The school has wifi in every building, so I’m never really disconnected, but internet access during a lecture is sometimes a very dangerous thing for me.
Example: Astrophysics professor puts up an artist’s rendering of an exoplanet with a side panel comparing its density to solar system bodies, putting it somewhere between a gas giant and a rocky planet.
Lance:
- Continues to listen to lecture.
- Looks up the exoplanet
- Looks up the densities of various solar system bodies
- Dismisses the idea of it being similar composition to the dwarf planet Eris – orbital parameters are too different
- Wait, Saturn’s density is that low? I knew it would float in water, but…
- You should be paying more attention. We’ve gone back to radiation pressure.
- Hmm. Solar sails. Reflected vs absorbed. Let’s do a quick spreadsheet to show which transfers more momentum by angle. I know what the answer is supposed to be, but…
Taking the given example, I’ll admit this is more likely to happen in an Astrophysics class, but it’s actually a danger in any course I’m finding interesting. Last year, it happened at least once in Quantum Mechanics and a couple of times in Mathematical Methods regarding complex numbers (although that was a much shallower rabbit hole), and it’s a particular hazard in the Ancient Warfare elective course I’m taking right now. Less likely in lab courses, but that’s because we’re usually busy running the experiment in question, and I managed to not take the fourth year version.
Connected: I keep a running file of notes of things to look up. Some days I add lots to it, some days nothing, but I think it’s going to leave me with too much potential reading material over the winter break, or the next reading week coming up.
But I never seem to empty it.
Be well, everyone.
Life, Writing, Weirdness 
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