Visiting California

Reasons To Believe's "The Lab" conference is happening this week, and I am attending with my father, so I am currently in California. I also am taking the opportunity to visit Caltech, since it's fairly close by.

This morning, we rode two flights to get to the Ontario airport after a stop in Dallas (Fort Worth). DFW has a really neat tram-like system to move people to the various gates very quickly. After landing in ONT, we picked up a rental car, which turned out to be a completely new Nissan because they didn't have the economy car that we ordered.

Following that, we attempted to visit the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but since we had not signed up for any public tour, we couldn't get in.

Found the way to space!

At the JPL sign

Since we hadn't eaten for a while, we went to look for food. I Googled "caltech cafe" and found mentions of a Red Door Café, so I had Google give me walking directions, but when we arrived at the destination, no café was in sight. So instead, we hurriedly bought burgers from a Jack-in-the-Box before checking in for the Caltech tour.

I am most struck by Caltech's academic rigor and the freedom/responsibility it gives students. The amount of resources it makes available is also exceptionally impressive. I'll definitely be applying there. (The tour included a stop outside the Red Door Café, and it was nowhere near where we had previously been led to.)

With the admissions counselor

Following the Caltech visit, I searched for attractions near Pasadena. Google mentioned a Strawberry Peak, so we put that in the Google Maps app and started going. It turns out that Strawberry Peak is a few miles into the Angeles National Forest, which covers a swath of mountains. The only way through is Highway 2, which winds up and down in elevation and around numerous mountains, which are breathtaking:

 

When Google Maps informed us that we had arrived, we saw nothing special - the actual peak point is not accessible from a road, so it took us to the closest place. Though I couldn't get cell service 3,000 feet above sea level, we continued on Highway 2, planning to travel the entire length of the Forest. It took us several hours, but we did it. The elevation reached almost 8,000 feet at some points.

At Cloud Burst Summit, >7K feet

The Forest is almost entirely devoid of civilization; we only ran across two places that might have running water, and both were closed at the time. Therefore, we were very pleased to run across the Grizzly Café in Wrightwood to the east of the Forest.

After a good meal there, we arrived at the hotel near RTB, where I have typed this post. The convention begins tomorrow morning.

Optics presentation

I just gave a brief (20 minute) presentation on optics as it related to astronomy. It just covers refraction, reflection, common kinds of aberration, binoculars, and touches on types of telescopes. I figured I'd upload my slides in case anybody wants to use them as an outline.

Download as PDF

Chinatown trip 2016

Today I went up to Chicago's Chinatown with the rest of my Chinese class, plus a few people who used to be in the class and one other student who is Chinese.

Upon arrival, we walked around the zone for a bit to get our bearings. We then went into the Phoenix Restaurant for dim sum. Previously, each person on the trip had given the guide a menu with the desired items checked. One student had checked everything that she thought looked good, and so we ended up ordering a huge amount of dishes. There was a constant stream of new things being delivered to the table as we ate. We did manage to eat almost all of it, and the guide only took home two or three small Styrofoam boxes of food.

After that, we went around town, looking into stores. I only bought a small bag of White Rabbit candies, which are delicious. We then visited a museum that had information about Chinatown's history and culture, including a brief film about it.

Finally, we went to Joy Yee for tea. I got a coconut milk tea with tapioca, which was delicious.

I didn't get to speak all that much Chinese, but I did hear some and understood a little.

AP exam week

Today concludes the first week of the two-week AP exam season, during which high school students take exams corresponding to courses authorized by the College Board.

It so happens that all my exams (Physics 1, English Literature and Composition, and Calculus BC) were this week, so I am finished for the year.

The College Board usually publishes the free-response questions two days after the exam, and since it's been about 57 hours from the end of the Physics 1 one, this year's are indeed available (PDF).

Microwaves do not cause cancer

Microwaves do not cause cancer.

Microwave ovens are able to cook food because they deliver so much energy via microwaves that the molecules of the food vibrate, producing heat. Standing right next to an old microwave oven is "only" dangerous because the microwaves could burn you. Temperature changes in certain parts of the body can lead to problems (like temporary infertility), but not cancer.

The only kinds of electromagnetic radiation that cause cancer are the ionizing ones, like gamma rays. Fortunately, microwaves are not ionizing - not even close. Normal visible light is closer to gamma rays on the EM spectrum than microwaves are. Similarly, the electric field from power lines is non-ionizing, and so cannot cause cancer.

"Let's see some reliable sources!" Sure:

• Microwaves, Radio Waves, and Other Types of Radiofrequency Radiation from the American Cancer Society
• Power Lines, Electrical Devices and Extremely Low Frequency Radiation likewise
• Cell Phones and Cancer Risk from the National Cancer Institute
• Electromagnetic Fields and Cancer likewise

Note that studies are still going on; there is yet some uncertainty. So far, the evidence for a causal relationship between microwaves/phones and cancer is not there.

Chocolate fountains require a good deal of work

My class planned/hosted the school prom this year, and we decided to get a chocolate fountain. That was all well and good in the beginning - it was assembled easily and started working, just as expected. 

The problems appeared at teardown time. You see, the largest dish of the fountain was fixed to the main part. Therefore, the only way to remove the chocolate from it was to very carefully place the whole assembly in a sink and direct the water to avoid the electrical parts.

Even after twenty of fiddling around, the device is still not completely chocolate-free, and will probably need to be left with water in the bowl to get the last pieces off.

What is the volume of a 2-liter bottle?

Many math courses provide a few helpful formulas that may be used on tests on a formula sheet. A certain online course provider's sheet includes an interesting "formula" after some common geometric ones:

Volume of a 2-liter bottle: 2 liters

I find it difficult to imagine the circumstances that led up to that being added to the sheet. Surely it couldn't have been there from the start - I hope the test writers had faith that their students would be able to determine the volume of a 2-liter bottle from the "2-liter" part. Though, in two years of mathematics through that provider, I never once was asked a question involving a 2-liter bottle, so maybe there was a confusing question that was retired.

Interestingly, "what is the volume of a 2 liter bottle" does get auto-completed in the Google Chrome search bar after I type the 2. In the results, Google renders in bold both "2 liters" and "500 milliliters."