Monday, April 6, 2009

What did you learn today?

Some days I feel like we spin our wheels, making it to the end of the day intact but with little or nothing learned. This list, from a very ordinary day, is my proof for future blah days that we're all always learning.

Today, someone in the house learned:

Red cabbage juice turns magenta in the presence of an acid and blue/green in the presence of a base.
Red cabbage juice stinks.
Adding the base gradually to the acid neutralizes the acid, returning it's color to normal. More makes a basic solution (back to that blue/green!).
Sympathy to the injured child is more credible to the child when one abstains from a dissertation on the carelessness that went into obtaining the injury. Being kind again trumps being right.
To bring a gram of water from 1oo degrees C to water vapor requires 2255 J of energy, and the temperature does not change.
How to memorize more of Giga, by J.S.Bach, on piano.
How to beat the first gym leader on Pokemon Platinum.
Geysers are basically erupting pressure cookers.
"Incredulous" means full of disbelief.
Semicolons often go outside of quotation marks, unless they are within the quote itself.
Cold but not frozen shredded mozzarella can be safely warmed to room temperature in the microwave (level 2, 20 seconds).
Napoleon would not have made a good friend.
A litter box left uncleaned for 36 hours is pretty nasty.
Ruling with a five-person Directory doesn't always work, at least not in post-Revolutionary France.
It's hard to beat a Pokemon champion.
Fractions can be simplified if the denominator and numerator have a common factor.
In probability, if all outcomes are equally likely, then the probability of success is the number of successful outcomes over the number of possible outcomes.
A flame extinguishes in the water vapor from the spout of a tea kettle.
A.A. Milne felt strongly about the high quality of The Wind in the Willows, so strongly as to use appreciating it as a judge of a person's character.
Facebook comments pop up on one's homepage quite a bit before the notification occurs in one's email.
April snow in Michigan melts quickly on the pavement.
A list is an easy way to create a blog entry but feels a bit like cheating.
We're learning all the time. Whew!