Second chem test is on Thursday. I am going through old exams. Hey, does anyone in the field of chemistry still balance re-dox reactions by hand, anyway, except of course for test-taking purposes?

Check this out. Post your prognosis: the first scenario will come true or "the other scenario" will come true? Or something else?

God help us, squirrels hooked on crack.

Had Todd and Sandy (this one's for you two!) over with their kids last night. My cats hid the entire time, but the kids had fun, and so did we. It was a good time--bring them over again some time. I told my dear old mom today that her wish sort of came true, that there were 5 kids playing in my home last night-- they just weren't mine!

I learned something yesterday about myself-- I'd rather run a day-care center than study for calc tests. :)

Sorry of my posts seem boring. Really, I would love to keep a chronicle of my wild eroto-pharm-enhanced, mansion-wide, hot, steamy ORGIES featuring Hollywood A-list celebrities and ambiguously-sexualized supermodels, but I am afraid my folks may one day find this blog and give me a hard time for not inviting them. :-)

I have a calc test on Tuesday. Why, I ask, do some of these problems seem unbelievably hard to solve, but then when I ask the TA, the answer he gives is obvious? I mean, what is it about this one branch of mathematics in particular that seems so bloody confounding to people who can otherwise do fine with stuff like algebra and even, *gasp* geometry? Trig, I can understand not understanding that. I mean, trig is just plain weird -- all those triangles in circles and stuff. But when you look at calculus, it seems so "obvious", so "intuitive". Then you go to do the problems, and BLAM-O, reality strikes. *sigh*...

So here's the sort of thing I am dealing with in chem class:

A spherical balloon with a radius of 120 meters:
Twenty students want to go for a ride in the balloon and they
weigh an average of 150 pounds (453.6g/pound).  The total mass
besides the people is 82 kg.  The balloon flies on helium and nitrogen
gas, with a .80 mole fraction of helium.  The internal temperature
of the balloon is 16 degrees Celsius, which is the same as the
surrounding air.  When the external pressure  is .80 atm, and the
balloon is floating, what is the internal pressure of the balloon?  The
molar mass of the air is 28.92g/mol.  (The volume of a sphere
is: 4/3*pi*(r^3).)

OK, so post your answers, folks! :)

Hell, why should we be any different from my cats? Read it here.

My dad mentioned this problem last night and he said he doesn't have the solution. Can you figure it out?

Three men go into a 7-11 and buy $30 worth of beer, paying $10 each. They leave but the store owner who took the cash realizes they overpaid by $5 since there was a special running. He gives his young employee 5 $1-bills and sends him after the men before they drive away. The boy runs out to the parking lot but figuring $5 is hard to split 3 ways, he decides to give them each $1 and keep the last $2 for himself (kids these days! sheesh!). So in the end, each man paid $9 for beer and the boy kept $2. The problem is, $1 disappears somehow in all this, because 3 x $9 = $27, and $27 (what the men paid) + $2 (what the boy kept) = $29. The store owner parted with $5 from the total of $30, leaving him with $25, with $5 gone with the boy, for a total of $30 on his side.

So what happened to the 30th dollar?

I have no idea what the answer to this is and as tempted as I am to Google for it, I want to see if someone else can figure it out first.