Yet Another Busy weekend

Here is a synopsis of my weekend:

• We went to go see Batman: The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger's performance of the Joker was highly entertaining. His off-the-wall maniacal character very much controlled the course of the story, which was thoroughly thrilling. This movie very much lived up to its own hype
  
• I got to play basketball for the first time in a while. It was nice to get out there again
  
• I got to take a walk over to the sea cliffs to watch the sunset. I found out that La Jolla Shores, the beach that I had taken a 10 minute bus-ride to get to is not the closest beach to campus, but instead this beach by the cliffs is. It is a short walking distance from Eleanor Roosevelt College where I'm staying, and is very beautiful.
  
• Went to a skate-boarding exhibition at Muir college, which included a free baseball cap, dvd, magazine, and stickers. I also got to try out some of the longboards there. Longboards are a recent craze; they are a sturdier, more stable type of skateboard with thicker wheels meant for cruising and less acrobatics.
• After the skating I got to go to the "UTC Mall", my first experience at an outdoor Westfield mall. It was similar to Santana Row in San Jose, but not quite as upscale and without the multi-story buildings
• Today (Monday) our boundaries were expanded so that we can now explore the majority of the campus on our free time. A large portion of the COSMO-ers took the opportunity to eat lunch at the the Price Center, the hub of the UCSD campus. I meanwhile went back to our normally designated cafeteria to get a free lunch in order to save my money
• I'm looking forward to going to the San Diego Zoo this weekend. Though I went there at least 6 years ago, I expect that many new exhibits have since been brought into the park.

In Scientific curriculum news:

• In our lectures we are moving closer yet to true nano-photonics. We've already covered ray optics, lenses, waves and their properties, fiber optics, polarization and irradiance, etc. Each of these are essential to understanding nano-photonics. Today we learned about the anatomy of the eye and about how certain photodiode devices can detect light and alter electrical current
• My group project is progressing along slowly but surely. We are struggling to put together our computer program in order to rotate our diffractive grating and have our photodector take light intensity readings in unison. We spent some time today calibrating our set up using a laser that we leveled ourselves using irises, or disklike devices that shrink to a pinhole like how an iris of an eye would contract around the pupil of an eye. We must use a 4F (four focal lengths) method of focusing the light, so we worked on this today too.
  

4

Friday dance- I think that I enjoyed the music, but I was not inclined to dancing that much for some reason.
Saturday- A wonderful weekend of golden silence...sort of... I was able to see my parents for an interval of two hours. I received way more junk food from my mom than I will ever eat here. But with Tiffany and Chantal and most people gone, it can get very lonely. :( However, I enjoy the short lines in the cafeteria, and the emptiness of the laundry room. To kill some free time, I worked on friendship bracelets. It can be quite addicting. Anyways, I went near the beach Saturday night to see a *stunning sunset. It was freezing, but worth it to see the sun go down and then become obscured by clouds.
Sunday morning- Batman rocked, was very intense, and exciting. But I find it funny how batman as a superhero lacks a supernatural talent. And now...I am ready to settle down to a nice, quiet Sunday afternoon...

Cosmos So far...

This weekend has been amazing.  On Saturday we went shopping in the Westfield area for about 3 hours.  Although the shopping wasn't as good as the shopping in San Francisco, I had a lot of fun hanging out with all of my friends and trying on crazy clothing.  After shopping, I made two friendship bracelets and then I watched Batman begins with about 20 other people. We decided to watch this movie to prepare us for sunday's movie Batman: The Dark Knight.  The next day we went in vans and got to the movie theater at about 9:00 am.  We watched the movie and it was AMAZING.  I can't wait for future activities at COSMOS! :)

Happy Birthday

Hey COSMOS,

I turned 16 today, I was born on July 18th, 2008. Supposedly I can get a license now, although I just got a permit a few day before COSMOS and have driven a total of 0 hours.

Thank you everyone for making my birthday golden.

This is the first birthday I've spent away from my family, but also the first birthday I've spent with so many people - friends from my cluster, friends from my suite, RA's, more COSMOS students, mentors, professors, TAs, everyone.

Started off with a surprise singing of happy birthday after breakfast after Paul offered me a piece of gum to distract me. Sarah made for me a card and collected the signatures of everyone in our cluster and more.

The card had a paper cube on it, supposedly a "4x4" for my 16th birthday. x] Inside were the signatures and messages from various COSMOS buddies embedded in colorful stars, swirls, and borders.

At lecture we spent way too much time on one math problem, but it was still fun watching Jon try to measure the width of a dancing laser dot on the back wall. Walking back from Lecture, Paul lent me his speakers and we played and sang songs on the way back - notably songs from High School Musical and Cascada. At lab, Peter gave me a Happy Birthday Pencil. My group worked on our group project, only to be hindered by difficulties in software. Hopefully these issues can be resolved before the end of family visitation.

Matt, our RA, came into our suite with a cake.

(My birthday has been pretty cube themed so far. You guys really notice what I like, haha)
The cake looked really nice, Matt spent a lot of time cubifying the once-round cake and mixing colors of frosting.

It tasted excellent. :D Half of our suite is also ordering some more cubes and cube materials off eBay from Paul.

I've never had a dance on my birthday, and it's really a great coincidence to have the first one overlap with it. I had a great time there, and I'd like to thank you all for the last song, it really meant alot to me.

Thank you everyone,

I've never enjoyed a birthday with over 150 people before, and today, I savored every last bit of it.

I love you COSMOS!

William Chen

Shout out to everyone leaving or staying for Family Visitation! Have a great weekend!

College/Career Info. Day and Campus Touring

Today was another great day for motivational speakers to come in and further edify our awareness of the necessary admissions into UCSD and other colleges. At the beginning of the presentation, Trisha (1) warned us about the little mistakes that one could possibly encounter when applying for colleges. Whether it was making sure you completed the a-g requirements or being active as leaders in school, one had to keep in mind that grades weren't the only aspect viewed on one's application. Others suches included taking important roles in sport, being active in community service, doing well on the SAT, etc.

Not long later three grad-students came to talk to us: (2) Eddie Magee, (3) Diana Ruiz, and (4) Chester Yarbrough. They talked of their experience in high school and what aspects of high school brought them to their standing in society today. The speeches were very helpful in the fact that i was able to analyze different point of views of college life from more than just a single person.

As the presentations came to a close, we split into different groups with the RAs to further explore the UCSD campus. My tour group was led by Matt and Mike. For the first time, we were able to get a sense of what the different colleges that were on the campus had to offer although we were only able to visit a couple of them. Despite this, i'm really looking forward to being able to take my own tour of the campus and ponder upon the various magnificent buildings on the campus.















(1) Trisha















(2)Eddie Magee UCSD School of Medicine













(3) Diana Ruiz Research Assistant, The Scripps Research Institute














(4) Chester Yarbrough UCSD, School of Medicine











Muir College restaurant















library

COSMOS....continued

Hey all!! This week has been awesome! Today we had lunch with Dr. Tu, the director of the program, and it was great. Everyone had a chance to voice their problems or concerns with COSMOS. I didnt have anything to complain about. The one thing I spoke up about was just an idea, not really a complaint. The only other thing I should have mentioned is COSMOS needs to do a better job advertising. They say that 300 people applied, but when you think about it, that's still not a lot. I think this program is AMAZING.....but I can see it growing in the future. I can see it becoming a nationwide program, and I want it to get to that level. I think this should be offered all over the country so kids everywhere have a better chance of getting in and so more people can experience math and science in the real world so they will want to pursue it. If they want it to reach this level, COSMOS needs to put itself out there. We have to get America back on board with the STEM majors in college. We are falling behind. COSMOS is an excellent way to do that!

Back to my experience here...The classes are good, I get so tired though because I am sitting in a classroom all morning after not having enough sleep. We went to the Science Center on Tuesday and we saw an IMAX movie. That was really fun; I love the science museum because it has all those hands on experiments. We also had a movie night in a lecture hall, which was an odd experience....Oxymoran...LOL!! Anchorman was funny!! I liked it. We are getting Chipolte's (spelling) tonight!! YEA!!! Okay, I have a lot of homework so I gotta go...that's all folks.....

July 17th

Today was good.  This morning we had the regular class with Dave, which I always enjoy. I like it because its a break from the usual topic and we get a chance to learn things that we can apply in our regular classroom settings (like the statistics that we learned today). Then at lunch we had a lunch meeting with Charles and Becky where we went around  and gave them feedback and just talked. Then we headed over to the College fair, which was interesting. After the college fair, we went in groups of 10 around the campus and got tours, which was also fun. Tonight we have the options of ice-blocking, inner-tube water polo, or henna. We'll see how they go...