Chemistry by Weike Wang

Author:Weike Wang [Wang, Weike]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2017-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

A Chinese proverb says that the mastery of three things will make you fearless anywhere in the world. They are math, physics, and chemistry.

I have a few smart but lazy summer school students who want to learn all three as quickly as possible. They want what’s in my head in theirs and wish that I could deliver knowledge more efficiently, through a tube, ideally, uploaded online.

Quality over quantity, they say, when they refuse to do the work that I have assigned.

So for these students, I have come up with a new assignment. Please sleep with your head on your textbook, and if you can recite the whole textbook by tomorrow, then I will concede to your genius.

Of course they try.

To be fearless means what? I ask the shrink. Does it mean to be without fear or to have courage that is equal to or greater than fear?

The courage one, she says.

And where do I find courage?

·

At the library, when girls walk past me tutoring the math student, they slow down. They drop things like books and pencils and it gets too distracting, so we move to the café, where the same type of girl appears, dropping cups of coffee, and then stands in line again while glancing at him.

Had I noticed this before? His eye color is ivy. His hair color is sand. He is tall but not that willowy. I guess I can see the appeal. He often comes in wearing cool sunglasses and funky nautical-themed shorts.

But he pays no heed to these girls.

Why not? I ask. They seem so accommodating.

I then learn about the girl he feels strongly about, who feels the same way about him, but has said that it would never work out.

She can’t possibly know that, I say.

But she’s right, he says.

I then learn that the girl who feels the same way about him also studies extreme climate geology and spends most of the year in Antarctica.

I ask him to repeat that.

I had not heard that one before.

···

Many scientists believe that science cannot advance without sacrifices along the way.

Eric believes this. My father believes this.

Both have said something along this line of reasoning: the first man could not have known what was poison until he ate it and a second man was there to watch.

I try to picture this. How morbid. Did he really watch or did he run back to the village, arms flailing?

The math student meets the girl in college. They are on and off. He wants to travel the world first. But after he is finished, she wants to go to Antarctica. To get from here to that frozen place requires a mighty plane or boat. No car could get you there in one piece.

A southern continent was hypothesized to exist as early as the first century, but the South Pole was not reached until 1911. First by a team of Norwegians. A month later by a team of Brits. The Brits were disheartened to find that they were not the first to reach the pole.

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