Washington, D.C. Redux

Today turned out to be more fun than I had originally anticipated it to be. Today we visited Washington, D.C. Considering this was my fourth time visiting our capitol, I felt right at home. The difference this time was that I would be spending my time with new friends and people that I had never visited D.C. with, except of course Brian and Julia. I had an excellent time seeing the capitol.

We woke up at 7:00 this morning so we could board the bus at 7:45, which was the planned time of departure. Once we started driving, we did not stop for another two and a half hours. It was a very long drive. Half the bus was sleeping, and the rest were either listening to their iPods or watching Inglorious Bastards. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and sleep a little bit more. I woke up with about half an hour of driving time left. Soon we had arrived in Georgetown, where we left the bus behind and hiked to Georgetown University.

We were given about an hour and a half to do as we wished in the Georgetown area. We could either take a tour given by Elliot (one of our RC’s), wander the campus on our own, or walk around the college town area and grab lunch. We opted for the latter and decided to go into the college town. We ate at a restaurant called Georgetown Wings Co. and then got free popsicles from West Elm Furniture. This was basically all we had time to do in Georgetown because of the long walk between the campus and 30^th Street, which is where we could go to hang out if we weren’t touring Georgetown. We regrouped at Healy Hall and gathered at our respective busses and headed for the National Mall.

We were allowed to roam for about two hours in the National Mall so we had a lot of options with what we could see. The eight of us, Brian, Julia, Richard, Abheek, Onur, Alison, Fred, and I, decided to walk around and take pictures before visiting any museums. We walked around in the middle of the Mall on the fields of grass and took pictures of each other in front of various buildings and monuments that were actually off in the distance. We also sat at the edge of a long pool of water across from the Capitol Building for quite some time. After taking photos we made our way to the Air and Space Smithsonian, which Onur was very excited about visiting. Unfortunately my camera died almost immediately after entering the museum so I was unable to get pictures of all the amazing pieces of aeronautics history. The eight of us split into smaller groups depending on what we were interested in seeing. Alison, Richard, and I viewed the Hall of Apollo, which was completely dedicated to the history of the Apollo moon landings. Richard knew so much about the planes and shuttles in the museum he could have given us a tour. It turns out he has been fascinated by planes since he was a child and has learned a lot about them over the years. His passion was evident in the museum. We also viewed toured the area dedicated to intrepid American pilots such as Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. Once it got closer to 5:30, which is when we had to regroup at the buses, we decided to check out the gift shop. We concluded our visit in the museum and made our way back to the buses.

Onur, Richard, and Alison with the Washington Monument in the distance.

Fun on the Mall

Alison wants our capitol to live long and prosper.

Our nation's glorious capitol.

We were brought to Union Station for dinner. We had about fifty minutes to eat so we had to make haste. Brian, Alison, Fred, Onur, and I ate dinner together. Brian and I got Subway, Alison and Onur had massive gyros (which I learned is actually pronounced hero), and Fred got Taco Bell. During dinner we all discussed what we saw in the Air and Space Smithsonian and what our favorite parts of the museum were. I enjoy picking my friends’ brains because all of our perspectives are so different. Afterwards, we got dessert from Haagen Dazs and Ben and Jerry’s before returning to the busses.

Our bus ride home seemed much longer than the first, but that might be because I did not sleep for two hours of it. Regardless, I sat with Onur and we talked for a long time. I also reflected on my experience so far with Penn. I’ve been putting a lot of thought into what I do and do not like about the school. I’ve decided that a completely urban environment is not right for me. I do not feel like I’m on a college campus when I’m outside the quad, rather I’m just moving around a city going from building to building. I like the feel of a college campus. However, if a campus is set deep in a city but is secluded from the city streets, I would like that. This is something I really liked about Columbia. However, there are also a number of benefits to attending Penn. For instance, I really like all of the academic opportunities that I would have at Penn. I am interested in studying green energy in college and Penn offers a number of programs that would give me the tools I need to advance my knowledge in that field. I’m still on the fence about Penn, but there are certainly things to love about it. On that note, I’m signing off so I can get some rest before tomorrow’s ice skating excursion.

The Nation's Capital

Today was trend-breaking; it actually felt short. I think that can be accounted for by the total of five hours we spent on the bus to Washington, DC most of which I spent napping to make up for the slight lack of sleep I've been getting these past couple weeks.

Our first stop was Georgetown and since Brian, Alex and I had already taken a tour of the campus we sat down at a crêpe restaurant for lunch instead. The service was a little slow and we didn't have much time in town, so we unfortunately didn't get to see much but the free Popsicles we got at a store opening on our way back more than made up for that. After lunch we walked back to the campus and waited on the grass for the buses. It was very relaxing.Next up on our DC tour was The Mall, where we got to take a look at the capital buildings and a bunch of really interesting museums. We spent the most time in the air and space museum. It was a good feeling being able to understand so much of what the displays showed about how telescopes work and the ways we understand our solar system because we have been talking so much about it in physics.For dinner, we went to union station. I ate at a hamburger shop in the food court with a girl from my physics class and some of her friends. It was surprisingly tasty and the ketchup dishes they gave us were adorable. Unfortunately, we again did not have much time to look around or shop, but it was a good trip none the less.Before I knew it, it was time to get back on the bus. The ride home was long and the seats started getting pretty uncomfortable at the end there, but the scenery was beautiful especially once the sun started going down.

We didn't return to the quad till after 9, so we lay down on the grass, sang some songs we knew and some we made up, did some wheelbarrow racing to get rid of all our excess energy, and attempted to toss a Frisbee around in the dark. After that, I went to bed excited for tomorrows ice skating.

Airplanes!

You might guess that after working all week that we would have the weekend off to be lazy. In fact, you would be guessing wrong because our weekend days turn out to be as if not more busy than the week days. Because we were both up late the night before, Alex and I tried to get some extra sleep so we woke up at 7. We got our stuff packed up and then headed down to the local store to grab a quick breakfast for the bus ride to Washington, D.C. The bus ride was pretty much business as usual, I enjoyed my breakfast, talked for a while, and then read my book. Occasionally I took the time to look out of the windows to enjoy the lush countryside. I enjoyed seeing how green everything was even though it’s summer because there is actually a sufficient amount of water here to grow grass during the summer unlike California. By the time the two hour ride was over, I was quite ready to get off the bus to stretch my legs for a bit.

We first got off the bus at Georgetown University. One of our Summer Discovery counselors Elliot who has worked at Georgetown programs before was kind enough to offer to give people a tour of the University. Although Alex, Julia, and I skipped it because we had toured Georgetown only two weeks ago, we heard good things about the tour later. In lieu of the tour, we took the option of walking to the town part of Georgetown where we ate lunch. We agreed on a modern-looking restaurant that specialized in crepes and burgers. The restaurant had a nice loft area upstairs that we sat in and waited for our food. The service was a little bit slow, but I really enjoyed the dish that I ate which was a chicken sandwich. After lunch we had a bit of time left before we had to return to the bus so we took a look at some of the local shops. In particular, being the hungry teenagers that we are, we were drawn to the house wares store that was giving out free popsicles. After realizing that none of us needed new ceramic alarm clocks or fancy sheets, we left the store and walked back to the University. Once again I was impressed by the beauty of the Georgetown campus while we waited underneath a large tree on the lawn for the busses to arrive.

The next leg of our trip took only about half an hour for us to drive to the National Mall. We were all excited to do a bit of sightseeing and to enjoy the Smithsonian Museums. The first thing we did was to stroll down towards the Capitol. I was with Alex, Julia, and several international students who had not seen the Capitol building yet, so it was a fun first-time experience for them and a pleasant repeat for us. After a bit of debate, we decided that we would all enjoy spending the remainder of our time at the Air and Space Museum. I visited here once on a school trip in 8^th grade but since then I have become a lot more interested in airplanes and the technology behind them. I’ve always enjoyed planes, but recently I have toyed with the idea of making a career out of it. Watching events such as the Atlantis Space Shuttle completing its final mission and seeing the absolutely incredible images that are beamed to Earth by the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes has made me want to get involved in these sorts of projects. I don’t yet know if I want to go for a degree in aeronautical or aerospace engineering or something like that yet, but simply getting exposure to my interests is very helpful in getting me to think about what I want to do in the future. For that reason as well as the fact that planes are just really cool, I enjoyed my time at the Air and Space Museum a lot. (I feel like I could make a silly simile here about how my hobbies are like a piece of film because the more time I am exposed to them the more developed my thoughts about what I want to do with my life become.)

Anyways, after I was pulled away from the countless airplanes in the museum, we hopped onto our bus that seemed very slow compared to say an SR-71 Blackbird. While the traffic prevented us from going Mach 5 all the way home, a combination of reading, watching a movie, talking, and dozing off made the return trip pass quickly. I really enjoyed the time we spent in D.C. today, and I’m looking forward to ice skating tomorrow. Until then, it’s time for some well deserved rest.

SooperDooperLooper

The day we had all been waiting for arrived earlier than usual this morning. Our physics class piled on the bus to Hershey Park at 8:00 AM (an hour early) in order to maximize our time on the coasters. We arrived at around 10 and Mary and Bill handed out the accelerometers and video cameras (that came in the ultra-stylish fanny packs and vests) that we would need to take data on our roller coaster.

It turned out that even though the ride our group chose (the sooperdooperLooper) was not the most popular, it was a great one to choose to collect data for because—as the name suggests—there were a couple of very exciting loops in the tracks and the line was practically non-existent. We finished the two runs of data taking that we needed by about 11:30. We peeked at the accelerometer reading before saving our data and the graphs were pretty incredible. The video we took from the front car must also be pretty cool. I am exited to bring the readings back to the lab and make some sense out of all of it. We turned our high-tech devices back into Bill and Mary and we had the rest of the day (or at least the next four hours) to explore the park and ride as many rides as possible in that time.

Of course the first one Brian and I rode was the most popular ride in the park because it is clearly the most thrilling. It takes you straight up vertical tracks and the drops you into a series of high speed loops and tumbles. The line took almost an hour, but it was definitely the most thrilling ride in the park and I'm glad we waited.

Some other fun rides we went on included a coaster that brought us from zero to 60 in some ridiculously small amount of time and a wooden coaster where two carts raced on separate tracks (Alex's won). I also got a wicked half-face face paint that I fortunately got after the splash drop ride where we all got completely soaked. I felt very lucky for remembering to bring a change of clothes. A bus ride home looking like this would not have been comfortable.

All the spikes in adrenaline got me so tired I couldn't stay awake on the bus ride home. When we arrived at the quad, we grabbed a quick dinner and then I went out to see the movie Terrible Bosses with one of the Friday movie groups. Again, it was slightly immature but quite entertaining. The whole night, people would stare at me and I was very confused for a while until I remembered that my face paint was still on and looked rather strange outside of the amusement park.

Tomorrow, the excitement continues with a trip to Washington, DC.

Hershey Park

Today was the day I have been looking forward to this entire last week. Through some mistake with our alarm clock, Alex and I slept in until 7:50-10 minutes before we were supposed to be outside of the front gates. Luckily for us, our friend from one room over, Onur, is also in the physics program and he realized that we weren’t up so he woke us up. He was even kind enough to grab us some food for breakfast while we quickly got our act together by getting dressed, throwing cameras, cell phones, books, and iPods into our backpacks and headed downstairs. Thanks to Onur, we made it onto the bus in time and we had food to eat on the bus.

The next couple hours of hour day were not as adrenaline packed as the first 10 minutes, but they were still relatively enjoyable. Once I was settled I ate a light breakfast with the intent of filling myself up but not being so stuffed that I’d feel sick on the rides later. After my breakfast, I popped open a book and read for a good part of the ride. They also had a movie playing about the famous scientist Richard Feynman that I watched and found quite interesting. The movie was basically a biography of Richard’s life and it detailed how he became interested in science—which eventually led to him taking part in building the atomic bomb.

In the World War Two class that I took last year, I was the head of the prosecution in a mock war crimes trial with the defendant President Harry Truman. Through this two week long trial I became very aware of the various ethical aspects of dropping the bomb, but I have not yet had the opportunity to learn much about the development of the bomb. Because of this, I found the movie, which is called “Infinity’ by the way, to be quite interesting as a way of getting inside the head of one of the leading scientists of the time. Additionally, I intend to read the book “The making of the Atomic Bomb” which our teacher, Bill Berner, highly recommended.

Anyways, back to what we did today. Once we got off the bus, getting into HersheyPark went very smoothly. Even though Bill was carrying 50 or so pounds of electronics that easily made him look like a terrorist, the security was friendly and we were in the park in less than five minutes. Inside the park, we established a meeting spot where we got all of our gear for the morning. My group of four got our gear and we quickly headed to our rollercoaster of choice: the SooperDooperLooper.

We got on the ride with two of us looking completely ridiculous. We alternated who got to make the amazing fashion statement of wearing a fanny pack and who got to look highly suspicious by wearing a vest that held the camera in it. Although we looked ridiculous, we set up our 3-dimensional accelerometer, fastened our gear down and got ready to ride. The ride we rode lasted about two minutes for each run, and we went on a few times in a row to get several sets of data to make sure it was accurate. After we had gotten several sets of data, we returned our equipment to Bill and got ready to enjoy the next several hours at the park.

The roller coasters at HersheyPark were a lot of fun. Though I didn’t keep track of how many rides we went on, we tried every kind of ride you can imagine. We tried wooden coasters, smooth metal coasters, and my favorite, the hydraulically launched Storm Runner. Storm runner was my favorite because it accelerates you from 0 to 72 miles per hour in less than two seconds and you then go flying straight up into the air well over a hundred fifty feet.

Wheeeeeeee!!!

The ride continues by careening down the other side and then doing some fancy loops. We rode several more roller coasters like this that I won’t bother to describe, but I had a really fun time on all of them especially because all of my friends were with me. In the afternoon we were pretty hot so we decided to try a water ride to cool off a bit. While we were repeatedly warned, we all went on the ride in our regular clothes and proceeded to be absolutely saturated with about 10 gallons of water each. After I wrung out my clothing, we headed to some more rides and before we knew it, it was time to head home.

As a last fun thing in the park, I went with Julia and watched her get a cool-looking design painted on her face. The ride back home went very smoothly just as the ride to the park had. We watched Harry Potter 7 part 1 (which I hadn’t seen yet so that was enjoyable as well). All in all, today was somewhat educational, and very very fun.

Who's got their hands in the air? Oh yeah, me.

Beautiful no?

The Rides at Hershey Park are Sweet

When I woke up this morning, I did not at all expect that by the end of the day I would have such a hoarse voice. Today was our class field trip to Hershey Park, where we would gather data from our respective rides. We had to meet in front of the quad at 8:00 so we could beat traffic into Hershey. We did in fact beat traffic, but the ride to the park was still long. We drove for two hours before reaching the amusement park. Once we arrived, we set up a base camp of sorts in a shaded area near the front of the park. This is where we were given our data collection tools and also where we would meet to leave the park later. Once my group was given a GLX (our data collection tool) and a camera, we headed for the SooperDooperLooper.

We had to walk about half way across the park to reach our ride, but it paid off later when we were trying to find other rides. The name SooperDooperLooper is slightly misleading. The name makes it sound like the loop is the main point of the ride. However, the loop is right after the first hill, which makes total sense with regard to physics, and then after that, the twists and turns of the ride are really what make it. The loop has to be right after the initial drop so that the carts have enough gravitational potential energy to convert into kinetic energy. This kinetic energy is important because otherwise the carts will not have enough energy to make it around the loop. Our data was easy to collect and we only had to spend about half an hour of our time working. Once we collected the data and analyzed it, we returned our equipment and began exploring the park.


Checking the data thoroughly

The first stop we made was at the most intense rollercoaster in the park: Fahrenheit. Since Mike has been to Hershey before and he had already experienced the whiplashing vertigo-inducing Fahrenheit he opted not to ride it. I also decided not to ride because I value the alignment in my spine and neck far too much to ride what looks to be a deathtrap.

Our group divided and Brian and Julia waited to ride the coaster for an hour. Mike and I did several things in the meantime. We rode the Lightning Racer, which is a wooden coaster on which two trains of carts race to the finish, as well as a pendulum ride called Pirate. Mike and I rode on separate trains of carts so we could race and my group of carts won. After several roller coaster rides, Pirate was actually pretty relaxing.

We also had lunch at a pizza shop next to the water ride Tidal Force (which will reappear later). We met up with Brian and Julia after we ate and thankfully they were each still in one piece.

Once we were all back together, we decided to ride Stormrunner, which is the second most intense coaster in the park. Words cannot really do justice to the experience so I will post a link to a YouTube video where you can see what we saw. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DEELm_Dajc) The ride is only about forty-five seconds long and the speed of the carts begins at about seventy miles per hour. I cannot really estimate how fast it was going after the first hill because I was just gripping the seat for dear life, but it was definitely faster than any other ride that I have been on in the past. It was a great ride and was definitely the highlight of my day, despite it being the cause of me losing my voice.

After Stormrunner, we headed to Tidal Force, which is similar to Logger’s Revenge for those readers who are familiar with the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. The ride is just a big cart that holds about twenty and you are dropped down a tall ramp into a pool below, which then causes a “tidal force” that splashes just about everything within a twenty foot radius. After Tidal Force, we decided to dry off by riding Lightning Racer again. Unfortunately we had to return to base camp and attempt to, once again, beat traffic. It didn’t work this time…


Being launched at 70 mph is not exactly calming...

When we returned to Penn, Brian and I discovered that we were late for our movie group’s departure. Because of this we had to go watch Avatar in the lounge instead of going to the real movie theater. Thankfully, all the other people in the room (about six people) were just as bored with the film as Brian and I were. When we finished disc one, we pleaded with Elliot (one of the RC’s that manages the events) to let us leave. He allowed us to leave so Brian and I sought out the other members of our group. Once the seven of us had gathered, we played Pictionary and Taboo in our lounge. It was a great way to conclude an already excellent day.

As I sit here typing this blog, I am also chugging water because I would like to restore my voice to full capacity. This was really the only downside to the day. All the other thrills I experienced today and all the fun I had far outweigh that small side effect. Tomorrow we will all be taking another field trip to Washington, D.C. and I cannot wait to tour the capitol with my friends. Until tomorrow’s blog, I’m signing off.

I thought the heat was getting to me when I saw dancing chocolate...

A sea of Domo...

Physics with a Side of Entropy

Today, class seemed very sporadic. Our topics of discussion were all over the place. First, we began with a discussion about gravitation, which seemed to come out of nowhere. I had learned gravitation in my high school physics class, but we did not spend a very long time on it. We basically only covered a few formulas and constants that we needed to know for standardized testing, but other than that we did not, delve very deeply into the topic. Today was quite different though. Bill was not only thorough in covering the math side of gravitation, but also the conceptual side, despite how vague this subject really is. He explained the inverse square relationships that are involved with gravitational strength and even began discussing Roche Limits. My high school physics teacher told me a little bit about Roche Limits before, but I really wanted to learn more. Today, my thirst for this knowledge was finally quenched. We learned that Roche Limits are the distance within a celestial body, held together by its own gravity, which will disintegrate due to a second celestial body’s tidal forces exceeding the first body’s gravitational attraction. Basically, one object can basically be ripped apart by another object’s gravity if it is pulled upon by a strong enough force. This was my favorite part of today’s lecture.

Following the lecture, we began talking about our field trip to Hershey Park tomorrow. We were presented with a list of rides that we could use for our tests as well as the parameters for our testing. We will have to chart data on the position and acceleration of certain points on our ride. My group, which is composed of Brian, Julia, and Mike, will be collecting data from a ride called the Sooperdooperlooper. We will have to ride the coaster several times to get different sets of data, and then we are free to do as we please in the park. The trips in this program are the best educational field trips I have ever been on.

We continued discussing Hershey Park until our guest lecturer, Dr. Randy Camien, arrived. Dr. Camien is a Soft-Condensed Matter Theoretician…even after his lecture I am still lost as to what that means. His lecture dealt with topology in physics, which concerns the continuous deformation of an object using stretching. The bulk of the information discussed interactions between light and liquid crystals. He explained, at great length, how and why liquid crystals (which are what make LCD screens work) operate the way they do. Liquid crystals operate by blocking certain colors of light and only letting other types through as they contract and expand. Dr. Camien was very interesting to listen to because he was able to draw analogies and examples from a lot of different places and still relate them back to topology. I find that I am enjoying our guest lecturers very much because they bring a new perspective to our class-wide discussion of physics.

Following the guest lecture and lunch, we performed a lab in which we had to measure the speed of electrons. We did this by using microscopic bubbles of oil that were suspended in a confined space using electric current. By increasing or decreasing the voltage, we could get the bubbles of oil to rise or fall, and our task was to measure how fast these bubbles moved. Once Onur, Mike, Lindsey, and I collected our data, we plugged our values for the velocity of the oil bubbles into Excel. Thankfully, the tables were already set up to evaluate the rest of the data that we would need once we plugged in the values for velocity. So, aside from having to strain my eyes by trying to find a tiny bubble of oil through a microscope, this lab was fairly easy. I’m finding that my new lab group is much more efficient than my old one. However, this could just be because we are all in a familiar space and are used to all the equipment by now. Either way, my group is working well.

The rest of the day was very relaxing. Brian and I hung out in our room for a while after class. Later our group enjoyed dinner together, played some Frisbee afterwards, and then we watched the movie Garden State, with Zach Braff and Natalie Portman. It was a great way to conclude the day, especially after the randomness of class. Moving from one topic to another that quickly can be disorienting at first, but I can certainly see the value in it. It forces me to think on my feet and adapt to a new idea or concept. It takes a while to get used to thinking like this, especially since things are so structured in my high school classes, but I am getting used to it. Despite today’s abnormal level of entropy (the physics term for randomness or chaos), it was still enjoyable and I learned a lot from our lab and two lectures. I love this class more and more each day because I am finally able to be immersed in a subject that I am truly passionate about.