The Undersexed Nerd

As the trope goes, the nerdy academic has one shot at getting close (albeit frustratingly so) to the attractive, popular girl. He can be the tutor/friend. Sure, he probably still will fail to form a romantic bond, but he deludes himself into thinking that there is a possibility, even if the crushing realization ends up being worse than being spurned from great distance. (Note: I feel justified in the use of "he". Even though there is obvious evidence that women are kicking the tar out of men at the high school and college levels, this sort of skewed, masochistic attitude I find more characteristic of nerdy males. Women definitely make poor choices, and definitely are vulnerable to the "friend-in-waiting" to stupid, unworthy men. But I think the dynamic still tends to be a bit contextually different.)


Do you know how pathetic I am?

I've never really exploited my gift at schoolwork to get remotely close to attractive women.


In fact, I was recently called upon to loan my academic giftedness to help someone else get closer to a hot, but lazy women. Describing himself as lazy, he turned to me.

If the world needs anything, it's more attractive, lazy people procreating.

Gonna go to my dark place now. Or read about Iran's nuclear program. Both are semi-effective, though ultimately self-defeating, ways of coping with my irrational terror of actually trying to do a damn thing to start a relationship of my own.

Fuck me.

Also, in case you were wondering, here's the question I was asked, and the response I supplied.

A 200 mg sample of a solution is 22 ppm in sodium ions. what mass of sodium ions are contained in the solution? How many moles of sodium ions are in the solution?


Sodium ions have a mass of 22.9898 g/mol

Water has a molecular mass of 15.994+2(1.00797) = 18.0153 g

22 parts per million of the soluition is sodium. This means for every million moles of the solution, there is

22(22.9898 g) = 505.7756 g of sodium

for every

(999,978)(18.0153 g) = 18,014,903.6634 g of water.

In other words, the mass fraction of sodium in the solution is

505.7756 g/18,014,903.6634 g = 2.80754x 10^-5.

So for a 200 g solution, there is
(2.80754x 10^-5)(200 g) = 0.005615 g of sodium.

To convert from mass to moles, divide by the mass of one mole of sodium:

0.005615 g Na (1 mol Na/22.9898 g Na) =  0.1291 mol Na.