lhexa | (no subject)

I've been working through this semester's Chemistry book recently, and had gotten very used to its style... which was why I was so shocked when I came across a joke (a good one!) in Chapter 8, four hundred pages in. The fact that it's there at all is the funniest thing, to me. Here's the joke:

"Now, however, to write the orbital diagram we have to make a decision as to where to put the two electrons. At this point you may have an unprintable suggestion, but try to bear up."

To pad the entry some: I'm actually used to humor and light-spiritedness in textbooks. My favorite Calculus text (Spivak's) is dedicated to a Y.P., which on further investigation is revealed to be "Yellow Pig." The awesome red bracket-notation QM tome by Shankar is, well, awesome, and has catchy section headings like "Operators in Infinite Dimensions," "Analysis of the Recipe," "Born Again," and the chapter title you never want to see in physics, "A Simple Example." Then my Griffiths E&M book is often tongue-in-cheek; after working out an example, it says "This result is, mathematically speaking, as boring as it could possibly be."

I'm intent on working out what makes these superior textbooks...