Day 2

A continuation of yesterday's little synopsis of my classes. And some other stuff.

Thermodynamics
I know it's the first day of this class, and it's really too early to tell, but this class really disappointed me. Among other things, the professor spent most of the lecture "introducing" thermodynamics (e.g. the state functions and such). It was so much more fun last time! We'll see what happens, I guess; maybe it'll get better.

Intro Biochemistry
Let's just put it this way. Less than 10 minutes into the course, and I already realize that I don't like biochemistry. And the professor even pulled all stops to make the first day interesting: video clips, shiny research articles (all of which are from Nature, hmm), weird jokes, it's all there on the powerpoint slides. Alas, I still don't like biochemistry, possibly because the professor assumes that everyone is a biochemistry major, and defintely because I have to memorize all the amino acid structures and codes. *Sigh*

Analytical 2
Analytical was good. The professor is very traditional: blackboard and chalk. Which is fine. The lecture itself is mostly review (Nernst equation and all that), but it's alright. The class size is surprisingly small, though; I know it's summer, but where'd everyone go?

I also managed to (finally!) acquire a periodic table poster. In terms of aesthetics it is the absolute opposite of the famous poster by Theodore Gray (i.e. the poster is really quite homely), but it's decently informative (with things like Pauling electronegativity and first ionization energy in it). The atomic masses only go to 4 significant figures, though. The most chemically-serious defect the poster has is that it lacks an outline of the metal-nonmetal "staircase". And it's dated: no Roentgenium. Oh well. I've been lusting after a periodic table poster for two years, and now I have one!