Archimedes was a Genius

Today was a pretty eventful day at least from the seat of my couch. The FIFA Women's World Cup Final was most exciting to watch, despite USA's loss to Japan in penalty kicks. I thought the US Women played exceptionally well, but the Japanese stepped it up when their backs were against the wall and ultimately that's what mattered. After all that Japan and its citizens have had to endure these past few months, I hope that this victory serves as a bright light in what has unequivocally been a dark time.

You may be wondering about the title of this post; random, isn't it? Well, it's the truth. Archimedes' ability to discern basic properties of liquids and solids (i.e. density) by simple observation and induction was pure genius. If only the scope of the material required for the MCAT stopped at Archemedian fluid mechanics. I spent a majority of the day slaving over fluid mechanics, including the much hated Bernoulli's principle, hydrostatics, etc. Honestly, I don't know why students find Daniel Bernoulli so distasteful. All he did was take the Conservation of Energy and apply to liquids/gases (things that flow). All the greek letters may seem daunting but really its just variations of basic KE + PE = Total Mechanical Energy, something that any student who has taken physics should know. I'll use this time to give a little plug for Kaplan and their MCAT prepwork. To put into perspective just how wonderful their program and reading materials are...I took two semesters of physics as required by the "pre-med track". I earned pretty good grades both semesters but forgot most of what I had learned (crammed) for tests. One of my weakest areas in physics was fluid mechanics. After spending about 5 hours on-and-off reading and following their worked-out solutions, I had a much better grasp of the topic than I had having taken this class and spent over a week on the exact same concepts. That goes to show just how efficient and easy-to-understand the Kaplan materials are. I presume that if you're bored enough to read my blog, you're a pre-med student, and thus I highly recommend that if you want to succeed on the MCAT, take the Kaplan course and really make use of their reading material; it makes the pain of the MCAT much more bearable :)

Cheers

-BK

(P.S. If you ever go to Canada, get their maple cream cookies, they are addicting, delicious, and will surely raise your blood glucose)