So, I have been on one of my periodic purges (no irony intended). And at the bottom and back of a desk drawer we use as a spectrometer table for the teaching IR I found this collection of objects:
What we have here is the high school chemistry text that I used in grade 11 and 12. The safety glasses that I wore through graduate school and the last CNDO/2 program that I ran with punched cards (it was an optimization of the torsion angle in the dithionite dianion).
Sentimental fool that I am I have kept these incidental objects, the flotsam and jetsam of a life in science, for decades for no other reason than the tactile joy and nostalgia they bring to me. They went back into the drawer but really, am I alone in doing this? Should I just grow up and move on? Does anyone else have an irrational scientific memory drawer? What is in it?
Have a good week people, play safe.
4 comments:
Keep the punch cards at least. Those are a glorious connection to a long gone world.
How do those work? As someone from the GaussView generation, I can't quite wrap my head around them.
No, you're not the only one. I have a piece of chalk from my first class as a TA and I also have my 12th grade AP chemistry text.
I r a math teechur... I recently went to ebay and bought a K&E wooden/laminate slide rule like I had in HS and also a TI SR-11 calculator (that even did square root!!!) like I had in my final year in HS ('76). But I do have most of my texts and notes from college ('78-'85).
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