My watch claimed I was twenty minutes early for physics, but the room was buzzing when I walked in. I still hadn't reset my watch to the infamous Arkwright time zone, the ever-present peril known to dog students from class to class. It wouldn't have been so bad if the time didn't change every week or so. The student union had tried everything from petitions to bribes, and after a while they just gave up. Rumor had it that the oddity was a faculty prank or a temporal anomaly. General opinion said it was a grand pain in the rear. I stopped caring the moment I heard Sarah's voice in the auditory melee.
"...and he was a real sweetheart and said he'd go talk to the chief editor for me! I hope I see him sometime this afternoon so I can thank him..."
I lost track of her voice in the din of the crowd, but it gave me something to think about: How could a Junior with so many advanced Liberal Arts classes have the prerequisites and the time to be taking Quantum Physics II? Her schedule sounded packed with labor-intensive classes, Speaking of what I read, land she would have needed to skip a year or two of sciences to be in the class. The little voice in my head whispered that it was a bad sign. I made a half-hearted crack about paranoia and went back to examining the crowd.
There were more students than I had expected. Maybe people were entering the field after all the hype from "What the Bleep do we Know" and all the other pop-sci adaptations of quantum theory. Quantum is rapidly becoming the new target of pseudoscience and mysticism, a void that used to be filled by relativity. Things are no longer "relative." Instead, they're "subjective" or "in a variety of quantum states" or "possessing infinite quantum futures." Or, worst of all, "it's all interconnected, man, like the water molecules." That's the trouble with teaching science to Joe Schmoe; it makes him think he understands it.
While I was still scanning the room when the professor entered. He went unnoticed, being about half my height, but the white beard set him apart. He took his time getting to the front of the room, and when he finally got there it didn't seem to matter much. It didn't seem to, that is, until his voice burst over what must have been a Dolby 5.1 surround sound system. Smart little guy. Probably experienced. He knew how to run a class.
"Please be seated," shouted the speakers. I sat. To my great surprise, Sarah sat next to me. I nearly asked about her major, but the speakers yelled again. "Silence!"
At least the guy didn't beat around the bush. And he knew how to scare the chatty ones. I think that's a good trait in a teacher.
The next thing anyone knew he was off the podium and fiddling with projector controls. If nothing else he had enough energy to replace a small fission reactor. I checked for his name on my class schedule: Mechenburg. Strict and Germanic.
Professor Mechenburg got the projector working. Half the class groaned - this was not the "easy first day" they had hoped for. Mechenburg didn't have a syllabus for us. He had a few simple problems. "Problem one - a sinusoidal change in velocity!" It was the first time I had heard anyone so excited about physics. Surprising, considering how many physics classes I've taken. "We are looking for the distance covered during a given time interval of twenty seven seconds. I am looking for an answer within a given time interval of two minutes. Go!"
To my right, Sarah groaned under her breath. "I've never seen a problem like this before! How are we supposed to know what to do?" The voice in the back of my head wondered how she got into the class with such a bad attitude and thoroughly warned me against helping her.
I normally trust the little voice about math problems and nothing else. I made a compromise with it and said to Sarah, "Velocity is the slope of a distance-over-time graph. This plots velocity over time. So turn this into the slope of a d-t graph. Just think about it that way and it's easier." The little voice griped about wasted talent and corrected my multiplication. It isn't that I don't know seven times nine or anything, I just get clumsy if I use calculators too much. I spent all summer using calculators. The voice knew all that, but he teased me about it all the same. I would never have listened to the stupid little voice if he hadn't been so good at catching my mathematical mistakes.
AGF has a new look! Or at least a newer look. I have to rework the archives and improve the formatting of the navigation bar, but it's getting consistently better, I think. And I am now engaging in shameless self-promotion for the sake of gaining an audience! Technically speaking I do have an audience right now, but as much as I appreciate Christos's readership... One person isn't a huge audience. Still, it beats the ol' hypothetical audience! And as a sort of excuse for the lateness, let me fill you in on my latest methods of procrastination: http://www.agentaeolus.com/ - Good writing. Not quite my genre, but it keeps me entertained. And I think it's good to read another webserial. I'm not completely sure why, but I have a strong conviction that it is so.
Book recommendation: On Writing by Stephen King. Awesome book about King's writing and his life as a writer. Definitely a must-read for writers.
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