04 Jun 2011
by Nikkiin science Tags: can't i just shut off my brain and enjoy things?, sci-fi, whining
Seriously, how many more times must I read (or watch) a sci-fi story in which somewhere someone says ‘imagine life if Alexander Fleming didn’t discover penicillin’ or ‘if Ben Franklin didn’t discover electricity’ or, for a real life example (as in, I got told this by a prof IRL and was too raaage to form a coherent retort so I said nothing), ‘if Xerox didn’t show Steve Jobs their GUI, we’d still be using DOS’. Or even ‘well, we can’t let this person die because they discover x and without x the world will be doomed’.
No.
Just… no.
Contrary to popular belief, a single person does not have that large of an effect on science. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that these guys aren’t brilliant and don’t deserve their credit or anything, I’m just saying that if one person discovered something, so could someone else. Maybe it’ll take a little while longer and maybe we’d be be living slightly differently because of it, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near as drastic as sci-fi makes it seem.
And, no, I’m not just saying this. I totally have historical anecdotes to show that more than one person can, and will, discover or invent something.
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31 May 2011
by Nikkiin science, writing Tags: failing already, grandiose plans, summer writing marathon
Seriously? November? Finals start in about the second week of December, so there’s tons of shit going down in that month. What’s wrong with January or May through September? Needless to say, I’ve failed the nanowrimo every year since I started in, ohhh, 2008. Yeah. I’m just thaaat good. And my word count keeps decreasing every year!
Anyway, what I meant to say before I went off on a tangent, is that, since I have no 30 page paper looming1 over my head this summer, I should make my own damned writing goal for the next three months. Far simpler than nano too – I’m just going to write, at minimum, 1000 words per day of whatever I damn well please as long as it is fiction. Cuz I can totally write a 1000 word blog entry without effort. I mean, c’mon, all of my posts are just me rambling on about nothing anyway – it’s only a couple of steps above stream-of-consciousness.
Basically, I want to accomplish something, writing wise, with my newfound 8-5 life. Not even 8-5, really, cuz, as a chemist, I spent a lot – a lot – of time doing dick all timing slow moving liquid dripping through screens. Science (well, my science) is a lot of hurry up and wait so I spend a looot of time rushing about in a mad dash about the lab cuz I have to start an experiment by an hour after I arrive so that it’ll be done by five. And I do pretty much nothing between nine and five. Seriously, best career decision ever. Except for the part where you run experiments that last twelve hours and you end up working split shifts. At two in the morning. But other than that.
So much for having a blog entry about writing. Back to that.
In order to publicly humiliate motivate myself into actually following through with this goal, I am going to spam everyone with posts about how much I haven’t written and why I suck at life, possibly every day. However, unlike nanowrimo, I’m not going to post what I’ve written cuz I don’t have the excuse of lol I wrote it all in word wars to explain away my crappy first drafts.
And that is all.
Also, feel free to mock me when I fail at this.
And I start tomorrow. Either with my sci-fi romcom comic script, a novel(la?) length Rizzoli & Isles AU fic (boring AU – no vampires or space monsters or anything, just Jane attending BCU as an athletic scholarship student right after Maura broke up with the axe murderer and started her MD) or the modern, genderbent Sherlock Holmes reimagining (or whatever the cool word for remake is these days) novel (series) @Sildra told me to write (well, sorta) a few months ago.
Basically, I’mma gunna be writing a lot of femslash. Or preslash, in the case of the girly Sherlock Holmes thing. It’s a series and I really, really love UST – especially slash goggle/deliberate shiptease type UST. Though I’m not sure if it counts as femslash for the comic script as one of the characters is an alien whose species has three (or more, haven’t exactly decided) genders. She, uh, looks pretty feminine? Well, more on the androgynous side of femininity, but still very clearly a woman. Except not.
Wait, how does word count work if I’m writing a script…? And I haven’t exactly, y’know, properly plotted out any of these ideas. I haven’t written much down for the first two and I don’t even have a crime for the last.
Dammit.
1Heh. Looms.
11 Oct 2009
by Nikkiin science, tv Tags: chemistry, fringe, pauli exclusion principle
ETA: Since this is my most popular page ever, how about I skip the sci-fi and jump straight for what you came looking for?
The Pauli Exclusion Principle simply states that a fermion cannot exist twice in a quantum state. At a more basic level (also known as, the level I’m at and I’m a fifth year chemistry student), two electrons with the same spin cannot be in the same quantum state. They have to be of opposite spins.
Figure 1 is hydrogen. Yeah, it’s pretty boring. One electron in the 1s orbital. That electron could be pointing up or down (ie, of either spin), but by convention we write it upwards.
Figure 2 is helium… sort of. In this example, two electrons are in the 1s orbital. However, both electrons have the same spin. That is what the Pauli Exclusion Principle says we cannot do.
Figure 3 is also helium. Two electrons in the 1s orbital however, the second is pointing downwards, thus signifying a spin in the other direction. That is the correct way of drawing the 1s orbital.
(The electrons can also be drawn on top of the line. In fact, I had one chem prof who wanted them drawn that way and a different chem prof who wanted them to be drawn through the line. Clearly, I like the second chem prof more.)
Now, back to the regularly scheduled tv discussion.
Last Thursday, Fringe made a grave mistake in science.
Yes, Fringe is all about mistakes in (fake) science.
This mistake, however, holds the singular claim (for this show) of pissing me off.
The mistake? Nina Sharp was explaining to Olivia about why the two universes cannot be brought together – one will inevitably be destroyed.
Yes, that’s a pretty common theory and it always shows up in science fiction. In fact, I have absolutely no problem with that – it’s effing theoretical physics so do whatever the hell you want.
Just don’t mutilate quantum mechanics whilst you do so.
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