The 2009 Christmas Diaries III

Right now you may be thinking: "Christmas is long gone, along with my interest in reading these tiresome Christmas Diaries." Well for us students it is most definitely still Christmas, and given that New Year is still round the corner I'm hoping you'll cut me some slack.

New Year's resolutions have never been my forté. In fact, I have become so bad at keeping them that I have decided they are stupid. From time to time I do set my self goals, I suppose they are resolutions in a sense, yet I'm not usually that good at keeping them either. As I was writing The 2009 Christmas Diaries I, I firmly believed I'd write a blog entry a day - truly making a unit of Christmas entries. Well, you see the result in front of you, hardly very impressive. It is sad how easily we let ourselves down so often, even in more serious cases our resolve is often shamefully weak.

I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day at my aunt Gill's house together with most of my British half of the family. Spending time with family was great; especially catching up with my twenty month old cousin Kirsten, and my cousin Matt's three year old daughter Maddie. Little kids are great fun, and they have an innate ability to make everyone else more fun as well. Uncles, aunts and cousins all hade a great time playing with the toys we got the toddlers for Christmas; especially Rolf's rocket balloons were a great hit. Balloon proppelled cars and planes - you can only imagine...

True to my word I'll give you another chemistry titbit before the year runs out. Scientists have a talent for being delighted by the seemingly obvious; and devoted to making simple things complicated. Last year I had a presentation on how everyone should love quantum mechanics - because without it there would be no fireworks. Now, in truth fireworks we invented long before anyone even thought of quantum mechanics. Quantum theory didn't make fireworks possible, it just explains why fireworks flash in bright colours. Analogically scientists take great pleasure in explaining that we owe our lives to Chemical Kinetics. It is a fact that the human body in air is thermodynamically unstable - this is because the atoms in question are more stable in the form of ash, carbon dyoxide and water than the human body in air. This reaction is also exothermic, meaning that according to the laws of thermodynamics the human body should spontaneously burst into flames, producing heat. Luckily for us the reaction of the human body with oxygen is kinetically extremely slow. (Combined with the fact that our respiratory system increases the entropy of the universe, chemical kinetics preserves our lives.) As fireworks could not exist without Quantum Mechanics, we would not exist without Chemical Kinetics; or as the non-scientist would say: "Scientists have theories on why both humans and fireworks exist."

As this Christmas' chilché section has been a huge let down I'll spare you the agony of having to endure another torrid attempt - though I challenge you to make a New Year's Resolution that will significantly change your weekly routine and keep it up for at least a month.

The 2009 Christmas Diaries II

On of my courses this term has been Chemical Equilibria. I find there is something fascinating about equilibria. It's all about finding the right balance - in contrast to humans, this seems to be intrinsic to nature. In Chemistry there is a constant relationship between products and reactants at equilibrium, at set conditions (temperature, pressure etc.) Somehow the reaction will always give the same percentage yield - there is something natural about the equilibrium, in a sense it is the way it was meant to be. Though as with all equilibria, chemical equilibria can be manipulated by changing variables. As long as one knows what one is doing this is very useful, it is in fact the very foundation of chemical indusrry. In some cases it is very useful that equilibria are fragile, yet in other instances it can create serious problems. Nature is perhaps the best example of this. Though the environmental issues we face today are far more complex than a simple chemical reaction, the equilibria of nature are manipulated just as easily as the chemical reactions in industry.

Other equilibria are also easily disturbed. Relationships within a group of friends can be disturbed dramatically by the addition of another member. Friendships are highly dynamic and although we may not want our new friends to impact the relationships we already have, they tend to do so. Obviously this needn't be a bad thing - it just somehow seems that it often is. In our daily lives we are constantly juggling responsibilities, the natural equilibria of nature seem far away. How easy it is to overprioritize one thing, only to overcompensate later.


Christmas Cliché II: Prioritising work may seem important, but make sure it doesn't affect the things you care about the most. And remember, there's seldom a better time than the present, though the pastures of the future may look greener; you only live once!

The 2009 Christmas Diaries I

As the train left the centre of London behind I found myself engulfed in a British winter wonderland. The countryside actually looked rather idyllic clothed in white. The cottages and the rolling hills surrounding them reminded me of scenes from movies, all to rare in the real world. Snow doesn't usually settle in England, sure, there is usually a light snowfall one night close to New Year's Eve, but this was different. The coast of North Wales was considerably milder than the shocking cold London. I even went running with my brother yesterday, unsurprisingly not the most enjoyable experience ever - I felt like throwing up after the first hill... Oh, and on a lighter note - yesterday Fulham beat Manchester United, just thought I'd put that out there; now football results don't get much better than that.

Usually I spend my time at home in Wales lounging in bed engulfed in a novel, or staring at my computer screen; breakfast becomes a distant memory and 1 pm becomes the new 8 am. If I feel the need to eat more than one meal a day I'll have some ice cream or a couple of mince pies. Well, this Christmas that is all going to change (a pre-New Year resolution), not only has my brother decided to put me through a strict work-out regime; I have finals my first week back in January - and 3000 power point slides of notes to cover, in addition to the five last years worth of past papers. So, if I have to suffer - so should you. I'll be sharing some titbits of my studies in every blog this christmas, in addition to a very special christmas cliché.

One thing that has struck me this year is the extent to which science is dumbed down in order for students and other mere mortals to understand. I love the way atoms and molecules are personified and given titles such as chaperones. Humans seem to be the only things we can understand, so why try to pretend that everything is like us in order for us to understand. It's fair enough I guess, after all I do it myself all the time. In fear of boring my readers or indeed scaring you off after reading just one Christmas Chemistry Special, I have decided not to share the intricate delights of spectroscopy. Everyone loves histroy, hence the first Christmas Chemistry Special of 2009 is a brief insight into the scandalous history of modern science.

In 1904 the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann introduced the Boltzmann Distribution, which today is one of the cornerstones of understanding molecular systems. Many scientists refused to accept his work, however, and devoted their studies to disproving his theories. The attacks became so intense that in fear of his life's work collapsing on him Boltzmann comitted suicide just two years after publishing it; ironically his work was confirmed by experiment ahortly after his death.

Christmas Cliché I: Don't let any single thing become so important to you that if you loose it - you loose it all. (Don't put all your eggs in one basket)

a wake up call

I just had three of the worst hours in quite a while. Three hours filled by frustration, rage and humiliation. The spectroscopy workshop began well enough, untill one of the instructors led me down a path that brought on my foul mood. He suggested I use a formula which turned out to be pretty useless with regard to the question I was working on. Then, almost one hour later, still working on the same problem, I began repeatedly keying in the wrong numbers on my calculator. By this point the satisfactory sensation brought on by being way ahead of the people across the table from me had vanished entirely, not only because of my frustration, but because I was in fact no longer ahead. I had spent almost two hours solving four problems, out of a total of twelve. My professor kindly pointed out that an equivalent question to the one I had been struggling with would have been allotted approximately fifteen minutes for my exam. Clearly there was a problem. To add insult to injury, upon returning later he casually remarked that question six was in fact really easy, on a second glance he remarked "I don't know why I included that question, it is so easy." I'm sure he didn't realise that I had been staring at the question at loss for how to begin; at least I did as well as I could to make sure I was emitting an aura of confidence.

It is in fact incredible, how stupid and inferior a professor like Andrew de Mello can make you feel; one might almost assume his PhD was in intimidatory tactics. Despite my disheartening experience, I find myself upbeat. After all, one of my reasons for coming to Imperial was to discover that I'm not the most intelligent person around. It also reminds me that though my Christmas may not be white, it will most certainly be intellectually enriching...

what a waste

Being sick is such a waste of time. I've been stuck in my room since saturday morning, missed six lectures and one tutorial - which in itself might be the chance to have a blast; it hasn't been enjoyable though. As if that wasn't bad enough I feel really guilty about all the work I should have been doing. There are many pointless things in life, but sickness must be the most pointless of them all. Really being sick that is, "feeling ill" can be great as long as you feel bad enough not to have to do all the things you don't want to do anyway, while still being able to enjoy the things you don't get around to doing as often as you like. It's the perfect excuse, especially if you give it to someone you're not around - they'll never know that your illness isn't half as bad as it sounded in your text. Tomorrow I'm headed back to geek central though - one might safely say I have mixed feelings about the whole thing....