Eggs.

Dominique and I decorated eggs for our group Easter dinner at the lake tonight.

How does that song go..?
"One of these things is not like the other ones.."

Spring Cleaning.

Well, it's Spring Break! (Finally. Phew)

Ken has pretty much moved out- he and Dom got the keys to their new, adorable house on Friday! So for the time being, I've got the condo to myself, and it seemed like a good time to do some cleaning.

So far this week I have:
- done 5 loads of laundry
- swept and treated the hardwood on the main floor
- washed the baseboards
- scrubbed the stovetop and oven
- given all my plants some long overdue TLC
- cleaned out the fridge and cupboards
- shelf papered under all my sinks
AND
- cleaned out my closet

Can you tell I'm procrastinating marking labs?

Green and White.

Yesterday was St Patty's Day. And I had a lovely day celebrating! Started off with a visit to Telus World of Science to see the Star Wars: Identities exhibit (which was epic), and ended with a fabulous green and white dinner at the parents with a load of friends. So much fun.

Gotta visit my man, Chris Hadfield

Einsteinmas.

Today is Pi Day.

I have written about Pi Day before (check it out). You might not have known that today is also Albert Einstein's birthday.

A bit devastated I did not have time to make a pi(e) this year... maybe this weekend? Belated pi(e)?

Anyways, here are some pi songs to make you smile:

Pi Day (Waaaaaaay better than Rebecca Black's original)

and

Mathematical Pi (Best pi song ever.)

Drawing.

I've always assumed that it is a well known fact in my classes that I am a dodgy drawer. Whenever I need to draw an airplane, it ends up looking like a blue whale.

Today in Physics, I had to draw a man shooting a gun. When I warned them in advance it would probably be terrible, one boy said,
"I don't think your drawings are bad. Did someone insult them once to make you insecure?"

Suck up.

Flying whale?

Crafty.

Dom and I mod podged some awesome coasters this past weekend. I have been crazy busy at work lately, so it was nice to be able to let off some creative steam. Especially when it involves a mildly embarrassing excursion to Home Depot.

I was extremely happy with how they turned out! Hooray for Pinterest inspiration!

Vectors.

Sometimes teaching high school is challenging.


This is not to say teaching elementary or (dear god) junior high is not challenging, but high school students present a whole different challenge in the professionalism department.

Usually for me, this is in the form of mildly inappropriate jokes, the kind that you usually keep in your head, but sometimes slip out in the "did I say that out loud?" kind of way. The "that's what she said" type of joke. Often times my students will make double entendre comments, and I just have to giggle under my breath.

In physics right now, we are learning how to add vectors using vector diagrams. Simply put, a vector is an arrow that represents a quantity, where the length of the arrow shows the size, and the direction is indicated by orientation. All vectors must have an arrowhead (at the tip) to show which way they are pointing.

If you were to say, walk a certain distance east, and then walk a certain distance north, we could show that using vectors. To make sure our diagram works out properly, vectors are always drawn so that the end of the first vector is where you start to draw your second vector. This is known as the "tip-to-tail" method of vector addition.

To determine how far away from your starting point you are, if you were to walk the above path, we would draw a new vector from the original starting point to the final end point, like such.

Measuring the length and direction of the red vector would give you your final displacement. Of course, I am not the most accurate drawer, and unless you are using a scale diagram, the actual length of your vectors is not important; most of the time we solve these problems using trig and the diagram is just to help.

So I draw a pretty sloppy resulting vector on the board, and one boy puts up his hand to ask,

"Are those two tips supposed to be touching?"

Hysterical giggles all around. One kid snorts while original boy is protesting how serious the question is. Snigger.

This is the start of a new unit. Better get the giggles out of your systems, boys. There are going to be lots of tips touching over the next few weeks.

Hoo boy.