today, i was proud of my students

"Your students? You haven't taught for nearly eight years, ya know."

Yes, I was reminded of that yesterday while talking to Cathy of California. She'd called to check in and made sure I knew she was retiring on June 29! I told her I keep thinking it's been 7 years, but... I retired in May of 2018... so next month will make 8 years.

"Yes, indeed. You need to plan something to commemorate that occasion. So, what brought that up tonight?"

Well, you know that crazy TV show I like? "The Game With Balls"? Tonight was the second show of their second season and it had male firefighters - complete with them partially clad in calendar shots!!! - versus male and female nurses. I liked that diversity, as some of my students had been men, too. Anyway, it gets down to one lone firefighter playing three rounds all by himself. All of the others - all five on the nurses' team, as well as his two brothers and the other two from their fire house - had all missed answers and fallen into the pool. Splash!!!

"Oh, wow!"

So, he manages to win them $31,000, theirs to keep. Then he gets to go up against the Golden Balls for $100,000 of prize money. All he has to do is answer five questions correctly, that's all.

"Easier said than done, I'm sure!"

Get this: he chooses "Chemistry" over "Girl Groups". "Chemistry"!!! He says that's the topic he goes for when playing "Trivia Crack", whatever that is. The other four guys applauded like crazy!!! Apparently, he does pretty well with that. And so I was excited to see what would happen in this duel between Nate and those Golden Balls.

"And..."

And he did impressively well! The question that stumped him would have gotten me, too. But the others? He really did know his science! The first question had been a soft pitch. "Which element forms table salt when combined with chlorine?" He knew immediately that was "Sodium"! Take that, you Golden Ball!

"Hahahaha! That was an easy choice, though. Given that the other possibilities were 'Lead', 'Nickel', 'Nitrogen', 'Boron', and 'Hydrogen'."

Very true. The next question was a little harder. "Legume plants are known for fixing which element into the soil?" Well, he ran right onto the space for 'Nitrogen', knowing that element to be good for dirt... and he was right, of course!

"Oh, nice, you caught that in the photo!"

You bet I did! The third question was a bit harder. "Deuterium is an isotope of which element?" My students would have known 'isotope' means 'type of atom of same element' and that 'Hydrogen' has two isotopes, Deuterium and Tritium. Somewhere in his mind, he know that, too!

"Very good! Three questions down, two to go!"

The fourth one asked: "Galena is the primary ore of which element?" He recognized that to be a metal and chose 'Lead'. Bravo! I feel like my students would have gotten that, too. But the fifth, and final, question? That was tough. "Which element has a Curie point?'

"Yikes! What's a Curie point???"

Well, as Jay told us afterward, a Curie point is "the temperature at which a metal loses its magnetism". That's not anything I ever recall talking about, ever. I would have thought it had something to do with its radioactivity, given Marie Curie's work. However, it's named for her husband, Pierre Curie, not her. Oh, well!

"So, what was the answer? 'Nickel' or 'Boron'?"

'Nickel'. I bet he'll never forget that! I know I won't. Nice to learn something new, especially when it's from an unexpected source like a game show.