Once Upon a Time, in a Little Valley

AKA reports from my life. If you just want to hear me opine and rant and whatnot, skip.

My first week of doing out-and-out medical studies (or so I define them, anyway). Here's a nice, vaguely bulleted overview:

I learned how to titrate. What's this, you ask? Essentially, it's adding a solution drop by drop to another solution until you reach a desirable endpoint. In this case, I added hydrochloric acid to two dyed solutions (water and a buffer) to try to restore clarity and see which would absorb more. The buffer did, as expected.

What's a buffer, you ask? Well, consider this (paraphrased explanation): Soda is acidic, yes? So when you drink a soda, why doesn't your body's pH change palpably change (and why don't you die)? The answer's in the buffer - in the case of the body, bicarbonate ions, which bind with the hydrogen ions present in acids like soda to form carbonic acid, which can then be converted to water and carbon dioxide, which the body is quite adept at dealing with. Similarly, when the body takes in too much base, hydrogen ions are removed from the blood, so the body responds by dissociating carbonic acid (which, again, just comes from water and carbon dioxide) into hydrogen and bicarbonate ions. Cool, yeah? Nothing tells the body to do this, it just happens. The body: the best machine on the planet.

(Incidentally, if that explanation is too paraphrased or anything, correct me.)

Chemistry is a science and vocabulary unto itself. Example: significant figures. Sig figs are apparently also shared by physics, but this is the first time I've run into them. I understand them on a basic level, but they make no sense to me logically. This is where it gets me: Say you have two substances, 6.4 grams and 6.7 grams, and you want to multiply them together. The answer should be 42.88 grams, right? But according to the rules of significant figures, the answer should be 43 grams (or maybe 42.9, generously, and I'm still not sure), because 6.4 and 6.7 g each only have two significant figures. Being less accurate makes no logical sense to me, and even less so when you consider this: multiply 14.0 by 3 with the rules of significant figures. The answer? 40, because, it only has one significant figure (and the zero isn't, because it's trailing and uncertain). Lord, just let me report that damn decimals. Amen.

For all the latent Animorphs fans out there, my lab partner in biology is a black woman named Cassie, and I sat next to a tall, handsome guy named Jake my first day in chemistry. I'm taking this as a smiling sign, by the way. Would definitely like to talk to him again, incidentally. I also asked a cute guy, on my first day, how to use the sinks in the library bathroom (hey, it was counter-intuitive, all right, you had to physically push the faucet spigot up into itself. And if that sounds confusing, you should've seen the sink). I don't think I came off too intelligently. Then it turns out he's in my chemistry lecture, recitation, and lab.... He's also one of those guys with an utterly perpetual sneer, compounded by the fact that he's an utterly perfect physical specimen. Be still, my heaving and somewhat downtrodden chest.

I also had a pretty awesome Friday-night adventure with Michael that involved the best bar in town, drinking margaritas, buying underwear, singing along to the Chicago soundtrack, and breaking down in his car several miles from anywhere in the middle of the night, and hiking back singing Christmas carols. We are awesome.

I'm all for joining the tri-city area's GSA (see previous posts), and they're going to move meeting times to a "week 1 Tuesday, week 2 Thursday, week 3 Tuesday, week 4 Thursday" schedule, which means I can go half the time (my recitation/lab for chemistry is Tuesday night). The guy who runs it, Joey, is studying to be a space physicist; he's a smart guy, nice, accommodating. And he wears tight Star Trek t-shirts. It remains to be seen if he sings Christmas carols while hiking, though.

Such is the summary for now. Expect more as it unfolds.