Today I re-learn the physics principle of refraction. As I was walking home today, the basketball court is full of students playing a game with their youthful energy. Was I was nearing home, I notice the sky is alight with the sort of illumination that approaches the intensity of the sky when some high-powered light source is alight, like the intensity of the lights that lit the Kranji racecourse when you pass by the MRT station at weekend nights.

Well today, the sky at Clementi shone the same way. Not quite like the racecourse lights, but alight anyway. I deduce as I walk that that’s the power of light refraction. You see, tonight is the 16-th day of Lunar calendar. With its peculiar rules of lunar calculation borrowed from some ancient belief, when it’s the 14th to 16th day of Lunar calendar, the nights are accompanied by a bright full moon. Always. And at the 1st of the lunar calendar, it is a night of no moon. The moon wax from the 1st to the 15th, and starting to wane from 15th to the 1st day of the next month. Oh well, I was saying about physics.

Due to smoke of the bush fires that ablaze Singapore and Sumatra, we have watched as a steady blanket of fog engulfed us. While it looked like fog, its actually the smoke fire with the taste and smell of burning leaves, choking us even in our own bedroom. Due to smoke, in a night like today, the moon light is refracted in various directions, illuminating the sky with greyish quality that entices you with the wonders of science. That’s an impromptu physics reflection of a not quite so jaded student of life.