Waves Of The Present

After the shenanigans from yesterday, I feel completely fine and nothing serious happened. Fortunately, all the chaos dispersed and there were no traces of the incidence - meaning the halls were cleansed of my blood and the glass was removed. I'm not trying to make it seem like a serious incident but it sure was treated like it. It's amazing how much attention there is to such small accidents when there are much more serious events. 

Today, class was as enjoyable as ever. We had a guest professor, Alison Sweeney, lecture us about biophysics. I never thought I would hear the two subjects in one study - biology and physics. They're the most separated fields of sciences but somehow, they can both beautifully synthesize together. Alison studied the unique clams deep below sea level. The clams have a relatively high amount of algae in their stomach that allows them to live in such an isolated environment. The algae use a biological process to "donate" the clams energy. Essentially, the clams enslave the algae for their survival. Alison uses physics to learn more about this process through scattering light beams on the algae to analyze its effects and use that as a mechanism to make conclusions. I'm unsure of how they arrive at their conclusions but it has to do with analyzing the different energy levels. Later, we found the speed of sound and electricity using an oscillator. By making a sound with a wooden block and a hammer, we used two microphones to detect the sound waves and by measuring the distance of the two initial peaks of the signal, we were able to calculate the speed of sound. We performed the same process with the speed of electricity by using a circuit.

Later in the day, I decided to play some more Frisbee. Back at home, there is no place nor people to play Frisbee with. It's such a dead sport in the West Coast, or at least the WCCUSD. Sure, I see people playing it in parks but after playing it over in Philly for an extensive amount of time, Frisbee has become so much more fun. I had thought that Frisbee was boring but after learning it much more in detail, it has become a sport that I'd like to become involved in. Ultimate Frisbee is a game of tactics and strategy, the outcome of a game is usually determined by the tactical wit of the teams. Sure, an amazing player who can throw an extremely accurate hammer can win games, but it's a team effort to make sure that pass goes through. This applies to every sport that needs passing but I especially like Frisbee because it doesn't require as much strength as it requires technique. Through my three days of playing it - 3 hours each day - I have become better at throwing my forehands and hammers. Also, I would not have learned those types of shots nor hear of it if I had not participated in Summer Discovery.

There's so much to do around here. We went to NY last week and I'm planning on trying ice-skating this week. There's so much more to experience and I've just gotten a taste of what it means to "absorb my environment".