Sunday, February 13, 2005

Water is adhesive and cohesive!

Well I now know that water is adhesive and cohesive. And I know the difference between the two. I even know why - due to the weak Hydrogen boding caused by the electronegativity ( which is the effect of the fact that there is polar covalent bonding between the Oxygen and Hydrogen - resulting in the water molecule being charged.) This makes water an excellent transport mechanism.

This knowledge has been fascinating me. When I ate breakfast this morning I was thinking. "Hmmm... Peanut butter is very adhesive; but not as cohesive. Honey, on the other hand is cohesive, but not as adhesive."

Last night I was thinking, "Hmmm, both ice and water have lower densities than Cape Velvet..."

I also know that species is the lowest taxon in the biological classifaction hierarchy.

I also know other stuff. I know what a phenotypic characteristic is - for example.

Yup. Sandra has a test today.

I also have been working on my own courses. I finished a maths assignment on matrices. But Word does not have the correct formatting tools to produce mathematical type. I have thus started learning Latex2e in order to be able to create my assignment electronically. I found, downloaded and installed the Windows Implementation of the very powerful and useful program. I think if I ever write a short story or novel this will be the way to go. The final product is printed book quality. And this is the industry standard for publishing scientific texts!

The reasons I like it lots are:

(1) I don't think I have particularly nice handwriting, especially of mathematics.
(2) I can not submit handwritten assignemnts via the internet. And its a real hassle to get to the UNISA building to submit it via the non-internet method.
(3) I can easily read the typed format and catch any careless errors.
(4) Its looks uber-cool.

Last night, I finally got all I needed downloaded (its all free software!) and the markup knowledge worked out to format the text... and now its a matter of transferring the information into wordpad or notepad and then marking it up correctly.

I saw Meira on Sunday. She was in Durban for Richard Moshal's wedding. She took some photographs with her 5 megapixel digital camera. She looked a bit annoyed when I had to ask what it meant if a digital camera is 5 megapixels. Anyways, she took some photographs which she has promised to email me. So if you are reading this Meira, send me them soon!!!

We chatted a while about her interest in geneaology (she attended an international genealogy conference in Israel recently.) And her next planned event ( she wants to go on the March of the Living.) It was nice to catch up a little.

Oh, and I still find my Friday evening conversation with Richard a bit amusing. I went to shul on Friday night, and as I was walking in Richard passed by me, rushing out and in like a whirl wind.

I said: "Hello. Richard. Haven't seen you in a while. How are you doing?"
He said: "Good. And you?"

I later found out, during the Rabbi's shpiel before Aleinu that Richard was getting married on Sunday, and that the entire Moshal family and guests were here to mark the Shabbat before the wedding. Hmm.

Anyways... Mazel Tov.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I see the US Government appears to be losing interest in your blog. Perhaps they clicked the link to the site on Lies and Deception and found it a much more worthwhile place to spend their limited time, manpower and expertise.

...

.. It's in words that the magic is -- Abracadabra, Open Sesame, and the rest -- but the magic words in one story aren't magical in the next. The real magic is to understand which words work, and when, and for what; the trick is to learn the trick. ... And those words are made from the letters of our alphabet: a couple-dozen squiggles we can draw with the pen. This is the key! And the treasure, too, if we can only get our hands on it! It's as if - as if the key to the treasure is the treasure! ------- John Barth, Chimera