Three snippets of recent conversation:
Richard (getting dressed & pulling clean underwear out of a drawer): "I think these pants have had it. Look at the elastic! It's not elastic any more, it's undergoing plastic deformation!".
Me: "Hooke's Law in action!"
Tim (coming into our room
as we were getting up): "Oh, you've got
the big bear in bed with you!".
Richard (rolling over sleepily): "This is my bed! I always sleep here!".
Tim: "Perhaps I should have said 'the big bear (white)', to distinguish him from any big bears (brown)".
Peter (talking about somewhere they'd eaten recently): "It's quite a smart pub. They have games. We drank a bottle of wine and played Scrabble."
Tim: "Only the pieces were muddled up like they came from several different sets."
Peter: "So you could draw a Q and put it on the board, and then draw another Q."
Tim: "There was one tile which was the same size as a normal Scrabble tile, but had letters on both sides. And another one which was 1/4 of the size of a normal Scrabble tile, with the number 4 on it."
Richard: "For all of those words with a 4 in, obviously."
Tim: Maybe it was from a set of Chemistry Scrabble!
Richard: "You could have double and triple atom score, and double and triple bond score..."
Tim: "But would you be allowed free radicals? That's the question."
Me: "I don't think so. Anything can be a radical - CH3 dot would be too cheaty. It would have to be actual molecules and compounds only."
Richard: "You'd be screwed if you drew helium, though."
Me: "I guess it would have to be no Noble Gases."
Richard: "It would be even better if it used organic notation with all those zigzag lines. You'd be able to add a benzene ring to the end of any atom on the board!"