Food chem vs. Thermody

As I was studying SAT Chemistry last week, I first encountered the chemistry aspect of thermodynamics. I was quite fascinated by the Gibb's free energy and spontaneity of reactions. So I thought of doing the option Thermody in A level Chemistry.

I borrowed some notes from Jian Chao, and was very confident that I could finally rid myself of the trouble to memorise almost 100 page of food chem. However, the option proved much more difficult than I initially thought. The concept and equations are very confusing. I began to doubt if I can master it before A level and do better than my food chemistry.

My chem tutor also warned me of the danger of choosing thermody. She even told me past year students had done so and did quite badly. What shall I do now? Am I digging my own grave or paving a path for an A?

for langrange and tex

These days I have been writing the physics paper on rolling asymmetrical cylinders. It first seemed an impossible task due to our centre of mass approach, but in the end it still worked out. I learned quite a lot, such as Lagrangian (all thanks to Dax). The most daunting part of the whole thing looks to be presenting (or the typing out) the paper. Firstly, I’ve to learn this LaTEX language, which is really crazy. At first I was using a trial software (for typesetting in LaTEX), and it gives a very good mix of red, blue and black colours when I was typing, which are easily recognizable. But after searching the Internet for hours, I couldn’t find any crack to unlocking the full version. I have an older version, but sadly it doesn’t support pdf so I give up on it also.

As a result, I’ve to switch to WinEdt plus MikTEX, which proved to be more powerful. However the interface of WinEdt is so irritating; it gives at least 5 colours, dark brown, dark blue, dark green, black and purple, all of which look about the same after a while, and spoiling my already 800 degrees eyes. The red colour was assigned for spelling mistakes, which are far less important than formulae mistakes when writing a Physics paper. I still could not appreciate the usefulness of LaTEX, although it's widely popular in the scientific world (ask any science, maybe not bio or engineering graduates they would have used or heard of it).