(no subject)
Inorganic and quantum were really similar up until like Wednesday, at which point it became glaringly obvious that the inorganic professor is insane and quantum is going to be ridiculously hard.
Like, uh. Inorganic so far is mostly stuff from high school chem and freshman chem, whereas in quantum we just got to the Schrödinger equation yesterday and started fucking around with it today. Luckily, he was like "okay, so I'm going to go really slowly through this, because I know there are some of you out there who are really mathematically inclined but there are also those of you out there who aren't, so just bear with me, guys". Or, like, professor-speak for that. It was really nice, actually, because he was going slowly enough that I actually pretty much understood everything we did today.
Granted, we did the simplest manipulation of the Schrödinger equation today -- particle in a one-dimensional box -- but still. Everyone has to start somewhere, right?
Also, I still don't know my amino acids but I also still love my biochem class, mostly because the professor is amazing. He is hilarious and really nice and, strangely, reminds me a little of Neil Patrick Harris. We were talking about linkage numbers yesterday and today and he was emphatic on the fact that they're stupid and arbitrary and put math somewhere math has NO PLACE. (His words: "it's like saying look at that door! ... that door's a FIVE! :D" And then he scowled exaggeratedly.)
The awesome for today was less him and more the video he showed us but, okay, since we're onto superhelical topology (and the need of superhelices, obviously) he put this animation of a DNA strand being wound by a histome on the projection screen. And it was SO AWESOME, oh man. The DNA strand was just chilling there, twitching a little, and then this histome came out of NOWHERE and jumped on top of the strand. Freaking amazing, seriously. And then it zoomed out, and out, and the helices kept coiling, and then it turned into chromosomes.
He let us watch it twice. :D
Like, uh. Inorganic so far is mostly stuff from high school chem and freshman chem, whereas in quantum we just got to the Schrödinger equation yesterday and started fucking around with it today. Luckily, he was like "okay, so I'm going to go really slowly through this, because I know there are some of you out there who are really mathematically inclined but there are also those of you out there who aren't, so just bear with me, guys". Or, like, professor-speak for that. It was really nice, actually, because he was going slowly enough that I actually pretty much understood everything we did today.
Granted, we did the simplest manipulation of the Schrödinger equation today -- particle in a one-dimensional box -- but still. Everyone has to start somewhere, right?
Also, I still don't know my amino acids but I also still love my biochem class, mostly because the professor is amazing. He is hilarious and really nice and, strangely, reminds me a little of Neil Patrick Harris. We were talking about linkage numbers yesterday and today and he was emphatic on the fact that they're stupid and arbitrary and put math somewhere math has NO PLACE. (His words: "it's like saying look at that door! ... that door's a FIVE! :D" And then he scowled exaggeratedly.)
The awesome for today was less him and more the video he showed us but, okay, since we're onto superhelical topology (and the need of superhelices, obviously) he put this animation of a DNA strand being wound by a histome on the projection screen. And it was SO AWESOME, oh man. The DNA strand was just chilling there, twitching a little, and then this histome came out of NOWHERE and jumped on top of the strand. Freaking amazing, seriously. And then it zoomed out, and out, and the helices kept coiling, and then it turned into chromosomes.
He let us watch it twice. :D