Current IQ: 2.2
12/3/2024 - Still nogains
I'm here and I will get back to making gains. Some things I did instead of making mental gains:
11/19/2024, 10:00pm - Week of nogains
Just reporting in to say I've made no science gains. Will work on it again tomorrow. On the other hand, I've installed Arch linux on my PC, that's something r-right? I had installed an NVME drive on my PC to dual boot it for the longest time, but I finally did it.
11/12/2024, 10:25pm - Unit 2!
I've been putting off doing the end chapter quiz and the unit test, but I got those done today as well as the first lesson in Unit 2 about cells. 100% on the unit test too, woooo. I need a bit of a review of this stuff to fill some gaps so I might come back to it later.
I went over the structure of a eukaryotic cell inside yeast. I remember a lot of terms of course but I couldn't tell you before what the ribosomes did or where DNA was located, so that was interesting.
11/5/2024, 11:30pm - Unsaturated, Saturated, Trans Fats
Lazy post today. Worked on Unsaturated, Saturated and Trans fats and the differences in their structures. Picked up drawing tablet and took notes with it. Ok bye.
11/4/2024, 11:10pm - Triglycerides
Man I lost my 3 week streak, I forgot all about it. FUCK. Anyway I learned about triglycerides today, and how the proper name is triacylglycerol given that it contains 3 acyl groups and forms from a glycerol molecule that bumped into a fatty acid. Connections are formed between the fatty acid and glycerol through dehydration synthesis, so a byproduct of the reaction will be water.
The acidity comes from the carbonyl group where its two oxygen atoms draw electrons inward. The hydrophobic property expected of oils and fats comes from the long carbon chain which is not polar and overrides the polarity of the carbonyl group.
Oh yeah and I had to look it up separately but the purpose of the triglyceride is for energy storage. Seems to be a common theme in the body. The advantage is that it forms a stable molecule that will last and can be broken down later when needed.
11/3/2024, 10:38pm
No science today, but I worked a bit on the backend for the wiki where I'll put all my notes. It's probably going to go through a few iterations; right now we're storing basic title, text body, tags, and some other fields, but I imagine we'll need to store more than that. This will do for now.
11/2/2024, 11:16pm - Carbohydrates
I learned more than I was ready for about carbs AKA saccharides so there are a lot of notes to read through. I was copying almost word for word notes towards the middle of the lesson because everything seemed like relevant and new information, had to cut down on that.
I found a good note taking technique. For each block of notes related to a topic, I'll make sure to ask a question on the sidebar of the notebook page which is answered by those notes I wrote.You have to make sure to keep notes you are writing on the same general topic. If they just seem to be random facts, I'll literally write "What are some facts on X topic"? While it's unavoidable sometimes, it's best to not just list facts and to have some kind of point to convey with each bulletpoint (I use bulletpoints a lot).
11/1/2024, 12:11pm - Structure of Amino Acids and Structure of Proteins
Took some good notes today, so the text below might sound like an encyclopedia entry. 3 week streak so far on Khan, I have a lot of lessons left to do if I want to keep it. We've finished covering the intros for nucleic acids and proteins and it looks like the upcoming stuff is for the remaining macros, carbs and proteins.
Structure of Amino acids: To start, amino acids make up proteins. Some common ones discussed in the video were Serine and Valine. Each amino acid has an amino group of course and a carboxyl group, which turns it into an acid because of its electronegativity. There is an alpha carbon, which is just carbon but in the center of the molecule which branches out to those two functional groups and to a side chain molecule. The side chain varies among the different amino acid molecules and gives them additional properties like polarity and hydrophobic / hydrophyllic behavior.
Proteins are built off of 4 increasingly larger structures built from amino acids at the core. A single line of polypeptides forms a larger structure that can be in the form of a B Pleated Sheet or an Alpha Helix. These structures become more stable as the side chains in each peptide react with the surrounding molecules and change the overall structure. Finally these polypeptide chains folde togehter to form the larger protein complex.
10/31/2024, 10:32pm - Science on Halloween
Found some candy on my driveway and lawn today, I'll see what else people left tomorrow. Also I created a nav link to some useful apps for productivity.
Today I learned about the structure of RNA and glossed over some facts about it. mRNA carries genetic info from DNA to ribosomes, the ribosomes produce proteins, tRNA brings amino acids to the ribosomes so they can be used during protein synthesis, rRNA provides structure to the ribosomes, microRNA regulates translation of other RNA molecules. So that thing that was ruined by the vaccine; I understand it a little better now.
I also learned that it's a primitive form of DNA, but is still used in the body. It's a less stable molecule so it's less suitable for some purposes that DNA handles. The only difference from the structure of DNA is that RNA uses Uracil to replace Thymine. Uracil has a methyl group removed but is otherwise identical to Thymine.
RNA polymerase passes through the unwound strands of DNA and attaches whichever nitrogenous base matches the one it encounters. Guanine <=> Cytosine are interchangeable, Uracil attaches to Adenine, Adenine attaches to Thymine. It is transcribed by the DNA template like this, then the RNA molecule breaks off of the DNA and goes to do its job, depends what kind of RNA it is.
10/29/2024, 10:30pm - Lazy day
Watched one video on the structure of the nitrogenous bases inside DNA. Thymine and Cytosine (both pyrimidenes) attach to Adenine and Guanine respectively (both purines). I've heard of purines before in the context of gout. They're molecules that have nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen in common, and they form into two rings or loops as part of their molecular structure.
One other fact about the structure is that the phosphate groups, which are electronegative in a neutral solution as they are ready to donate their H+ ion, are what give DNA its helix shape, as they repel the phosphate groups in both sides of the long DNA chain.
Apparently nucleic acids are a major macro group like fats, proteins, and carbs, but we don't really track these in the nutrition labels. The reasons are that they aren't a significant source of energy, and there is basically no risk of deficiency since we easily obtain it from foods we eat.
10/28/2024, 11:25pm - Collecting Notes
I'm working on a method to display notes that I've written out, hopefully with a search feature. It'll either be another companion site like the notepad, or something built into this site. My notes aren't that useful yet but as I'm paying more attention to the way I jot things down, I think the quality should improve.
10/28/2024, 10:55pm - Hydrolysis and DNA
The opposite process to dehydration synthesis, water is used as a reactant to separate chains of polymers. I learned a bit about the makeup of DNA - it is a nucleic acid, it's made up of nucleotides, and a nucleotide is made up of ribose, a nitrogenous base, and a phosphate group. I learned what makes up each of these but I think I'm going to need to watch it again.
10/25/2024, 11:41pm - Hydronium ion
Just learned about a bit more about dehydration synthesis. Basically an electronegative atom like oxygen atom attacks an electron seeking atom like carbon and breaks off the hanging hydroxide molecule to form a connection directly to the carbon. A hydrogen ion is picked up from the surrounding solution and forms water. The oxygen which is now electropositive drops its attached hydrogen ion so it becomes stable again. The lost hydrogen ion attaches to the lost water molecule to form hydronium.
I think progress is a bit slow. I'm hoping to make large science gains in the future, but I think small gains like this are a good habit.
10/23/2024, 10:50pm - No progress today
Maybe I'll do a quick lesson before I head out. Also, I set up my mouse themed notepad site here: cheesymouse.mappios.com Very handy. The idea is to blow away everything you've written in 5 minutes, so you'd better get your ideas down fast and review them.
10/22/2024, 11:26pm - Some more learning today
I learned about hydrolysis which I'd heard of before, but also about dehydration synthesis which undoes that reaction. Hydrolysis captures a water molecule and breaks a bond between two polymers. Dehydration synthesis as the name implies removes a water molecule and combines two monomers together. I saw an example using glucose and one of its potential polymers, maltose. The ends that contain OH / HO are broken down and form H2O, with one O atom left to form the covalent bonds between the two glucose molecules.
While taking notes, I remembered my notes always sucked through all of my years at school and even now. I copied down everything on the board with the mindset that I'd read through the notes later, but I rarely did and when I did the notes seemed to be all over the place and weren't useful. I'm improving my notetaking by actually reading through them and rewriting them second and maybe third time if I feel like it. That way I'll know what's working and what's a nonsense time waster. That's right I discovered you can actually read your notes, imagine that.
One other useful trick I'm trying out is to track the actual time that I'm spending working. Start working - start the stopwatch. Look away for a video, pause it. There's nothing lost and it takes little effort, but at the end of the day you have the proof of why you didn't get much done.
10/21/2024, 11:01pm
Quick lesson today. I reviewed the chemical bonds like ionic and covalent bonds and reclassified the hydrogen and london dispersion forces as Van der Waals forces. Hydrogen bonds we know come from electrons preferring to stay closer to one atom of the two that are bonded. London dispersion has to do with temporary imbalances in electron distribution by accident, not due to a higher electronegativity of one atom. I'm not repeating lessons by the way, this was the next one.
10/20/2024, 10:48pm - We're so back x2
False alarm 2 days ago, NOW we are back. I very nearly lost my weekly science streak on KA. Need to also start up my guitar streak and the Leetcode one.
I passed my quiz by re-reasoning through each question after I forgot the answers from last time. There's a lot of memorization to do at this stage, like what elements make up different biological molecules. I'll remember them through trial and error whenever these questions come up. Coming up next is Ionic bonds which I think I get conceptually - negative and positive charges attract - one atom steals the other's valence electron.
10/18/2024, 5:40pm - We're so back
Back to Khan Academy and at a reasonable hour. I'm rewatching the functional group video as a refresher.
10/16/2024, 11:08pm - No progress today
Writing this out to track ups and downs. Did nothing today nor yesterday.
10/14/2024, 10:41pm - Messed up
I messed up, I didn't do enough today. No coding and only one video of Khan with some discussion with the ai bot. Will need to get back to it tomorrow.
10/13/2024, 11:16pm - Low effort post
Got one or two articles read in the khan academy course. Forgot the first one, the second is about functional groups of molecules. Basically modular molecules that are complete and can be stuck to the end of a molecule to give it some properties like structure and reactivity with other molecules. It's a good way to guess what an unfamiliar molecule will do if it has that familiar functional group.
One thing I remember from a blood test I had is reading something about a carboxyl group, so it's cool to see what that's actually referencing.
I did a leetcode daily mission since I want that T-shirt. Ended up looking up the answer because mine was getting convoluted and it's getting late, so I needed something for my time. However it looks like I was on the right track by using binary search to insert a value back into the right place in my array and maintain sorting. It's just that I was supposed to use a heap to store the array values in the first place. The answer was a priority queue by the way, don't ask me what the question was.
10/12/2024, 3:16pm - About Carbon
It forms many molecules inside organisms, including ATP, glucose, DNA, and then according to Khanmigo, proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, and one other thing. Carbon is important is uhh the main point here - it's highly important to life.
Look I added progress bars! Very easy with HTML5, there's a specific element for it. These will stay at the very top so you can stay updated.
10/12/2024 - Continuing Biology, 80/100 Khan Academy course, still one digit IQ
I really, really want to play old school runescape right now so I'll channel that into pretending I am making xp gains in science.
Today, I finished the first section in Khan Academy AP Bio. 80/100 somehow even though I got the 4 questions right. Moving on, we have learned some properties of water like solubility, adhesion and cohesion, surface tension, capillary action, and what causes these phenomena (basically all due to the properties of hydrogen bonds). Now we're doing a bit of review on elements, atomic numbers, and what different isotopes of an element like carbon are made up of - 6 protons, 8 neutrons, and is unstable and undergoes radioactive decay to turn into nitrogen.
I've already done a mental lab on capillary action for the week so that takes care of my lab hours. Paper towel in a beaker of water.
Watching: You Don't Suck At Runescape - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf2ZSrV0pH8
10/10/2024 - First post + Biology 1 (current rank -255,654; single digit IQ)
I made this site, along with this initial post. I watched a video from the Khan Academy course on Biology. This one was about solvents and how water dissolves molecules like salt. It loosens the bond between the sodium and chlorine atoms, then the negatively charged oxygen atoms bind to the positive sodium atoms. The same thing is done with the positive hydrogen and negative chlorine atoms. A hydration shell is formed around the components of the salt, so it gets dissolved.
I'm finding the AI chatbot Khanmigo very helpful for quizzing myself after each lesson. It really shows if you've been listening and fills in the gaps. Saw the same thing on a Linkedin Learning course today - unrelated since this was for my job. Ok, that's all I have as I'm writing this late at night but there will be MORE, I assure you, MUCH MUCH more.