Entropy wins twice today!

Today was a very odd day for me. Two things happened, both of which have affirmed my faith in the phenomena known as entropy (basically randomness is favored over order).

1. I did a caffeine lab this morning. I prepared for the lab like I prepared for all my other labs. During the lab, I followed the procedure as carefully as I could so that I would extract a pure sample of caffeine. Well, after I evaporated the CH2Cl2, we were supposed to end up with a white solid on the bottom of our beaker which was supposed to be our crude caffeine. Well, guess what happened? I ended up with nothing at the bottom of my beaker. Nada. Zilch. I brought this odd empty beaker to my TA. She confirmed that there was nothing in my beaker. The look on her face was priceless. Anyway, she told me to do it again but this time to only do 2 washes of CH2Cl2, which would basically save some time at the expense of accuracy. So, I haphazardly did a second attempt. By haphazardly, I mean that I drained out some of the emulsion that we were supposed to prevent from getting out. Yet, this time, after I evaporated the CH2Cl2, there was a white solid at the bottom of the beaker. I had done nothing differently except that I have done things in a more random and chaotic manner.

2. After the caffeine lab finished, I was walking to my dorm when a girl approached me and asked where the admissions office was. I asked her if she knew the address and she said it was on East Mall. Well, we were on West Mall so I decided to show her exactly where it was by leading her there in person. I felt pretty good about my self at this time because I was helping for no other reason than to help. Anyway, after I led her to East Mall, I turned to where I thought it would be and continued to walk down East Mall. When I got there and turned around, the girl was no where to be found. I was sure that she was walking alongside me the whole time until when we got to East Mall. Not only is this event in itself random, it ended up separating two people from being close to each other to far away, like we were liquid particles evaporating.Oh well, I still helped her out, I think.