Happy Don Rags

...to those who have the break in classes they bring with them. I suppose it's crunch time for thesis writers... have a wee bit of fun anyway.

My mother (a physician) just did some minor surgery on my 15-year-old brother's foot. I got to look on, fetch whatever else was needed, and hold down his foot when his anesthetised toe started to tickle. I guess I'm not as fully cured of my childhood aversion to blood as I thought. We've got time for improvement, though.

Spontaneity

This morning I built a snowman.
In Virginia.
The snow was falling in fist-sized clumps out of the sky, and it took just a few minutes to get a few huge balls ready. The snow was so warm and soft, though, that when I heaved the second ball into place, the bottom one fell apart like a smashed pumkin. We needed a little reconstructive surgery, but all is well now.

I just got home from an incredibly spur-of-the-moment trip down to Christendom College. Some Sisters were stopping over at our house on their way to the college's Discernment Weekend, and I asked to come along as they were walking out the door. They called their superior; she said alright; I stuffed my toothbrush and a few extra skirts in a backpack and hopped in the van and was on my way to Virginia!

It was my first time there during the school year (I stopped by once during the summer) and I was impressed... the people seem pretty much like my own dear schoolmates. I guess fish out of the same pond would look alike. When people asked where I was from, I usually told them my school before my homestate, because it was more to the point in explaining why I was (or wasn't) there. The responses that I got were fun. I think they think about us more than we do about them (Which is pretty much never.) but we had a lot of good-humored school-pride bantering this weekend. :o)

Au revior!

An Acceptable Time

Have a productive Lent, everyone.

In an ideal world, here I would write all kinds of holy things with a few nice quotes from saints to add a little Lenten flair to this blog. But, it's not an ideal world, I don't have any particularly pious sentiments to impart to the world, and my need to write a presentation on acne supercedes any enthusiasm for looking through saints' writings tonight. Maybe there will be some good quotes another day.

Well, as you just read, I'm giving a talk on acne tomorrow morning for my human biology class. We each chose a disease or other sort of problem, and I think that I get to be the first to report. I had grand plans, but time is running out so we'll see how well they'll come into effect.

My youngest brother and I are reading a children's book on St. Bernadette. I started tellign him snips of her story for about 2 minutes every night after prayers (starting with, "once upon a time there was a baby girl...") - but eventually I couldn't remember enough details to make it worth telling. So we found a book. I'm afraid that, even written for children, it's pretty significantly over his head- but with a little bit of recapping every few sentances, I think he might understand some of it. At least he likes it, and comes to show me the book every night with a question mark in his eyes.

I'm also reading Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen. I finished Emma a week or so ago, and liked it very much by the end. M.P. has a slightly different flavor. Has anyone read it before?

The most consternating part of this Ash Wednesday has been the revelation by our ballet instructor that the required end-of-the-year performance is going to be set to some awful atonal music. The inspiration for the dance is to be the modern-art picture of "The Scream". (!) Ballet's biggest going-point for me up to now was that we got to dance to very nice classical music. But, anyhow, this leaves me in something of a fix, trying to discern the line between stylistic snobbery (albeit well founded), and some sort of a duty to avoid what is not beautiful, if possible. Besides, is there any good in portraying fright and despair in body language?


After class I went outside the Music History classroom and listened to Mozart through the wall for an hour.

Snow Days

Fiat nix!
... the prayers of every child in the county were answered yesterday when a "wintry mixture" of snow, rain, and ice pellets gave everyone a St. Valentine's Day at home. Even my dad worked from home because of the weather. I found that icey snow is a great thing to wash your car with- no wasted water, no soap, no dirty rags, and the slight abrasiveness of the tiny ice balls is enough to scrub off the dirt and salt without hurting the paint. The price is right, too.
Today, the grammar and high schools were still closed. My school was not, but as I was walking out the door to go to Mass and then class, my Mom told me to stay home. I only had one short class this morning, anyway.
On the exciting-stuff front: I'm in the process of switching organic chemistry sections. I was in the twice-a-week 6-10 pm section, and this semester it just wasn't working out. Now I'll be in the bright-n-early thrice-a-week 8:30 AM section. The tricky thing is that my very first class on Monday will be a major exam. I don't think it will matter too much, though, because it should be pretty similar to the exam I would have been taking on Monday night, anyway.
Happy St. Valentine's Day to all, to the engaged as well as the not hardly. God bless us, every one.
I did end up going to the cathedral last week. I think it will be generally agreed that special blessings, etc., are not for the sake of "feeling special", or feeling anything else for that matter. (Do you ask for any Father's blessing just to feel special?!) Of course, the Bishop's blessing wasn't for me, since I'm not a health care professional yet, but you have to admit that Catholic doctors and nurses are working in a culture set against them... and they need all the grace they can get!(Alright, Tasik, my gentle reprimand is over- let it go into cyberspace paired with tons of sisterly love.)
Tonight, weather cooperating, I'm going to give a talk on Crossroads to the Knights of Columbus for fundraising concerns... God willing, I can infect them with a little of the awesomely contagious enthusiasm of the walk. :)

Cool Physics Stuff

Well, hello out there. I hope all motorcycle owners are healthy and happy, as well as the engaged working on a modern philosophy thesis. Best wishes to any other, too. (If there are any technician wanna-bes in the room, would they please stand up?)

Besides Mass, a few meals, an unsuccessful attempt to start a fire without much kindling, and a few phone calls, I have spent today calculating interference patterns for light (and occasionally sound) traveling through one, two, or many slits of various widths, onto walls various distances away from the slits.

I think it's pretty safe to say that I will never, never (within the next month or two) forget that the sine of an angle of (usually constructive) interference is equal to an integer multiple of the wavelength, divided by the width of the slits.

But now I'm starting in on the next chapter, calculating the powers of eyeglass lenses and such which looks so nicely like the cacluating scribbles that had me mystified at the optician's office last fall. I just "prescribed" a lens with the power +3.0 D for a fictitious lady who can't see anything within 100 cm of her face. Pretty cool.

The good news is, I was told to only cover this chapter "slightly"- so I might not be sitting on my bed with the book for the entire weekend. Yay! There is a special Mass at the cathedral on Sunday for medical workers, and I might go with my mother if time will allow it.

Fair thee well, reader.

My thoughts exactly...

"It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances
have been known of young people passing many, many months
successively, without being at any ball of any description, and
no material injury accrue either to body or mind; — but when
a beginning is made — when the felicities of rapid motion have
once been, though slightly, felt — it must be a very heavy set that
does not ask for more."

Jane Austin: Emma, Vol. II, Ch.11


By the way, the book has become much more interesting since the advent of Mr. Frank Churchill.

Lux

A little tidbit from physics:

How a mirage works: Hot air has a different index of refraction than cooler air, so as a light ray that is reflected towards the ground goes through hotter and hotter air (like there would be on top of hot pavement), the angle that ray makes with the ground can be made more and more shallow, even to the point of heading all the way back up, into your eye.

I've been studying light recently- yesterday, the geometry of light rays; today, the arguements for light acting as a wave. The next chapter is on the more practical applications of it all- how eyes, eyeglasses, etc. work.

My car has become my little house on wheels- a study, a dining room, a bedroom, and an entertainment center all in one private but conveniently movable package. It even has central heating! :o) It's a real blessing for these days when I have mass from 7:15-8:00, class from 10-11:30 am, and not another class until 6pm.

Speaking of in-car entertainment, I've been listening to Emma by Jane Austen. The you-ought-to-become-more-civilized part of me enjoys it, while the more tomboyish side is exasperated. I'm not sure that I would like Emma very much. I abhor empty pleasantries and gettings-around-the-subject, but at the same time, I can see that the sort of frankness I'm fond of won't always do in our fallen world of misunderstandings.

Fare thee well.

Physics is my Life

2 chapters/week x (1 lesson + 100 problems)/chapter x 5 minutes/problem x 1 hour/60 minutes + 3 hours/lesson = 22.67 hours per week.

Enough said.

I'm going to take a department examination (challenge exam) for physics II- when I find out which professor will be writing it, I may be able to skip 12 or so of the 24 chapters left in the book. (Read: above x 0.5) No one really covers all these chapters in one semester, but no one seems to agree on which ones should be skipped :o)

This little project is squeezed in between 4 other classes and work.

But- the chapter I'm marching through now is really, really neat. It touches on everything we did in Jr. Music. Check out these cool problems:
*How far from the mouthpiece of a flute should the hole be that must be uncovered to play D above Middle C (294 Hz)?
*What resonant frequency would you expect from blowing across the top of an empty soda bottle 18 cm deep, if you assumed it was a closed tube? If it was 1/3 full of soda?
*by what percent should a piano tuner tighten or loosen the tension on a string that should be vibrating at 132 Hz but is currently producing 3 beats every 2 seconds with a string actually vibrating at that frequency?

...and many other neat things of more varied scope.

And speaking of, I have now officially abandoned the project for a whole hour to peruse blogs, etc. , so I better go back to it before supper.