30 Nov 2011

Modern Physics - (absent) something about Neutrinos - stuff I don't care about.

Organic chemistry - We talked about organometallic compounds, such as R-Li and R-MgCl, the latter traditionally referred to as Grignard reagent.

These compounds are useful and important for the substition of RX with a metal atom changes the carbon atom from being an electrophile to a nucleophile, i.e. electrophilic attacck of the carbon atom may occur more easily.

Coupling reactions.

Displacement reactions.

Note of interest: Lithium compounds came to play much later than magnesium due to greater reactivity and consequently difficult in storage of Lithium and (some of) its compounds.

- read course handouts on webpage to appreciate the significance of these reactions.

These organometallic compounds are sensitive to -OH, -NH2 groups. Thus the relevant reactions need to be carried out under air-free, inert atmosphere.

Intro to Economics -- We talked about Fisher Effect, inflation and the cost of inflation (shoeleather cost, menu cost) etc. Coiner remarked that expected inflation are generally less harmful (something along this line). When inflation is below what was expected, creditors benefit, debtors (penghutang) lose; and vice versa.

Mankiw writes that inflation itself does not necessarily lead to decrease of purchasing power.

Linear Algebra -- We began to see the link between eigenvalues and orthogonality/orthogonal matrix. I was totally lost in the lecture. Need to study the last few subtopics of Eigenvalues.