can't sleep

Physics H190 is the Best Class Ever (tm). I don't know how it escaped my in the past, although I think this semester it's better than usual. It's a pass/notpass 2-unit course with a variable topic. This semester it's the quantum mechanical properties of many-bodied systems, with 137B and 112 as prerequisites. That's right, it's a whole course about phonons! No, not really, but today we derived the formalism in which 'second quantization' takes place, leading to quasi-particles like phonons and the cooper-pairs that result in superconductivity and superfluidity, and even some fermion states I have yet to learn about. The other thing is that it's a great review of quantum mechanics.

(no subject)

( visited countries map )

Fuller Projection

With everyone posting that "countries visited" map, I thought I'd chime in with an image of the Fuller Projection (or here), a map projection designed by Buckminister Fuller to represent land area as accurately as possible, not cut continents in half, etc. It is an unfolding of a projection of the earth onto an icosahedron:

If you find this interesting, you might like the geography community.