Monday. 5 April 2010.

Today is a good day, except it's freakin hot. So I stripped to a tank top and pajama pants. Which I never do. o_o Probably gonna sleep on top of the blankets again today, like I did last night, until about 7 in the morning, after which I pulled half of the comforter over the part of me that wasn't right next to the wall.

Okay. So Charles and I are working on a letter of sorts to my parents. I'm pretty terrified o- no. I'm not. I can't say that. I'm a bit nervous. But I've given up control of the situation, in the sense that worrying over how mom and pa might react won't do anything except give me premature gray hairs. Whatever happens, happens, I guess. Charles and I will take what comes when it comes; yes, we'll try to plan for different results, but there's only so much that we can do, and trying to go beyond that will only cause strife.

Alright. On to the nerding.

Which is now a verb.

I, in my chem notes, tend to jot down interesting things Professor Zeigler says. And the notes from the past two or so lectures have been incredibly interesting. So I'll jot all of my thoughts on them down here, in the hopes that they offer some amusement or food for thought.

First off, midges. Mayflies. Canadian soldiers. Whatever you want to call the damn things, they like swarming the area around the lake like no tomorrow (Lake Erie, to the non-natives). As in, you park the car in a place remotely close to the lake and come back and the car is black. And you hear crunching wherever you walk. And the screens. And the roller coasters. And and and... *shudders* So these pesky little buggers weren't around during the 70's. Why? Because of pollution. I find it amusing that we get to choose between catching the Cuyahoga River on fire and dealing with a mob of midges every spring...

Alright. Tip for not getting those yellow spots in your lawn everywhere Fido pees? Take a watering can out and water the spot for the toilet right after he goes. The reason the grass dies is because of too-high concentrations of nitrogen. Dilute the nitrogen, and the grass doesn't die. Also, you'll lose all communication with your neighbors because you water your dog's excretions.

Professor Zeigler: What are some of the remnants of pollution in the 1970s?
Student: We lit the river on fire!
Professor Zeigler: *calmly* After the glory days of pollution, then.
Other Student: Three-eyed fish?

Although organic farming (no pesticides) produces less icky stuff, it replenishes nitrogen in the soil too slowly. Basically, by being organic, you're making people go hungry because there isn't enough food being produced, you drive ALL the prices up, etc., etc.

In the Crutacious period, carbon dioxide was at about 3,000 ppm. The average global temperature was at about 4 degrees above what it is now. The current ppm (parts per million)? 300. I don't think we should be too worried.

In fact, carbon dioxide isn't really that much of a greenhouse gas. You see, the atoms in carbon dioxide (a carbon and two oxygens) line up in a straight line, like this:
O=C=O
However, for example, a water molecule's atoms (two hydrogens and one oxygen) look like this:
/O\
H/ \H
(upside down v-shaped)
When energy from the sun (infrared radiation... it's like visible light, only the way we perceive it is as heat) hits these molecules, it causes the 'bonds' (the lines between the letters, basically - shared electrons hold the atoms together, but they're drawn like this and referred to as bonds) to 'vibrate'. In the carbon dioxide atom, the oxygens can only go towards and away from the carbon atom. However, the hydrogen atoms in the water go up and down - closer to each other and further away from each other. This absorbs more energy... basically? Water vapor is a better greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. A lot of molecules are. The only reason it's a concern is because we produce so freakin much of it.

Which brings up the question: if we switch to the kind of fuel that only produces water vapor as a product, wouldn't that only have a negative effect on the environment? Added to that, those cells need /fresh/ water to run, and there's kind of a problem with that, seeing as 1.6 billion people are expected to live where water is scarce in a few years. That's a lot of people.

Following that line of thought: Desalinating water (removing the salt from seawater) leaves the nasty salty stuff behind. What do you do with it? You can't just dump it; that only increases the concentration of salt in whatever you're trying to de-salt, and that could screw up the ecosystem pretty badly, and be very much a step backwards in the whole fresh water needed nao thing. So just filtering the water isn't a good idea either.

What if we used the salt solution as a kind of battery? Like, if you have a low concentration on one side, and a high concentration of salt on the other side, the high concentration side is gonna wanna go to the low concentration, and that movement creates energy. Not sure how much... but it'd be something. We'd have to figure out how to switch out the concentrations. o_o

The Salim witch trials are sometimes blamed on this strange hallucinagory fungus that grows on grain. One time a whole city in France got high off of it and started hallucinating some really freaky crap. So in Salim, the kids ate the bread and then the villagers were like OMG OUR KIDS ARE SEEING THINGS...
>.>
<.<
BURN THE WITCHES!
How do you know that she's a witch?
SHE LOOKS LIKE ONE!
They dressed me in this, it's not me...
SHE TURNED ME INTO A NEWT!
.....
I got better...

Yeah. XD You can see my views on the Salim witch trials.

Well, that's all the nerding from the past few days. I leave this EPICpost now.