12:25

Undoubtedly, Fridays are always something to look forward to after a long week. For me, this is especially true for Fridays evenings at 5 when I finish my last class of week, a four hour long chemistry lab. Normally, we leave when we finish our experiments, but today's lab for me was unusually ridiculous. Part of our experiment involved mixing an iodide solution with n-heptane to dissolve some of the iodine in the n-heptane so we get an aqueous layer containing the original solution containing iodide, diatomic iodine, and triiodide, and an organic n-heptane layer that contained just iodine. My lab partner and I had to start our experiments over twice. The first time, we ran out of our aqueous solution because some technical difficulties with a volumetric pipette so we couldn't do the third trial of the titration. As a result, we had to start over. However, when our second mixture separated into the aqueous and organic layers, there was this mysterious layer of an unknown su...

When I went outside today morning beneath the rain and overcast, I knew that today was an especially cold day. I had a shorter than normal lunch today (my lunch is already short because I have 20 minutes until the next class) so I could go back to my room and don my peacoat and grab the umbrella since I was going to go up Science Hill later today. As I went to dinner with a few friends, I was once again grateful that I lived in the same building as the dining hall, which meant that we could just go through the basement to go eat rather than having to step outside, because it was really cold outside. I managed to take a peek at Yahoo Weather before I left and was surprised that the temperature had already dropped to 38 degrees Fahrenheit. After dinner, as I was working on finishing up my chemistry lab report, I suddenly received an IM from a friend who told me to look out the window. Surprised, I saw large flakes drifting down among the raindrops. It is the middle of October. And it is...

Saybrook had a "Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream Social," where we had ice cream that was prepared using liquid nitrogen to rapidly cool it down. They had some interesting flavors. There was the more conventional types like Oreo, blueberry/lemon, cinnamon/sprinkles, and there were a apparently few that were less conventional like Cheetos and salad dressing. I thankfully managed to avoid the Cheetos tub, but I inadvertently got a scoop of the salad dressing, which was, aside from the scent of ranch (which I associate with either ranch or Elmer's Glue), wasn't really that bad. It in fact tasted like cream cheese. I'm guessing the logic behind using liquid nitrogen to cool it down is that the cooling process would be more rapid and that the ice cream ends up becoming smoother because the water has less of a chance to form ice crystals. This reminds me of my friend's summer research project for STARS on the formability of bulk metallic glasses, which are a kind of amorph...