Some more things I missed in science class
I guess I missed more days in high school than I remember. There are things that aren’t part of my collected knowledge; some more things that I missed in science class while I was busy daydreaming or passing a note to a friend or watching the clock. Time is science material, after all.
This evening while flipping through the upper channels, I came across a short public demonstration of the laws of magnetism. Things like “grapes are magnetic”, or “water is magnetic” or “copper is magnetic, if you find the right powder”. Stop, don’t make fun of me; I saw the demonstrations on television, and they weren’t trying to trick anybody.
Wiki always helps, so I looked up my new words for today. Specifically: paramagnetism and diamagnetism, which go perfectly well with ferromagnetism and a few others that I really didn’t understand. Just learning that a grape can be repelled by a magnet was enough to make my day complete. From now on, I can try to distract the dog with grapes and iron bars. Maybe I can surround my compass with grapes and melons and see what else my science teacher was hiding from us. So much more useful than iron filings which tend to stain the carpets.
Tomorrow should have other surprises; I wasn’t particularly awake during math, languages, geography or history either.
Today my office returned to normal. When I arrived yesterday, the painters had already arrived and I became a refugee. Finding an empty desk for a day or more isn’t difficult at this time of the season with vacations in progress, but it was an adjustment to join another workgroup for the time period. You can’t drop into the middle of a circle that has taken decades to grow into its current form; I really felt like a spectator. Getting my own desk and cubicle back is good for the soul.
