Ammonia

Ammonia, or NH3, to give it it's chemical formula, is a weak electrolyte and a covalent molecular compound, and I would draw an electron dot diagram save for the fact that Google Blogs does not allow me to do this.
Ah, what a nerd I am.
I have two reasons for dedicating a post to ammonia.
Reason Number the First: It STINKS. It reeks to high Heaven, truly it does. You know when you have a cold, and you go to breathe in through your clogged-up nose, and there's a weird feeling/smell thing right at the tail-end of your breath in? That's what ammonia is like. It's not a very pleasant smell, and you get it right at the end of your breath in. It is also toxic, in that if you breathe too much of it, it displaces all the air in your lungs.
Nice.
The reason I know that it reeketh is because we were housesitting for my grandparents for six weeks while they travelled all over Europe, and as we currently do not own a house, this was a great opportunity. However, on the last week of our staying there, we noticed an odd smell coming from the laundry. I thought nothing of it, save that I might have had a cold, or a blocked nose, and that's what it was. My father thought it was a problem with him, too. My mother was the one who opened the cupboard in which a bottle of cloudy ammonia, used for cleaning stains, previously was, to be hit in the face by the overpowering stench of ammonia. When I say the bottle previously was in the cupboard, I mean that it was in bottle-shaped form. Because it was SO DAMN COLD in that house over the past few weeks, the plastic bottle had shrunk, cracked, and perished, spilling ammonia everywhere. Needless to say we opened the house up, then, as we were running severely late for something we were hosting, closed it back up again, then left for the fresh air, feeling slightly headachey and out-of-breath.
The ammonia dissipated, and we're all fine, having breathed it all out and got some good clean air.
Reason Number the Second: It's very cool, in a nerdish way. It is a covalent compound that is also a weak electrolyte, a rare occurrence. This means it ionises partly when dissolved in water, making some ions and some bits remaining neutral NH3 molecules. But what ions does it make? N and H ions? That would be odd. So what does happen?
Here's the nerdishly cool bit.
It rips apart the water molecules to make NH4+ ions and OH- ions. This is the only thing I know of that actually rips apart the damn water, as opposed to itself being dissolved by the water. This is very very awesome to a chemistry nerd like myself. Because it Rips. Apart. The Water.
How cool is that?

So I think I'll wind up my monologue on ammonia. Got any ammonia tales yourself? Leave a comment! (Although I don't actually expect this to happen - no-freakin'-body gives a damn about this blog and probably never will.)
Also, the smell of ammonia is nothing at all like the scent of petrichor.
Which, by the way, was on the list of the 100 most beautiful words. Yeah. (But "melancholy" wasn't, which surprised me - I have a fondness for that word, and think it is deserving of a place.)
Anyway.
Fare thee well!

Letteratura

Also known as Literature, Lit, or just Err yuck not essays again.
Honestly, it's enough to drive a sane (relatively) person bonkers (or even more so). I have an essay due on Friday about Frankenstein (note how I underline this, Lit teachers! Look, look!), and the trouble with this is that there are so many readings that you can interpret this text as being about. Usually, I have trouble with the reverse, but not this time! Oh no, my problem is that I have to narrow it down. Oh well.
So I'm an introduction, a paragraph, and two more topic sentences in, 446 words through a 1500 (at least) word essay.
Actually, I have spent more time reading the Inky Fool blog by the amazing Mark Forsyth, author of The Etymologicon and The Horologicon, two utterly fantastic books for any bibliophile. The blog can be found here. Incidentally, I found that there is a Sanskrit word, "ayoni", which means - actually, I won't give this away. Use this as an incentive to look through the blog. It is a... rather interesting word. Points to the person who uses it in casual conversation and can tell me exactly how they used it.

On another note, it has been raining quite heavily this afternoon, and as such I have experienced the melancholy of petrichor up close.

Ghostbusters 101

There is a Ghostbuster at my school.
(A real one!)
(Probably)
And he shall be the topic of my first drabble.
He's a retired science teacher who still does relief work, is the chief locker guy, and generally lurks around. He was my Chemistry teacher's teacher, and according to her looks the same now as he did back then.
But that isn't why he's a Ghostbuster.
He is a Ghostbuster because:
* He goes hunting. True fact.
* He uses night-vision goggles while hunting. Also true.
* He tests said night-vision goggles...............
In. The. Cemetery.
NO LIE.
This final piece of proof sent my friend (who came up with the idea) into spasms of shocked laughter. We have made it our personal mission now to, whenever we see him, talk about Ghostbusters so he knows we know. Really. We chased him to his car once just about yelling "Ghostbusters!" "Yeah, Ghostbusters!" "Definitely Ghostbusters!"
But.
The main topic of this drabble is what happened in Chemistry on Tuesday. Now, my Chem teacher is a great teacher, and an amazing person, but she's not that strict, and so people talk a lot, and make jokes, and class is generally really really loud. To the point where my teacher opened the windows on a freezing cold day to apply the Kinetic Theory. (If you don't get this, you're not enough of a nerd for this blog. And I won't tell you, either.)
But on Tuesday we had said Ghostbuster, while my teacher was doing a course in Sydney. And we had the quietest Chemistry lesson for the entire year. Why? Because of something this teacher had said early on during the lesson. To the best of my memory, I quote:
"I was killing stuff all holidays."
Pause.
"Except for the occasional coffee."
Pause.
Pause.
"And I don't think I'm done yet."

Time to wrap this up, methinks.
Remember to keep a place in your lives for the melancholy of petrichor.

Test Post

Test, test, test
We all tend to drabble a bit, don't we? Words, thoughts, ideas - things that enter our minds and are lost almost instantaneously.
That's why I'm blogging.
Not for followers, not for hits, but for a way to stream-of-consciousness my life as it happens, drabble before it gets lost. In all honesty, I'll probably tire of this within a week. But. I am doing it now.
To retain the melancholy of petrichor.
Because what is life, if not dust after rain?