In a Slurry - Fic for Numb3rsWriteOff
Title: In a Slurry
Author: Jelsemium
Characters: Amita Ramanujan, Millie Finch, plus a room full of walk-ons
Rating/Category: K+ / Gen Schmoop
Word Count: 1,569
Spoilers: None
Summary: Amita's lecture venue is shifted, due to circumstances beyond anyone's control.
Comment: This story so did not want to get written. I only came up with a plot Thursday evening and didn't get a chance to start writing until 6 PM on Friday.
Notes/Warnings: Drinking and reading my fic usually isn't a good idea;.
The sweat dripping in Amita Ramanujan's eyes didn't bother her as much as the large drop slowly wending its way down between her shoulder blades.
"What we have here is a simple inclined plane," she explained to her captive audience. She indicated the acrylic and aluminum contraption that she and Millie Finch had managed to wrestle onto the cramped stage.
"This particular incarnation is based on a design by Assistant Professor Anette “Peko” Hosoi of MIT," she added. She saw a few people actually write that down. Obviously, some of her students had actually made it. She hoped that they had come to the Schooner or Later for the burgers, rather than the booze, but (remembering her own undergrad days) she wasn't going to take any bets.
She wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand, blinking furiously. The sudden shift in venues had bothered her, but not to the point of tears. The extraneous tears and the excess sweat were both products of the stage lights rather than stress.
"Here, sweetie," Millie said. She handed Amita a visor with the "Schooner or Later" logo emblazoned on it.
"Thanks, Millie," Amita pulled it on. The bill protected her eyes and the band soaked up some of the residual sweat. Now, if she could only do something about that damn drip down her back!
"Ironically, this is used to simulate the behavior of mud flows so we can study them in the lab," she continued.
The drip finally arrived at the waistband of her corduroys and stopped. She gave a little sigh of relief.
"So, how does this work?" a heavy-set white man in the back asked. He was dressed like a stereotypical tourist, Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, flip-flops with white socks. Not the sort of spectator Amita expected at her lectures.
Of course, of her current audience, only about a third were the young adults that Amita usually attended Amita's lectures The ages here ran from a sleepy infant in a stroller to an octogenarian dressed in biker gear.
"What we have here…" Amita said.
"Is a failure to communicate?" a teenaged boy catcalled.
There was a reason the term "sophomoric" humor was considered an insult.
"I hope I'm communicating clearly," Amita said. She refrained from making an impossible-to-misunderstand gesture. Everybody was feeling just a little stressed out just now. No need for her to add fat to the fire.
Speaking of stressed. A pack of sweat droplets were congregating at the base of her neck, apparently ready to make a pilgrimage down her spine. She wished she could take her jacket off, but didn't want to stand up there, in the bright light, in just her blouse. Especially if her blouse was going to cling to her.
"You are!" one of the first teen's friends shouted. The second teen "inconspicuously" elbowed the first in the ribs.
"Thank you," Amita said. "Anyway, to simulate the mud flow…"
"What? We don't have enough of it outside?" the rail thin barmaid asked incredulously.
"If you want to go out there for a closer look, sweetie, be my guest," the blonde barmaid replied. "I'll stay in here out of the rain and watch the good professor's demo."
Amita decided against pointing out that she was only an assistant professor. The new drop of sweat slid down her back. She wondered how Charlie dealt with distractions like this, or if he even noticed things like sweat.
"We're using a slurry made from uniformly sized glass beads in a viscous fluid to simulate an actual mud flow," Amita said. "Using real mud doesn't work in the lab, because we can't use enough of it to get an accurate measurement. That's why we take a special effects approach and use something that mimics mud."
"What fluid are you using?" a shaggy, heavily tattooed man asked. He looked more like a biker than a math student, but Amita answered as politely as if he'd been Bill Nye. After all, there were a lot of impromptu students here today, and they were all tired of endless newscasts about the rain damage.
"It's a silicon oil," she reported. "We did a lot of experimenting to get the formula just right, so don't even ask. I'd hate to have to kill a good student... or even a bad one."
This brought a hoot of laughter from the biker and a smattering of chuckles and applause from the audience, even from the dour looking bartender.
"Anyway, we let the slurry out of the gate on top here," Amita gestured to the top of the acrylic plane. "The results depend on the angle of the slope. The shallower the slope, the more the glass beads tend to drop out of the slurry."
She opened the gate and the silicon oil flowed down, mostly sans glass beads.
"That doesn't help much, does it?" a slender black woman asked. She bounced a toddler on her hip as she listened to Amita's lecture.
"Correct," Amita said. "At least, not very useful for simulating a mud flow. At medium angles, like this…" she adjusted the plane. "The glass beads keep up better and you get this 'fingering' effect." Long strings of silicon oil established where the term 'fingering' came from.
"Nice," a teen-age girl said. She was actually taking notes. Probably one of the students who had actually signed up for her seminar, Amita surmised.
"Thanks," Amita said. "Of course, for the study of mudslides, a steep angle will cause the glass beads to move faster and collect at the front boundary of the flow, suppressing fingering and producing a pronounced ridge."
Another tilt demonstrated how the slurry looked like an actual mudslide. Heads swiveled from the demonstration to the television replay of an actual slide. It was an interesting way to show the accuracy of the flow, Amita thought. She wondered if she could get a copy of that tape for her rescheduled lecture.
"Wow, it really does make the slurry behave like mud!" the sophomoric boy yelped triumphantly.
"Exactly," Amita said approvingly.
"And this helps us predict when and where mudslides occur?" his sharp-elbowed friend asked.
"Not very well," the rail thin barmaid said dryly.
This earned her a chorus of protests and catcalls, to Amita's relief. She'd obviously impressed her fellow prisoners. And here she'd been afraid that her presentation would be too dry. She looked out the window at the pouring rain and laughed at herself for worrying about dryness.
"What?" the barmaid demanded. "If she could predict mudslides, would she be stuck here with the rest of us?"
Amita laughed aloud at that one. "That's so true," she admitted.
"Oh, look, we're on TV again!" the Hawaiian shirted man called.
The bartender turned up the sound and they watched CBS News show overhead shots of Pacific Coast Highway, which was closed off in three places by mudslides.
Amita shuddered. If she and Millie hadn't stopped for lunch and gas, they might well have been caught in the slide that had occurred between the Schooner or Later and Pepperdine University.
Millie patted her on the shoulder. "Don't worry about it," she said. "It clearly wasn't our turn to die today."
Amita managed a small smile.
"And speaking of not dying…" Millie continued.
"Oh, no," Amita said. "Was I that bad?" After she'd been congratulating herself, too.
Millie shook her head. "I just said, today was NOT your day to die, didn't I?" She squeezed Amita's shoulder and gave her a shake. "You did good, considering that three-fourths of the audience has never seriously studied math."
"Thanks," Amita said.
"You need a drink," Millie said.
"Sorry," Amita said. "I'm the designated driver."
Millie laughed. "You're kidding. We're not going anywhere until tomorrow at the earliest. We're just lucky that Hawaii Boy…" she gestured to the man in the tourist clothing "… offered to let us sleep in his camper."
"You can sleep there," Amita said. "I gave my spot to them." She gestured to the slender black woman with the toddler.
"Well, I've got my Bose earmuffs, lots of batteries and a nice, stiff nightcap," Millie said. "I can sleep through anything." She held out a drink to Amita. "Speaking of drinks, here's one for you."
"Um," Amita said.
"Don't worry," Millie said. "I know you're not into serious drinking. That's why I got you something not entirely unlike a milkshake. It'll go good with your fake burger."
"Oh, they do have soy burgers?" Amita said happily. She knuckled the small of her back, where yet another sweat drop had appeared.
"Yes," Millie said. "Disgusting as that thought may be."
Amita started to object, but Millie interrupted
She handed Amita a tall, chilly drink. "This mocktail will go great with it."
Amita looked at the glass curiously. "What's in here?"
Millie smiled. "Vanilla ice cream, milk, coffee, cinnamon, plus hazelnut and chocolate syrups." She cocked her head and studied the concoction. "Really, it's not too bad for a kids' drink. Especially when topped with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry."
Amita plucked off the cherry and nibbled on it. Then her eyes went wide. "You mean, this is a…"
"It's a Virgin Mudslide," Millie smirked. "Somehow, it seemed appropriate."
Amita could have pointed out that she wasn't a virgin, but she settled on giving Millie a Mona Lisa smile and lifting her glass. "Here's mud in your eye."
Author: Jelsemium
Characters: Amita Ramanujan, Millie Finch, plus a room full of walk-ons
Rating/Category: K+ / Gen Schmoop
Word Count: 1,569
Spoilers: None
Summary: Amita's lecture venue is shifted, due to circumstances beyond anyone's control.
Comment: This story so did not want to get written. I only came up with a plot Thursday evening and didn't get a chance to start writing until 6 PM on Friday.
Notes/Warnings: Drinking and reading my fic usually isn't a good idea;.
The sweat dripping in Amita Ramanujan's eyes didn't bother her as much as the large drop slowly wending its way down between her shoulder blades.
"What we have here is a simple inclined plane," she explained to her captive audience. She indicated the acrylic and aluminum contraption that she and Millie Finch had managed to wrestle onto the cramped stage.
"This particular incarnation is based on a design by Assistant Professor Anette “Peko” Hosoi of MIT," she added. She saw a few people actually write that down. Obviously, some of her students had actually made it. She hoped that they had come to the Schooner or Later for the burgers, rather than the booze, but (remembering her own undergrad days) she wasn't going to take any bets.
She wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand, blinking furiously. The sudden shift in venues had bothered her, but not to the point of tears. The extraneous tears and the excess sweat were both products of the stage lights rather than stress.
"Here, sweetie," Millie said. She handed Amita a visor with the "Schooner or Later" logo emblazoned on it.
"Thanks, Millie," Amita pulled it on. The bill protected her eyes and the band soaked up some of the residual sweat. Now, if she could only do something about that damn drip down her back!
"Ironically, this is used to simulate the behavior of mud flows so we can study them in the lab," she continued.
The drip finally arrived at the waistband of her corduroys and stopped. She gave a little sigh of relief.
"So, how does this work?" a heavy-set white man in the back asked. He was dressed like a stereotypical tourist, Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, flip-flops with white socks. Not the sort of spectator Amita expected at her lectures.
Of course, of her current audience, only about a third were the young adults that Amita usually attended Amita's lectures The ages here ran from a sleepy infant in a stroller to an octogenarian dressed in biker gear.
"What we have here…" Amita said.
"Is a failure to communicate?" a teenaged boy catcalled.
There was a reason the term "sophomoric" humor was considered an insult.
"I hope I'm communicating clearly," Amita said. She refrained from making an impossible-to-misunderstand gesture. Everybody was feeling just a little stressed out just now. No need for her to add fat to the fire.
Speaking of stressed. A pack of sweat droplets were congregating at the base of her neck, apparently ready to make a pilgrimage down her spine. She wished she could take her jacket off, but didn't want to stand up there, in the bright light, in just her blouse. Especially if her blouse was going to cling to her.
"You are!" one of the first teen's friends shouted. The second teen "inconspicuously" elbowed the first in the ribs.
"Thank you," Amita said. "Anyway, to simulate the mud flow…"
"What? We don't have enough of it outside?" the rail thin barmaid asked incredulously.
"If you want to go out there for a closer look, sweetie, be my guest," the blonde barmaid replied. "I'll stay in here out of the rain and watch the good professor's demo."
Amita decided against pointing out that she was only an assistant professor. The new drop of sweat slid down her back. She wondered how Charlie dealt with distractions like this, or if he even noticed things like sweat.
"We're using a slurry made from uniformly sized glass beads in a viscous fluid to simulate an actual mud flow," Amita said. "Using real mud doesn't work in the lab, because we can't use enough of it to get an accurate measurement. That's why we take a special effects approach and use something that mimics mud."
"What fluid are you using?" a shaggy, heavily tattooed man asked. He looked more like a biker than a math student, but Amita answered as politely as if he'd been Bill Nye. After all, there were a lot of impromptu students here today, and they were all tired of endless newscasts about the rain damage.
"It's a silicon oil," she reported. "We did a lot of experimenting to get the formula just right, so don't even ask. I'd hate to have to kill a good student... or even a bad one."
This brought a hoot of laughter from the biker and a smattering of chuckles and applause from the audience, even from the dour looking bartender.
"Anyway, we let the slurry out of the gate on top here," Amita gestured to the top of the acrylic plane. "The results depend on the angle of the slope. The shallower the slope, the more the glass beads tend to drop out of the slurry."
She opened the gate and the silicon oil flowed down, mostly sans glass beads.
"That doesn't help much, does it?" a slender black woman asked. She bounced a toddler on her hip as she listened to Amita's lecture.
"Correct," Amita said. "At least, not very useful for simulating a mud flow. At medium angles, like this…" she adjusted the plane. "The glass beads keep up better and you get this 'fingering' effect." Long strings of silicon oil established where the term 'fingering' came from.
"Nice," a teen-age girl said. She was actually taking notes. Probably one of the students who had actually signed up for her seminar, Amita surmised.
"Thanks," Amita said. "Of course, for the study of mudslides, a steep angle will cause the glass beads to move faster and collect at the front boundary of the flow, suppressing fingering and producing a pronounced ridge."
Another tilt demonstrated how the slurry looked like an actual mudslide. Heads swiveled from the demonstration to the television replay of an actual slide. It was an interesting way to show the accuracy of the flow, Amita thought. She wondered if she could get a copy of that tape for her rescheduled lecture.
"Wow, it really does make the slurry behave like mud!" the sophomoric boy yelped triumphantly.
"Exactly," Amita said approvingly.
"And this helps us predict when and where mudslides occur?" his sharp-elbowed friend asked.
"Not very well," the rail thin barmaid said dryly.
This earned her a chorus of protests and catcalls, to Amita's relief. She'd obviously impressed her fellow prisoners. And here she'd been afraid that her presentation would be too dry. She looked out the window at the pouring rain and laughed at herself for worrying about dryness.
"What?" the barmaid demanded. "If she could predict mudslides, would she be stuck here with the rest of us?"
Amita laughed aloud at that one. "That's so true," she admitted.
"Oh, look, we're on TV again!" the Hawaiian shirted man called.
The bartender turned up the sound and they watched CBS News show overhead shots of Pacific Coast Highway, which was closed off in three places by mudslides.
Amita shuddered. If she and Millie hadn't stopped for lunch and gas, they might well have been caught in the slide that had occurred between the Schooner or Later and Pepperdine University.
Millie patted her on the shoulder. "Don't worry about it," she said. "It clearly wasn't our turn to die today."
Amita managed a small smile.
"And speaking of not dying…" Millie continued.
"Oh, no," Amita said. "Was I that bad?" After she'd been congratulating herself, too.
Millie shook her head. "I just said, today was NOT your day to die, didn't I?" She squeezed Amita's shoulder and gave her a shake. "You did good, considering that three-fourths of the audience has never seriously studied math."
"Thanks," Amita said.
"You need a drink," Millie said.
"Sorry," Amita said. "I'm the designated driver."
Millie laughed. "You're kidding. We're not going anywhere until tomorrow at the earliest. We're just lucky that Hawaii Boy…" she gestured to the man in the tourist clothing "… offered to let us sleep in his camper."
"You can sleep there," Amita said. "I gave my spot to them." She gestured to the slender black woman with the toddler.
"Well, I've got my Bose earmuffs, lots of batteries and a nice, stiff nightcap," Millie said. "I can sleep through anything." She held out a drink to Amita. "Speaking of drinks, here's one for you."
"Um," Amita said.
"Don't worry," Millie said. "I know you're not into serious drinking. That's why I got you something not entirely unlike a milkshake. It'll go good with your fake burger."
"Oh, they do have soy burgers?" Amita said happily. She knuckled the small of her back, where yet another sweat drop had appeared.
"Yes," Millie said. "Disgusting as that thought may be."
Amita started to object, but Millie interrupted
She handed Amita a tall, chilly drink. "This mocktail will go great with it."
Amita looked at the glass curiously. "What's in here?"
Millie smiled. "Vanilla ice cream, milk, coffee, cinnamon, plus hazelnut and chocolate syrups." She cocked her head and studied the concoction. "Really, it's not too bad for a kids' drink. Especially when topped with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry."
Amita plucked off the cherry and nibbled on it. Then her eyes went wide. "You mean, this is a…"
"It's a Virgin Mudslide," Millie smirked. "Somehow, it seemed appropriate."
Amita could have pointed out that she wasn't a virgin, but she settled on giving Millie a Mona Lisa smile and lifting her glass. "Here's mud in your eye."