Magisterium Cover Reveal+Predictions

Cover Courtesy of Goodreads

Somewhat of a short post today. The Magisterium book 5's cover has been released! It's so gorgeous!
I cannot wait for the rest of the books! In honor of this event, here are my predictions for the final book:

SPOILERS MAY BE PRESENT. VIEW AT YOUR OWN RISK.

1. Call will not die. I think that Call will come very close to dying but survive at the end.
2. Aaron will be Call's guiding force. It was already revealed that *spoiler* Aaron was left as a voice in Call's head. Slightly strange, but I digress. *end spoiler*
3. Havoc and Alastair will die. I think both of Call's family members will perish because he himself will live. What's the point of being an author if you can't kill off characters?
4. Tamara will come close to dying.
5. Master Rufus will die. The mentor figure usually dies in fantasy novels (refer to Albus Dumbledore).
6. Good will triumph. I would not be satisfied otherwise.
What do you think will happen in the story? What do you think of the cover? Tell me in the comments below!

Happiness in Terms of...Trigonometry?

Yes, you read that title right! I've been doing various happiness molecules post (if you're new, here is one of my first posts about the topic), tying in emotions with science. With this post, I'll be paying homage to mathematics by introducing angles of depression. You don't really need to know much trigonometry, but it might be helpful if you do, not going to lie.

Okay, so angle of depression is shown in the picture below, of the man looking down at the object that is not mysteriously floating (the real question should be, why is he ignoring the floating box?)

Credit
I'm not sure why the clipart still holds its background and doesn't blend in...but oh well.

You can learn all types of trig online, but I bet you didn't know that the angle of depression can also measure how happy you are! It's true! Basically, the greater the angle of depression, the more depressed you are. The "object" is really the world. A large angle of depression means you see the world as a place to be depressed. When you get happier and happier, the world in your eyes seems to move higher and higher, until your angle of depression turns into an angle of elevation.

Typically, the angle of depression is measured in a 90 degree interval in the 4th quadrant of a graph (picture the man as the origin, or the center of the graph, and his line of view as the x-axis). To follow a trig and avoid confusion, the angle ranges from 0 degrees (right at the x-axis, where you're indifferent and only feel that way once a day, right when you wake up) to -90 degrees (when x=0, right on the y-axis, which most do not feel unless they are clinically depressed).

Why is this useful, you ask? Well, it has many uses:

• It can help diagnose patients with depression. Anyone who has an angle of depression below -75 degrees is moving towards being clinically depressed. The average human only has an angle of depression until -45 degrees to their angle of elevations.
• It is a fun topic to blog about. That one's a bit self-explanatory.

Okay, now before I head off, let's do one example!

Rebecca has had a rough Monday. She woke up feeling excited to present her project that day in her science class, with her angle of elevation being 45 degrees. Then, she realized that she had run out of toothpaste and cereal, and was late to school while searching for replacements. She became sad by 30 degrees. Then, she realized she forgot to bring her flash drive to class, and was even sadder by 45 degrees when she couldn't present the project that took her 6 hours to work on! Her friends did give her milk tea to cheer her up, which caused her to be happy by 6.5 degrees. What is her angle of depression by the end of the day?

We can calculate the angle to be 45-30-45+6.5= -23.5 degrees. She is pretty sad. Perhaps more boba tea would cheer her up. And toothpaste.

Anyways, I hope you're not depressed after reading this post! In fact, your angle of elevation should have gone up, right? ;)

Thanks for reading! I'll be back with more posts soon!

Let's Talk About...Gallagher Girls

Image from Pixabay, text added later

This week, we're featuring the book "Only the Good Spy Young" by Ally Carter and the rest of the series. I've raved about this book in a previous review, and it's high time since I featured it in a "Let's Talk About" post. So here it is! The synopsis is of book 4.

Cover Courtesy of Goodreads

Goodreads Synopsis: When Cammie Morgan enrolled at the Gallagher Academy, she knew she was preparing for the dangerous life of a spy. What she didn’t know was that the serious, real-life danger would start during her junior year of high school. But that’s exactly what happened two months ago when Cammie faced off against an ancient terrorist organization dead set on kidnapping her.

Now the danger follows her everywhere, and even Cammie “The Chameleon” can’t hide. When a terrifying encounter in London reveals that one of her most-trusted allies is actually a rogue double-agent, Cammie no longer knows if she can trust her classmates, her teachers—or even her own heart.

In this fourth installment of the New York Times best-selling series, the Gallagher Girls must hack, spy, steal, and lie their way to the truth.as they go searching for answers, recognizing that the key to Cammie’s future may lie deep in the past.

Here are the questions:

1. Which character do you most resemble?

Well, I like to read and learn as much as Liz does, and I'm honestly more of a behind-the-scenes type of person than the get-out-there-and-fight kind, so I'm going to go with her.

2. Do you own any fan-related memorabilia?

I own Only the Good Spy Young, but other than that, sadly, I don't own anything :(. Maybe I'll get some copies of the rest of the books later, though :). I also want a Gallagher Girl notebook/planner to write in with quotes, etc., but I don't know if there's anything like that out there. This may be good reading journal inspiration, though!

3. Which of the six books is your favorite?

I love the featured book above and the last two books. I read the one above first, so it's bound to be my favorite, but the other two were written exceptionally well, too.

4. Which class would you most look forward to at the school?
Covert Operations, of course! There's so many awesome skills to learn from there. I'd also like to learn as many languages as possible in other courses so I could spy on other people's conversations. Heh heh, just kidding.

5. What's your favorite part about the books?
I love the friendship of Cammie, Bex, Liz, and Macy. I also love the Gallagher Academy itself. If only one could take such cool courses at school...

6. Which book cover is your favorite?

I like the cover of LYKY the best. It looks nice and uniform, as sometimes the font seems a bit off in the later covers. Also, I like the simplicity of the white background.

Cover Courtesy of Goodreads

That's all for this week! Stay tuned for more posts :).

Chemistry of Life: Diffusing the Tension

I was having a conversation with some friends about how one uses the expression "diffusing the tension" to describe making an environment less stressful. You can guess that I immediately connected this to my Chemistry of Life analogies. So today, you can hear all about tension and how "diffusing the tension" is an expression that really does make sense.

When something gets stressful, one notices the tension increasing. Let's use pressurum from my new periodic table of feeling elements (which I need to update onto my blog, as I realized there were problems with my old one), abbreviated as Prs, as our example.

What one needs to realize is that there are always lots of Prs atoms in the room, floating around, doing nothing. They're all spread out, as if they were gases. When something gets stressful, they clump together and form double bonds (meaning they bond with each other) to form molecules of pressure/tension/stress. Their presence is now felt more by people in the room, because the concentration in an area seems much greater.

While the Prs atoms form molecules, they also release heat, like a normal reaction. That's why some people get sweaty or nervous as the stress in the system increases. The Prs molecules themselves stop moving around so much and clump up together, like solids, and keep releasing heat.

There are ways to diffuse the tension. If someone new comes into the room who is not stressed, they usually become a bit nervous or pressured by looking at the situation. What's really happening is that the Prs molecules are going from an area from high tension to low tension, and start to spread out a bit more. As they continue to do so, the molecules diffuse by using energy in the environment (so people are not sweating anymore). The concentration of Prs molecules balances out again.

This is applicable to real cases. When people keep thoughts bottled up to themselves, they become more stressed. If they share their thoughts with others, the Prs molecules spread out and diffuse to others, which may cause them to be a bit stressed, but not as much, and it helps both people to interact with each other.

This cycle repeats again and again, with tension building up and then getting released.

I know this was a bit complicated, but I hope you understood why people can use the term "diffusing the tension" now in relation to science! Stay tuned for more chemistry of life if you enjoyed this one :).

Happy New Year, New Year's Resolutions, and Happy Birthday to my Blog!

Happy New Year everyone!

Courtesy of Giphy

I hope everyone is excited to start off the new year with their resolutions! In case you need some inspiration, here are the ones I have in relation to blogging and reading.

Also, what a coincidence. My blog turned three two days ago! It's the perfect time for some resolutions :).

1. Read at least 100 books this year.

2. Read three classics.

3. Meet an author (and get their autograph).

4. Write at least 100 blog posts.

They're all relatively simple, but I think they're good goals to aim for this year. What are your resolutions for 2018?