Yooooooooo,
Two things from class today:
1. The plural of wunderkind is, of course, wunderkinder. I realized as much right after class, (when I thought about the word kindergarten; I also remembered a sentence in a book I read long ago: “eine Schande für die Kinder” (or something like that), which a German woman says to her husband (in a pleasant way) when he is affectionate with her in front of their children. I don’t remember what the book was, though, and Google didn’t help, so if you happen to have the same weirdly specific memory and know whence that sentence comes, PLEASE let me know because it’s bugging me). Coincidentally, I was listening to the piano quintet in B minor by the German composer (and Beethoven chum) Ferdinand Ries when I realized wunderkinder was the right word. I suspect the Germanness of the piece helped me out quite a bit.
2. It’s “Rayleigh coefficient”, not “Raleigh”; I think I wrote the latter name on the board today. (Note: I put the previous sentence’s comma and semicolon outside the quotation marks, in the British style, because Lord Rayleigh was English (I also thinks it makes more sense to write that way)). Lord Rayleigh won the Nobel Prize in Physics, for discovering argon, but is perhaps better known for Rayleigh scattering, which explains why the sky is blue (it’s because it’s been listening to Miles Davis’s soundtrack to Ascenseur pour l’échafaud).
Perhaps more importantly for you, the second exam will be 23 October 2013 (one week from this Wednesday) in class. It will cover chapter 3. I will be more precise with respect to what exactly you need to know sometime after this Wednesday’s class. Don’t forget to do the homework that is due this Wednesday.
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Robert Mapplethorpe was a hugely controversial photographer, but he also once took this lovely picture of bread:
Prof. Prattle 