Day 1 - The Disappearing Spoon
I wonder when livejournal will die as a website. Internet blogging has been moving to more asinine things such as Tumblr where people don't write about how horrible they feel their lives are (as I've been doing since I resided on the internet) but rather, show them through overdramatic jpegs with generalized subtitles.
I was looking through my old blog posts and was kind of amused and somewhat disheartened at my negativity. At this point of my life, I'm trying to learn how to consistently make progress in my different aspects of my life. Despite that, I don't expect to exuberantly write just how positively things are going, because I don't ever really feel as though things are ever so... hopeful. I'm quite happy with my life so far and quite happy with how things are going. However, there are always things I feel as though are things I should regard seriously, and if not for the constant fear of failure, I become arrogant in my abilities and am therefore unsuccessful in my endeavors.
I wanted to undergo a thirty day challenge of detailing things. Maybe even a personal journal to figure out just how I feel nowadays. But besides that, I find that I have difficulty verbalizing or even attempting of thinking how to explain the way things work. I also feel myself getting wary at the initial attempt of explanation, and find myself getting lightheaded with pure... helplessness.
I hope livejournal won't go bankrupt in the next thirty days.
The Disappearing Spoon
The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kearn is a non-fiction text that describes the origins, arrangement, and usefulness of the periodic table through the people that took part in its organization. He talks about particular elements and their natures such as helium: an inert gas that makes balloons fly and voices squeak, and when heated to a specific temperature, becomes a sort of super fluid (although I'm not sure if it's aqueous instead), acquiring zero viscosity and can float uphill, defying gravity. He talks about elements that we have used in history that have had poisonous consequences, thinking they're beneficial for our bodies such as mercury for laxatives and lead for paint. I learned as well that another word for lead is antimony. I never associated the two to each other, nor have I truly heard the name.
I haven't gotten very far in the novel, but it's definitely been an interesting read.
Gilbert Lewis was an interesting person described in Kearn's book as well. Lewis worked particularly hard on electron theory and made several discoveries that many thought deserved him the nobel prize. However, he seemed to have had bad tempered disputes with scientists around the world that worked against his favor. His discoveries were also thought of as broad and not specific to help with a major problem specifically, and was therefore not enough to amount to the prize. He worked at Cal for a while, working more on electron bonding theory, which is around when, I assume, he was thinking of the basis for what we know now are lewis structures: structures that describe how atoms bond to each other through lone pairs, single bonds, double bonds, and triple bonds. He was still unrecognized for his works, became a hermit, was invited to parties by his fellow science compatriots that had won nobel prizes, and eventually died alone in his lab.
I felt a great sympathy for Lewis that I usually don't have for people. The underrated genius who didn't get what he felt he deserved and eventually died, still unappreciated. He's someone I should look up. Perhaps that's what my next meme'll be on. Gilbert Lewis specifically.
I was looking through my old blog posts and was kind of amused and somewhat disheartened at my negativity. At this point of my life, I'm trying to learn how to consistently make progress in my different aspects of my life. Despite that, I don't expect to exuberantly write just how positively things are going, because I don't ever really feel as though things are ever so... hopeful. I'm quite happy with my life so far and quite happy with how things are going. However, there are always things I feel as though are things I should regard seriously, and if not for the constant fear of failure, I become arrogant in my abilities and am therefore unsuccessful in my endeavors.
I wanted to undergo a thirty day challenge of detailing things. Maybe even a personal journal to figure out just how I feel nowadays. But besides that, I find that I have difficulty verbalizing or even attempting of thinking how to explain the way things work. I also feel myself getting wary at the initial attempt of explanation, and find myself getting lightheaded with pure... helplessness.
I hope livejournal won't go bankrupt in the next thirty days.
The Disappearing Spoon
The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kearn is a non-fiction text that describes the origins, arrangement, and usefulness of the periodic table through the people that took part in its organization. He talks about particular elements and their natures such as helium: an inert gas that makes balloons fly and voices squeak, and when heated to a specific temperature, becomes a sort of super fluid (although I'm not sure if it's aqueous instead), acquiring zero viscosity and can float uphill, defying gravity. He talks about elements that we have used in history that have had poisonous consequences, thinking they're beneficial for our bodies such as mercury for laxatives and lead for paint. I learned as well that another word for lead is antimony. I never associated the two to each other, nor have I truly heard the name.
I haven't gotten very far in the novel, but it's definitely been an interesting read.
Gilbert Lewis was an interesting person described in Kearn's book as well. Lewis worked particularly hard on electron theory and made several discoveries that many thought deserved him the nobel prize. However, he seemed to have had bad tempered disputes with scientists around the world that worked against his favor. His discoveries were also thought of as broad and not specific to help with a major problem specifically, and was therefore not enough to amount to the prize. He worked at Cal for a while, working more on electron bonding theory, which is around when, I assume, he was thinking of the basis for what we know now are lewis structures: structures that describe how atoms bond to each other through lone pairs, single bonds, double bonds, and triple bonds. He was still unrecognized for his works, became a hermit, was invited to parties by his fellow science compatriots that had won nobel prizes, and eventually died alone in his lab.
I felt a great sympathy for Lewis that I usually don't have for people. The underrated genius who didn't get what he felt he deserved and eventually died, still unappreciated. He's someone I should look up. Perhaps that's what my next meme'll be on. Gilbert Lewis specifically.