Oddly enough, the worst day of my recovery so far was yesterday. Yesterday morning I took my last Vicodin, but I’m not sure that it was working anymore for me anyhoo. So I switched to Ibuprofen (with Acetaminophen on the off hours if the pain is still there) when I take my Amoxicillin. Still, I had many moments of pain – like having overly sensitive teeth. I even pondered going home from school early. I ended up not doing that, but my afternoon was not as productive as it could have been.
Today, the pain wasn’t as much, which is nice. However, there was some time when one of my sutures came unraveled enough to get caught between my back molars. Very annoying. Either it’s finally broken off or dissolved, but the annoying thread is finally gone.
In the non-teeth front, my physics students had their egg drop contest today. They came up with some clever platforms upon which to drop naked eggs. There were two in particular which had some great physics in their design. All but 3 groups managed to survive the drop from the 3rd floor, which is very good. (We drop from 1 meter, second floor, and third floor. They get full points for the egg surviving each drop.) The winner of the contest had a platform that was only 16cm off of the ground. Pretty impressive!
The egg drop contest is the first of four engineering projects that my students do during the course of the school year. Next up (probably next week) is the Comeback Cans. Then we have the two bigger projects, both worth test grades. The catapult contest and the toothpick bridge contest.
What I’d like to do some year is create a few more engineering projects for later in the school year. After the toothpick bridges, we’re out of mechanics (it’s in the unit with scaling) so any further engineering projects would need to be wave-based.
BTW, the prize for this first contest was a pair of Sonic Sound Sizzlers (yeah, a bit repetitive for that title). It’s a pair of strong magnets in oblong shapes that, when thrown so they connect in the air, will make a fun sizzling sound. I love it when Walmart has cheap-o physics toys on sale!
Anyhoo. here’s hoping yesterday was the worst of it and everything is downhill from now on. I miss having crunchy foods! (I ate some peanut butter today because I’ve missed nuts.)