buy a book. I put it back on the shelf and went upstairs to leave.

And then it caught my eye. The words "Star Trek" in bold white letters. The USS Enterprise blasting an asteroid with its phasers. Resistance was futile.

A brightly remastered image for each month. All the lettering in that familiar title font. Birthdays already marked down for the members of the original cast.
And in between June and July, a stunning two-page spread:

I needed it, and I needed it bad. Barely thinking, I handed over the money and brought it proudly back to my room.

And that is how I, Elizabeth, went shopping on a Saturday afternoon. I don't regret it a bit.

Stuff that Happened Recently

Captain's blog, stardate 8294.3...
It seems that in my excitement over getting to write about Star Trek, I forgot that the point of my blog is to talk about what's going on.

Well...I'm really busy. I have a physics test on Monday, a math test on Wednesday, an English paper due Thursday, and a chemistry test a week from Monday. Also, I still have problem sets to do for chemistry and physics. So that kind of stinks.

On the topic of math, I don't think we've had a Quote of the Day from my math professor yet.
"The logistic equation can be used to model population growth, or the spread of a disease, or chemical reactions, or some other disease, like how many people are playing FarmVille on Facebook."

On a different, completely unrelated topic, I didn't get any work done last night, because my dear friend Elena was visiting colleges and we met up in the evening. So that was lovely; I got to advertise my college and jabber on about physics. Also, I got to help improve Elena's woefully inadequate knowledge of Star Wars and Trek.
Elizabeth: Haven't you seen Star Wars?
Elena: I think I saw one of them, it had the little green guy.
Elizabeth: His name is Yoda and almost all the episodes have him. [Episode 4 is the only one which doesn't.]
Elena: Well, uh, there was this guy who talked funny and I think they went to his planet?
Elizabeth: Oh, Jar-Jar. That's Episode 1. Silly Elena.
She's so awesome, and I hope she comes to MIT because she would like it a lot there. She would have to learn at least the names of the main Star Wars characters, though, because that's just common knowledge.

(Science) Lessons from Star Trek

Captain's blog, stardate 9274.3....
As you all saw in the last post, physics is good science but provides horrible life lessons.
Now let's take a brief look at Star Trek, which can provide good life lessons...but horrible science ones.
This is just a sample, so if you want a full list, go watch the show for Pete's sake.
According to Star Trek...

• A race of creatures which must consume very large quantities of salt to live can survive indefinitely on a planet with no natural sources of salt. (This is from "The Man Trap". The creature in question normally drains living creatures of salt to survive. However, for some reason it couldn't do this on the planet where it had evolved due to lack of salt sources, apparently. The scientist who lived there had to feed it salt tablets--begging the question of how it survived before he got there.)
• Silicon-based life is just like carbon-based life, except it's virtually indestructible and looks stupid. ("The Devil in the Dark")
• Water can somehow be turned into a chain of molecules that behaves vaguely like alcohol, according to "The Naked Time". The best part? This is caused by an imploding planet. No, really.
• It is possible for the Enterprise to fall out of orbit if the engines run out of power.
• Human beings can survive temperatures of negative 170 degrees Farenheit with only small blankets and heated rocks to provide warmth, for extended periods of time. Not only that, even redshirts can do so! ("The Enemy Within")
• A person made of matter can travel to an antimatter universe with no adverse effects, unless the antimatter version of him is also there. ("The Alternative Factor". Then again, the person in question was Kirk, and he tends to change the laws of physics to suit his whims.)
• It is standard medical procedure to carry around 100 times the necessary dosage of a drug known to be dangerous in large quantities. ("The City On The Edge Of Forever", one of my favorite episodes)
• Cells can be any size whatsoever, including several thousand miles across. ("The Immunity Syndrome", "Operation: Annihilate!")
• It is standard medical procedure to use the entire light spectrum when instructed to shine lights on someone. ("Operation: Annihilate!"
• It is logical to have a vestigial set of eyelids, which are not used except in emergencies, rather than simply evolving one thick set of eyelids. ("Operation: Annihilate!")
• ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT IS RED. ("Operation: Annihilate!" once again...did I mention I hate that episode? It just makes no sense.)
• Cells can exist in the vacuum of space and survive by absorbing energy from passing ships. ("The Immunity Syndrome". I think this one could use some extra explanation: There is a 11,000-mile amoeba. Floating around in deep space. It drains the energy from a ship full of Vulcans and tries to do the same to the Enterprise. Doesn't convert the matter to energy, just drains the engines and makes everyone die of exhaustion. No one has been in this area of space before, and the amoeba doesn't move, so this is presumably all it's consumed. Ever. It is 11,000 miles across.)
• All computers can be destroyed by paradoxes. (Pretty much every episode featuring androids or computers.)
• Radiation poisoning can be cured or even prevented by adrenaline. ("The Deadly Years")
• Diseases which cause death within 24 hours somehow manage to infect small numbers of people on a regular basis. ("The Mark of Gideon". You'd think that pretty much everyone who got such a disease would die before they could spread it to someone else, especially since the virus in question was transmitted through blood rather than through the air.)
• Disembodied brains can transmit radio signals. Said radio signals sound like the voice of the person who once owned the brain. ("Spock's Brain", of course. Boy is that one silly.)
• When in doubt, the answer is always ions. If it's not ions, it's antimatter.

There are plenty more delightful science lessons one can learn from Star Trek, but now it's time for me to do some real science.
Quirk out!

EDIT: I can't believe I forgot this one! The episode is "Court-Martial". Kirk has a device that, he claims, will amplify all sounds by a power of.....
One to the fourth! Wow, that's powerful. (The best part: It makes their heartbeats louder, but does amplify their voices, breathing, etc. by a power of one to the fourth.)

Lessons from Physics

Captain's blog, stardate 6968.4....
OK, newsflash! The college that repeatedly told me would have a really intensive workload actually *gasp* wants me to do work! Inconcievable!
I barely got any work done on the weekend, due to a combination of having to do other things and wanting to have a little fun. Now I'm desperately struggling to keep my head above water...wait, that's a bad metaphor because I can't tread water.
ABRUPT SUBJECT CHANGE TO DISTRACT EVERYONE! My physics teacher said the other day: "In cases like this, you have to ask yourself 'what would a positive charge do'?" So I shall ask myself: What Would a Positive Charge Do? The answer, according to physics, is "move towards a region of lower potential".  But everyone wants to have the potential to do great things, so why move to a region of lower potential, especially if I'm feeling positive about myself at the time? According to physics, if I want to move towards higher potential, I'd have to be negative about the situation, which I have tried, and it doesn't work! Curse you, physicists! Remind me never to take advice from you again!
Of course, don't forget that positive and negative charges move towards lower potential energy, so pretty soon I won't have any energy either! (Well, I will, but it will be kinetic energy and I don't need that! I'm a student, not an athlete!)
Let's see what else we can learn from physics, shall we?
a) If a charge (me) is placed in a uniform field, it will move in the direction of the field if it in positive and in the opposite direction if it is negative. This is not true, I'd go towards a nice green field no matter what. It's better than boring old sidewalks.
b) Positive charges are repelled by other positive charges. Not true, everyone wants to be around people who are positive!

Conclusions: Physics is silly and everyone should just stick to math. (It's OK, physics, I love you anyway.)

Still Alive

Captain's blog, stardate 4197.1...
Well hello there. It's 10:30 on Friday night and I just spent two hours doing chemistry homework. Isn't that just a lovely way to spend an evening? (That was a rhetorical question. The answer is "NO, because I didn't even get any math homework done.")

Seriously, they weren't kidding when they said we would have to work here. Sitting here, with 2/3 of a chemistry P-set and all of an 18.03 P-set to (hopefully) finish by Wednesday so I can start my homework cycle all over again, I wonder why I love this place so much. I'm still fairly convinced that I love it here, though. Maybe it's just too much chemistry clogging up my brain, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to be someplace else.

Eh, whatever, maybe I'm just really weird. That would explain a lot, actually.

Yay for weekends...except not, because there's always stuff for me to be doing on the weekends which is not my homework, and when I'm not doing said miscellaneous activities I have to do my homework. Amazing how that happens. Although, come to think of it, I had a bit of a weekend-ish moment today, because I didn't even start my homework until around 7:30, which was very irresponsible because it prevented me from getting enough done before I got too tired and had to resort to blogging which is marginally easier than calculating the wavelength of a tennis ball. But the point is at least I had a few hours of doing nothing while feeling guilty about not working, which is kind of the point of weekends.

Unfortunately, though, I don't write very coherently when I'm tired (lucky I finished my English homework a few hours ago!) so I'm going to have to sign out for now. There wasn't much news to report anyways.

MIT Quote of the Day...

(Captain's blog, stardate 5028.8)
"We are not mathematicians, we're physicists. We want to actually solve something in a finite amount of time." --My physics professor

In physics today we learned Gauss's Law, the first one of Maxwell's equations! Since my physics professor is so good, I actually understood it this time around. Physics is so awesome, you should all take it when you go to college. It's way better than high-school physics classes.

Anyway, enough gushing over how ~*AMAZING*~ college is; it makes me sound stupid. Also, it's very rude since no one reading this is in college, and I'll end up making people feel left out. My sincere apologies.

And another quote of the day, from a question the 18.03 class got asked today:
Alice jumps out of a plane with a parachute [we had just learned an equation for this] and 20 seconds later Bob jumps out with an identical parachute. Will they have the same speed at any time before they reach the ground?
1) Yes.
2) No.
3) Not enough information.
4) I don't know.
5) 42.
(I chose "42", by the way. The real answer is "No".)

Procrastination

Captain's blog, stardate 8327.9...
Please note the fact that the title of this post could refer either to the procrastination I'm doing by blogging instead of finishing my 18.03 (*) problem set, OR it could refer to the procrastination I've been doing by not blogging as I promised to. It's like a G-rated double entendre. I don't know the correct term. (See why I'm not an English major? Other than the excellent reason that I go to engineer school?)

(*) 18.03, for the uninitiated, means "Differential Equations". It's faster to refer to classes by their numbers rather than the class name. "Differential Equations", for the really, really uninitiated, means "math".

Oh right, I'm supposed to say what I've been doing! Let's see...I joined two extracurriculars, concert choir and a nerdy a cappella group called the Asymptones. This is, by the way, more than the number of extracurriculars I've been in during my entire high school career. Just saying. But anyway YAY SINGING. I had concert choir rehearsal last night and it was totally awesome. We are doing a concert (gasp! Who would have imagined?) sometime, I don't really know when, and we're going to sing a Gloria by Bach and some Carmina Burana, which is nice because I have the Carmina Burana CD so I can practice. The soprano line in one spot has a high C; it's so crazy and awesome at the same time. By the way, I can apparently sing a high C now, because I did at my audition for the Asymptones, which makes me crazy and awesome at the same time! (Not to mention egotistical, given the sentence I just wrote.)

Anyway, classes are going well. I have three problems left on my 18.03 p-set, so I'll probably finish it tonight. It's due on Friday...time management skills for the win! It's so amazing, we have to do work here! In high school, I never had more than an hour or so of homework, so this is really refreshing. (Somebody once compared studying at MIT to taking a drink from a firehose. Well, firehoses are refreshing. I rest my case. (See why I'm not in law school?))

Oh, and how could I forget, proctoring the SAT diagnostic for the SAT prep class I'm going to be teaching. (Yes, I have a job. Only on weekends, though.) On a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is fascinating and 10 is watching paint dry, this was OVER NINE THOUSAND. If boredom could be used to power machinery, I could have obliterated the planet with the Death Star laser after proctoring that stupid test.

See, the test is as long as an SAT, which is about four hours. "Well, heck," you may say. "That's not too bad. I've taken the SAT, and it wasn't that boring." Well yeah, if you're taking it you have test questions to answer, and that gives you something to do for at least a third of the time in each section. "But I've spent way more than four hours in precalc, and it wasn't that boring." Precalc is only 45 minutes at a time. "But I've...uh...been in a ridiculously boring meeting for four hours, and it wasn't that boring." Well yeah, because you can just zone out for a while and think about D&D. Or even sleep, as long as you look like you might be awake. Or doodle in a notebook. If you're proctoring, you can't do any of those things, because you have to write remaining time on the board every five minutes. So you can't really even think about something else, because you'd get distracted and not write the time punctually. Thus, four hours can be spent watching a cell-phone timer count down, while getting up every five minutes. Doesn't that just sound thrilling?

I feel so sorry for high school teachers. They go through that all the time, and I never stopped to think how awful it might be.

Other than that, though, I love this place!
Quirk out, for now.

More Classes!

Captain's blog, stardate 2643.3...
So. Yesterday I had classes. Maybe I should talk about that. Righto, here goes.

I got to sleep in, because my first class (math recitation) isn't till 11am. Some of you high school kids might not know what recitations are. If you do know, go to (*). Else, continue reading. (I have a tendency to think "else" instead of "otherwise". Too much time messing around with calculators, I think.) As you probably know, most introductory classes are very large. To make sure everyone can keep up, the class gets split into recitation groups. Each group has its own recitation, typically taught by a grad student/TA. During recitation, we review what went on in the lecture, get questions answered, and do practice problems.

(*) Good for you, you know what a recitation is. So yeah, I had math recitation, and it was pretty cool but kind of silly because what we did in class was mostly review, so we reviewed review. (If you analyzed a theater critic's writing and then went over what you'd written, you'd be reviewing a review of a review of a revue!)

Right afterwards was chemistry recitation, pretty much the same deal of reviewing review. It will get better though.
I have swim class right after chem recitation, so I rushed over to the sports center and asked where the entrance to the pool was, only to find out that phys. ed. classes don't start until next week. Yay.
Then I had Shakespeare class in the afternoon; we are reading The Tempest and have to finish it by Tuesday, so that should be fun! An excuse to do some reading! Oh gosh, I'm going to have to write English papers eventually....
I auditioned for the concert choir and got in, so that should be extremely fun.

And that's pretty much all that happened yesterday (other than me doing problem sets, which you probably don't need to hear about.)

*Sneak peek at what's happened so far today*
"Physicists are like babies; they still smash things together." --My chemistry professor

What my college tuition is paying for: Hundreds of Ping-Pong balls, to be thrown at styrofoam balls suspended in the air as an imitation of the Rutherford gold-foil experiment!

Chem professor: *does calculations* Based on the number of balls which rebounded, the radius of the styrofoam balls is 1cm. It's amazing, it comes out right every year.
Everyone: Yeah, when you do all your calculations with 1 significant figure...

Me, thinking: If we still had IDs called OSIS Numbers, like in high school, then my ID # would be a MITOSIS munber!

Classes!

Captain's blog, stardate 2384.6....
So. I should probably be doing homework right now, but I just did some physics so I'm in a relatively good mood. I'll probably buckle down and work on chemistry for a bit after I post this.
Chemistry? Yeah, chemistry! I know I said before I was taking biology, but as it turns out that didn't work with my schedule, which is great for me because I don't even like biology. I'll have to take it next term though. Woe is me. Who cares, though, as long as I get to take physics, math, AND chemistry all in the same term?
Allow me to recount for you the dramatic events of my first day of MIT classes. To further immerse you in the narrative, this will be written in the present tense. To give me a chance to have some fun, it will be written over-dramatically and in stilted prose. (Just thought I should warn you.)

7:51 AM. Thunder crashes outside the window I fortuitously closed last night, waking me before my alarm clock gets the chance. I peer out the window with still-blurred eyes, to see rain pouring down outside. (This is an auspicious beginning for the day. After all, children born during storms in stories are often marked for some greater destiny. Why not those who start college during a storm?) Combing through my mind to try and remember where I put my umbrella, I prepare myself for the day ahead. Where are my notebooks? I realize to my shock that I have none. Check the schedule again. There will be time between physics and chemistry.
I hastily toast some bread for breakfast and leave with it; the time between my awakening and my necessary departure seeming to have slipped away without my noticing. The storm has passed by the time I leave my dorm, and the sky has brightened--another auspicious sign; overcast skies usually foreshadow tragedy of some sort.
I arrive at the building of my physics class, check the room number on my "schedule" (in reality nothing more than my hastily scribbled list of classes, locations, and times) and eventually find my way to it. One slight problem presents itself before I even walk in the door: The classroom does not exist. Perhaps one of the students accidentally divided by zero? Idle jokes will get me nowhere. If there were a computer anywhere nearby, I could check the class location online. But no such machine is readily available. Finally I give in to temptation and use the Internet access on my cell phone, a technique normally forbidden as I do not have a data plan which includes the cost of said access.
The risk pays off. I find myself in an underground chamber (the classroom is in the basement) filled with round tables. Already late, I take an empty seat where I can find it.
Then the lecture begins. It starts as nothing of note, logistical announcements and basic review. Then, as an indication of things to come, Maxwell's equations appear on the projector screen. I stare, entranced. Until today, I had never realized how stunning they were, how mysterious at first and then beautiful. Every curve of every integral sign calls out to me. And I realize I've forgotten how much I love physics.

Today physics lasts for two hours. Afterwards, I purchase my notebooks, leave some in my dorm room, and set off for chemistry. Yeah, chemistry. No sweeping equations here, no gleaming integrals, but it's still refreshing in a down-to-earth sort of way. I haven't officially enrolled yet; my advisor still hasn't given me the forms to add chemistry and drop biology. I enjoy the class anyway.
A longer break this time, enough for me to eat and relax in my room for a while. Then comes the high point of the day. (If a math lecture at the end of an exciting day of classes is not the definition of the word "apotheosis", I don't know what is.) Differential Equations, finally. I look at the syllabus. Within a few weeks, we will learn topics I have never been exposed to. Some of these techniques are things I've never even heard of.
I emerge from the lecture hall, euphoric.

(N.B. Euphoric is another of those words which deserves to be used, but not too often or it will lose its meaning.)

Well, hopefully that little narrative satisfies; I have chemistry homework to do.
Yeah, chemistry.

And Some More Updates Without A Clever Title For The Post; Why Can't I Ever Come Up With A Halfway Decent Title?

Captain's blog, stardate 8979.3...
The past few days haven't been super eventful, because Fun Activities at Random Hall, (aka Residence Exploration activities--they are supposed to help you meet people at various dorms and choose the right one, except Random had all the best activities because they are awesome) have ended.
Still, there's probably enough for me to scrape together a post and let all you guys know how I'm doing.
I still haven't starved to death; it helps that my dorm's dining hall was open a couple days this week and *gasp* they serve meat! And vegetables! And fruit salad! And dishes containing more than two ingredients! In short, things way better than anything I can cook! There was corn and broccoli and IT WAS AWESOME.
Anyway, moving right along. I took my 18.02 (multivariate calculus) and 18.06 (linear algebra) placement exams a while back. I didn't study, so I had to make up the formulas for surface integrals and the Gram-Schmidt orthonormalization formula, so when you learn those be comforted by the fact that I can't remember them for more than two seconds at a time.
Somehow I passed anyway, so I'm taking differential equations, which I've been hoping to learn for a long time. When I was eleven, I had a little book with stuff to fill out (just for fun), like what my favorite color was, what I did with my friends, etc. One of the questions was "If you had one wish, what would it be?" and I put "That I would learn differential equations". No world peace, no cure for cancer, just differential equations. Goes to show that I was pretty selfish at eleven, not to mention ridiculously nerdy. I also put down that my favorite video was "Calculus lectures" and my favorite song was "Freight Train Gets Lorentz-Contracted", which I had made up the words to. Told you I was self-centered back then. (By the way, if you'd like to know how that song goes I'll give you the lyrics).
Anyway, I digress. What else happened...ooh! We registered for classes! Besides differential equations, I'm taking 8.02 (second-semester physics--somehow getting a 5 on both the Mechanics and Electricity/Magnetism AP Physics exams gets you placement out of...mechanics! You still have to take E&M! If you don't pass both, you have to take mechanics! I do not understand this at all, but I don't really mind since I forgot everything about E&M anyway.) Also I'm taking intro biology (it's a requirement to graduate, so I figured I should just get it out of the way) and, for my humanities class, Shakespeare. Freshmen here are only allowed to take four classes so we don't overwhelm our poor little brains. Oh, we're also allowed to take physical education, so I'm doing a beginner's swim class since I'm relatively incapable of swimming and you have to either take a swim class or pass the swim test to graduate.
Well, that's about all the exciting news I have to report for the moment.
Oh wait! Make sure you read my "About Me" blurb, cause I changed it a few days ago!
Quirk out!