ChemWizards

The Green Flame of Boron

For a day, we joyfully kept our periodic tables, calculators and scratch  papers away. On that day, we turned the perils of chemistry into a distant, almost nonexistent memory. We swore to promote chemistry to everyone (of course, I mean chemistry minus the difficulty) by performing pseudo-magic tricks we found scattered around the WWW. One of the interesting and most-applauded trick is shown above. That’s a strange mixture of boric acid and methanol, which is then reacted with oxygen. The flicker of their eyes when they first saw this colored flame spelled “Wow” with pure amazement. And it was, for us, priceless.

Back

Despite my best efforts, I can no longer find time to narrate my day-to-day combat with inconsistencies on this blog regularly. School works forged an unlikely alliance with council matters to make me diurnal and nocturnal all at the same time. Since June 7, sleep has been a privilege, and to cope with deadlines, it’s often a want rather than a need. You might think that I’m overstating the facts and you could be right, but believe me when I say that I’m having a hard time right now.

I’ll be back.

One Year Later

A year ago, on this very day, my dream crashed before my very eyes. My plan to become who I want to be in the future disintegrated into tiny specks of dust, blocking my view of the horizon that lay before me. Disoriented, I pulled back and ran away as far as possible. The truth was just too bad to be true. I failed myself. I failed my family. I failed everyone who believed in me. The pain was too unbearable. There’s no anesthesia.

I used to imagine myself in the corporate world – balancing sheets, preparing income statements, and doing everything that has something to do with accounting. And why not? I originally intended to pursue a degree in Accountancy. But something wouldn’t let me. And that’s the next-to-the-penultimate period of the story. Goodbye, dream.

When I got home that day, I came across a bitter quotation:

Reality can destroy the dream; why shouldn’t the dream destroy the reality?

- George Moore

It’s as if this whole sentence empathized with the unstable state of my emotions. But it still felt like trudging a wild river in a debilitated raft. I was certain I couldn’t move on.

But I did, once I enrolled as a BS Chemistry student.

Fast forward.

I only have a vague recollection of my first day as a chemistry major. But I’m willing to bet a thousand dollars that nothing else made me happier than studying about atoms. It took me almost a year to realize what happened. God used His invisible hands to place me in the field that’s best for me. I was just weak to accept my fate. Or I was just to blind to see it. But now, I moved on… with all the atoms in my body.

Second Year, Second Semester Report Card

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Isang Araw sa Electromagnetism Class…

Prof. L****: (nagsusulat sa whiteboard)
N***: Sir, narinig niyo na ba ‘yung tungkol kay Jason Ivler?
Prof. L****: Ano naman ang kaugnayan ni Jason Ivler sa Physics?
N***: Sir, kasi po current events po ‘yun!

HAHAHA. Benta!

An Unordered List

1. I wish this vacation would never end. I cannot entertain the thought of returning to school two weeks from now. Lots of school works are to be submitted on the 4th day of January. And I am not in the mood to start any of them right now.
2. I’ve successfully transferred all of the posts from my previous blogs to here. I’m currently finding a way to include comments.
3. Guess what? I’ve found a way to re-order my meta data. But I’m still thinking if it would work. I don’t want to initiate an action that could produce horrible and irreversible results.
4. You can now ask me anything and everything but nothing (what?) here.

OK! This is a random entry.

Number Blunder

Numbers have a good way of manipulating and controlling my life’s direction.

I was writing an entry last week at 5:00 PM when a stark realization came into my mind: I still have something to do. I ended my keyboard monologue instantly and went to my room to meet up with my Calculus book. I was embarrassed to know that he (Calculus) missed me. To make up for the absences of each other, we talked about our own journey together. Memories of limits, differentiations, integrations, maxima and minima were automatically brought up. He even mentioned something about his twin brother, Analytical Geometry. He kept on talking and before I knew it, he had begun a long, sermon-like orientation about our newest goal together: transcendental functions. Then, my time came. It’s now my turn to answer his questions accurately. That’s my assignment, by the way. And then I closed him.

Halfway down the stairs, a sudden thought occurred to me: Analytical Chemistry. Like Calculus, she (Analytical Chemistry) is fond of seeing me. Although she‘s a new-found friend, both of us make subtle efforts to keep our tacit promise to meet regularly. Her life is dominated by numbers as well. We talked about gravimetry and precipitations. I also answered some of her problems, with the help of my calculator. In times of crises, friends must always help each other. I had managed to solve some before I quit. Not so long after, I bid good bye despite her reluctance.

I stared at the wall clock (without seeing the time), and saw something not-worth-seeing-but-worth-remembering: batteries. As far as I could remember, regular batteries carry 1.5 V. Ah…V. Wait… V! Voltage! You guessed it right. I spent another reunion. This time, my guest was Physics. It (Physics) made an abstract introduction about the electric fields of point charges. It was even grateful enough to tell me about Coulomb’s and Gauss’s Laws. With the help of my calculator, I caught a brief glimpse of what it‘s trying to say.

For the third time, I exited the confines of my room to go back to the computer and escape this incongruous, makeshift reality. But as soon as I sat, a disturbing phenomenon happened.

“Matulog ka na. May pasok ka na bukas. Kailangan mong bumangon ng alas-kwatro.” (Sleep now. You still have classes tomorrow. You need to wake up at 4:00 AM).

To cut the long story short, I didn’t finish my supposed-to-be blog entry. But I was still happy in knowing that I had, at least, survived my journey with numbers. I would not be able to see them again, at least for the night. I opened the door and was met by the voice of my brother:

“Kuya, pa’no nga ba ‘yung pagsosolve ng logarithm at natural exponent?” (How do you solve for logarithms and natural exponents?).

Ah, numbers!

P.S. Sorry, I don’t have the time to return comments nor exchange links. But keep all of those coming and I’ll try to give justice to them (return comments and links) as soon as possible. Thanks!