Resonant Constellation

Aw, crap.

Okay, so here’s the situation: today I was in E&M class, sitting in the back (I had biked in and was almost late, so I took the first seat available). My glasses were smudged a little, so I took them off to clean on the bottom of my shirt-this is a commonplace occurrence. While cleaning, I heard a popping sound, and the glass/plastic piece that actually corrects my vision clattered onto the floor. This was a little surprising, as it had never happened before, but I was theoretically prepared for it (I knew it could happen and was not overly alarmed).

I quickly retrieved the wayward lens, but noticed that the small bolt that holds the frame together and the lens in the frame had disappeared. As far as I can tell, this tiny screw evaporated into thin air-I never found it. The puzzling part of all of this is that the threads in the tiny little hole aren’t stripped at all and the whole assembly is otherwise intact (sans tiny screw). Now, I say I never found the screw, but it could have been right under my nose-I believe it to be too small to be perceived by human vision (yes, it is smaller than the wavelength of optical electromagnetic radiation). I’d need to requisition the department’s scanning electron microscope to find it.

Okay I thought, I’ll just wait until I get home to repair it and go today without glasses. My prescription isn’t that intense, I can still see. Sure, past me, you can see. Here’s what you can see: the people in the rows around you, the seats, and senseless blue smudges on the whiteboard that must have been equations. Squinting, focusing hard on the distant board, I gave myself a headache and eventually felt nauseous. Awesome.

Now, a whole day passes like this, including other symptoms, such as my right eye beginning to twitch again (this was a weird tick I developed before I had glasses when I needed them). This is so incredibly annoying, I do not have words to describe it. By the time I ride my bike home, I am really ready to break out the eyeglass repair kit. After about a minute of searching, I locate the tiny kit with its tiny screwdriver, and its even tinier screw (remember:scanning electron microscope) and get to work (this is difficult, as I can’t see that well without the glasses…which I am repairing).

Twenty truly excruciating minutes later, I conclude that the tiny screw included in the kit is somehow not tiny enough to fit through the indescribably tiny hole in the actual glasses. I gave up this line of attack.

Soon, though, a new idea struck me: solder! I have a kickass soldering iron, which I’ve been itching to use, so I broke it out and got to work. Another twenty excruciating minutes later, I again concluded that this is a failed effort. The solder, even with a resin core, just wouldn’t stick. I realized halfway through this process that it’s kind of irreversible, so maybe it’s not so bad that it didn’t work.

So that’s where I stand now: not quite blind, but headache-ridden, and a little blurry. Anybody out there have good ideas to help me out?