Granted, pets are not usually allowed in the place, but the cat just... demanded entrance. There is also a barometer and thermometer beside the window.
Saturday, May 3, 2014
PTNS-101 Ideal wrokspace
Granted, pets are not usually allowed in the place, but the cat just... demanded entrance. There is also a barometer and thermometer beside the window.
CHRM-101 (#3) Wand Properties and Movements
Thank you so much for teaching the mending charm so early! I have a feeling I'm going to need it.
Isn't the unlocking charm kind of a useless measure? I mean, if you're teaching it to first-years, it's clearly kind of a basic spell. Wouldn't anything worth protecting be under counter-enchantments?
<->
3g. Practical Word Practice
Look at the following spells, and using what you have learned, please determine the intent of each spell. Have your teacher check your work.
Stupefy
To stupefy is to 'make (someone) unable to think or feel properly'. So I would guess the effect at being some kind of stunning.
I remember this from the history books! It also halts moving objects.
Spongify
This one I remember from DADA. It makes things rubbery.
Without that knowledge, I would assume it either made things spongy or turned them into sponges (the sea kind or the artificial kind).
Finite
'finish', at a guess.
As I recall from previous study, it is a spell to end other spell's effects.
Fera Verto
I always learned it as 'Vera Verto'. Without knowing what it was, I couldn't have guessed the effects.
As it is, however, the etymology guesses would include 'verre' being the french word for glass.
So, for the purposes of practicing these two spells, I've bought a few padlocks and grabbed a few toothpicks.
*breaks a toothpick*
Reparo!
Nothing.
Reparo!
Nothing and a half, as the toothpick seems to knit, incompletely, back together.
*breaks another toothpick*
*focuses very hard on a whole toothpick* Reparo!
Nothing.
Reparo!
Nothing.
Reparo!
Nothing.
Reparo!
Nothing.
*draws the spiral in the air a few times, to get the hang of it.*Reparo!
The toothpick turns into a very small twig. Well that was interesting.
--
twenty minutes later, mostly gotten the hang of it.
*grabs a mangy paintbrush*
Reparo!
The brush's bristles look a little better.
Hmm, I can see this being really useful!
*turns her room upside down looking for a broken necklace*
Reparo!
Some of the beads are in the wrong order, but wearable enough I suppose!
Okay, enough fun, on to lockpicking!
--
Fifteen minutes later, one lock is open, another one is melted, a third is plain old broken, and one's been broken into shards and cobbled back together, so that it looks more like a peice of abstract art than a padlock. Thank goodness I decided not to practice on my mother's doors.
Friday, May 2, 2014
ASTR-101 Mid-Term, Test 2 (Essay)
100%
Mercury - Surface Geology
Venus - Atmosphere and climate
Earth - Tectonic plates
Mars - Moons
Student Response
Student Response
Count the words! Each section has exactly 125.
--
Seen from a telescope, Mercury looks a lot like our moon. It's also pretty pockmarked, probably due to being pelted by meteors all the time. Analysis of the planet's surface has determined that it almost surely has ice (water). As water is the base for most potions and has been determined to be necessary in order to anchor life, this is very interesting, as it would suggest the possibility of life on Mercury. Mars also has evidence of the same. The muggles have only speculated its existence, but wizarding astronomers confirm absolutely the presence of ice on the surface of Mercury.--
Venus is hot! No, I don't mean the goddess, although that does also fit... I mean the planet. Geez. As I've mentioned briefly in a previous essay, Venus has an average temperature of 460 degrees Celsius. That is four and a half times the boiling point of water. It is also consistently that temperature - unlike the earth, where surface temperature depends on season, region, time, and weather, among other things, Venus' surface is pretty consistent. This is partially because of its axial tilt, which is 3 degrees to our 23, but it is also because Venus' atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide. CO2 traps heat, which prevents it from leaving the planet. Therefore, unlike the earth, where sun exposure only briefly warms the surface, on Venus it stays, making it toasty even at night.
A note: There are gases on our planet, including CO2, that trap heat too, they just aren't as plentiful.
A note: There are gases on our planet, including CO2, that trap heat too, they just aren't as plentiful.
--
The crust of planet Earth is made up of plates that shift, slowly but noticeably, over time. For wizards, this caused some confusion and trouble, as some magic that relies on very accurate placement had a tendency to change unpredictably, even when factoring in the spin of the planet. In this case, the muggles beat us to the discovery in the mid-1900s - which makes it extremely recent. Until then, though our endeavours to study backwards in time gave us some idea that something was changing on the planet's surface over time (given that time travelers going more than a few thousand years at once had a strange, unexplained tendency of ending up in entirely the wrong places), it was attributed to 'quirks in the magic'.
--
The moons of Mars are named Phobos and Deimos, personifications of fear and terror- as the constant companions of the god of war, they make perfect sense, as they are his sons in Greek myth, or rather, the sons of Ares, his greek counterpart, as Mars is a Roman god. Their existence was predicted by wizards since the early twelfth century, but only confirmed once our modern spellwork on telescopes came in, circa 1694. Word leaked to a muggle author, Jonathan Swift, who dramatized it in his novel Gulliver's Travels, published 1726. George Bonaccord, a french wizard of some small renown, also published a short story in 1750 that mentioned them, under the alias Voltaire. For muggles, Asaph Hall discovered proof of both in August 1877.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)