In the heat of the fusion

Untitled from Mary O'Reilly on Vimeo.

This is an animation I made for my Chem151 students, but was foiled from showing it yesterday, the second to last lecture of the semester, because for the first time, the cord that connects my computer to the projector was missing from the classroom. It wasn't a big deal to do the lecture on the white board - it was mostly working through problems - but I did mention that I was bummed that I couldn't show the animation I made for them. After a collective "Aww..", they offered to all (40 of them) gather around my laptop to watch it. They also eagerly offered to act it out. (This came from a class months ago when they were having a hard time grasping orbital hybridization, so I got some volunteers to act out hybridization and then the p-p and sp-sp orbital overlaps of the carbon-carbon triple bond of an alkyne.) I should say though, that all of this came after their initial hopefulness as I searched the room for the cord. "Does this mean class is canceled?"  They are awesome, but they are human after all.