Bridge

This is a follow-up to wabo's facebook status yesterday:
Life is like a game of bridge, the hand dealt to you is like your fate, but how you play it, that's your game.
Largely true statement, you can find application to daily life yourself.
From what I see, there are 5 types of playing style for bridge:
1. The confident ones. They count the tricks they can take carefully, push up contracts, and with a certain level of luck and skill, they make the contract. This type of people are very ambitious people, and tend to think a lot about problems, way before other people did.
2. The careful ones. They only count the tricks they can take by themselves, and hope that with a lucky partner they can make the contract. Hence their bid is usually small, but for them they are quite certain a small contract will usually make very easily. This type of people are probably more common in the environment I live in.
3. The dummy. Their hand is not for bidding, they only bid something to show support. (Instead of being a fanyi and double to show strong in hearts) And if they are lucky they get called by the bidder and they make the contract. If they are unlucky the bidder call the wrong person then gg. It's as though their life is dependent on another person's actions. I feel like I might be such a person to a certain extend.
4. The bid pumper. Their hand is not for bidding, they only pump the bid so as to make the person who is bidding have a higher chance of failure. They don't win by counting how many they can win, they win by counting how many the opponent will lose. In this sense their success depends on other people's failure. Ah I don't see such bad people around, maybe there are but I never meet one before.
5. The terrorist. They are the kind of people who know that they would definitely not win, and hence calls something like 7NT and partner 2 of diamond so as to screw up the game and have everyone get new cards. I don't really see any people nowadays acting like a terrorist cus it's dam retarded, uh maybe except real terrorists.
Of course there are many other types of people not included in these 5 types, but I suppose the general 5 found in bridge are these 5?
Coming to think of it, I still never play online mahjong with wabo domi and they all -.-

Chemical of the Day - Potassium Manganate (VII)

Somehow gc likes easy chemicals o.o maybe we start with easy stuff and move to hardcore mugging later. Potassium manganate (VII) or potassium permanganate is interesting in the sense that the manganese is existing as +7 charge in the compound, which is quite rare even among transition metals, since the maximum oxidation number that an element can exhibit is +8 (which is super rare because most elements will not tend to lose all its 8 electrons)
And seeing that the Mn lost so many electrons, it is quite expected that it would want to gain back some electrons when undergoing chemical reactions. Hence KMnO4 is a strong oxidising agent.


Formula: KMnO4


Appearance: Purple-gray crystals. Purple to magenta solution.
Structure: Giant ionic lattice


Solubility: 6.38g / 100 ml (noober than phenol rofl)


Preparation: (you need a pikachu electricity to do this)
First MnO2 is fused with KOH and heated with a source of oxygen, such as KNO3 or KClO3. This gives K2MnO4 as the product. After which electrolytic oxidation in an alkaline medium would produce KMnO4.
2 MnO₂ + 4 KOH + O₂ → 2 K₂MnO₄ + 2 H₂O
2 MnO₄^2– + Cl₂ → 2 MnO₄^– + 2 Cl^–


Uses:
Inorganic: Used as a standard solution for redox titration in quantitative analysis of reducing agent, such as finding out how much or how concentrated a solution of ascorbic acid is. In this case KMnO4 can undergo 2 types of reduction, first in an acidic medium and second in a non-acidic medium.
In acidic medium:
MnO4- + 8H+ + 5e- -> Mn2+ + 4H2O
In non-acidic medium:
MnO4- + 2H2O + 3e- -> MnO2 + 4OH-
Hence in acidic medium the purple colour will fade to very pale pink (almost colourless), while in non-acidic medium the purple colour will turn to a brown precipitate.


Organic: Used as an oxidising agent to oxidise many organic compounds.
Dilute solution of KMnO4 can oxidise alkenes to diols.
Acidic solution of KMnO4 can cleave (切) C=C bond to form either CO2 & H2O, carboxylic acid or ketone.
CH₃(CH₂)₁₇CH=CH₂ + 2 KMnO₄ + 3 H₂SO₄ → CH₃(CH₂)₁₇COOH + CO₂ + 4 H₂O + K₂SO₄ + 2 MnSO₄
It can oxidise aldehyde to carboxylic acid.
5 C₆H₁₃CHO + 2 KMnO₄ + 3 H₂SO₄ → 5 C₆H₁₃COOH + 3 H₂O + K₂SO₄ + 2 MnSO₄
It can even oxidise alkyl groups on a benzene ring. For example it oxidises toluene to benzoic acid.
5 C₆H₅CH₃ + 6 KMnO₄ + 9 H₂SO₄ → 5 C₆H₅COOH + 14 H₂O + 2 K₂SO₄ + 6 MnSO₄

Other stuff:
It can be used as an antiseptic and disinfectant due to its oxidising nature. (Hence you can buy it from Guardian in dilute solutions meant for treating cuts and stuff)
Reaction of solild KMnO4 with pure glycerol or simple alcohols result in violent combustion.
Reaction with conc H2SO4 produces Mn2O7, which (unsurprisingly) explodes due to instability.
Can rapidly stain any organic material, thought it can be cleaned by washing with a reducing agent (such as ascorbic acid)
Used in banana shipments to absorb the ethene produced by ripening bananas to lengthen their ripening time (wow).

Ok now gc can go and do cyclohexane.

mood swing

Mugging for promos somehow gives me a lousy mood. Once again I wasted 3 hours on the com for nothing. I don't even know what the hell did I do and then my parents tell me it's time to get off. Maybe my body is complaining about a lack of gaming with humans instead of ai and so until the negative feedback can apply itself and adjust situations I would remain in that lousy mood.
And I get pissed dam easily now. Lol I think I might as well scream at my internet for not loading the anime properly o.o
Ah well watch anime.

Chemical of the Day - Copper iodide

Ok I shall start off with the chemical of the day then.
So today's chemical is copper (I) iodide.
Some may wonder why it is not copper (II) iodide which is usually the preferred oxidation state for copper.
Nvm wikipedia says nothing about why copper (I) iodide is more stable than copper (II) iodide. My guess would be due to steric strain between the iodide ion and copper ion, since iodine is much larger, so the ionic lattice would be strained.

Formula: CuI

Appearance: white powder (pure). brownish (impure)

Structure: Giant ionic lattice

Ksp: 1 x 10^-12

Preparation: Heating of iodine and copper in concentrated HI,
Addition of KI to a soluble copper salt such as CuSO4. The product formed is CuI2, which decomposes immediately to CuI and I2.
Hence if given an unknown X, which is mixed with KI and then CCl4 is added, if a purple layer is seen with a white powder, it can be quite confirmed that X contains Cu2+, since CuI2 decomposes immediately to give CuI (white powder) and I2 (dissolves to give purple colour in CCl4)

Uses: Organometallic coupling. CuI is one of the reagents required for the synthesis of the Gilman reagent. What this reagent can do is to replace the halide group on a haloalkane with another R group. It is prepared by reaction of an organolithium compound with CuI with diethyl ether as solvent.
2CH3Li + CuI -> (CH3)2CuLi + LiI
In this case the (CH3)2CuLi is the Gilman reagent. Of course the R group bonded to the copper can be changed to other substituent other than methyl group. Gilman reagent can react with haloalkanes as follows:
(CH3)2CuLi + CH3(CH2)8CH2I -> CH3(CH2)8CH2CH3 + LiI + CH3Cu
As can be seen from the reaction, one of the CH3 groups in the Gilman reagent substituted the I from the haloalkane forming a larger alkane as the main product. This reaction is useful as it forms a C-C bond, thereby making possible preparation of larger molecules from smaller ones. This is even more useful as you can use this reaction to add alkyl groups to a benzene compound as well.
C6H5I (iodobenzene) + (CH3)2CuLi -> C6H5CH3 (toluene) + CH3Cu + LiI.

Other info: Used for cloud seeding. Used to detect Hg, upon addition of CuI to Hg, copper tetraiodomercurate is formed which turns the white powder brown. Soluble in concentrated KI to give [CuI2]-

Now gc can go and do phenol. lol.

Chemical of the day

Somehow gc and I decided that we are going to alternate around with posts known as 'Chemical of the Day', so that random people who might be from chem o (not likely) and coincidentally came to my blog or his blog can get more info for his or her chem o work.
Aww I had wanted to post retarded compounds to 巨魔 people but unfortunately I have to do the greater good hence need to give correct info.
So it's highly likely that gc would do all the organic compound while I do the inorganic compounds. Maybe I shall start with inorganic QA mmm.
Shall sleep first and hope I can get A for maths class test tmr so my overall class test score is not that rubbish.

seemingly nice people are not so nice in my eyes. different points of view can be hurtful to hear.

A kind of sorrowful song. Enjoy while mugging lol.

人

我家有一本书，叫蛇王淘金。很有意义的故事。其中有句很经典的话：蛇不喜欢谁就去咬谁不会为了维持和平而装出喜欢对方的样子，而人类会为了大家的和睦生存而牺牲自己的喜怒哀乐。
We live a tiring life, always wearing a mask to protect ourselves and others. its inevitable, but its kind of sad that sometimes we cant be true to each other, cus we are afraid to, or we dun want to hurt others.
I once tried to pry open a shell. but the owner is probably unwilling, or scared to, or dun find it necessary. Hence we became best frens at having fun. He does not emo before me, but I guess thats a form of friendship too.

purpose

Everyone has a role, a purpose in life. they can be the one to lighten up the mood, to solve problem, to provide company, to give entertainment. I feel that my role is different from the rest. But wats that role? I dunno. There is a difference btwn the role u want to be, and the role people see u as.

Giftedness

Mmm posting this after reading two other people's blog posts about being gifted.
I remember the first time I talked about gifted program with someone else was with gc over msn. The convo went something like:
gc: ok tell me someone whom you think is gifted.
me: uh isaac?
gc: have u seen how much bio books did he read during sec 3 and 4?
me: lol
Nvm the main point is I got pwned into thinking giftedness is so 'common' as to say.

Effort
As of now most of the people that I see are seen as 'gifted' because they have put in a lot of effort into whatever they were doing. It is hard to really see if there are any who is born with a natural edge as compared to other people, so from what I see is that it all comes through hard work.
Hard work since young, continuously doing practices, going through scoldings, extra classes, which laid down that strong foundation. And this foundation allowed many to achieve what we see now. Sometimes it's as though 'gifted' is an excuse made up by people who only see others' achievements but not how much effort they put in behind the scene. So I guess a large portion of giftedness should be attributed to the effort that was put in.

Skill
Though of course I agree different people have different ways of learning, and different levels of understanding the same thing. Hence some tend to get things faster, or able to find easier methods to solve the same problem.
I've got friends who can understand concepts very quickly, who can come up with their own methods of solving problems, who can derive other concepts from one given concept, etc. These are probably something both acquired since young and developed from young as well.

Pro?
Ever since sec 4 I acquired the title of 'chem god' (probably strengthened with SJChO results). The thing is, I'm not gifted in chem either. All the knowledge (or should we say information) I have, I started acquiring since sec 1 and 2. It's like 99% of the library books I borrowed in sec 1 and 2 were about chem, periodic table, blah blah. It's more of I'm like a memory bank that takes in all the information, and use these information when doing problems to sometimes 'cheat' my way out. Other than that my learning speed is probably slower than the more 'pro' people. It's just that I got an early start, after sec 4 I'm on par with most people again, and now I'm slowing down. But I suppose I do get most of the chemistry concepts pretty ok, except the calculations which I need a longer time to digest. Oh, and my 4 year's worth of wikipedia information still gives me that slight edge above many people, though it's getting less and less useful.

Depression
My comment on domi's blog lacks elaboration, so here it is. The first point about depression is that teenagers who are seen as 'gifted' as still developing mentally, physically and also in their analytic skills. Sometimes people see them as very capable in doing work that requires maybe logic, or finding a pattern, and so overestimates their ability. It may be true that gifted people have stronger analytic skills and such, as teenagers these skills are still developing. If others put too much expectations on them, thinking that they can solve a certain problem when they cannot, this will put pressure into the gifted people. That's why they can get frustrated and fall into depression, because they try to meet the expectations of people who overestimates the abilities they are strong in, but not strong enough. It's not about gifted people being overconfident in their own abilities, but more of other people overestimating these people's abilities.
The second point is, yeah, dependent on the type of people that we look at. Those who see things more optimistically and who can take pressure with ease will find comparison with others as a form of healthy competition. Those who are pessimistic about things and succumb to pressure easily will find competition with others very depressing.
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mm that should be enough for a blog post.

the tragedy of happiness

smile! cus in that way even if your heart dies, people will still remember your laughter.

:P

Lol I actually cried while watching Fairy Tail episode 95. Dunno why leh, maybe I'm getting more sensitive to emotional stuff.
Ahh crying felt good. haha. :P

realisations

When people were not told, they thought of things otherwise, because they follow the normal way of thinking, and thus see things as what they appear to be.
When people were told, they come to sudden realisations, as though everything that happened in the past fits perfectly, yet they never thought about it before.
Interesting isn't it, some things remain hidden even when shown to be so obvious, while some which did not exist in the first place were thought to have existed, and thus was expanded upon for no reasons whatsoever.
On the other hand, secretive people are secretive, aren't they?