What else did I learn about chemistry?

Yesterday, I talked about all the various ways in which baking soda has endeared itself to me.

Today, I'd like to ramble on a little more about a related topic, the things I've learned in chemistry class, which are not entirely the same thing. I didn't take any chemistry courses in college; I did, however, two years of chemistry in high school, and got a 5 on my AP Chem test, so perhaps I learned about basic chemistry in class.

The AP chem test turned out to be the most valuable AP test I took (out of four), since it gave me a whole eight credit hours, a sequence that was actually on the checksheet for my physics major at some point. AP Physics wouldn't have done as much for me, ironically.

The man who taught both of my high school chem classes, was just an incredible teacher - maybe not the most organized-seeming person, and he would ramble and get side-tracked once in a while, but his stories would drive home valuable lessons. Not only did his lessons send me through the AP test, but years later, I took the physics GRE and knocked out a 770.

I hadn't taken any formal coursework in thermodynamics when I took the test, which made it tricky, as that was one of the topics it covered; however, I was surprised at how many thermodynamics questions I could answer based on things my chemistry teacher had taught me back in high school. I still remember many of the lessons I learned in class; one of the odder ones is to always taste test, and that a little bit of lime flavor goes a long way. He had us making ice cream for a lab once.

Another lesson that was reinforced in my first chemistry class - perhaps not the best lesson to take to heart in high school - was that the less work you seem to do to get a given test grade, the more it impresses people with your intelligence when it's a high grade. I shared my 10th grade chemistry class with a much more studious girl named Jennie, and she expressed amazement that I kept acing quiz after quiz in that class. I sat in the back corner, where the distracted talkative kids were.

The guy in front of me was facing a failing grade long before he got the crap kicked out of him by some rough characters in the parking lot across from the school one lunchtime and wound up in the hospital; I probably had three of the four lowest grades in that class sitting nearest to me. But even if I seemed terribly distracted, had a habit of not doing homework and turning lab reports in late if ever - things that Jennie had apparently noticed - I tended to pay attention to what my teacher was actually saying, because it was so interesting.

Later, I looked back on Jennie telling me that she was amazed that I could keep doing so well in the class without doing work, and I see one of the moments where I was closest to consciously realizing that more than anything else, I was making a conspicuous display out of laziness throughout high school in order to score some kind of points with my peers. Now that I've seen that sort of attitude from the other side of the classroom, I strongly suspect some of my teachers in high school felt frustrated with me.

Physics, dating, and the elusive house-husband

To continue the vein of yesterday, where we explored the social dynamics of academia and the nearly unique social role of physicists outside of academia (a role they don't exactly seek, usually), today I'd like to write a little about another side of the "science ladder."

Dating. One of my female physics professors once told our class that the quickest way to get rid of a guy in a bar was to mention that she was a physics student. That wouldn't work on other physics people, of course, and I don't think it works on women, either. I didn't notice the same phenomenon as a man; while many male physics majors are socially awkward, the fact that they are interested in physics doesn't cast aspersions on their manliness, or make them less appealing.

I really don't think this strange aversion applies to anything other than the traditional heterosexual dating field in that one particular direction: When a woman is highly educated, and especially in a mathematically intensive field, men find it intimidating. A couple decades of sitcoms and movies starring dumb-as-rocks male lead roles paired with more educated female lead roles may have eroded this a little, which make me wonder just how strong a phenonemon this used to be.

The growing educational gender gap between men and women (women are becoming more educated than men) may bury it completely, eventually; it's only a few fields, and mainly the doctoral level, that we still see a gender imbalance favoring males, but in the mean time, I can't help but wonder if this is one of the factors that helps drive women away from physics and mathematics.

Physics envy

Choosing where to go to graduate school was a long and difficult process, and of the many considerations that passed my mind, none seems more petty than status. There's something of a heirarchy of academic fields when it comes to the respect its practitioners and experts get, and "social scientist" ranks near the bottom of the sciences pile, to the point where many people will point at one or more of its disciplines and say "Well, that's not even a science."

Indeed, I've accused economists of being nonscientific before myself.

I was introduced to this concept in my introductory psychology class as "physics envy" - because physics tends to be on the top of the respect pile for the sciences, unless you count mathematics - and talked about it in my philosophy of science class. In fact, physicists get so much respect from "lay" people that they're almost treated as a priesthood of the modern age; listen to the questions physicists get asked in media interviews.

There's also a ladder of respect based on your school's reputation. So when I passed up going to a top-25 physics school for theoretical physics, and decided to go to a unique cross-disciplinary program at a less prestigious university, I felt a twinge of regret on that account. It felt like I was gambling the respect I could expect to get for my research against bad house odds.

A doctorate in physics from a top-25 school - nobody but the most Ivy League of snobs would dare to badmouth that. Working on an applied mathematical field traditionally occupied by economists at a school I hadn't heard of three years ago? Perhaps it's because that evaluation felt like such a petty reason that I made the decision I did. I've been known to be contrarian before.

How you can gain weight while burning calories

As you may or may not know, in addition to being a student of physics, I worked for two summers at a weight loss camp. And so it was that I thought to apply thermodynamics to what was happening to my campers.

Some campers would lose weight steadily; others would have slow and fact points; in the long term, they all improved dramatically. And yet, when you use weight to try to measure your fitness, things tend to fall flat a little more often, and you see quirks.

As BMI measures it, I hit the "overweight" marker at 184 pounds - at which point my body fat percentage is still quite healthy. If I drop to 170 pounds (BMI 23, still in the upper half of "normal") my body fat percentage is dangerously low. I would probably drop dead before hitting the "underweight" BMI (136 pounds).

The quirk here is lean body mass. I have a relatively high lean body mass; my campers, universally, were increasing their lean body mass as well, strengthening muscles they didn't know existed, drinking plenty of water, etc. And at the most extreme end of it - you can be burning through calories and still adding just a little bit of mass as you reshape your body. I've seen it; I've also seen, on weighing day, how terribly discouraged campers get when they discovered they lost little to no weight that week.

Hidden in that news is the amazing improvements they made in their fitness. They can now hike further, lift more, swim more quickly, and they may even have lost an inch on their waistline. And when we're worried about our appearance, it's that - not the proxy of total weight - that makes the difference when people look at you.

So if you're working out hard and watching your diet, and yet you just don't seem to be losing weight, cheer up. You're still probably improving your health and appearance.

One kilogram does not equal 2.2 pounds

How you react to this statement tells me something, I think. If you've taken physics, you know that pounds are a unit of force, while kilograms are a unit of mass, and therefore, 2.2 pounds does not equal 1 kilogram. 1 kilogram of matter, on Earth, weighs 2.2 pounds (give or take a few small fractions; Earth's gravity field isn't quite uniform); on the moon, the same object will still mass one kilogram, while it will weigh only a few ounces.

So it's quite technically correct to say 1 kilogram doesn't equal 2.2 pounds. On the other hand, for all practical intents and purposes, that's the useful conversion to make, since the newton (metric unit of force) and the slug (standard imperial unit of mass) are more rarely used units.

Some people react with a nod. They're aware of the difference, and consider it an important one. Others react with a groan - they know that technically it's correct, but as far as they're concerned, the difference is a technical distinction that doesn't really matter. And a few become quite confused, because they don't know what the distinction is between weight and mass.