Motivation
Motivation is the underlying reason we set goals and try to succeed with them. We are all effected by involuntary motivation, we all have the motivation to breath, eat, sleep, etc. We also have secondary motivation that helps us set our goals. I feel too often we get so caught up in our long-term goals we forget that what motivated us to set these goals. Motivational quotes can be inspiring to someone starting to forget why they set the long-term goals that they did.
Several basic facts about working itself would ease your stress or hostility toward it. Simple ideas that are easily overlooked because work is always thought of to be hard, not easy; required, not voluntary; and boring, not fun. A stressful day at the grinding stone could probably be relieved quickly with a glance at these facts. They help us understand our motivation to work.
More than financial stability motivates us to go to work. Many people enjoy what they do, and others are just happy to get out of the house and do something. Retribution for the work we perform, in the form of money, is an indirect motivational factor. In my opinion, it is one of the least important.
Optical Illusions
Optical illusions gave me better understanding to how we perceive the world. My perception could be very different from someone else's looking at the identical picture. Rarely did I see both points of view initially, actually if optical illusions did not have solutions I probably would not ever find them. All of mind-bending illusions could have been seen in two different ways. This is a trait of human beings I have noticed before. We all see things differently and understand them differently. It is so easy to trick our senses because we have been conditioned to expect certain things throughout the course of our lives. This is certainly a skill I will try to maintain throughout my professional career.
Hexavalent Chromium
Dissolved hexavalent chromium in wastewater is toxic to many fonns of aquatic life, and it poses a potential health hazard to humans. The discharge of hexavalent chromium is regulated by most municipal authorities as well as by the US Environmental Protection Agency. As a result, there IS a need for a field-capable method to analyze hexavalent chromium rapidly and easily at ppm levels. In the reference book "Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and Wastewater" (l9th ed.,1995), method 3500-Cr D specifies the reagent 1,3-diphenylcarbohydrazide and a visible spectrophotometer (540 nm) to determine chromium at 0.2 to 1.0 ppm. The spectrophotometric method is attractive since field-capable spectrophotometers are readily available, and even simple "color comparators" often can provide sufficient accuracy. However, the method calls for moderately large volumes, a controlled pH of about 1.0, the use of standards to construct a calibration curve in the correct concentration range, providing the colorimetric reagent in an acetone solution, and various pretreatment methods to eliminate interferences. Many of these steps are not easily carried out unless a fully equipped laboratory is available. Several water testing companies have simple mixtures of reagents available for sale in plastic "powder pillows" that contain the correct amounts of the chemicals necessary to carry out various water analyses (for example, one of the best known is Hach Chemical Co., Loveland, CO). Often the colorimetric agents have been chemically modified to improve their solubility in water, and buffering and complexing agents may also be present. For hexavalent chromium, one powder pillow that contains the colorimetric reagent and acidic buffers is added to a small water sample, and the absorbance can then be read and compared to a calibration line. Some spectrophotometers can store a calibration in memory and concentration can be read directly. Provided a preliminary dilution has been worked out to ensure a concentration of 0.2 to 1.0 ppm Cr, and if a calibration can be carried out and checked at reasonable intervals, routine Cr analyses can be carried out at remote locations. If total Cr or Cr(III) are needed, there is also a set of pretreatment reagents (in powder pillows) that can be used oxidize Cr(III) to Cr(VI), allowing a determination of "total" Cr, and then Cr(III) by difference.