Why Science is cool and why Print media must die

To 11th graders, it meant mugging up a lot of information that doesn't make sense. To atheists, it is the weapon of choice. To Breaking Bad fans, its the path to the perfect way of cooking meth. Science.

My last checked out book was Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of Elements by Hugh Aldersey-Williams. Hugh takes elements from the periodic table and scavenges their history, giving readers a book full of did you know's (in which,for most part, your answer will be "no, I did not.")

Talking of cultural significance of the known elements shows how humans have provided a certain character to them. Silver is seen as feminine while gold is seen as masculine. Some scientist randomly waded a mesh through water to make carbonated water. His name was Schweppes.Before it was known that radium was radioactive, there used to be radium spa's and radium cosmetics(yay,capitalism!). Marie Curie and her scientist husband provided great fodder for romance entusiasts who were in love with their work-relationship.
Someone made an aeroplane out of lead. As expected, it didn't fly.
This is just an atom of the knowledge of elements I gained from reading this book.
The elements were always there, we just discover them and re-discover them and use them in ways that please and profit us. Even if you fail your chemistry papers, you should give this book a go.

Another great place to visit if you are feeling science hungry is ASAPScience on youtube. It is a channel dedicated to doodling out answers we never wonder about loudly. Some of these are, what are the effects of marijuana and which came first: the chicken or the egg?

Print it

We (my Print Media class) visited a private printing press. The location and name shall be held confidential. If you have ever visited a printing press or any large scale factory, you will know it looks sexy and boring at the same time. The mechanisation will awe you and punch you in the gut. For some reason, we weren't allowed to take photos (the irony of  free press). There was a big room (as big as a mall floor) with an elaborate equipment that took up half the room. It seemed like a theme park for newspapers. Conveyor belts ran through the room like nobody's business.The paper roll was connected to another machine that had a plate with the imprint of the newspaper design and content on it. The colors used are magenta, yellow, black and cyan. This would then slope downwards and fold the paper into half and then the conveyor belt would take it to another machine that folded it into quarter. Another machine lumped all the papers together, squeezed them and put a plastic wrap and wire package. The wondrous monstrosity was working at an inhuman speed. We were told that it produces 60,000 copies per hour.It was constant, fast and for the most part consistent. The inconsistent one's were taken out and trashed. All that ink smell and the power of creation of a newspaper over and over again definitely got me on some weird high. But for the first time, my brain woke up to the knowledge of the sheer unnecessity of this plant. Me, a staunch supporter of print media. Me, who always said new media will never look as good as paper feels. Me, who felt printed news is real news.I felt that print must be stabbed, strangled and buried. The life support it is sustaining on should be unplugged. All my romantic ideals of print media were tossed into the recycle bin. I just realised, this is a whole lot of work for no fucking reason! What really made us all gulp was going into the Paper Roll Room. The paper rolls looked just like toilet paper. As in, imagine toilet papers for giants and trolls- that is what the paper rolls looked like. They weighed a thousand kilograms. Now, in the Paper Roll Room these rolls were stacked up into 5 with abiut fifty rows. It looked like a setting for a thriller movie where two people run around a maze of goods. The smell of paper brought to me the collective guilt of our species, which I usually easily ignore. My friend Pradyumna mentioned if we had the sound machine write now, we could hear the shrieks of all these trees that have been neatly transformed and stacked.