Foul Formula

After having an energizing meal, Aysha went to attend her afternoon classes. She checked her timetable and groaned, as she found that she is going to be engaged in the toughest and boring classes of her fifth Semester-Chemical Reaction Engineering aka CRE,Thermodynamics and Protein Engineering. Thanks to her mom's biryani, she's already feeling the world around her dizzy. She is now sure that slumber can take her over anytime now.

'Odd semesters are a bit of a nightmare'; she thought. As if even semesters are sweet as candy. As if the whole four years of B.tech Biotechnology is nothing but bliss.

Enter Fawaz sir. The faculty handling Thermodynamics. The 50 minute session that she conceived was nothing but a chaotic orchestration of Enthalpy, Pressure,Temperature and Ideal gasses.

Occasionally, there is a synchronized nodding of heads whenever sir asked "did you understand?"

Aysha knows this unspoken rule. Out of reflex, she nods her head. But she should make sure not to be obvious. Continuous nodding will bring unwanted suspicion to the faculty and she will end up washing her face in the restroom.

Next came CRE. The most loathed period of all time. It is certified troublesome by every student who attended this class. Rahul sir handling this class is the cherry of the cake. Third year is deadly because of fifth semester. Fifth semester is deadly because of chemical reaction. Chemical reaction is deadly because of him. Now that he came, there is no stopping him from solving a string of problems. Our Aysha found it difficult to concentrate because the mammoth task of enduring thermodynamics itself is an achievement. And now CRE- the cherry of the cake. If he took problems, she would have gone to deep sleep. But he discussed about the differences in each reactor. This seems easy enough to concentrate. All she has to do is write whatever is on the board. Easy peasy.

But she is already sleeping while writing. Her manuscript was nothing but scribbles and spells of ancient language, which, when deciphered, meant 'go to sleep, go to sleep'. The formulae that she wrote had no difference within them. It all meant the same thing to her- 'when will he leave?!'

By the end of the last hour, Aysha was reduced from a sane and hale human to a hallucinated and horrible looking zombie.

Next day gave Aysha the hope to achieve something big in her life, to learn something new in her life, and also to survive the first two hours of chemical classes without dying-in her life.

He gave a problem and demanded an answer. All they have to do is refer the previous class's notes, hunt down the right formula and substitute the values. Math has a weird way of illusion with her disciples. She makes it sound easy-if only she knows how hard it is for Aysha to fish for the formula among ancient spells.

Aysha had no problem in finding the formula, despite her writings looking horrible, she still found it. The problem had the values for k,Fa0,Ra and a couple other values. The formula which had all these values was on the third column and the third row of the table. V=(Fa0-k)/(-Ra)she entered the numbers and viola! She got an answer! The answer was 99 litres. She waited for her friends to complete. Damn the friendship goals she wanted to make sure her answer matched with theirs which surely costs less embarrassment. The waiting was unusually long. Finally she decided to ask sir, for who is more knowledgable in CRE than he himself? on seeing the answer, he said,

"Good. Your name?"

"Aysha sir."

"Can you write the answer on the board?"

Bewildered, she took the chalk from him and went to the diaz with her note. Before she wrote the answer, the formula she used caught the sir's attention. Before she went further, he asked,

"Why did you write k value instead of Fa?"

"urm.. sir?"

"Why did you substitute k instead of Fa?"

The boys in the front row gestured her that she used the wrong formula-holding their laughter with much difficulty. On seeing her note and her friends note she found that the actual formula is,

V=(Fa0-Fa)/(-Ra). Damn the friendship goals. Now where the Frick is she going to find Fa??

And she stood there, like an idiot, in front of the whole class. She only saw the two boys. Glad she saw only them. They were laughing, so were the class. Glad she didn't see everyone else. She went back to her seat, dumbfolded from the recent turn of events.

He solved the problem, as he did always. He found Fa somehow and found the answer. 99 liters.

Aysha didn't know how to respond for this. This is indeed a coincidence, for if its not, he wouldn't have asked her to write the answer on the board. Reflecting on what has happened, she wants to know where it all started. Aye. Last day's afternoon's class. The day when she became a zombie. The time when she wrote spells of ancient language. Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Apparently the formulae had differences. She didn't knew that; until now. Poor soul.

Rahul sir has a peculiar way of distinguishing his students. Good students and lazy students. Until now,even Aysha cannot conjecture in which category she belongs to, in his mind.