another day another dollar

[x_shadowcat]

Well, not exactly, but whatever.

You know, I never was any good at keeping diaries or journals, and now I'm almost obsessive with this thing. Maybe I just needed it to be a tech toy, or maybe I'm really just an exhibitionist. Regardless, you lot get yet another view into the life and times of one Ms. Pryde. Lucky lucky you.

Not that there's all that much to relate. I mean, with Dr. McCoy sending lessons by email that I can breeze through whenever I feel like it (you know, partical physics before bed gives you the weirdest dreams...) and the Lit class being study hall (and therefore 8000x less doomful) I'm down to classes which are just... class. Not mind-numbingly boring like back at home, but also neither fascinating nor terrifying. It's a novel experience.

Well, I guess there's still a little terror in Mr. Logan's defense classes... but it's also fascinating in it's own way, and something I want to do really well at.

He paired me with x_jubilee today... that ws interesting. She's not been making it back to the room until even after I go to bed, so I guess what happened made sense...

(woah. Just checked the journals... Jubes, you haven't been sleeping at all? That's not good!)

Anwyay, she was a little overly energetic and... well, let's just say that it's a good thing we learned how to fall properly first. As it is I've got bruises.

Mr. Logan took her for some one-on-one after that, and I ended up working with a target. Very Rocky Balboa, or something.

And then there was that whole thing with the poems and what not. Ms. Braddock, I don't think my poem is bad, I just don't really think it's all that good. Words just aren't really my thing...

And I talked to Ms. Frost. Equal parts reassuring and enlightening, I guess. She had an interesting idea for a research project, but I just don't think I'd be able to do it. The idea is essentially, what if "mob mentality" is some sort of latent psychic reaction? Large groups of people feeding off each other's emotions, and they all end up feeling/thinking the same, which does sound like something you could do with telepathy. And if it was, could you use something like the power damping field we're using in the defense course to prevent lynch mobs? Or maybe just to difuse them... cause you wouldn't want to have something like that set up everywhere, and otherwise you couldn't be sure that it'd interfeer with the mob creation...

I don't know. And Ms. Frost suggested it might be unethical to do something like that, and maybe it was a topic for the Mutant Acceptance course.

I'm kinda rambling, but I don't really feel like going to bed you see.

I've started a list of all the tests I want to run when Dr. McCoy is back. Jamie said something that got me thinking, and now I'm really curious as to why I usually don't fall through the floor. If I'm phased then maybe gravity isn't exerting a force on me anymore, but then why don't I fly off the planet, just get left behind as it rotates away from me? But if it is exerting a force and the floor's no longer exerting a normal force to hold me up, shouldn't I always fall until I read the center of gravity? But if Jamie's right and it's something like I do what I *want* to do, and go where I *want* to go, then maybe I could be really cliche and walk on water, or something.

And what if we invoke Newton? Say I were in a moving car and phased. Would I stop moving relative to the car and the car pass me? Or continue traveling with constant velocity so that the car would leave me behind when it turned? If I stop moving relative to the frame of reference, well, which frame of reference?

I've never believed that whole thing about curiosity and cats...

Comments

Re:

[x-kitten.livejournal.com]

*g*

I've also got an idea on how we could test the threshold energy required for you to dupe, if you were interested. I don't think we there are many tests we could run without worrying about hurting you. Well, excpet maybe weather or not the dupes could last "forever" or fade out if you don't call them in...

And hey, what happens if you dupe and then either you (as the original) or you (as the dupe) go to sleep? Or what if you were knocked out? Would your dupes all automatically be called back, or would they be without direction and sit around?

Re:

[x-crowdofone.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm interested. :) What do you have in mind?

That second one I actually know, or at least I've tried it before. If one of my dupes gets knocked out (aside from making another dupe) it just sort of . . . it's a shock, but it doesn't knock me out, it just means I can't use that dupe. And I tried having a dupe do my homework while I was sleeping, once, but it fell asleep when I did, near as I can tell. But I don't know if that was because the original decided to go to sleep or the mind did, if you see what I mean. I don't know how much I'm still "in" my actual body when I'm working with dupes.

And I know they can last at least three days without being reabsorbed, because for a while when it first started I couldn't always do it and that was the longest I ever couldn't.

Re:

[x-kitten.livejournal.com]

Down in the physics lab we've got a machine that can deliver a specific force. We can set it to, say, 5 Newtons (you said about the strength of a slap, right?) and then go up and down in increments till we narrow the specific value down. The machine's accurate to a hundreth of a Newton... You'd want to run the experiment at least three times, just to make sure the numbers came out the same, and the whole thing might take up to two hours or so.

Say... do you get hurt when you absorb the kenetic energy to make a dupe? I mean, the machine just shoots out a little bar, which could bruise you, but I bet it'd be pretty easy to make up a rubber pad to widen the area the bar would strike. (Same amout of force over a larger area hurts less.) Of course, I guess there's the chance that that would change the required energy to dupe, but we could run tests on that too...

Three days, huh? Well, that's close enough to "forever" to not be worth testing it... Although, what caused that dupe? Maybe a dupe which is started with more energy would last longer?

But I don't know if that was because the original decided to go to sleep or the mind did, if you see what I mean.

Well, you'd probably need a telepath to tell you that one... :D

Re:

[x-crowdofone.livejournal.com]

Oh good, because none of the telepaths around here are at all scary or intimidating. :) That time, I fell off my bike, I think it was.

And it doesn't really hurt--well, I feel it, but--I think you'd probably say that most of the kinetic energy is going into whatever makes me dupe, instead of going into making me hurt.

That time I fell off my bike, though, I got pretty scraped up (falling into gravel isn't a great idea.) I've gotten scrapes and cuts and stuff other times, too, but I don't bruise very easily.

So are we gonna wait to subject me to the pokey machine until Dr. McCoy gets back? I mean, it's not like I don't trust you to know what you're doing, but I still remember the last unsupervised student experimentation. ;)

Besides, that way we can get both our things done all at once and grab something to eat after. Cookies, or something.

Re:

[x-kitten.livejournal.com]

most of the kinetic energy is going into whatever makes me dupe

That's what I was wondering. Because, in theory you're still being hit, so it might be possible for cappilaries to break or whatever makes people bruise, but if all the energy is being absorbed elsewhere then there wouldn't be any energy to do that... But yeah, sharp things are still sharp, and landing on them *hurts*

And yeah, we should wait for x_beast... Would definitely be up for cookies and what not afterwards. :)

[x-crowdofone.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a plan. :) And who knows, maybe by the end of that day you'll be walking on water and I'll . . . be able to be hit by things.

You know, I'm noticing a certain fun imbalance in our respective goals here. :)

Re:

[x-kitten.livejournal.com]

*g* poor Jamie...

Well, you can have more cookies to make up for it. :)