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Paris

  C'est tout.

Engines already started.... IAP's rolling along

Hola and happy January.  While everyone outside of MIT will think of this month merely as January, for us Tech-ers, it's IAP! IAP stands for Independent Activites Period and is a time without regular classes - instead only crazy and creative activities.

This IAP, I've been spending most of my time working on a UROP (undergraduate research opportunities program) here at MIT.  My project is to help an experimental dark matter group with some computer modeling and setting up the hardware.  It's pretty cool (especially since I work with cryogenics).  :)  .  Anyhow, there are some things from last IAP I'm still doing; I again participated on a mystery hunt team for my house - we were team "Lego my Ego".  Mystery hunt was awesome, and our team even won an award.  The Hunt's theme was Dante's Inferno and the circles of hell because MIT is often referred to as Hell.  You can check out this and more about the hunt here.  You'll find a picture of some of the team below. 

Besides Mystery Hunt and a UROP, I'm taking a ballroom dance PE class and been doing a lot of work with the solar car team.  Some of our team, including me, just got back from a trip to Detroit sponsored by Ford to see the Auto Show and Ford's research into hybrid and alternative energy vehicles.  (Pictures below)  Interesting cars included: GM's Volt, Ford's Airstream and various other automobiles.  It was all really cool to see and, there, I got to see my first snow - since it hasn't snowed much in Boston this year.  Although it's still been plenty cold.

Anyhow, time to get back to IAP stuff, but hope you enjoyed the update.  Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email, etc.

Ta ta for now -
Picture time: (They're coming.  Give me a bit.  Sorry.)

HELLO... Hello... hello...

Yes, I'm back from the world of the silent, and my room does echo this year.  Here I am in  yet another school year!  Things have been going well.  We are now approaching the first four day weekend of term (Hooray!). 

Term started about a month ago, but I came back a bit early to help out with dorm rush (when the freshman look around at the dorms to decide where they want to live).  It was nice to get an early start back.  My favorite part of it all was the annual house mystery hunt.  It's an evening long puzzle extravaganza/ treasure hunt, in the style of MIT's Mystery Hunt.  This year, the theme for the house hunt was Raiders of the List Art; a parody based on my dorm's fascination with MIT's List Visual Arts Center.  The culmination of the event involved putting a laser in a rubber duck's mouth and watching the reflection through two pieces of glass onto a map.  Sound similar to a movie?  Happily enough the team I was on ended up winning. 

Since the end of the hunt, though, the puzzles have kept coming, in the form of classes.   This term, I'm taking
Vibrations and Waves, Paradox and Infinity (a philosophy class with a lot of math), Relativity (Mostly Special, some General), French, & Real Analysis.
There's so much to be learned!  Aside from classes, I've been keeping busy with random diversions.  I'm in the Sailing PE class (one of the benefits of living next to a river, the Charles), and am still trying to decide if I should take to the water with the actual team.  We'll see how that goes. 

Anyhow, a couple interesting things around campus so far have been a firetruck on the Great Dome and elephants and ponies walking down Massachusetts Ave (which runs straight through campus).  I should explain that the former was a hack and the latter was when Ringling Brothers Circus came to town on Thursday, the animals needed to be walked to the theatre.  So I guess it's elephants, firetrucks, and ponies, oh my!  For those of you who remember pictures of the Great Glass Pumpkin patch from last year, I'm sorry but I missed it, so no pictures of it for this year. 

I could ramble on further, but for now, I shall stop.  But once again, hello!

Hallo again

Well, it's been a long time since I last wrote.  Apologies...  Since I am now on break, I have no excuse not to write.
This term has been leaps and bounds more challenging than last term.  My classes are:
Differential Equations
Introductory Geology
Chinese I
Electricity and Magnetism (with theory)

Other than that, I am doing a UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunity) with Geophysics faculty and staff.  We're working on finding correlations between gravity mapping and seismic data for the Tibetan plateau.  I'm still involved with the Solar Electric Vehicle team.  For that, our plans are to build a fleet of solar bikes, rather than cars for the 2007 races.  We've figured that in supporting a car during a race, more fuels are actually consumed (i.e. in the 3 chase cars, support equipment, etc) than is desired.  Additionally, the field of solar powered cars is a lot more well developed than that of the solar bike.  Anyhow...

This term has been nicer than the end of last; there is increasingly nice weather.  I can now go out and comfortably study in Killian court (picture in 1 of my first entries) or anywhere else outdoors.  This has also allowed me to go out and see such things as Wellesley (pictures below). 

Hmmm... this is probably sounding a bit dry, but alas, I am at a loss for words!  Ah, one final note: Congratulations to all those who were admitted to MIT and elsewhere this year.  And if not, no worries :) 

Take care and enjoy the pictures.[EDIT: When the pictures are actually put in..]  If you have any questions about anything specific or my summer plans, just drop me a line.

p.s. If you tried this site a couple weeks ago and it wasn't working, know that it was a result of the server undergoing some changes.

Rinse and Repeat

The past month has just zipped by. Here I am, again; at the beginning of a new term with IAP over. So what exactly have I been doing in the past month? Just as I said in my last post, I took a Special Relativity class and built an ultrasonic motion detector. Outside of the classroom, I engaged in random IAP offerings, such as a lecture like "The History of the Universe in an Hour" and MIT's world famous Charm School (earlier today). Yes, you heard me correctly - Charm school. Charm school is an annual IAP offering. Basically, it's a fun day to help us MIT nerds become more like the rest of society. For example, there were a range of offerings, including Flirting 101 and more serious/useful subjects like How to tell somebody something they'd rather not here. Getting there rather late, I only had enough time to sit in on one class - Table Manners. It was actually quite informative. I never knew that you should wear name tags on the right side of your torso, so that they're more easily seen when shaking hands. Sadly, though, I did not earn enough credits for a Bachelors, Masters, or even ChD (Doctorate of Charm). Alas, maybe next year...

Aside from classroom activities, I've done some random projects and excursions. Among the projects have been building a spice rack from wire, to hang on my bookshelf. As to excursions, last weekend I went with the MIT Guild of Bellringers to go change ringing at the Old North Church! Apparently, MIT is the only group authorized to ring the bells of the Old North Church. While there, I got to learn to ring the bells (it's actually a bit strenuous) and play handbells. That was followed by a nice day spent in the North End (Italian district of Boston) and a visit to Haymarket (an open air, weekend produce market). Aside from these things, I've been doing some fancy cooking here and there. The other day, for instance, my friends and I made spinach gnocchi (some with rice flour for the benefit of a wheat-allergic friend) in a roasted garlic-basil sauce. At other times, there have been lemon cookies (without lemon) and 6am pancakes with orange and cinnamon. So as you can see, a lot of things have been going on.

On the academic front, I am now a declared physics major. I can't wait to take more classes and find out what research areas truly excite me. I'll probably write about my classes in a little while (Registration Day is Feb. 6 and term starts on the 7th). Until then.. Have fun. Bye!

 

My lab bench

Old North Church

p.s. More pictures on their way

46 (yes, I mean 46 not 42)

Back in November, MIT opened building 46 - the new Brain and Cognitive Sciences Complex. It sits right across the street from Frank Gehry's Stata Center. Both bits of MIT's eclectic architecture make for very nice places to study and relax. In building 46, for example, there's a two story solarium (pictures below) filled with bamboo and palm trees. I've found it's really nice to sit there basking in the sun and 70 degrees, while outside it's snowing and 20 degrees. There are other bits of interesting architecture (the building has room for trains to pass between it - it looks sort of like pi) and features (the walls are three different colors to designate which part of the building it is - memory, brain and cog., or something else I can't quite remember... Sorry...).

Another neat thing about building 46 is all the pomp and circumstance that was had for the building's inauguration. There were three separate bashes (one for each part of the building). I attended some of the festivities for the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory's opening. It was really interesting to watch James Watson (of Watson and Crick), Eric Kandel and other Nobel laureates speak. I found Kandel to be the most engaging speaker. When asked by someone why he became a neurobiologist, Kandel responded "As a Jewish Viennese boy, there weren't a lot of options..."

So that's a bit about building 46. If you're ever around, you should check it out.

Reflection of Stata	Main Atrium	Stata View from Picower Reading Room	Another View of the Main Atrium
		Yes, that's bamboo!

After a long hiatus...

I'm BACK! So today, I'm going to post twice.

After finishing exams on Wednesday, I have returned home. As of ten minutes ago, I can announce that I have passed all my classes (MIT has a system of giving out grades of "Pass" or "No Record" on the external transcript for first-term freshmen. I did get real letter grades, though, which will show up on an internal transcript.) So now it's on to enjoying the holidays and looking to IAP and next term. [For your FYI (yes I know what FYI means), IAP is "Independent Activities Period." All of January, class is optional There are classes on such subjects as Chainmail Making and Glass Blowing. I'll be taking a Special Relativity class and one on making a motion detector.]

As to the weather, it has been quite a ride. Lots of firsts for me... First blizzard... First slip on ice... First everything... Needless to say, it's been very cool. Maybe even too cool. We'll see if I can build a snow launcher during IAP... Any suggestions on how to do so?

One final note for this post - CONGRATULATIONS to all 2010s. It seems that everyone I know has gotten early admission. So three cheers for all of you. Don't sweat the rest of the applications or anything like that.

Take care all. Happy Holidays!

More than London Bridge can fall down

I am happy to report that in the past few days, I have become more familiar with the earth’s gravity. For a few brief hours on Saturday, there was the first snowfall. I couldn’t help but engage in a snow fight. In the process, my jacket and I deflected a good number of snowballs from directly falling towards the center of the Earth. After sufficient thawing, a visit was paid to the annual pumpkin drop. This event entailed dozens of pumpkins (some dipped in liquid nitrogen) being thrown off the highest building on campus. I am happy to report that it took the smaller pumpkins an average of 5.2 seconds to fall. As you can see, diversions (including Halloween) and falling objects have been plentiful.

Pause

Starting yesterday, there’s been a lull in the rain we’ve been getting. Not to get too Hawthorne-like, but it appears that nature is mimicking the ebb and flow of my life. Wednesday was a nice brisk clear day. After having two exams (one was a midterm) and another scheduled for Friday, I thought it was time to enjoy some down time. It's been nice to have a day without tooling (verb: MIT speak for work. antonym: punt). Currently, I’m lacking any terribly interesting pictures to put up. Come Halloween, though, there should be no such shortage. Until then, regards-

And they’re off and running…

So it’s been over a month since I arrived here. This past week has been quite hectic; I’m finally having the true college experience. I wrote a six-page psychology paper (yes, we have humanities here) and had my first exam. This week has been full of exciting events, too. On Thursday night, some friends and I attended a lecture by Ben Mezrich (author of Bringing Down the House – an excellent exposition about MIT’s blackjack team) and Semyon Dukach. It was interesting to hear about techniques that have been used in casinos as well as moral repercussions. Yesterday, I went hiking at Mount Moosilauke in New Hampshire. The weather was nice, and I was in good company. All in all, it was a very nice outing.

It now seems that I am a college student. Scary, eh?

Pictures from the hike

Pumpkins and fireworks - wait what month is it?

Something on the order of 10 minutes ago, I saw a fireworks show out of my window. It seemed to be coming a bit Southwest from Harvard's campus. I have no idea what it was from. In any event, I just thought I'd mention that as well as the "glass pumpkin patch" I saw yesterday, out on the field. Apparently every year, MIT's glass lab displays hundreds of glass pumpkins, which are then put on sale. There are some nice pictures of the pumpkins here.  I know that one pumpkin went for $600. In any event, I just thought it was interesting that it felt like July and October all at the same time.

At the moment

I've just finished sending out a couple emails to some people back home (If you're someone back home and you haven't received anything yet - DON'T WORRY. Give me some time). I am now on my way to a brunch type event with my chemistry professor. So ta ta for now

Current weather: Nice blue skies

I'll leave you with a picture from another day

At a glance

Current weather: Foggy skies

Coursework:
*18.022 Multivariable Calculus with Theory
*Concourse 3.091 Solid State Chemistry
*Concourse 8.01/8.012 Mechanics
*Concourse 9.00 Introduction to Psychology

OK, so if you're one of those people that prefers real sentences and descriptive words to just bulleted phrases, here you go:

This is the end of my third week here. Since arriving here, I've gone through orientation (so that I could be initiated into the society that is MIT) and, of couse, started classes. You can see my coursework above. As you might have noticed, I am a part of Concourse, one of the freshman learning communities. My Concourse classes only have 45 people in lectures, as opposed to several hundred. It's unique to have classes where you aren't overwhelmed by the number of people in lecture; however, it's nice to also have one big class (math) where you get to know different people every day. So far, I have encountered some of the most interesting and exciting people I've ever met. I haven't just met people in classes. I've met people just walking around and in my dormitory (an Iron Waffle). One of the benefits of MIT's dorms is that you live with upperclassmen, graduate students, and even professors. Thus, dorm life is an education and experience in itself. But back to education... Psychology is particularly enjoyable because the professor is exceedingly engaging. Other classes are good, but their problem sets (a.k.a. homework, a.k.a. p-sets) add up. I've been doing my best to do all the work as soon as it's assigned, but still things like sickness and the desire to go out and explore can be a bit overwhelming at times. Not to worry, though, sleep has been in good supply. Speaking of sleep, I believe I shall do that now. Cheerio.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog.
This is my effort at sharing my experiences at MIT with you.
Hopefully my entries will give you some idea of what I've been up to.

Enjoy!