Chapter 2: First Day at School [1]
The teacher began handing out the test papers to each student, and as I received mine, I quickly scanned the questions. To my surprise, the questions seemed strangely familiar, as if I had known them all my life. They were clear and straightforward, I relaxed seeing what I saw and dived straight in.
'How Much Does Your Leg Shorten When You Stand on It?'
"Well... all I gotta figure out is the mass, gravity doin' its thing, and the cross-sectional area of my leg. Then, I can just plug that into the equation I picked up earlier today."
With remarkable ease, I paced through the questions, solving the majority of them within a mere minute.
A few required a bit more thought, taking up to three minutes of my time. After solving nine questions, only one remained – a unique challenge that wasn't mandatory but had the potential to earn some extra points.
'When using a pencil eraser, you exert a vertical force of 11.00 N at a distance of 3.00 cm from the hardwood-eraser joint. The pencil is held at an angle of 25.5º to the horizontal. How much is the pencil compressed lengthwise?'
"Well, well... I gotta figure out the torque slammin' on this pencil. Now, all I'm missin' is the inertia, the bendin' stress, and, ya know, good ol' Hooke's law!"
Wow, I found myself pretty darn satisfied with what I jotted down. I couldn't help but wonder what was going on with me, and if this sharpness will stick around.
I mean, what the heck, it's kinda nice. I might just have a shot at that SAT in two weeks and nail a top-notch score. Maybe even slide into one of them Ivy League engineering programs or something.
Ethan, who sat at the desk to my left, glanced at me with this dissapointed expression, probably thinking that I flunked the quiz and that I started getting all frustrated, chuckling at my own darn stupidity. Oh, he couldn't have been more wrong.
Then I stood up, grabbed the paper, and with folks in the class shooting me these weird looks, I handed in my paper to the teacher. She shot me an angry glare and warned me: