Hands in acid
Feb. 26th, 2004 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenFirst things first.
Enid. I am what you made me, and what you have made me is a thief. In other words, the universal indicator paper has been acquired. You said you didn't remember, so a quick explanation. It goes red in strong acid, yellow/orange in weaker acid, green in neutral conditions, blue in weak alkali and purple in a strong alkaline solution. Now all you have to do is come up and see me next week and retrieve the stuff.
This morning, we were all subjected to various IQ/personality tests instead of lessons. The first one, the IQ test, was awful. It involved all that horrible stuff, such as non-verbal reasoning (whenever something is described as non-verbal I get twitchy) and I was Not Very Good. The BBC Test the Nation IQ test everyone was doing a few months ago told me I had an IQ of 95, which was far from reassuring, and judging from my performance this morning it could be argued to have at least some basis in truth.
On the other hand, I didn't even put my name on the test (no-one did) so it doesn't really matter. The personality test thing does. It's an updated version of the Oasis aptitude tests we did in Upper Five. These ones promise to tell you which courses, out of the 55,000 available under UCAS, are best suited to you. I await it with baited breath, etc; it might be more reliable this time because there were less questions about agriculture. The last one wanted us all to be farmers, I don't know why. A few outbreaks of foot and mouth later, they seem to have changed their minds.
The other development of the morning has to do with school security, of all things. Instead of signing in and out, we now have to use swipe-cards that will not only let us in and out the side doors but will also record the data of who's gone where when. It will probably be more convenient, and another reason to look down on the lower school, but it occurred to me that it will probably mean that when people are gated, they're really going to be gated. The system will probably be programmed not to accept their cards.
I didn't have Maths-for-Science today - it was Physics only - and somehow ended up in lunch with Helena, who shared a pie with me. She was going to cut with a knife that had been in the ketchup, but I moaned and made "eww!" noises until Mrs Johnson (the formlings' form teacher) took pity on us both and threw us a knife. Somehow or other we emerged from lunch with four times as much cutlery as when we went in.
I then realised I hadn't done that inorganic test from last term, which led to much stressing over hydrazine, which didn't abate once we got into Chemistry and had to do a practical. I hate myself when it comes to practicals. The only benefit of it was the fact Mrs Colvin had to go and get ammonium chloride from somewhere and while she was gone, I stole the universal indicator paper out of the tray.
For some reason, we were discussing how dangerous various chemicals are today. I was talking about how in the first year, I was terrified of the hydrochloric on the bench. (We have a fixed set of five chemicals on the benches - the three mineral acids, hydrochloric, sulphuric and nitric, and two alkalis - sodium and ammonium hydroxide. The NaOH is the most powerful chemical by a long shot). As the years passed, though, it dawned on me that to put it on a bench with first years, it couldn't actually be all that strong. It's only 1M, I think. I asked Mrs Colvin how strong it really is - she said, "Put your hands in it and see."
So I poured it out into a beaker, stuck both hands in it and waited. After five minutes (which the rest of the class found very amusing) I got a certain sense of the surreal, sitting at a bench with my hands in acid, but it was only after about ten that I noticed any effect at all. I washed it off with the firm conviction that if they replaced it with water, no-one would notice. Mrs Colvin then informed that she wouldn't have let me do that with the concentrated hydrochloric. That's good to know.
I got let out of English early - having had to read out one of my text transformation essays, which was embarrassing in the extreme - and went down to the station through snow. It has been snowing on and off all day, almost as if the weather is playing at it, trying to get it right. It hasn't stuck yet and it probably won't, but it's pretty while it lasts. Only here, though. Only in Britain could be relatively mild through November, December and January, and start snowing a week before March.
Nevermind. It gives me an excuse for another cup of coffee.
Enid. I am what you made me, and what you have made me is a thief. In other words, the universal indicator paper has been acquired. You said you didn't remember, so a quick explanation. It goes red in strong acid, yellow/orange in weaker acid, green in neutral conditions, blue in weak alkali and purple in a strong alkaline solution. Now all you have to do is come up and see me next week and retrieve the stuff.
This morning, we were all subjected to various IQ/personality tests instead of lessons. The first one, the IQ test, was awful. It involved all that horrible stuff, such as non-verbal reasoning (whenever something is described as non-verbal I get twitchy) and I was Not Very Good. The BBC Test the Nation IQ test everyone was doing a few months ago told me I had an IQ of 95, which was far from reassuring, and judging from my performance this morning it could be argued to have at least some basis in truth.
On the other hand, I didn't even put my name on the test (no-one did) so it doesn't really matter. The personality test thing does. It's an updated version of the Oasis aptitude tests we did in Upper Five. These ones promise to tell you which courses, out of the 55,000 available under UCAS, are best suited to you. I await it with baited breath, etc; it might be more reliable this time because there were less questions about agriculture. The last one wanted us all to be farmers, I don't know why. A few outbreaks of foot and mouth later, they seem to have changed their minds.
The other development of the morning has to do with school security, of all things. Instead of signing in and out, we now have to use swipe-cards that will not only let us in and out the side doors but will also record the data of who's gone where when. It will probably be more convenient, and another reason to look down on the lower school, but it occurred to me that it will probably mean that when people are gated, they're really going to be gated. The system will probably be programmed not to accept their cards.
I didn't have Maths-for-Science today - it was Physics only - and somehow ended up in lunch with Helena, who shared a pie with me. She was going to cut with a knife that had been in the ketchup, but I moaned and made "eww!" noises until Mrs Johnson (the formlings' form teacher) took pity on us both and threw us a knife. Somehow or other we emerged from lunch with four times as much cutlery as when we went in.
I then realised I hadn't done that inorganic test from last term, which led to much stressing over hydrazine, which didn't abate once we got into Chemistry and had to do a practical. I hate myself when it comes to practicals. The only benefit of it was the fact Mrs Colvin had to go and get ammonium chloride from somewhere and while she was gone, I stole the universal indicator paper out of the tray.
For some reason, we were discussing how dangerous various chemicals are today. I was talking about how in the first year, I was terrified of the hydrochloric on the bench. (We have a fixed set of five chemicals on the benches - the three mineral acids, hydrochloric, sulphuric and nitric, and two alkalis - sodium and ammonium hydroxide. The NaOH is the most powerful chemical by a long shot). As the years passed, though, it dawned on me that to put it on a bench with first years, it couldn't actually be all that strong. It's only 1M, I think. I asked Mrs Colvin how strong it really is - she said, "Put your hands in it and see."
So I poured it out into a beaker, stuck both hands in it and waited. After five minutes (which the rest of the class found very amusing) I got a certain sense of the surreal, sitting at a bench with my hands in acid, but it was only after about ten that I noticed any effect at all. I washed it off with the firm conviction that if they replaced it with water, no-one would notice. Mrs Colvin then informed that she wouldn't have let me do that with the concentrated hydrochloric. That's good to know.
I got let out of English early - having had to read out one of my text transformation essays, which was embarrassing in the extreme - and went down to the station through snow. It has been snowing on and off all day, almost as if the weather is playing at it, trying to get it right. It hasn't stuck yet and it probably won't, but it's pretty while it lasts. Only here, though. Only in Britain could be relatively mild through November, December and January, and start snowing a week before March.
Nevermind. It gives me an excuse for another cup of coffee.
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no subject
on 2004-02-26 09:49 am (UTC)Although uh... I'm not sure you should ever progress to book, hon. I have far too many that i uh... borrowed... from TTS.
xx
no subject
on 2004-02-26 10:26 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-02-26 10:51 am (UTC)And here! ::grabs you and dances in the snow:: ::falls down::
no subject
on 2004-02-27 02:25 pm (UTC)