Quick update

I've been busy this week working on homework so I haven't had time to post. Here's a quick synopsis.

I've starting doing intramural hockey now. Our first games were on Sunday- I'm in both the men's league and the corec league, and both of my teams lost our first games. The corec team's game was against another MatSci team, who just happens to be the returning champions from last year, so we got obliterated. In the men's league we didn't do so badly, but we just didn't get a lot of shots off. A lot of us are new to the sport, and I personally haven't played since middle school. Oh, and it's floor hockey, so we just run around in our shoes, not roller blades, which is kind of disappointing, but I won't complain.

I also went curling this past Sunday, but I think it will be my last time until hockey is over. Both are on Sunday, and I can't waste my entire Sunday just playing sports. Plus it's tiring. Anyway, we had a mini-curling match, and my team beat the other team 7-0. I had some particularly good placements that were pivotal in our win, so I was pretty excited about that. In our last round, the other team had like 4 stones in the 'house' and we only had one, which they had just knocked out. I was trying to take out their closest stone to keep them from winning 4 points, but instead, I messed up the shot, knocked out their second closest stone, and ricocheted off it to put my stone smack dab in the center. The beauty of it was that this was blocked in front by about 3 other stones, so the other team even with two more stones left, was unable to take out my stone so we got the point instead of them getting 3 or 4. I was quite proud of my mistake.

Also on Sunday (I know, busy day) I met with the regional science olympiad director, and she gave me the rules for the events I will be supervising. I have a group of 4 friends who said they'd be willing to help me out with writing the exams, so we're having brunch on Sunday at my apartment and doing some brainstorming. The two events I will be doing are Five Star Science and Forensics. The Five-Star Science event is a pentathlon of Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Earth Science/Astronomy, and Data Analysis, while the Forensics is like a crime-solving event where I get to devise a made-up crime with suspects and the students have to solve the crime using fingerprint analysis, chromatography, identification of white powders and polymers, etc. It should be a lot of fun, and I'm really looking forward to this weekend (gotta get past the homework this week though!).

In lab, I was able to successfully polymerize poly(n-butyl acrylate) as an elastomer and then polymerize the same thing in the presence of a triblock copolymer. The idea is that we will compare the two polymers to see whether the triblock copolymer strengthens the poly(n-butyl acrylate) network, and then proceed to the hydrogel systems if it looks promising. I'm presenting at lab meeting this week, but once again, there are like 4 of us presenting so I want to keep it at about a 5 minute presentation with room for questions. Next week I'll actually be doing the mechanical measurements to see if the one polymer is stronger than the other. I would have done it last week, but I had some issues with my polymerizations shooting into the water bath and then bubbles forming during polymerization, which I have since corrected.

I guess that's about it for now. Thankfully my homework this semester is only worth about 10-15% in most of my classes so I don't need to worry about it so much. However, I'm doing an extra class this semester so that probably makes up for it. But, if I take 4 classes this quarter and next quarter, I'll only have 4 left until I'm done with classes forever! That means I could potentially be done with classes in December, but my guess is that I'll just end up taking like 1 or 2 at a time instead because of when courses are offered that I want to take.

Anyway, I need to get back to work or go to sleep. Sleep sounds better. Hope everybody is doing well. For your viewing pleasure, I'm attaching a picture of a group of us doing homework in my apartment with the "wall of laptops". I'm not in it, as I'm taking the picture. The guy on the couch is Nikhil, the girl standing up is Louise, and the guy in the background is Andres.