And I'm back!!!
Hi!
When you're in a room with 70 other science enthusiasts, you realise a few things. 1. We are all socially awkward human beings, that resort to hangman as a form of introduction. 2. Plot twist! Actually we're not and you find out that we aren't shy, quiet and painfully awkward, as you once thought but instead, we are the loudest, weirdest, most charismatic group of people that you will ever meet- who also happen to be able to put more than 2 and 2 together. As well as the interesting experience of meeting and having some very funny, awkward, fun and embarrassing moments with these people, we also got to have some fun with some pretty cool kit, following the safety lecture from pretty much every person aged over 18 that we encountered, some being more chirpy than others.
"Where is this wonderful place?", I hear you ask. Well, it's only an Imperial College London summer school! What else could it be? honestly, come on.
So after the excruciating experience of being forced to choose between Chemistry and Physics, I find myself in the biggest lab I have ever seen and where do I go? The front, of course! So we're introduced to our stream and we get cracking (Not literally). First, Chemical clock reactions and these put those reactions that you thought were so 'cool' in high school to shame. And yes, I'm talking the flame tests, traffic light reactions or even elephant's toothpaste (Decomposition of Hydrogen peroxide)- they were cooler than all of them and to be honest this week made GCSE Chemistry look like child's play. The evening consisted of dinner at Garfunkel's and a maths puzzle given to me by one of the chirpiest mathematicians I think I've ever met or ever will for that matter.
I'll leave it for you to have a go at:
Moving only one digit, make this true:
62 - 63 = 1
Next day, Complexometric titrations. Yeah, I know, 'Complexa-what?'. Now, some of you may vaguely remember what a titration is from GCSE chemistry but these are far more interesting than your run of the mill acid- base stuff. We used this to find the amount of copper in coins. Now, this would have been great if I wasn't little miss has a migraine every couple of hours- resulting in my proud acceptance of the certificate for most CIR forms. And completing 3 accurate titrations while feeling like there is a nail being driven through your head is not easy, but we got it done and done well at that. And I want to slip in a quick thank you to my mentors who handled the situation very well.
When you're in a room with 70 other science enthusiasts, you realise a few things. 1. We are all socially awkward human beings, that resort to hangman as a form of introduction. 2. Plot twist! Actually we're not and you find out that we aren't shy, quiet and painfully awkward, as you once thought but instead, we are the loudest, weirdest, most charismatic group of people that you will ever meet- who also happen to be able to put more than 2 and 2 together. As well as the interesting experience of meeting and having some very funny, awkward, fun and embarrassing moments with these people, we also got to have some fun with some pretty cool kit, following the safety lecture from pretty much every person aged over 18 that we encountered, some being more chirpy than others.
"Where is this wonderful place?", I hear you ask. Well, it's only an Imperial College London summer school! What else could it be? honestly, come on.
So after the excruciating experience of being forced to choose between Chemistry and Physics, I find myself in the biggest lab I have ever seen and where do I go? The front, of course! So we're introduced to our stream and we get cracking (Not literally). First, Chemical clock reactions and these put those reactions that you thought were so 'cool' in high school to shame. And yes, I'm talking the flame tests, traffic light reactions or even elephant's toothpaste (Decomposition of Hydrogen peroxide)- they were cooler than all of them and to be honest this week made GCSE Chemistry look like child's play. The evening consisted of dinner at Garfunkel's and a maths puzzle given to me by one of the chirpiest mathematicians I think I've ever met or ever will for that matter.
I'll leave it for you to have a go at:
Moving only one digit, make this true:
62 - 63 = 1
Next day, Complexometric titrations. Yeah, I know, 'Complexa-what?'. Now, some of you may vaguely remember what a titration is from GCSE chemistry but these are far more interesting than your run of the mill acid- base stuff. We used this to find the amount of copper in coins. Now, this would have been great if I wasn't little miss has a migraine every couple of hours- resulting in my proud acceptance of the certificate for most CIR forms. And completing 3 accurate titrations while feeling like there is a nail being driven through your head is not easy, but we got it done and done well at that. And I want to slip in a quick thank you to my mentors who handled the situation very well.
Next, dyes and dyeing which resulted in more dye getting onto my lab book than onto the actual fabric, but nevertheless it was fun, really quite strenuous, but altogether quite fun.
By this point, I was ready to go to bed, as 6 hours in the lab is really quite intense, but then I remember- We're going to watch Les Mis! So after a great time at the theatre, we make our way home and I'm not sure whether I was going to spontaneously fall asleep or spontaneously combust and to be honest, I'm not even sure now.
Now for some PET depolymerisation and aspirin synthesis and that almost takes us to the end. So I guess it looks like I'm far too chilled out, so what do I get? A maths question from an undergraduate maths past paper... Challenging but I really like that about Imperial, there is always someone, somewhere who will throw a challenge at you, whether it be drawing the products of a reaction that you've never seen before or calculating the number of fingers on a martian- someone's always got something!
I had an amazing time at Imperial and I loved it all- (except the headaches) I met some really cool people, some really impressive people or people who like and are good at maths and ∴ by definition are really awesome people. I learned to use a lot of very cool kit that I had never seen or heard of before, I learned life lessons from Jag about being late- (To save you the trouble- my advice to you is... don't be or even better, be early!) and I can definitely say that Imperial has become my favourite place to be and at next opportunity, I'll be back!
Stay Curious,
Vanessa x
Note: Try this one:
There are 2 answers:
Add one straight line to make this true-
5 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 555
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