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Gotta Make the Grade...

Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 10:28 pm
by T-Fox†
((Peter McCue continued from An After School Meeting))
Sometimes classes required a bit of extra work, but for Peter? Only when that class required something physical. Some stupid assignment had been given to him in his AP Physics class, and his teacher decided it would be a good idea to make him work with a partner, even though it was pretty obvious that he worked alot better alone. He and his partner, Ivan were supposed to be meeting in the Library at 4:00 to work on... something or other. He'd look at the paper when he got there. I don't know how well this kid works. If he doesn't want to do anything, I guess I can work on this myself. He chuckled to himself on the way there, having taken the bus home since his mother had made food for him that day.

It took about 20 minutes more to get to the Library, and he started unpacking his bag. "3:37..." He muttered under his breath, glancing up at the clock. Leaving his pencil case, Physics Binder, and Textbook on the library table, he wandered off to the fiction isles of the room, trying to find something interesting to kill the time, and maybe even something to bring home to read.

Re: Gotta Make the Grade...

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 3:38 am
by MK Kilmarnock
((Ivan Kuznetsov continued from Captain's Orders))

Ivan arrived at the library at exactly 3:55. For a few moments, he thought he might have ended up being late, but his shoulder had stopped acting up over time to the point where, fortunately, he no longer had to adjust his gait to tend to it. The limping and straining had made Ivan feel like a wounded animal walking amongst a school of predators, each one eyeing him and trying to smell the blood. He was never paranoid... anti-social, yes, but paranoia was not an emotion Ivan was comfortable with, which is why he felt all the more vulnerable as of late, well, at least until now.

As far as this physics project went, as much as he detested it, at least he got a pretty good partner. Peter was one of those bookish types who didn't seem to talk a lot, at least in class. As long as he didn't drown Ivan out with idle conversation about things the boy honestly didn't care about at all, and focused on getting this assignment out of the way, hell... maybe he'd even get to like Mr. McCue. An added bonus came in the fact that Peter was actually around the same height as Ivan (a nice change from the seemingly mutated population of this section of St. Paul), so he wouldn't have to crane his neck up to talk to him or feel like he was being looked down upon. In more than one way.

Passing through the detectors at the library's entrance, Ivan made a sharp turn in accordance with the front desk and began walking towards the various seating areas of the library, keeping an eye out for Peter. His glasses were proof that his eyes weren't that of an eagle's, but Peter really wasn't all that difficult for Ivan to pick out; it helped that the library had almost a dozen people at most at the current moment.

"You just get here?" He asked in an effort of politeness, slinging his backpack into one of the chairs across from Peter. Ivan immediately unzipped the pack and began to rummage through it without offering any other words or a look to his partner that asked for a response. The words he said were just there as courtesy; if Peter got there an hour early, that was too bad. They had decided on a time. "This is pointless, but easy..." Ivan eventually said, pulling out the set of gadgets that the two had to mess around with. So we have to replicate these patterns..." Ivan mumbled, nodding towards a few pieces of paper on the small desk between them, "using these... sonar... echolocation... things.

He set down the borrowed device a bit roughly, moving his backpack out of the way to take a seat. ".... So let's start."

Re: Gotta Make the Grade...

Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 12:45 am
by T-Fox†
Peter Glanced up from his book, a book on Mythology. Probably was the most interesting thing in this Library. "Huh? Oh, I've been here for a few minutes." He said as he watched the boy walk around the table, taking a seat. "You ready to get started?" He leaned back in his chair, a few pops eminating from the middle of his back.

There was a moment of silence as Peter opened up his Binder, looking over the handouts on the subject silently.

"This is Pointless, but Easy..."

Peter Chuckled in response. "Yeah. The science behind this is pretty simple. We just need to take these and replicate this pattern, right?" As he said this, his pointer finger landed on Ivan's paper right over the example. He went silent again, flipping back to his textbook, opening to the proper chapter on sound and sound waves, next flipping his notes to the corresponding page.

"...So let's start."

"Right, sorry. Just looking over the notes from the lecture on this, seeing if there's anything that might help make this even easier." He ran three fingers down the paper pretty quickly, flipping the page once and stopping about halfway down the page. He then looked over to the assignment page, incoherently muttering every so often to himself. "You have any ideas of how to start?" He looked up at Ivan, really only asking to be as polite as possible. He had a pretty good idea how to start this, but he was always interested to see a new perspective on the problem when it came to scientific study. Granted this wasn't really study, but mashing an idea into a young adult's head... But either way.

Re: Gotta Make the Grade...

Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 3:08 am
by MK Kilmarnock
Ivan had noticed Peter was reading, but didn't care to glance at the title of the book. The sooner he got this over with, the sooner he could go on to other things that he had to do. Yet, something about this assignment seemed like it was going to drag on for a while. There were plenty of graphs on that sheet, at least twenty, and they had three extra pages to record all the data on. Since it took him ten minutes to do one graph while getting the hang of it, the impatient Russian was really, really hoping that practice made perfect... and haste.

"I doubt the notes are going to help us much, unless they cover what movements we need to make to make ascending and descending... points or arcs or whatever. We just walk back and forth, it's not hard." Ivan shook his head and stood up. What this actually had to do with physics, he didn't know. Yes, they get to understand echolocation, that's all fine and dandy, but there are two points against this whole idea. One, most kids should be learning what echolocation is the first time they read about bats, which normally happens in... third to fifth grade? Second, why can't they just replicate three graphs if it's so important to understand? Why twenty? There was no point in lamenting it further.

Ivan stood up, holding the device in his hands before hooking it up to his graphing calculator, propping it on his backpack, and took a step back. "That book, it's got a hard cover..." Ivan pointed towards the book that Peter had set down. "If we hold something like that in front of us, it'll help."

Re: Gotta Make the Grade...

Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:30 am
by T-Fox†
Peter glanced up from his notes, his glasses covered eyes adjusting as they moved from the bright white pages. "Huh? Oh, sorry. I could have sworn I heard him say something a couple days ago about compression of the waves, based on distance and angle. I'm having a tough time finding it though, so... No better way than to hop into the fire." His hand slid down to the red notebook, the pages closing with a small thud. Maybe we can take this one step farther, and calculate out the exact distance to plot correlation... A small smile was creeping across his face for seemingly no reason. Experiments... Legitimate experiments in the name of science, and research in the name of mathematics always got Peter's adrenaline going. Not the shitty little 'experiments' that the school had them to do force them to grasp a concept. No. True, Scientific and Mathematical discovery. This is what Peter lived for.

He looked up at Ivan with a slight start as he mentioned the book, nodding in a slightly delayed reaction, still transitioning out of his thoughtful state. "Huh... Oh... OH Yeah! Yeah, this will suffice. Better than my original idea of holding it over the table. Gives us more range." He slid the paper from the top of his binder to the edge of the table, flipping to the first page of the graphs that the pair had to replicate. With that he slammed the book shut, and pushed himself from the table with it in his hand. "Okay, let's get started then. Might as well try to start with the first one." He started with the book held about six inches away from the device. "These look to be smooth curves, so my guess is that they don't require an angle to obtain. So these three..." A hand moved from the book to the paper. "Will be the easiest to replicate."

He smiled a little nervously, realizing he'd been rambling at the probably disinterested tennis star. "Er... Right. Let's just get started, huh? What's the graph showing?"

Re: Gotta Make the Grade...

Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 2:12 am
by MK Kilmarnock
Ivan was rubbing his temples. Sure, science stuff was fun, what with physic's basic princible of every action having a reaction. The boy loved to apply these sorts of things to tennis and while it hardly helped improve his game in practice, the logistics of each shot gave him something to think about and keep himself focused in the game. It also gave him a real excuse to get into college, which he'd need to help him go pro. This, though... this was just an uninteresting distraction given to them by their teacher to eat up an assignment slot in the curriculum.

"Don't make a big deal out of it." Ivan grumbled, looking through the packet a bit before turning back to the first page that actually had graphs on them. Just as common sense would have it, the first few graphs were pretty easy, a couple straight lines and then a parabolic curve. "Just use your head. The higher the point on the graph, the further away you are. So for one, you just steadily walk away. For another, you steadily walk forward." They'd take turns to keep it fair, obviously, but something still felt like this was going to be a giant waste of time, and that's what was driving Ivan nuts.

And Peter... Peter seemed so wrapped up and interested in this, it was obvious just by looking at the guy's face. He's probably just doing this for the grade, really. The guy just... really loves school for the sake of doing schoolwork. I wonder what he'll apply himself to when he gets out into the real world, I sure as hell don't know just by looking at him. Ivan thought about quite a few things that he wasn't even aware he was thinking of as he slung his legs over the arm of the easy chair, watching Peter and hitting the 'graph' button on the calculator when needed, and hitting 'enter' when needed to start the process all over again.

Re: Gotta Make the Grade...

Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2010 1:36 pm
by T-Fox†
Peter was just... insanely bored with the monotony of this 'experiment'. Even though his visage didn't show it, it had already served it's purpose... and they were literally halfway done. He'd already figured out what movements would create what changes in the pattern.

"Don't make a big deal out of it."

Peter stopped for a second at this, glancing down to the paper. It quickly hit him that he had done the last five on the worksheet without even realizing it. I guess I can see why he'd think I'm excited about this... He made an attempt to slow down, handing the calculator to Ivan. "If you want to do the next few."

As soon as Ivan had taken the calculator, he jotted a couple of things down in his notebook. To anyone who wasn't reading over his shoulder, it could probably be assumed that he was just scribbling down notes about the project. Really to him there was no need. He was writing down musings, still pertaining to the experiment. His notebook had little scrawlings all over the page he'd set aside for today. What if we bounced the signal off of a mirror? It would obviously flip on at least one scale... but what would the bend in the signal do to the distortion? Would it become less finite, less ordered? What if we angled it so that only half of the signal was hitting the book, but the other half was hitting ANOTHER book two feet back? If Ivan was paying enough attention, he would notice that his movements were practiced, methodical, and bored when he was actually working, but the true grin washed over his face when he had his nose buried in that notebook.

Re: Gotta Make the Grade...

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 6:36 pm
by MK Kilmarnock
"... Sure, whatever." Ivan took the calculator and sighed, getting it all nice and set so all he had to do was hit the button, grab the book, and move it back and forth in front of the sonar device to record the graph. In short, the same pointless exercise they had done at least ten or fifteen times already.

Ivan recorded at least two graphs in the same painfully redundant fashion and was in the process of drawing the second on the packet of paper they were given, when Peter caught his eye. For somebody about as fed up with this assignment as Ivan was, the other kid seemed to be rather caught up in whatever the hell he was writing. Again, at the very least, he was enthusiastic. Still, it bothered him... there was no way in hell Peter was writing about the project, because he just seemed to be enjoying himself far too much.

What is he up to? He can't be generally interested in this... and if he is, well... huh. Ivan sat down in his seat,resting one ankle over his other knee and staring at Peter without even realizing that it might seem a bit conspicuous. Is this guy interested in doing this shit for a living? He's a bit... naïve, maybe, but he's not all that bad. I wonder if... Sighing, Ivan forced himself to talk out of place, which was almost never easy for him.

"Hey." He said bluntly, hoping that would get Peter's attention. "What are you doing?"

Damn. That might've seemed a bit rough. Hopefully Peter wouldn't take offense to it immediately, and Ivan worked to qualify his statement so it wouldn't be taken the wrong way. "I mean... what do you want to do with your life?"

Re: Gotta Make the Grade...

Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2010 2:56 am
by T-Fox†
Peter had been obliviously writing in his notebook for a while, and had really gotten into it by the time that Ivan had noticed him.

"Hey."

This caught Peter's attention, but not enough for him to look up. "You want me to do the-" He was cut off and stopped as he heard Ivan ask him something.

"What are you doing?"

An embarrassed look crept over the boy's face as he realized that Ivan probably thought that he was the biggest nerd in the school. I mean, he had a look of joy on his face, his nose buried in a notebook, while they were doing a crappy physics experiment.

"I mean... what do you want to do with your life?"

That... was about as far from what Peter expected Ivan to mean as he could possibly get. "Er..." The question was so unexpected that Peter honestly had no idea how to react at first. "Well... That's kind of a loaded question, I guess." He glanced back down to his notebook and finished writing a sentence as quickly as he could. "I like to discover things. I always have. I've never liked the idea of an 'experiment'" He paused his sentence to use 'teacher quotes'. "as a form of reinforcing a concept. An experiment is something where you make a hypothesis about the unknown, and then you prove your hypothesis wrong, or right. The key word is unknown though. See, I'd have less of a problem with this monotonous thing if we hadn't had the lesson on how it works already."

He placed his pencil in the spiral ring of his notebook. "Maybe a Chemist, or a Biologist... Even maybe a Mathematician." He trailed off, considering other possible fields. "As for what I'm doing, whenever I get curious about something, I write the questions down in this notebook. I have tabs for different kinds of science, and a whole different notebook for Math." He gestured to the page he was on. "See, this 'experiment' has made me curious as to some of the other properties of echolocation. Like this one." In large print on the left side of the notebook, second from the bottom was written 'What happens to radar when it bounces off of a mirror at an acute angle?' and right below it was ' * an obtuse angle?'

"I usually take some time every once in a while and research what I write down." He gestured to a few crossed off questions. "The ones that I can't figure out, I write down in the back of the book... for something to dwell on whenever I get bored.

He stopped for a second, looking back up at Ivan. "Sorry I just went off rambling there... It's a bad habit I've always had. What do you plan to do after we get out of this place?"

Re: Gotta Make the Grade...

Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 4:59 pm
by MK Kilmarnock
Ivan listened to Peter's shpiel for the most part, though he was still finishing up a few of the graphs. Near the end, he put down his pencil and looked at the paper with some mild disbelief. Somehow, the end of the assignment had been sneaking up on him; he hadn't noticed that they were actually nearly finished in this exercise of redunancy.

Removing that distraction from his mind, Ivan looked back up and nodded, though he didn't look so stern as usual. His face still held a stoic 'whatever', but at least it was more of a 'whatever and I'm actually relatively interested' rather than a 'whatever, please shut up'. So, Peter was actually interested in physics as a major, or even something as pure on the mathematical scale as a plain ol' mathemetician. That wasn't entirely Ivan's bag as he was mostly using that scope of study to get him through college and serve as the door to his tennis career, but it was something... hell, in the unlikely event that he needed something to fall back on, maybe Peter would be the go-to guy to help him out.

... Maybe.

"What do you plan to do after we get out of this place?"

"You make it sound like we're in prison." Ivan smirked, pushing the paper to Peter. "Your turn, by the way." As he stood up to stretch his back, the boy also took the opportunity to clean his glasses. He didn't like looking at people when talking to them (it just felt far too weird), so this gave some place for his eyes to go to. "I'm heading to pro tennis, probably. That's about it for me. Nothing fancy."

Re: Gotta Make the Grade...

Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 5:36 pm
by T-Fox†
"You make it sound like we're in a prison."

"Well, an academic prison maybe." He chuckled a little as he noticed Ivan smirk, glancing down at the paper. "Oh wow, only 4 more? I'll finish this one off. Feel free to flip through my notebook if you want to." He did his best to give a warm smile, even if he wasn't sure if he did it right. He had never been good at social situations.

If Ivan were to look at Peter's notebook, he would notice 5 cleanly labeled tabs, in a very neat print handwriting. "Biology, Chemistry, Physics", all pretty par for the course. Although the other tabs would catch most scientist's eyes, especially on realization that this notebook belonged to a high school senior. "Theoretical Science, Other".

"I'm heading to pro tennis, probably. That's about it for me. Nothing fancy."

Peter picked up the calculator, glancing back at his partner. "That's it? No back up plans, no other passions?" He hit a few buttons, bringing up the first graph. "Or maybe you just haven't discovered them yet." He smiled as he recorded the graph, idly working on the rest of the graphs in the assignment.

Peter was genuinely interested... Ivan almost seemed to be behind a shell. Peter could tell there was more to the other boy than just tennis. It was obviously a big thing if it was his main plan through life, but there had to be something more. There was almost always something more. "I've never followed sports myself. Between not having time and my 'research', it's never been high on my priority list." He stopped for a second, contemplating if his next question was a stupid one. He shrugged. "I'm guessing you're on the Tennis Team here?"

Re: Gotta Make the Grade...

Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 4:11 am
by MK Kilmarnock
Huh... an academic prison. At least this kid had something of a sense of humor. It was strange, really... Peter seemed to be one part bookworm, and one part comedian. Parts of his personality slightly reminded Ivan of Louis, but only slightly. Still, he wasn't... intolerable, and that was something. The prodding could get a bit annoying though, but Ivan did his best not to show it as some sort of thanks for working with him on a project. On the subject of prying, he looked down at the notebook at which Peter referred to. There was in looking at it, though. He was organized, sure, but Ivan didn't want people in his business, and as a general courtesy didn't pry too far into other peoples'.

"That's it? No back up plans, no other passions... Or maybe you just haven't discovered them yet."

Ivan raised an eyebrow at this, but looked through his own notes again as an excuse to divert his eyes, which his glasses did well to hide anyway. "Nothing that I can use for a job, no." It might have seemed a bit cocky, but he didn't exactly need a backup plan. Tennis was his life, and Ivan was almost to the point where he could cleanly beat even his mom in a full game. Normally, this might sound pretty pathetic, until one realized Mischa Kuznetsov could have very well gone pro had she not gotten pregnant, something that Ivan's mom told him at one point in time... before telling him that it was still the greatest thing that had happened to her.

The next question almost made Ivan smile, though. Part of him wanted to be insulted; here he was talking about tennis and how it obviously meant a lot to him, and Peter was unsure if he was on the team. The sport was Ivan's one way to try and stand out to people, since his other talents weren't as... impressive. Most of them were downright embarrassing, actually. However, he felt a warm beam of pride whenever he was able to announce something like the answer he was about to give, sort of as a method of passive bragging... also known as gloating minus half the douchiness. "Yeah. I'm actually... sort of the captain of the guy's team", Ivan said with the slightest ghost of a smile.

Having answered this, he supposed he might as well take the time to glance at the notebook while Peter was finishing up the last few problems. What else was he going to do, after all? The last two tabs were... odd, to say the least. Theoretical Science? This guy is... getting a bit ahead of himself. Huh.

Re: Gotta Make the Grade...

Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 11:12 pm
by T-Fox†
"Nothing that I can use for a job, no."

Peter smiled to himself. That's pretty reckless... but if he hasn't taken the time to figure out SOME kind of back up plan, he's probably as good as he says. Either that or cocky, but he really doesn't seem that way... He had never payed any real attention to sports, finding them extremely boring to watch, and at the same time, he was worn out too easily to find them fun to play. Sure, he knew how most major sports worked. And he knew the teams they had at Bayview. You'd have to be deaf and dumb not to know when pretty much every other day there was another team featured on the morning announcements.

"Yeah. I'm actually... sort of the captain of the guy's team."

He sat up a little straighter as he heard this. Being as oblivious as he was, he completely missed the hint of a smile. The fact that Ivan was the captain of the team did nothing to change Peter's opinion, although it did surprise him a little bit. "Wow. That's a heck of a feat to get there." He stopped just long enough to jot down the screen of his calculator onto the page. The 'experiment' itself had become the furthest thing in the back of his mind for the moment.

If he were captain of the Tennis team, that must mean he was willing to make an amazing time comittment to Tennis alone. That, coupled with the fact that Ivan was breezing through an AP Physics assignment just as well as he was... well, Peter almost found it a waste. For someone so apparently intelligent to devote their lives to hitting a little green ball back and forth. Oh well. He'd never actually mention that. And in a way, he admired the fact that Ivan dreamed as big as he did. Something Peter could never do. Sure, he dreamed of making some massive breakthrough in Science someday, but it wasn't something he relied on. He had multiple, multiple backup plans.

He finished up the next two problems, glancing at the one on the bottom. Extra Credit... He sat there and pondered over the problem for a moment, a studious look slipping across his visage. And then... realization. He flashed a toothy grin quickly, upon realizing that the patten of the wave lined up perfectly with one of the theories that he'd created for the use of reflection and angles on a sound wave. "Hey, Ivan. Did you notice the extra credit problem on the bottom? I think this might answer one of the questions in my notebook. You wanna give it a shot?"

Re: Gotta Make the Grade...

Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:31 am
by MK Kilmarnock
So they were almost through this assignment, and almost out of the woods as far as uncomfortable social situations were considered. Hell, Peter was enthusiastically finishing up the last few problems over a little congratulatory talk of him being captain (pomp and circumstance and all that jazz, but Ivan had moved past that). Just a few more minutes and they could finally have their own peace... not that Peter was a bad guy, and Ivan had gotten to know him a bit more than his lack of feedback would suggest, but he simply wasn't good at this sort of thing. Oh well, they were almost-

"Hey, Ivan. Did you notice the extra credit problem on the bottom? I think this might answer one of the questions in my notebook. You wanna give it a shot?"

Oh, what the fuck. There had to be one of those... Ivan looked down at it in a bit of disbelief, not really sure what to think at first. This question.... what could it possibly solve in that personal section of Peter's notebook when it came from what was esentially a redundant and entirely useless assignment given to bored students by a very bored teacher? Ivan sat back in the chair with a fist to his mouth, working his jaw. "Sure." He said simply, thinking. The hell... the hell was up with this guy, anyway? Was his dedication to school and his work that steadfast?

... Actually, it was starting to impress him.

Re: Gotta Make the Grade...

Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 9:10 pm
by T-Fox†
Sure.

That was all Peter needed. He pushed a few papers out of the way, giving him a clear-ish working space on the table. He put the paper with the extra credit problem smack dab in the middle. "See here? The wave is inverted, flipped." He flipped his notebook open to the section on physics, and then flipped a couple of pages. "I was speculating on the signal bouncing off of multiple surfaces. If we could set it up so it was bouncing from the book, to a wall, and then back to the calulator, then I bet we could re-create that graph."

Currently, the two had the signal going from the device, and bouncing off of a book to be read. If they tilted the book so that it reflected towards another... Which in turn was angled back to the device, they could probably flip the graph. Something like how a mirror reflects an image. Granted, it was just a theory, but still, he thought there was some basis to it. The biggest problem was the lack of people to hold up books. And peter doubted the librarians would appreciate him flipping a table onto it's side to test the thought.

"Why don't we set a book up on top of the table here, and you can hold one, and we can angle them until we get them pointed right." He stopped for a second, realizing he hadn't even asked Ivan for any form of input. "Er... What do you think? Any ideas?" He looked up at his partner, giving a slightly sheepish look, embarrassed that he had gotten so into his 'work' again.