Sunday, April 09, 2006

Cat in a Beaker

Beaker: a type of laboratory glassware which consists of a cylindrical cup with a notch on the top to allow for the pouring of liquids. They are about as wide as they are tall. This makes beakers very stable and easy to handle. They may be made of plastic, glass, or Pyrex®. Some beakers have graduated markings, or calibrations, to allow an easy rough measure of liquid volume.
As a means to make solutions, they are probably the most used piece of laboratory glassware. Coupled with a good magnetic stirrer, they see frequent heavy use in a laboratory. Like a test tube or a boiling tube, a beaker can be placed over a burning flame (such as a Bunsen burner) to be heated.

Yes, I stole it from the encyclopedia.

I stole my photo ( at left) too. The cat is CC, the first cloned kitty. I think CC stands for carbon copy, but my Cheryl says it is for Cloned Cat. She's probably right, since hers makes more sense in that 'scientist being funny' way. Here's the website for the peeps that clone cats. I love them. I love them even more because they think putting a cloned cat in a beaker is cute, and not even mildly offensive to them or the cat. And because of their name. Genetic Savings and Clone. Scientists with puns - a very dangerous combination.

I used to be a scientist. A great theoretical physicist specializing in Quantum Mechanics and Relativistic Space Time. Ok - maybe not great, but I did get a degree in it. Barely. I think my song-and-dance laugh-riot thesis seminar on the Schrodinger's Cat Paradox was the piece that allowed me to graduate. ("Oh- Now I get it - it's the title of her blog - it all makes sense now! Der.") In comparison to the rest of my class, I had the test-taking ability of someone with mental retardation. The old IQ smaller than your hat size joke. But my thesis had lots of humor and really spiffy hand-drawn graphics (we didn't have powerpoint back then, kids) so I passed on a stand-up-comic technicality. Physicists aren't used to laughing during seminars. They were too stuned to fail me.

The only funny physicist was Richard P. Feynman - who was funny because he was willing to be the bongo-playing chief in the CalTech production of 'South Pacific'. He also used to sneak out of Los Alamos through a hole in the fence and keep re-entering over and over to confuse the MPs when he was working on the Manhattan Project. So that's the standard for stand-up physicists. I blew them out of the water.

Now I'm no longer a physicist, and the amount of quantum mechanics I retained is compiled in this sentence. To clarify...that means the words 'quantum mechanics' is about it.

I made a great huge art canvas out of pieces of my Relativistic Physics final and hung it in my bathroom. People love it, but I can't explain a single word, even though it's my handwriting, and it boggles my mind that at one point I actually knew what it meant, and came up with it on my own. It's sort of a commentary on my mind. Staggering intellegence has morphed into meaningless art held together with glue. I think there are triple intergrals on there. And sums of triple intergrals. And lots of greek letters that I don't know what letter it is, let alone what it stood for. Omega? Tau? Mu? What's the intergral of the volume of a sum of Mu's? Is it going to be on the test?

Now I spend my time coming up with poop jokes for my scripts, and I do know a lot about refinancing your house if you're interested.

6 comments:

Hyperion said...

It is Carbon Copy

Schrodinger's Kitten said...

Dammit Cheryl!!!

Tracy Lynn said...

Dude, I can honestly say that almost NO ONE makes me laugh as hard as you do, and that is no mean feat, I tell you. I desperately want you to write a book, a script, a memo, anything.

You should take a picture of your thesis and post it on the blog. DUDE!

Schrodinger's Kitten said...

Hmmm..screenwriting. I'll consider that.

Snark.

Cheryl said...

"Copy Cat" was what I heard, for the record. And even if that's wrong, I still think it's the cutest option. Copy Cat--get it?

Schrodinger's Kitten said...

Ok. I admit Copy Cat is cuter. I'm going to have to look it up once and for all now.