Paper airplane frenzy

We had our last chemistry lecture last Tuesday, and the lecturer warned us beforehand to prepare paper airplanes for the lecture. We had no idea what it’s about but whatever it is, it should be exciting. After all, the lecturer is actually deemed by students to be the best in the NatSci course because of his interesting lecture. Usually, halfway through his lecture, he usually has a few minutes break in which there will be a demonstration, gory stories or just interesting tidbits about chemistry. In the first term, he soaked a BIG lump of cotton in the shape of a sheep with some chemicals and set fire to it. There was a blinding flash and I could have sworn half of the lecture hall could feel a blast of heat in their faces. The other day he read to us some erm…obscene poems and comments that past students wrote in lecture questionnaires. One read, “I love you. You can inspect my cleavage mechanism anytime.” There’s another one that says, “Dr. W, would you gain a pair of electrons and become a HOMO?” Ha ha ha.

(For those who don’t know, in chemistry HOMO stands for highest occupied molecular orbital ;p )

Anyway, at the end of that lecture, he prepared boxes in front of the hall containing some nitrogen compound that can rapidly decompose into gaseous nitrogen if subjected to a force. Our job is to throw the paper planes so that they hit the compound and produces a bang. So for the next 30 seconds, the air was filled with paper planes. Coz I was sitting at the front, some of them hit me instead of the boxes. One of them did go bang, though. The others didn’t.

I would not want to be the janitor at the end...

You need a plane that can hit its target for this, so I couldn’t show off my amazing fancy special turbo airplane that can spin around and come back at you, he he. Oh well, some other time, I guess.

Yaz, Paper Master (if you don’t get this, go watch Read or Die)