This edition? ~Eclipse, Evolution and Archery…~ (Almost Alliteration!)
(I know – It’s Sunday. But hopefully after this weekend is over I will be pretty much up to speed with my blogging. I stop for a week and suddenly I have lots to write about!)
On Friday, there was a partial solar eclipse. It might have passed you by.
Naturally, The School (and possibly the rest of the world) went a bit crazy. Our little school telescope was out there, and so were many cereal-box pinhole cameras, sheets of paper with holes, and even old 1930s cameras and colanders. At least the third of the school were out there. I wouldn’t have been out there myself if it hadn’t been for the fact that Chemistry teacher was away. Ill, apparently. He’s the kind of dude who doesn’t take days off, so this was miraculous from the student point of view.
It was so exciting while it lasted, even when the sky didn’t go that dark (we didn’t get full coverage – not north enough) so it was a bit anticlimatic, although I began to appreciate the dimness at noon when the sun glared down at us – a true sign of spring. It might be time to sadly part with my winter coat and the comfort of its extra pockets.
In the afternoon, Double Psychology. The teacher passed around a bowl of a small variety of sweets. Licorice, Maoam pieces, Pinballs and Lindor. Everyone took a Lindor. Most of us took something else, too. One person took a licorice piece which was promptly spat into the bin.
But we were suspicious. A classmate jokingly guessed that they were probably poisonous.
The teacher took the bowl back. ‘At the beginning of the lesson, I passed around a bowl of sweets,’ he began. ‘There were ten of each variety. Now, I wonder how many are left.’
‘We took more than ten,’ someone said in concern, as he began counting.
9 Licorice pieces. 7 Maoam. 6 Pinballs. No Lindors.
‘Now, which sweet was most popular?’
‘The Lindor.’
‘And which was the fittest?’
I didn’t get this, but a friend did- survival of the fittest. ‘The Licorice.”
It was an analogy for natural selection and evolution, our topic for that session (sounds biological right? We’re also learning about the effect of genes on behaviour – biopsychology). The surviving Licorice pieces are unattractive and taste nasty (subject to opinion) but they’ll survive against the odds, and reproduce so more nastiness goes out into the world in the next generation. The Lindors are now extinct. This lead to a bit of speculation on what candy reproduction would be like that I can no longer remember… Curse my dreadful memory.
Archery club was unexpectedly quiet. Since the last related post, I’ve become more used to shooting with a heavier bow, but my posture is not great so my arrows always hit the target slightly to the right, and at an angle. I have a friend who started playing later than I did, but has gotten the hang of it much faster than I have. She was constantly getting bouncers (where the arrow hits a particularly dense part of the target and bounces back) in the centre of the target. It’s really discouraging because I’m really jealous, but I’m quite determined to improve as well. There are a bunch of things to remember when shooting – anchor points, relaxing the hand and fingers, closing the correct eye, rotating the torso, lowering the navel and so on.
On the bright side, I managed to put my bow together correctly without any trouble. I always have to ask for help when stringing it, though, because I can’t reach the end!
X
Twenty Swans 