Torsion

This is a picture of the awesome stuff I do in math class when polar coordinates are getting way too much attention. (They're super easy, by the way) Anyways, this is a picture taken from my crappy webcam that shows that those bracelets that people give away for just about everything are really good distractions. You might have been able to make one into three loops that lay flat (that usually fit snugly onto fingers), but I found out you can do two extra loops. I decided that there must be a way to make more loops, but the one I already did was pretty tight. Long story short, I did it. I'll explain how in a later paragraph.

College is pretty amazing right now, despite being one week from finals. My physics final is all multiple choice, and I get both sides of a sheet of paper in notes to take into the test. Looks like that test moved to the bottom of the study list. The only final I'm concerned about is my calculus final, because it is 50% of my grade, and we've gone through tons of material in just one semester. If I have to retake that class, so be it.

Anyways, back to the interesting stuff. It turns out that the twisting of the bracelet has a pattern. It is basically two intertwined helices (yes, I looked up the plural form). So you take the circular bracelet, and twist it twice, and let the spiral pull together, and you would (or should) have two circles, which you overlap vertically to form the simplest of the pattern. You can do the same thing except at the beginning, you twist it four times or six times. You end up with two spirals on each side of the bracelet, each with an opposite direction. You then simply stagger each loop with the opposite, and you get the awesome thing pictured above. I would try eight twists, but there are some problems. One, I don't think the thickness of the bracelet would allow it, I really struggled with getting six to fit. Also, this is the only bracelet I have, and I cant get it off of the pencil pictured. This is probably because I didn't get my pectorals sliced open in surgery (which I used to push the loops over the pencil) and my various back muscles did (which are required for pulling it off).

This is just one of many ways that the weakness of my back muscles is apparent. I don't feel like they are damaged and not repairing, they're just extraordinarily weak. I'm hopeful that the doctor will say everything is fine, and perhaps prescribe a way to increase the strength there, but he hasn't been too helpful in the past with ways to help myself get better, he just looks at x-rays and cuts my back open to straighten my spine out. Come what may.