Survival Of The Fittest

(Matthew Hunt continued from The Curse of Miss Celie)

If there was one saving grace in Ms. Zhang's Physics class, it was the labs themselves.

Matthew never liked anything science related. It got interesting during certain points, but he found himself forgetting half of the lessons in the next few weeks or months. Do we need to know what the powerhouse of the cell is? Do we need to know that a blood cell is called a eyth...etho...what was it called again...?

...erythrocyte? Yeah, that's the word.

He can say with confidence, however, that Physics was probably his least hated. It's still boring as hell, but the labs were probably the most fun out of all of his other science classes. That, and the teacher's lax behavior towards everyone's grades certainly helps out.

Today, they were doing a lab involving the conservation of energy. For the lab, he had to determine the distance that an object falls based on the...k of the spring? Ok, he had no idea what the "k" stood for. He knows that Ms. Zhang isn't focusing on how hot or cold the spring is, it can't be kelvin. Did it mean...what was it called...kinetic energy...?

Ah well, at least the actual experiment looks fun. Everybody was given meter sticks, unstretched springs, and weights of various sizes. When the mass of the weights were found, people had to also use an equation to determine the distance that the weights would fall before being stopped by the spring. Once everything is set-up, Ms. Zhang said that she will climb up on a ladder, put the spring on the hook on the ceiling, and drop the weights. She put a mat on the floor to prevent damage and said that everybody was free to ask for another drop if necessary. After that was done and over with, they have to answer boring questions like whether or not the result was accurate to their solved equations and why.

As Matthew thought about the weights he was going to use, he looks around the classroom to see what everybody else was up to.

((Toby Underwood continued from Let's Get Physical!))

Math was fine. Toby got math. Unlike most people he didn't mind the formulas and shit for physics classes. That was easy enough. Then you got the physics theories and those made sense. Conservation of energy, like, you can't just magic stuff into existence. Fine.

But he could not figure out how to put them together. It was the worst. The math made sense when it was theoretical, but trying to plug in the crazy theory numbers made it weird and suck. This experiment thing? Not helpful. How does dropping a thing give you all these numbers? And what is the 'energy' here? Falling, like gravity energy?

Blah. Toby leaned further back in his chair as the teacher's unhelpful explanation continued. Actually, he leaned so far back in his chair that he lost his balance and fell over with a yelp, past the edge of the table and onto his back with a loud crash. That hurt.

Amidst the various sounds of amusement from his classmates, Toby pulled himself to his feet just in time for a stern look and a lecture about lab safety, followed by an order to move to a desk out of the way and work on a different packet of problems instead of the experiment.

Oops. Toby shrugged sheepishly and did as told, flipping through the pages as he sat down. Actually all this seemed pretty simple by comparison. Things turned out alright, yay! His back hurt, though. Less yay.

A loud crash rang through Matthew's ears as he was about to figure out how to solve the equation in his mind. He looked around for the source of said crash and found Toby on the ground. Matthew couldn't resist listening to the teacher lecturing him about the importance of lab safety, how he could've gotten himself killed, blah blah blah.

As she was in the middle of it, he shook himself and looked at the paper again. He had to focus solving the problem. Now, where was he...

...Dammit, he lost his train of thought! Now he had to start from the beginning. As it turns out, not writing down his thoughts was a bad idea. Who would've thought?

Almost immediately, an idea popped into his head. Maybe he can do the actual experiment and figure out how to get to the said answer afterwards. It'll somewhat cut down on the work he had to do, anyways. Reaching for a random weight, he picked up a 200g one, which was the heaviest one in the set. No doubt that it would make the spring stretch as far as it would go, but it's not exactly heavy enough to hit the ground. Hell, he doubted that it would even get close to the ground to begin with. Why did Zhang put the mat down again? Raising his hand, he managed to get her attention and asked if she could hang his weight next. She asked if she could see the solution to the equation.

Well, shit, he didn't think about that little tidbit. He had only a few seconds to try to fix this. As the teacher moved her head to see his paper, he quickly rubbed his eraser on a blank spot on his paper and said:

"Uh...wait a minute...I think I did something wrong. Let me fix it and I'll be ready."

Zhang then asked if Matthew needed help on the problem. He was about to say no, but then he figured that any help is better than no help at all. Nodding his head, she began to listen to his thought process and  explained certain parts of the equation.

He'll forget about it in two or three weeks, he thought to himself.

Toby sat in the corner doing the packet.

He honestly didn't mind so much. Like, being the one in the metaphorical dunce cap was a drag, but it wasn't like he was going to get thrown into the social gossip blender or something. Nobody cared that much. And at least now he could focus on the parts of the subject he actually recognized. They weren't the 'fun' parts, but at least he wasn't going to screw the up--he knew how to do this stuff--and he wasn't going to hurt himself or get into trouble again.

Physics was a pain in the ass.

...Wait, was that...? Holy shit that was too perfect. A grin burst onto Toby's face and he put his hand over his mouth, trying to stifle the surge of giggling at his own accidental pun. After a couple of moments of muffling his laughs, he sighed and looked back at the paper. He was still grinning at least. Hey, who needs classroom science nonsense? he could entertain himself!

...Crap, that answer was wrong. Toby's smile sunk a little as he scribbled out the number with his pen and rechecked the equation.

"Alright, I think I got it figured out now. Thanks."

A slight smile formed on Matthew's face as he circled the answer. Now that he has the distance determined, it was finally time to hang his weight. He grabbed the meter stick and lined it up as close as he could without the spring or weight touching it. Ms. Zhang then climbed up the ladder and put the hook on the spring onto the roof's hook.

As Matthew was waiting for the teacher to drop it, he noticed that someone from earlier dropped a quarter on the mat. Ah, today must be his payday. He reached down and grabbed it, just in time to hear the teacher shout at him.

Oh shit, she dropped it! Almost immediately, with stick in hand, he backed up away from the spring. Thankfully, he got out of the way in time. Looking at the mat again, he saw that the weight wasn't there, but was still attached to the spring above him.

Oh come on, that wasn't even close to his head! That didn't seem to matter, however, as Ms. Zhang silently gave him an angry look, grabbed the meter stick from his hand, and measured the results. Afterwards. she bluntly told him that his answer was accurate and to sit back down.

Keeping his mouth shut, Matthew went back to his seat and worked on the next questions. Guess she felt that she didn't need to repeat herself after that chair-falling incident.

Oh well, at least he's got a quarter from all of that.

After a good while, the packet was done. Not too bad.

Toby checked the clock on his phone. Woah, that was fast, huh. The spring thing was just wrapping up. Spring thing. Was that good? Not really, not on its own. Needed context, yeah.

Toby stood up and did a little stretch, then plopped the papers onto the teacher's desk. He looked over at her, giving a little not so she saw that he was done, and sat down at his desk and started flipping through his messages.

Not much talk going on, school in session and all, but he'd gotten something from a dude who had lunch now. Or he just skipped his class. Not sure, actually, but he responded now, so it was fine for Toby.

He slouched in his desk, but not quite as much as before. Learning from mistakes and all that crap. Zhang might bug him for something last minute but probably not, so whatever. Not a bad period overall.

((Toby Underwood continued in A Trip to the Nerd Zoo))

Matthew's left hand is starting to hurt a bit from the writing and occasional erasing as he finally finished answering the questions.

And with little time to spare too, as the bell was getting close to ringing. As he was putting the packet on the teacher's desk, he heard Ms. Zhang talking again, this time saying that the packet is due by the end of class tomorrow.

...Actually, he wasn't sure if every answer was correct. He might have to look at that tomorrow. After making sure nobody was watching, he walked back to his seat and put the packet back in his folder.

Pulling out his phone to avoid eye contact with the teacher, Matthew browsed Reddit for anything new while keeping an eye on the time. Just a couple of more minutes before they're dismissed and he'll hopefully not get another lecture about lab safety.

It was funny watching that one guy get yelled at earlier, though.

((Matthew Hunt continued elsewhere))