Almost SALKing in Chemistry

Charmaine’s mom is a lawyer. And she wants you to sue the restaurant that Lucille’s mom runs. What? Is this just a coincidence? That doesn’t seem possible, but the alternative… you don’t even know what the alternative is. These thoughts occupy your head through economics in the morning, and before you know it, you’re walking into chemistry in the afternoon. You groan as you realize you have to make a decision about it soon. Friday’s going to come so quickly.

“You doing alright?” Beatrice asks, giving you a concerned look as you slide into the seat next to her. “You’re always there when I’m having an off day, so I thought I’d ask.”

“I’m fine, just had a weird morning is all,” you say. You pause, wondering if you should say more. “You know how I was out sick at the beginning of the semester? My dad wants to sue the restaurant that gave me food poisoning. I’m not so sure.”

“That’s a tough spot to be in,” Beatrice says, giving you a sympathetic look. “They probably didn’t mean it, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what I think,” you say, deciding to hold your tongue on the rest of it. Gossip can spread like wildfire, and you don’t want people whispering behind your back before you’ve even come to a decision. “So I’m still thinking it over.”

Class starts then, with Professor Styles calling everyone to attention. She begins lecturing on the material, continuing on with the material from last class. You take diligent notes, now that the lecture has moved on to fully new material that you’d never seen or heard of prior to starting college. But you’ve been keeping up with the class, studying an awful lot for it, so you follow everything going on at the blackboard, even as some of your classmates scrunch up their faces in confusion at the finer points of the lecture. This stuff about surface diffusion and surface kinetics is hard, and you glance at Beatrice, wondering how she’s doing. She’s busy taking very detailed notes, the diagrams sketched in her notebook full of annotations.

“Okay, that’s enough theory and math. I’m sure you’re tired of seeing equations on the board,” Professor Styles says about halfway through the class. “Let’s look at a practical example. Well, at least, my kind of practical.”

She hits a couple of buttons at the lecture desk, and the projector screen lowers. Two gifs flash up on the screen. Both of them are shaded blobs that begin to morph following the processes that your professor just spent the last half hour lecturing about.

“The green shape on the left shows surface diffusion, while the blue shape on the right shows surface attachment limited kinetics. To spoil the ending somewhat, the Wulff shape here is a regular octagon. Now, the million dollar question is, must the green and blue shape be topologically equivalent?”

There’s silence in the classroom as everyone ponders the question (or tries to figure out what the prof’s even asking). You drum your fingers quietly on the desk, thinking through the prior examples that were worked out on the blackboard. When surface diffusion and surface attachment limited kinetics were considered in the context of a rectangular structure, you showed that the long-run outcome between the two models were identical. But in this case… there’s no way you can do the calculations in your head. You have no idea what the answer should be.

In the meantime, nobody has spoken a word. Professor Styles looks at the class expectantly.

“Nobody?” she asks. “Time’s about to run out, and you’re about to see the answer revealed on the projector.”

You shrug, helplessly, and notice that nobody still has their hand up.

“Alright,” Professor Styles says, sounding slightly disappointed. “Looks like this went over everyone’s heads, or you’re all feeling shy today.” She skips over to the end of the animation, pointing to the separate figures. “Can you see how the blue SALK model now contains a hole while the green surface diffusion one is a solid block? That’s a clear topological difference. The question is, why? Well, we can start by examining…”

You quietly take notes, understanding what’s going on as Professor Styles explains it. You silently make a note to yourself: even though you’re good at this subject, you’re still going to have to put in some effort and study for this class. Otherwise, you might not get that coveted A, and you are damn sure you want to cash in on Burn Night.