A Breath of Fresh Air

Today was the most relaxing day so far. I got to sleep in almost until noon to catch up on some of the sleep I've been missing this week. When I Finlay got out of bed, I picked up some pastries from Starbucks. After that I returned to the quad and laid down in the grass of the quad until I couldn't stand the heat any longer.

I have run into a dilemma here at Penn; it is hard to motivate myself to do any physical activity when it is almost 100 degrees outside. Today, I found the solution to that problem. I utilized the gyms lap pool and cooled off while raising my heart beat a little. The facilities were very nice and the girl I shared lane with was nicer (I didn't think to bring goggles so I may have drifted into her lane a couple times, but she was very understanding).

After swimming, I explored the campus with some floor friends. We found a restaurant called "Hummus" and I got a really delicious falafel that rivaled the ones I get at Jerusalem Cafe back at home. On our walk back to the quad, we stopped and watched a pair of musicians playing an interesting type of music. It was a sort of psychedelic fusion of blues and jazz. One man played trombone, harmonica and sang while the other was on drums. It was mesmerising. We spent a good 30 minutes sitting on the grass listening to them before we made our way back to the quad.

After dinner, I played a sort of photograph scavenger hunt that some girls in the camp organized. I was on a team with Brian, Alex, and some of our floor friends. We had to walk around campus and capture photographs of another doing silly and embarrassing tasks. The team who captured the most ridiculous moments from the list won. It was a great team building experience. It also gave us a chance to really get to know the campus better. My favorite moment was when Alison from my floor asked a woman who walked by how to turn on the fire hydrant.

We returned to the quad by 11, which is sign in time, to watch Dazed and Confused before getting to bed. We'll need our sleep for tomorrows exciting day at the beach.

"Excessive Heat" Didn't Stop Our Fun

For me, today began late, but it still seemed like a very long day. Brian and I woke at 10:00 this morning with the intention of going to Center City as soon as possible. However, we would later learn that we could not leave campus until 2:00. This did not matter much because we took a while to actually get moving. Shortly after waking up, Brian went to the gym. I hung out in the room for a while and then cleaned up so I could go grab some breakfast. I decided to go to Au Bon Pain for breakfast, since the commons are not open on Saturdays. I grabbed bagels for Brian and I, then headed back to the dorm. Upon Brian’s return, we ate breakfast and then got ready to head to Center City with Fred, Alison, and Onur. This was when we headed to the office and found out we couldn’t leave until 2:00. Since that was only an hour away, we couldn’t do much. First we went to get sandwiches for lunch. We ate outside in on a lawn near the quad. After lunch, we decided to say goodbye to Chandler, one of the RC’s in the lower quad. He will be leaving Penn to return to Indiana tomorrow. We played Frisbee with Chandler a lot and he took pictures of our group a few times, such as on top of the Rockefeller Center. He was a cool guy to chat with and we will miss him.

When we were finally allowed to leave, we signed out and headed into the bowels of the Philadelphia trolley system. The trains were packed today, which is to be expected since it was Saturday and everybody wants to get off of campus. Once we got off the trolley, we headed to Love Square immediately so we could get to the souvenir shop long before they closed. This idea was executed in vain though because the shop was in fact closed. We arrived to a sign on the door that read “Store Closed Due to Excessive Heat.” That is too ridiculous to lie about… We were still able to enjoy the square despite the shop being closed because we waded in the fountain for a while, which was quite refreshing. The rest of our time in Center City was just spent walking around the city and visiting a few of the malls. I bought a nice watch, Fred and Alison got hats, and Onur got a poster. I also bought some swim trunks for tomorrow’s trip to Ocean City, New Jersey. We had yet another great day in Philadelphia, despite the insane heat and humidity.

When we got back to Penn, we went to dinner at the Chinese restaurant next to the quad, Beijing. Alison and Fred had a lengthy discussion about the differences between Chinese and Korean table manners. For instance, in Korea it is rude to refill a cup or glass before you are finished with your drink. It is the opposite in China, where it is seen as insolent if one is to completely finish their drink. Unfortunately I would seem very rude dinner as per Chinese customs because I was making up for the lack of water I didn’t have earlier today by drinking glass after glass at dinner. I always enjoy talking about how our backgrounds are different and the discussions that follow. It really puts things into perspective about how things can be so different when people really are not that far away geographically.

After dinner, we joined in on a scavenger hunt that some of the Summer Discovery students organized. It wasn’t a scavenger hunt in the traditional sense where we had to find things, but actions that we had to perform. Our groups had to do things such as approaching random people and pretending like we had known them previously and asking someone that we did not know for a piggyback ride (we stuck to people in the quad for our actions). There was a long list of tasks and we didn’t finish within the two hour time frame, but it was certainly a fun way to spend two hours.

Tomorrow we travel to Ocean City for a fun day at the beach and boardwalk…with thunderstorms. This won’t put a damper on my spirit (pun intended) because I actually like the rain. I just hope that the storm doesn’t get too severe because we will probably have to leave early. Either way, tomorrow is bound to be fun and I am looking forward to my last Sunday with my friends.

Brian is the Luigi to Fred's Mario

This can't handle this cut-out because it's bi-winning

Alison's best nerd face

Pay no attention to the severed hands in the background...

Running is Relaxing?

For the one day of the week with no scheduled activities, today was really busy. Alex and I caught up on a bit of sleep by sleeping in past our usual 7 o clock wake up. I was energized from the extra sleep, so I got some shorts on and then headed over to the gym as fast as I could. I burnt of my energy by setting the treadmill as fast as it would go and then sprinting for about 15 minutes. I really enjoy the gym here at UPenn because it is free, clean, the equipment is brand new, and the staff is all very friendly and helpful. I finished my workout by trying out an elliptical runner, lifting weights, and then stretching out to make sure that I’m not sore tomorrow.

By the time I was through at the gym, it was past 11 and Alex was on his way to a café sop I had him grab me a bagel. Soon enough, it was time for lunch, so I went and got a hoagie with my friends at the local store. I cleaned up and then got ready to go with my friends to Center City, Philadelphia. The sign-out process is pretty easy, and we quickly caught the next train downtown. As soon as we got off the train, we decided to go to Love Square to cool down a bit. In Love Square there is a large fountain that we played in for about half an hour. The water felt great, and it’s a cool place because it’s a nice park in the middle of a very dense city. After the fountain we still wanted to cool off some more so we found a nearby frozen yogurt place. After I took a copious amount of samples, I decided on a mixture of orange sherbet and blueberry. Finally, we headed back in to the heat and decided to do some shopping which I don’t generally enjoy, but I went anyways because it’s somewhat fun when you go with friends. We went to a large mall in the middle of Philly and started browsing through the various stores while a couple of the others actually bought stuff. After looking through a few reasonably priced stores, I couldn’t help but take a peek in one of the really expensive suit stores. The suits there were pretty nice, but not worth their price tags which were often high enough o be the down payment on a nice car. We left the mall and then went to some other smaller stores on the street. My friends Fred and Alison both found cool hats that they bought.

We left Center City at about 6:45 in order to be back with some time to spare before we had to check in. We checked in and then decided to go out for dinner because we don’t have meal plans on Saturday so we have to eat elsewhere. The restaurant we chose is actually only about 500 feet from our dorms and it’s called Beijing. Beijing was a nice Chinese restaurant, and the meals are served family style so we each chose a dish that we liked and then shared it with everyone else. We got pork chops, fried rice, lo mein, and a hot pot dish. I enjoyed the food and conversation a lot, and luckily there are some leftovers for tomorrow.

The final part of my day was energizing but eventually relaxing. I ran around with my friends on a scavenger hunt around the campus for a while which was quite fun. Eventually we got tired and settled into our dorms where we are now. I’ve been relaxing and studying a bit of Italian and reading a book for school. Tomorrow should be a lot of fun in Ocean City although the weather forecast is not great.

Goodnight.

A Physics Playground

Fridays are the best days. That is a well known fact. But it is especially true here at Penn. This weeks class field trip was to the Franklin Institute, and I never thought I would say this about a museum, but it was probably even more enjoyable than the roller coasters. Or, at least it was a close second.

Most of the displays were designed for children, and by that I do not mean that they demonstrated simple concepts or not advanced ideas,but rather that all of the displays were very hands-on. The exhibits reminded me of Bill's lectures in that they each had many very creative ways of explaining complex ideas with simple demonstrations that were both fun and interesting. It made me really happy to see all the young children around me truly excited about physics. In many instances I found myself wishing that I had had the opportunity to visit the museum when I was younger, but even at my age I learned a lot and had fun doing it.

The first exhibit we visited was a giant Foucault pendulum, the first experiment that proved the rotation of the Earth. It was really pretty amazing watching this gigantic mass swing back and forth. There was a plaque that showed the calculations for how long it took for the pendulum direction to shift a full 360 degrees at that particular place on Earth. At the end of the day, we visited it again, and sure enough, there were a few extra chess pieces that had been knocked down because of the shift in the pendulums path.

The next exhibit we went to was more biology oriented, but as we learned before from our pair of lectures on the brain, the two subjects are not disconnected. In this case, the subject is of interest to everyone. We all have a heart and, as it turns out it is quite important that we take care of it. This pointed was stressed to us all when we watched a video of an open heart surgery and got to look at some of the tools the surgeons used. It was both fascinating and horrifying. In addition to this, we spent some time in the famous model heart that is available and large enough to walk through (or at least large enough for a child to walk through; it was a tight fit for Brian).

There was another really cool exhibit on electricity where one could give and receive some fairly high voltage shocks. We also held hands to complete a circuit and light up a light bulb and spent a fair amount of time with out cell phones in front of the light up screen that detects radio waves. My favorite was the machine that detected the electricity that flows through your nerves when you flexed the muscles in your arm.

After that, we ventured up to the roof to withstand the sweltering heat just long enough to peer through a high-powered telescope with special lenses that allowed us to get a clear view of the sun. It was amazing. There were even a few sun spots visible.

We also spent some time in "Issac's Loft" which was an area with a collection of interactive demonstrations about simple machines such as levers and pulleys, the conservation of momentum, and transfers of energy. It was comparable to an educational playground. I raced Brian in a nifty contraption where you can sit in a seat and raise yourself with a pulley.

One of my favorite exhibits was one about engineering and inventions. It was really an interactive explanation of how things worked on the simplest levels. They had cases that contained everyday items such as windshield wipers, vacuum cleaners, and combination locks that had been disassembled in such a way that their inner workings were made clear. There were also stations where one could mess around with gears and pulleys to make simple machines. It was very entertaining.

There was also an entire exhibit on optics and optical illusions that was kind of trippy. They also ad some long exposure light pictures up, which got me really excited because I had just finished making a similar picture the night before. One of the most mind-blowing optical tricks was the one of the dragon whose face was build in a box that was going away from the view but painted in such a way that if one blurred their eyes, it appeared to be coming towards them, and then if they were to walk around the room, follow them wherever they went.

After lunch, we went as a group the the planetarium where we watched a movie on a dome-shaped screen called "A Journey Into a Black Hole" or something along those lines. There were some amazing images of space, and seeing the stars and galaxies all around our heads was pretty cool. Even cooler was the feeling that we knew exactly what the narrator was talking about when he discussed the bending of light and space-time that occurs around black holes. It was a really good way to end an extremely exciting day of "class".

When I returned to the quad, I had the intention of playing squash with a group of people who were interested, however the courts were closed due to excessive heat, which was probably for the best because instead, we sat in an air conditioned cafe sipping on some refreshing smoothies.

After dinner, we watched the final Harry Potter movie, which honestly surpassed my expectations and then returned to our dorms for some Friday night card games before bed.

Great Start to the Weekend

Today, we took another field trip. This was a fine way to end the week, especially considering the intense work that we had to do this week. We traveled to the Franklin Institute via school bus this morning at 9:30, which allowed us to sleep in an hour later. The Franklin Institute is a very diverse place so it is difficult to give it a description that covers all of its bases. At its core, the Franklin Institute is a center for scientific learning for all ages, akin to the Exploratorium in the Bay Area. Although there are definitely aspects of the institute that are geared towards the youth, a good majority of it is dedicated to the principle ideas of science. For instance, there is a large section of the third floor that is used for displaying Newtonian ideas of motion, called Sir Isaac’s Loft. All of the displays in the loft are accessible to children, but all of them have detailed plaques that describe the physics behind each display. There were also live demonstrations that occurred throughout the day in the main atrium. The idea of the Franklin Institute is great because it takes even some of the more difficult principles of science and makes it easy for a person of any age or scientific background to engage in learning and walk away with more knowledge than when they entered.

The US's version of Big Ben

I did a lot of things while in the institute today. We began by taking a group shot of the class in front of a massive statue of Ben Franklin (which looks shockingly similar to the Lincoln Memorial) and then observing a giant pendulum in the main stairwell. The purpose of the pendulum is to show that the Earth rotates upon an axis. The pendulum is hung in such a way that it continues the same path of motion while passing through a ring of chess pieces that, as the day passes, will be knocked over by the pendulum. After that, we were basically on our own until 12:30, which is when we would meet for lunch. I spent most of my time touring the museum with Mike, while occasionally joining, leaving, and re-joining Brian and Julia. As we walked around the institute, I realized how much I have learned in my science classes these past couple of years. I remember visiting places similar to the Franklin Institute and only being interested in the fascinating displays. However, as we toured the institute, I was easily able to identify what scientific principles were at work, from concepts such as mechanical advantage as well as laws relating to gas and pressure.

Taking the phrase "worked to the bone" a bit too seriously...

The highlight of today’s learning came after lunch, when our class gathered in the planetarium for a show about black holes. I was able to apply what we had learned in our lectures on relativity. I even recognized some of the demonstrations that we did in class to represent what actually happens when a black hole is formed. Basically, a black hole is the result of a massive star that goes supernova and leaves a deformation in space-time, from which nothing, not even light, can escape. This is why black holes were given their name. They absorb all light which leaves the area devoid of any light whatsoever, resulting in total darkness. Black holes actually have a point of no return called the event horizon. The demonstration was fascinating and helped me put my previous lessons about relativity into a better perspective. After the show, we were once again allowed to roam the institution. I chose to use some of this time in the gift shop, where I bought some souvenir t-shirts and gifts for my family.

The rest of the day was just spent relaxing. Upon our return from the Franklin Institute, I promptly made my way up to my dorm so I could sit in the air conditioning for a while (it was one-hundred and two degrees at one point this afternoon!). We only had a couple of hours between when we arrived and when we would have to meet for our weekly movie. I decided to hang out in the dorm with Onur, Brian, and Fred until dinner. We met with our peers (at least one-hundred of them) in the quad at about 7:00 to go see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, Part Two. I’ve never been a big fan of the Harry Potter films (the novels are a different story though), but there was something special about watching the finale to a series that has been popular for a good portion of my adolescence. It was interesting to watch people react to the end of this era because there were some die-hard Potter fans in the audience. I was even shushed by someone sitting in front of me within the first two minutes of the movie because I asked Brian (who was sitting right next to me) who a certain character was. Pop culture can be very interesting sometimes…

Today was an excellent way to kick off the weekend. We will be going back to Center City tomorrow to walk around the city without being rushed. We will also revisit Love Square so we can buy some souvenirs. This will be my last weekend with my Philly family, so I am sad about that. However, we are all aware of this and intent on making our final weekend together as memorable as possible.

Excuse me sir, you seem to be double parked...

Good to know??

Cool People on a Hot Day

Everyone loves Friday because it’s the end of the working week and the beginning of some time for a bit of relaxation. I look forward to Fridays here at UPenn because every Friday we go on a class field trip to various locations in Pennsylvania. Today, after some breakfast and a shower, we all boarded a yellow school bus just as the temperature was getting to be unbearably hot. The ride was extremely hot, but mercifully it was a short trip to our destination – the Franklin Institute-. The Franklin Institute was founded in Philadelphia where Franklin did most of his work to commemorate the achievements of Ben Franklin and to share an interest in science with younger people. Once we arrived, Bill handed out admissions tickets and lunch vouchers and soon enough we were all of exploring the museum’s many exhibits.

The first exhibit that I explored in depth was the biology exhibit about the heart. One of the most interesting parts of this exhibit was a large revolving display that had models of the hearts of many animals, from hamsters to huge whales. Even more impressive than this was the massive walk-through model of the human heart. This heart was scaled up large enough that it would be the right size for the Statue of Liberty. No matter how many books I have read about biology and how many times I’ve been told how the heart works, walking around as if I was a blood cell getting pumped through the heart was a great way to learn about the heart.

Another neat exhibit I visited was the so called ‘Isaac’s loft’ exhibit. As you might guess, the exhibit was centered on the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton. The first things that I tried out were the exhibits that displayed the concept of work. Because work is a measure of force times distance, you can do the same amount of work by applying a small amount of force over a long time as applying a large force over a small time. The way this was displayed was a large lever that you could use to pull a large pile of bricks that weighed 150 pounds. By pulling on ropes at different distances from the weight, you could do the same amount of work but over different distance and with different forces. Another cool example of work was the next display that I visited which let you pull yourself up in a chair. The chairs were suspended from the ceiling by a pulley, but the two chairs had different types of pulleys so on one of them you had to apply a force equal to one fifth of your weight, but you therefore had to apply the force for five times as much rope as usual. The other chair was the same idea, but you applied a force equal to one third of your weight for three times the distance. These displays were very effective at getting across the idea that you can do the same work in different ways.

Next, I visited the flight exhibit downstairs from the ‘Isaac’s Loft’ Exhibit. The first few displays I tried were exhibiting Bernoulli’s Principle in simple ways. One display challenged you to float a water bottle in the air using a fan. It wasn’t obvious at first how to do it because the fan was not strong enough to lift the bottle straight up. Instead, you had to line up the fan and bottle so that the fan accelerated the air on one side of the bottle. Just as the Bernoulli Principle says, moving air exerts less force, so the static air on the bottom of the bottle pushed harder than the moving top air and the bottle floated. While I’ve said it already, I again enjoyed the benefit of experimenting with these ideas instead of reading them in a book and vaguely understanding them. Finally, we all went together to a planetarium show about black holes that I found awesome, but several people next to me fell asleep during. I can’t really blame them because the 100 degree weather outside made me pretty sleepy too.

After the Franklin Institute trip, the temperature truly was over 100 degrees, so I decided to get my long overdue haircut. I went to a barbershop just down the street from our dorms and I got a nice haircut. Afterwards, my hair literally felt lighter and I felt much cooler (figuratively and literally). The evening continued to get better when we left to see the final movie of the Harry Potter series. I read the books avidly as a kid and have always felt my imagination was better than the films, but I still enjoyed seeing the action on the big screen. Even better than the movie, afterwards we stopped at Ben and Jerry’s for some ice cream. I got a ‘small’ (500 calorie plus) scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough that will be fueling my next dozen trips to the gym. The sugar’s wearing off and it’s been a long week, so goodnight for now.

Also, Alex thinks he's too cool for Harry Potter, what a dork.

Fun With Light

This morning was a little rough. Between class, lab reviews, exploring the city and meeting so many new people, not much time is left over for sleep, so getting out of bed can be difficult. Once class begins, it usually gets better. Today, we had three hour-long lectures in a row that were each very interesting, but sitting in one place for that long was still quite difficult.

Luckily, the topics of each of the presentations were intriguing enough to keep me awake. Mary took the first shift, giving us a lot of information about the Standard Model. She talked about the subatomic particles, most obviously protons, neutrons and electrons, but also the components that make up protons and neutrons (which happen to form in such a way that they have polar charges, allowing positive protons to exist so close to one another), as well as anti-matter such as positrons and anti-protons. It was really fascinating stuff and a lot of the tings she went over, I was hearing for the first time but it really helped me understand the way atoms work on a much deeper level.

Our next lecture was a guest lecture about how general relativity is proven by gravitational lensing. He basically explained that a massive object can bend the light coming from the objects around it and if it lines up perfectly with a light source directly behind it, observers from earth see the light source as a ring around the massive object. These rings are called Einstein Rings and we can use them and other examples of bent light to understand more about both the light sources and the dark matter and black hole in the universe that have mass and therefore bend light but are otherwise decidedly inactive. In fact, gravitational lensing turns out to be one of the few ways we can measure dark matter. After the talk, we got to play with lenses made to bend light in exactly the same way a black hole would.

The third and final lecture was performed by another guest, James Aguirre. He discussed with us some of the work he is doing with telescopes that use regular FM radio waves to get an image of the distant galaxies in the universe. He showed us some of the pictures he took of the 60 something radio receivers he set up in a desert in Africa, away from interfering signals, in order to collect his data. Based on the images he showed of the maps of the universe his telescopes have already created, it's clear he is doing some groundbreaking work. He also discussed with us the next step he would be taking to collect even more meaningful data in the next five years or so.

After all the lectures, we had a well deserved break for lunch and when we came back we split back up into our interest groups. Because quantum mechanics was done collecting data, we watched the Feynman lecture on particle/wave duality. It was really cool because he is really good at explaining the complex ideas of quantum mechanics in understandable ways and also because he mentioned specifically the exact experiment we had already done with the photo multiplier and the diffraction pattern. We also worked on a power point for our presentation on Wednesday before leaving.

After class, Brian, his floor mate Abheek and I met up with Tom Miller from the Yale ILC group on campus and we sat in the grass and under the shade of a nice big tree. We were planing on playing a game of Frisbee, but in 9o degree weather, the shade-sitting idea was much more appealing.

At 7:00, we got dressed for another fancy dinner with our ILC cohorts. There were many guests present: three students from U Penn as well as other faculty. I was seated next to Britney, a rising senior at Penn who majors in Psychology and is striving to become a pediatric psychiatrist. She had some really interesting things to share about the possible clubs, the options for housing and dining, and all there is to do in Philly. It was great getting to hear from her. I also talked briefly with Ellen Kim, the UPenn admissions councilor for Northern California, about how much I was enjoying my classes and why I was interested in physics in particular. We went on to discuss the types of people who are drawn to Penn and those who are accepted, specifically, those who have interests of their own but are also open-minded and willing to study across disciplines and hear what the community has to share. It definitely gave me a better feel for the place listening to all the guests and what they had to say about Penn.

When we returned to the quad, we walked into something very peculiar. A group of about ten students were standing in a strange formation waving glow sticks around very slowly in seemingly random directions. Upon closer inspection, I realized there was a camera set up in front of them. They were making light paintings with high exposure shutter speeds. it looked like too much fun to resist, so I grabbed a glow stick and joined in. It was great. We worked together to spell out "UPenn", draw a giant dinosaur, a man shooting another man with a laser beam, a family with a puppy, and a bunch of just random shapes. We ended up with some really cool pictures. I'll try to get a hold of them and post them tomorrow. It was a great end to a long day.