Jenny - I liked your exploration into chess in Pale Fire. It reminded me as a kid when my Dad and I would walk into this one store in our mall that had fancy chess sets. There would be a lot of different (and expensive) sets, but you could always count on there being a fairy set. Eventually we made our own chess board out of wood, and later I tried to make one in pottery class. Lets just say that I like the wood one a lot better, even if one half of the board is bowed.
Bizz - I have a close friend who is dyslexic, so I found this presentation really interesting. I was already going to give them Pale Fire, but now I may follow up on their reading more closely than I would have. I should really learn more about dyslexia.
Ashley - If that wasn't your A game, I don't really want to see what your A game is. I think reading your paper would help a lot with this book.
Could You possibly post a picture/diagram of a chiral? I'm having some difficulty visualizing this. -Jenny
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chirality_with_hands.svg
ReplyDeleteIt wont let me post the picture in the comment. This example shows a hypothetical molecule with its mirror image. If you were to take one molecule and put it on top of the other, if you tried to rotate it you would not be able to make them exactly the same. I guess the best example is your hands. If you cannot take one hand and rotate it in any way so that your two hands line up perfectly. No matter what your thumbs will be on opposite sides, your fingers wont line up, it just wont work. Your hands are mirror images of each other, so they are chiral. Chirality isn't just something that arises in chemistry and biology, it happens in math and physics too.