The Scientific Method of Love

(note to self: I'm switching around the situation in the story titled, "Code." Now the female lead of that thread (now named, Laura) is in love with one of the geeks (let's call him Kevin) and instead of being in love with the privileged, rich grunt (now named, Chad), Chad is in love with Laura.

This is Laura's dilemma. She loves Kevin but Kevin does not love her. Chad is in love with Laura but she is not in love with him. But she is a scientist after all and she attempts to use the scientific method to sort the whole thing out.
The scientific method proceeds thus: observation, hypothesis, testing of the hypotheses through experiments. But this problem includes people and in any theory involving people, there will be wiggle room. This study will be one of soft, rather than hard, science. But the work must be done if understanding is to be had.
Observations have already been done. She's seen the way that Chad looks at her, how he manages to make himself a part of any study group that she is a part of, how he is always ready with a quick compliment. He has yet to ask her out but she knows he's likely to jump on the tiniest hint of affection thrown his way and so she is careful to appear aloof. If she understands Chad's pursuits, it's because she does the same for Kevin. And she knows Kevin does not feel the same way towards her because she recognizes her rejection of Chad in Kevin's actions.
Unfortunately, for the most part, these are all conjectures (more or less unprovable short of coming right out and asking the players involved what their thoughts and intentions are). But the signs seems clear enough. And so working with these assumptions, she limits the scope of her study to two related but very different questions. Why Kevin and why not Chad?
First off, why Kevin. This is the easier of the two and so she starts here. Easy because evidence is easy to find. She is attracted to Kevin first and foremost because of his intellect and his imagination (not that she separates the two, the one complements and strengthens the other). He leads almost any study group or project that the lab takes on. He often has the most insight into the problems they face and comes up with the most novel (and successful, an important distinction) solutions. She loves the clarity of his reasoning, how his thoughts are constructed like cathedrals - high and mighty, buttressed by evidence and example. He takes a mass of information, weeds out the chaff and pieces the useful bits together, layering ideas one by one, finding connections in seemingly disparate directions, building them all to a spire atop which lies a single, beautiful, transcendent conclusion.
But it's not just that. She is a grunt by degree (or lack thereof) but she knows she has what it takes to reach geekdom. What thrills her about Kevin is how they seem to share the same methodologies when taking on a problem. They understand one another's metaphors and analogies, even when obscure. When trying to illustrate the problems caused by a particle's ill defined wave function and the ramifications that causes for the work at hand, she knows exactly what he means when he says, "it's like fishing for olives."
And lest she seem the puritan, she will readily admit her physical attraction to him. While her other female friends don't quite understand it, she points out the details she is drawn to - the creases at the corner of his eyes and how they lengthen when he laughs. His weak, skinny elbows and his long, strong fingers. The mess of his hair that she sees as a sure sign of complete devotion to his work, which her friends see as complete disregard for grooming. She could go on and on with reason after reason, and she often does, much to the dismay of her friends.
But her inquiry is incomplete. She turns her attention to the question, "why not Chad?" The easiest answer is simply, not Chad because Kevin. In other words, perhaps in some parallel universe where Kevin didn't work in this lab, she would reciprocate Chad's affections, but because quantum tunneling to that world is prevented by the limitations of today's technology, this is a moot point.
Put bluntly, Chad is not as smart as Kevin and never will be. Chad's reasoning is lumpy. Give him a suggestion that points to a solution and he only sees two steps into the problem. Science at this level is about having an intuitive idea into all the steps needed to solve a problem - one needs to have an idea where the summit is lest they start climbing the wrong mountain. It's like chess. She might not know exactly how pushing a pawn up one square seven moves into the game will help her endgame, but sure enough after push has led to shove, it's that one pawn that leads to mate. Chad plays his pieces one move at a time both on the chess board and in his studies.
Her friends chide her because Chad is cute, much more so than Kevin. And on paper, he's a great catch. In addition to his good looks, he comes from a monied family. Everyone agrees he's a nice guy and even his former girlfriends speak kindly of him (Laura's friends have researched this guy). What's not to love?
Even Laura is a bit perplexed on this matter. It's not as if she harbors no feelings towards him at all. The mere fact of his attention is enough to flatter her heart to attention. There is something electric and edifying about knowing someone is pining after you. And she agrees with her friends in that he is attractive. Which brings her face to face with the brain/body formula.
It goes like this. Laura finds a big brain more important to her than a hot body. However, there is a limit. If Einstein looked like the Elephant Man, it would be a no go. Likewise, she wouldn't even consider dating someone who never progressed past Freshman math or read anything surpassing a fifth grade reading level, even if this person happened to be Brad Pitt's identical stunt double twin. Within these extremes though, there was room to play with the ratios.
Take Kevin, for example. For all the charm that Laura has found, he is by all accounts a rather plain looking individual, and that's on his best days. But that doesn't matter to her because his brain and the way they think alike more than makes up for the difference between her aesthetic ideal and his reality. Thus, she's head over heels for the guy.
On the other hand, Chad is cute even on his woke-up-late-and-came-to-class-without-showering days. At the few social events the department throws, he can look quite dashing. He is, in fact, so good looking that Laura sincerely wishes that looks were enough for her because then she wouldn't be twisting herself into knots over this situation. And why isn't physical attraction enough for her? Why continue longing for someone who seems to be inaccessible when there's a more than eligible suitor eagerly waiting for the smallest encouragement on her part?
Again, with a mind that tends to look towards the endgame, she reasons this way. If she is more attracted to what and how a person thinks than she is how a person looks, then even if she were happy on every other level with Chad, she can foresee a time in the future when she might find someone like Kevin who will respond to her, and if that happens will she just up and leave Chad? On the other hand, if Kevin (or another brainiac like him) would have her, she can not ever see herself leaving him for someone else, regardless of how physically attracted she was to him.
And the mind ages far more slowly than the body. In the long term, who's to say what time will do to the physical attributes that make Chad appealing? Age is not kind to all faces. But the mind, for the most part the mind stays vital, robust, as agile in old age as in youth. In this way, she would much rather bet on the brain over the body.