What, if anything, will happen if—when you start to grow seeds—you treat some seeds differently in those early stages? For instance, what if one of the seeds is taken out of its aquatic baggy environment for a day? What if one of the seeds is put in a dark closet? What if one seed sat in a watery plus another substance mixture instead of simply water? What if one of the seed’s water solution is really cold and another’s is really hot?

I want to just explore these, and other different combinations of growing seeds to see what effect they have on the eventual flower. I may also use different seeds to see if that makes a difference. This experimentation will be fairly loose, as I am just exploring to see if anything interesting happens to further investigate in a more rigorous and researched way.

Curiosity leads to exploration, which I feel is—if not purely fun—an essential stage of discovery. I always considered myself an exploratory person with, at times, more curiosity than focus can manage to pin down and further develop those initial findings. An exploratory demeanor comes to its subject matter with no pre-conceived thought or idea about what the journey might unearth. In fact, I would rather not know what I will find until found. This stage of exploration seems vital to some, if not all, discoveries, even though eventually valid knowledge will require systematic scientific method and research to process what we initially unearth.

For some reason, I feel I must justify exploration, as if it is merely an unorganized, messy quest that does not really yield substantial knowledge. I want to make the point that exploration is a jumping off point, a place to begin discovery. Once you explore and find something that needs further understanding, then you apply rigor; but that initial exploratory phase is free, liberal, and serendipitous. And once you find something, you begin to own it; it becomes your brainchild; and you are evermore invested and determined to apply that rigor.

Attempting to figure out the name and/or formula for chemical compounds is interesting and challenging. While systematic and possible, the first go-around can lead to incorrect answers. My problem was that I did not know about, or neglected, the existence of charts (i.e., cheat sheets) for the common valence charges of elements and ionic compounds, particularly the ionic compounds and elements with more than one valence charge. Without such a chart for reference, I kind of took a good guess—typically the wrong guess—and was vexed about how people could know this off-hand. That is, which elements had a 2+ or 4+, a 3+ or 6+, and which to use; or which ionic compounds ended in -ite or -ate. I conclude that they, too, must have had some sort of cheat sheet.

In the future, I look forward to learning more about carbon compound chains. Understanding these important things seems possible, interesting, and fun. I always remember my high school chemistry teacher telling us how organic chemistry was the hardest class he ever took. Perhaps this turned me off to that prospect. It’s strange what influences our choices. By now, I feel like the subject is something I can understand.

As I am beginning the MIT Open Courseware classes in biology and chemistry, there are some basics that I must practice. Particularly, in the review chapter of the chemistry book, we have to convert units. This task is not terribly difficult, but does consume time. I spend much of the time searching for the conversion rate (which I likely will not retain), and then the remainder of the time plugging the numbers in the calculator. At the end of the problem, the calculator and computer did most of the work anyhow. I mainly did the searching, clicking, and plugging, which could probably be streamlined with a good app. The other task that I completed was writing the fractions to multiply values and cancel-out units. This is a useful skill; but after a few times it seems fairly easy. Thus, let’s just let the computer do everything after the user tells it which value to convert to which units. I sure hope an app already does this.

Delivery day is always exciting, especially when I am charting a course—new, fresh, and different than previously.

As per the syllabi of the two MIT Open Courseware courses I will step into, I ordered two books:

• Atkins, Peter, and Loretta Jones. Chemical Principles: The Quest for Insight. 4th ed. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman and Company, 2007.
• Freeman, Scott. Biological Science. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002.

My primary game plan is to learn chemistry and biology with an eye toward genetics. In conjunction with this learning, I want to apply programming skills and engage with web-related technologies. Lastly, as a concurrently creative stream, I want to listen to, feel, and live beside jazz music. These are the broad goals, priorities, and the starting point.