Reflections upon Reflections

NB: A backlogged post from reflections prior to entering college. Written with a strong tone of Pirsig and an aftertaste of coffee. Enjoy.

Crystalline smooth surfaces have me staring at my face, even as I seek to gaze below the surface of the tranquil pond. The quiet of dawn, the inner peace found through nature, surrounds and calms me through and through. These past two weeks, I have been reflecting upon my past high school life, seeking to divine what the future has in store. But tonight, with the Perseids lighting up the sky, I reflect with peace and serenity.

Seattleites sure love talking about the weather, but it’s not hard to see why. The abruptness of a summer storm with dark beauty in its thundering clouds, sweeps over the region and raises petrichor from the ground. As the hail beats the dry caked ground, I look up in vain at the morose skies. Every astronomical event has been ruined by the glum Seattle atmosphere, every blood moon and meteor sighting. Now, just days away till I leave for a new haven, the clouds would block me out once more for the Perseids, a spectacular meteor shower made all-the-more better with the new moon. No matter. I would stay through the darkness, praying to catch a glimpse regardless of what I see right now.

Around 11, I get a message from David. “Hey did the meteor shower end?” he asks, just as I’m about to settle for a quick nap. “Not yet- hasn’t even started haha” I type back, hoping that he would be able to stay up and see these shooting stars. In a few more lines, my eyes widen. David is at Mount Rainier tonight, which is not only the most magnificently round dumpling in the Washington forests, but also the best dark sky area in the Pacific Northwest. Although jealous, I quickly guide him to the location of a star party at the Sunrise Visitor Center, hoping that he could get to witness this amazing experience. After all, that’s all I can do for all of my friends. All of us at Interlake have been together for such a long time that I have nothing but goodwill for each one of them as they journey forwards. I believe that Interlake doesn’t have the cutthroat competition that may be found in other top notch schools because we are all so intertwined in the stories that we have and the goals in our future. Now, as we scatter like dust upon the wind, I can no longer hold on to their comfort. But. I can always rely on them to surprise and cheer me up, in thousands of minute ways in the future.

I nap, trying to desperately charge my own batteries, but as 2 am swings by, I leap outwards. armed with sky charts and blankets, the inky black skies seem to invite me outwards with a gentle rustle and nip. The gloomy clouds have begun to clear up to become a truly beautiful night, the rare combination of new moon and clear skies. Perhaps the best that Seattle can ever get to. In a spur-of-the-moment decision, I drag out my telescope onto the driveway along with the armchair and hot tea. Might as well bring out the big guns! But as I lug the giant polished mirror, too awkward for a single person, I struggle and think of the difficulties ahead. In a few short days, I will be on my own, without any loving parent to assist me. As I painfully piece together the assembly in the dark, I think of how there have always been gentle hands guiding me in the past. And as I discover, to my great dismay, that I am now missing a small but crucial adaptor, I am reminded of the care that mom and dad always had when things didn’t succeed. I sigh, and slowly disassemble and lug each part back. This will just be a calm observational night, no fancy pictures.

I kick back into my lawn chair, strategically placed to block out streetlights with the. It is 2:45, and I calm myself down in a half meditative way. Sky watching is a whole lot like fishing- you never really know where the next meteor will come from, so all you can do is to get a feel for it. You sit and stare and try not to strain your eyes in any particular direction, because you know that while the center of your eyes are good for color detection, it’s the sides that are important now for bright streaks. Sitting still and not falling asleep in the dark, I elect for a period of silence.

Truly, I had done so much reflecting over the past summer. From family in China to friends in the US, every exchange is markedly predictable. Am I ready? Am I excited? And yet, even after answering these personal questions nearly by rote, I’m still not sure where my heart resides. There is just a small hiccup, where my perceptions of the world just mismatches with its reality. And so, quiet reflection has brought up those emotions bubbling to the surface once more. They rise and set continuously, of confusion and adrenaline, of anxiety and peace. Before long, I realize that they are all two faces of the same coin. Or are they the same face of two coins? Does it matter?

Slowly, lazily drifting, a speck of light moves across my field of vision, bringing me out of my stupor. It’s far too fast for any plane or star, but several magnitudes slower than any shooting star. I watch it with amazement as this dot represents a miracle in engineering. Humans have sent so many satellites into orbit that Low Earth Orbit is as crowded as I-405, but I am reminded of the first satellite. As Spurnik slowly pinged across the world, families looked up in amazement, as a bit of humanity, a bit of us, has joined the heavens above. The satellite- I think it’s the ISS judging from its speed and size- moves with purpose but deliberation. Each part of the behemoth structure knows what must be done to further humanity’s probes into the unknown. I can only hope that I can follow such an example. Would I be able to have that kind of nonstop attitude, even as the fire dies down? Could I be a consistently hardworking student? Most importantly, could I do good (not well)?

Without warning, a flash catches my eye. The first meteor of the night- a baby, lasting just a second. While small, the intensity startles me. In usual stargazing sessions, one never gets these beautiful streaks. This is because it’s only after midnight that the majority of meteors are visible, as the earth finally faces in the right direction. This was worth the wait.

Soon, another. And another. And yet another. They fall, not as plentiful as rain, but just sparse enough to make each one a treasure of its own. Each one has a different characteristic- some streak across the span of several constellations, while others are more like an Iridium flare than a comet. If only we could view our own lives as short as a shooting star- but in the grand scale, we occupy a far shorter fraction of time. Looking up, I see that there is no shooting star that is markedly better than another. Each brings a different type of joy, a different type of sweetness. But every one of them shines bright. Oh, so bright.

As my natural eyes wander from constellation, I also have a digital eye watching, ready to capture. 3 am and I stir from the chair, ready to set it up for some star trails. Because as the Earth turns, the fixed stars stand still, calmly pointing humanity forwards. Yet, we have the audacity to believe that we are fixed and they move. In a star trail, a time lapse is taken over the course of hours, and frame by frame, an outline emerges. It is a view that can only be gained with the progression of time. A capture of both time and space in one single compiled photo. It is beautiful. Some things cannot be seen in the moment; they take time to build and build, each step infinitesimally small but ultimately creating an incredible product. It’s been said that true genius is recognize potential in a seed, but I believe it is true wisdom to patiently nurture that seed into a great tree. Nothing can beat time- to heal, to mature, to grow.

All will come in due time.

The hour hand ticks past four, and a rustle emerges from the house. A bushy head of hair pops out the front door, squinting in the darkness. My dad, with his superb sleep schedule that better fits small islands in the Atlantic Ocean than Seattle, wakes up and checks on me. In another 10 minutes, he is bundled up too, coming out to this rare and beautiful night to gaze with me. We sit in silence, with interspersed oos and ahs as streaks pass by. There is no need for talk; enough is said in the silence. This is the man who has raised me, seen me through the good and the bad. No need for small talk here.

What more is to be said to someone who had heard it all? Leaving friends is sad; leaving family is impossible. No matter how much bickering will ever exist, their blood runs through my veins, hot and heavy. Wherever I go, their influence carried me along, making me think harder, push farther, and love deeper. My first teachers, counselors, and friends, my family is always here for me. And now I must leave them.

We stay up far later than we should, late enough to see the rising of a deep winter constellation in mid Fall. Orion rises from the East, chasing after those mystical creatures, on the eternal chase of the gods. His jeweled belt was the first I ever recognized, as a young and impressionable kid in Knoxville. That first memory, of finally looking up and just seeing it’s shape, has always stayed with me. There is not a sensation more powerful than the first time you feel the infinite vastness of the universe before your eyes, and here it comes again. This mythos had carried me far beyond my imagination. I give chase after their secrets, and in return, they provide infinite more questions to ponder.

But the rise of Orion is simultaneous with the rise of a star far better known. It is 5AM, and our sun starts to make its way up. There is much time before the orb of light and life peaks above the horizon, but already, it’s effects can be seen. The dimmest stars of Perseus and Auriga fade, so slowly that I doubt the integrity of my own eyes at first. But there is no stopping it. We do not doubt the rise of the sun for two reasons: it has risen a million times before, and that out science has shown the existence of a ball of fire that our little rock slowly revolves and rotates around. My educational training will bring me to more explanations of the latter variety, but I take solace in the former. This is how it has been done for millennia; this is how it will be done for millennia more.

The bleaching of the sky wipes the stars out one by one, slowly at first, then all at once until only the brightest remain. The night has ended with the might of the sun, but that’s alright too. A new day brings different challenges, not better or worse. Just different. There will always be another dusk to return to the memories of the night; there will always be another dawn to bring back light. Is my departure the sunset of one journey, or the sunrise of another? But that’s just semantics. My heart is at peace- and that is enough.

Just as I head in, one more flash surprises me. An ambitious shooting star has raced against the sun, and won. It was the longest streak I had seen all night- brilliant and proud, the meteor refuses to go quietly into the night. It will be seen; it will be!

This night etches itself into my memory with the sharpness of an Exacto knife. It cuts in with emotion and reality, commanding me to live life. All my reflections are in the skies above; all the heavens are mirrored in my thoughts. As long as there are stars in the sky and wonder in my heart, I will be fine.

I will live.
I will love.
I will reflect.

The Importance of Being Important

Sweat dominates the olfactory landscape, as a sea of young women and men crowd in front of ornamented organs and delicate decorations. Dressed in their Oxfords, these students have gathered to hear the president and the deans, the peak of Mount Academia, share and speak their thoughts to the new entering class. Naturally, pomp and tradition dominates the experience as the heavenly choir and majestic organ float through the wind. Commencement is here for the Yale Class of 2019.

Through President Salovey, Dean Halloway, Dean Muller and Master Near’s several articulate speeches, the vision of Yale’s future slowly solidifies. Their speeches touch on topics as soaring as the songs in the procession: issues of national and global importance, pleas of intellectual discussion and mindfulness, and a dedication towards leadership and service. With the particular focus around the naming of Calhoun College and the national discussion of race, there is no shortage of empathetic and logical calls to action. We have been selected to guide this country towards a better future, a better tomorrow.

Still, something bothers me. It was covered in Professor Gage’s address in the Freshman Commencement – the paradoxes of Yale. As she mentioned, there are three overt messages we often hear:

  1. You did not get in by mistake. You are special and unique and important.
  2. Noone else got in by mistake. Everyone around you is special and unique and important, and you need to work hard if you expect anything good.
  3. You are privileged. You are good. You are important.

Obviously, these first two messages can often cause confusion and unease within students. How are we able to study in a joyous setting when everyone is special? Would our delicate minds be able to handle not being the best, or would we immediately have nervous breakdowns? Of course, the solution to this is an appeal to our love for learning. Coming to Yale represents that we students are no longer bound to the rat race of education, such as is found in high school. Everyone can be a happy learner, absorbing the pinnacle of human knowledge in this exclusive, safe club.

However, it seems to me that it immediately implies several topics – that 1) people who are not fortunate enough to get into a top school are unable to appreciate the happiness of learning, 2) that people who were not able to enter college at all are thereby unable to prosper from the love of learning, and 3) that high school is not ultimately beneficial in any way towards the journey of learning, but is instead only a stepping stone for the next step.

I have a problem with those three corollaries, which I believe stems from one root cause: importance. We, as students, have arrived within the iron gates and Gothic halls, designed to provide grandeur and mysticism to the college we live in. Every branded item, from the small stickers to the lanyards to the large banners and posters, reminds us that you are here, that you made it. No matter what you do, it’ll be fine. As a senior CS student told me, it’s okay if you don’t do well in the academics, extracurriculars, or social life of the campus. You are already in. You already have the name. It’ll be fine.

But will it really?

I want to be happy in college, and for me, that means applying all of me to the brilliant classes and even more to the enormously kind friends I hope to make. I have no doubt that the majority of Yale feels the same way, that there is something more than a number or a diploma that makes up a human. We receive the education here and use it to improve the world.

A large portion of this stems from two sources – one, an excellent Yale Daily News article by Victoria Hall-Palerm on Importance in Yale, and another essay in Harper Magazine by William Deresiwicz on college and the market. Both have colored, or at the least, tinted, my perception of these welcome ceremonies. Like Deresiwicz, I’m jarred by the lack of “education” as one of the college’s foci, but perhaps that is so simple that the leadership need not to mention it? Or perhaps this is just further nervousness of how classes will look like, and how I will perhaps find my own bliss here.

The first day of classes have treated me well. Each seminar and discussion brought in new insights, just as I had always hoped. Perhaps prejudging the college on nothing but the merits of the opening processions is too empty. All I know is that I will be trying my hardest and doing my best.

The Start of Something New

College has started – that certainly is new, is it not? Yet, I’m in my dorm around 11pm, writing rather than “socializing” outdoors. What is up with that?

To preface this: I have two blog posts on the back burner, both of which have been stewing far too long, but I simply don’t have time to bang them out. Indeed, I can’t really figure out how to use this blog area either – is this professional? Is this for my own thoughts? Or is it a mixture of both? I’m not sure if I can really decide right now, but for the time being, I’m going to be trying out a bit of everything – just like I’m trying out a bit of everything at Yale.

I’ve been told that the first three weeks of Yale will be the most exciting, as it is the only time that I can go to random strangers and make introductions. Oddly, it seems that sharing names and hometowns only lasts for the 3.6 seconds it takes to speak the name. The wind whisks away the name as it’s spoken, and *poof*, it’s gone forever. What remains is small chit-chat about:

  1. Stereotypes about said hometown,
  2. Preorientation trips,
  3. College majors
  4. College extracurriculars

Perhaps the central issue of this is not silly differentials between “introvert/extrovert” or even intrinsic shyness, but instead, a fundamental problem of knowing myself. On the FOOT trip, I realized that I have a very strong positive quality that simultaneously serves as a handicap. Fitting into society is natural for me; being myself is not. Seemingly, I won’t enjoy fitting into this new society until I can become comfortable in my own skin.

It’s not that I have specific issues that I need to work out, but rather, I would more appreciate an alternative route to this rat race we are all going at right now. I’d say that my peers are all smart, but instead of realizing how silly this introduction culture is, we all happily play along. After all, even the Master of Silliman College here condones the practice – he published an article in the New York Times on this phenomena. Who am I to talk back to that?

Really, this is probably first day jitters. None of the first days are particularly helpful, or even particularly memorable. I can’t barely remember the first day of my internship, or of Interlake High School and any other educational program beforehand. The fact that I’m with other students who seem “well-adjusted” is probably just as delusional. I was walking with another friend this afternoon, and was calling out to some of my FOOT and SSP friends for some casual conversation. She noted that I knew so many people on campus, but I didn’t feel it at all. Perhaps the same people that I see are feeling similarly – appearing to know many people but not actually at the level of comfort yet?

A big problem seems to be that introduction conversations are much more focused on this speed-dating mindset, rather than a long and steady conversation. Because there are simply so many students, it is impossible to get to really know every person’s story. Instead, we freshman aim for a scattershot. If we get to know 100 people, at least 10 of them should turn out alright, right?

I’ll try to be changing myself just a bit more over the next week. After all, I’m still in Camp Yale – that beautiful time when I don’t have any coursework and can focus on the socialization. But perhaps, I’ll try to take it a bit slower, be a bit more reflective, and discover myself. It seems to be the start of something new, again.

 

Slamming the Brakes

It was a frenzied typing session yesterday, as I thanked all of my experience for preparing me to write thoughtful reports. The Image Processing program that I had been working on for the past three days was finally complete, and after the previous night’s roundtable discussion, everything was set in order. We had tested out some of the simpler ideas, hypothesized further conditions, and worked on increasing the accuracy of the current system. All we needed now were some additional test images, and we would be done!

I set out to make a composite document of everything that I had learned over the past three days, from the mathematics of the system, to the logic behind why this image processing algorithm worked, to the direct details of what this project could be used for in the future. The final result was a lengthy and complete 18-page report, with pictures, appendices and references. It was furious typing in a mostly empty office, clattering away to get all my thoughts on paper. With notes, textbooks, and code documents spread out around me, I was simply having a blast. As the day went on, we even had a chance to test the algorithm against some truly horrible images, and the results were astounding. Where there were nasty streaks all across the image, we were finally able to see a clear shape near the atom cloud.

But after finishing my project, everything suddenly started slowing down. The main thing that I’ve built up my knowledge around, the image processing algorithm, was complete! Essentially, I had programmed myself out of a job – or so I thought at first. But Yaxiong helped me find other people in the lab who I could speak with, namely another student who was working on Control Theory with a specific feedback loop that the lab was testing. So, just like the first day of my internship, I cleared off the junk on my desk, got the reference documents out along with a fresh page of notebook paper, and got cracking.

Control theory is a whole lot more difficult than image processing or even understanding the experiment, because instead of big picture ideas, you really need to become an expert in the mathematical models of how individual electrical components worked. For instance, I started off trying to figure out what an IGBT was, and then figuring out what a BT was, and then learning about how a transformer works (not the robot, although equally interesting) and then understanding the PID algorithm, and then … and then…

In specialized fields like Control Theory, everything seems like a rabbit hole – it is incredibly difficult to find a place to get started. Especially without a specialized teacher around, it was hard to just “dive in” to a textbook and really understand things. I did the best I could, and reminded myself repeatedly that I was primarily here at USTC to learn what life as a researcher is like. Being a programmer is rather exciting because you get to immediately test out the things you are working with. Being a theoretical researcher is harder because there isn’t an immediate feedback loop (hehe) for figuring out your own mistakes. It means having an iron will of discipline and a strong motivation to always be moving forwards.

I persisted, and around 9pm, I went over to the grad student and asked him a couple of the specific questions that I had about the PID system. I was confused because the textbook I was reading stated that the PID system had built in tuning software that could be used to minimize disturbances; couldn’t we just use those? His response helped reaffirm some of the knowledge I already knew – yes, the K_D could be very small because we had very small disturbances – but also gave me quite a surprise. The specific problem that he was working on did not really need any configuration of the PID variables at all – they were all already as precise as possible. He was instead working on another electrical component that could help raise the bandwidth of the system to reach higher precisions, which involved much more complicated arrangements of capacitors that neither he nor anyone else in the lab understood.

Again, I was a bit crushed. I spent so much time learning, and it looks like I wouldn’t be able to apply it! But reflecting now, I’m very glad that I was assigned to this project. It taught me something new within physics that I had never thought about, the feedback control for autonomous systems, and gave me an opportunity to explore electrical components on a level that I had never previously done before. Even though it was not immediate like with the programming project, it was an opportunity to discover something new. And I am happy for that.

Today, I believe that I will speak to Professor Zhao about learning something else – currently, the PID route seems dry as I don’t have the background to continue learning more. But in any case, the new day awaits – and regardless of what happens, it will be great :)

Round Table Discussions

A long wooden table rests in a small room inexplicably labeled as “tea room”, although there’s hardly a hot water dispenser in there. Scattered around it as haphazardly as the reflections of photons around an atom are graduate students, spread out in the half-lazy manner that they sit when there’s no teacher around. A skimpy VGA projector sits in the middle of the wooden table, projecting in 4:3 ratio to the screen just a few meters in front of it. And there was I, sweating profusely in the back, trying to explain my results to this collection of USTC students.

I wasn’t expecting to have anything to present three days into this internship, and honestly, I don’t think anyone else was expecting it either. After all, I am a high school student surrounded by graduate students, right? But I wouldn’t attribute finishing the 025ImageProcessingv3.0.py program to hard work alone. It was largely because of Yaxiong and Fan Laoshi that I was able to find an entryway into this problem in the first place. If Yaxiong hadn’t shown me the algorithm that he was planning on implementing, I would be most likely still mucking around with linear algebra right now anyways!

Yesterday was primarily polishing and testing the ImageProcessing program with large data sets, creating helper programs and functions that could process images faster and more efficiently. Trying to zap miniscule bugs was difficult work, especially given particularly crappy internet that couldn’t even look things up on StackExchange. (For instance, I was absolutely confuzzled by why python interpreted np.nan == np.nan to be False instead of True – it easily took 30 minutes of testing and waiting for the internet to work to discover np.isnan(np.nan) -> True) Afterwards, I created a lab report, using the exact same template as the SSP research group meetings, and called it a day. I felt like I had done all that I could, and contentedly set off to learn Control Theory.

But wait, there’s more!

First, control theory is hard. Really hard. The “essay” that I was reading was targeted at “Physics professionals and physics graduate students, although especially talented undergraduates could understand the basic concepts”. I started getting lost after the 6th page of the 60 page document, where the author moves from classical dynamical systems modeled with differential equations and using Laplacian Transforms to suddenly speaking of complex and chaotic systems that required multiple transformations to be solved. Too much for me!

Second, Yaxiong was able to create a great way of allowing the user to manually select several regions of the image, which allowed the image processing program to run better. However, that meant updating my report, which existed in the crappy internet-based ShareLatex, AND he then told me that typical reports require not a document, but instead, a clear presentation of all of the ideas. Which I did not have. And the meeting was in three hours, don’t forget to get dinner, and good luck!

Okay, it wasn’t as hurried as that, but I was definitely feeling the pressure. I was desperate to prove that I was competent for small tasks, and furiously set out to create a polished report. Using the knowledge that Dr. Hsu taught me back at the University of Washington regarding presentation, I created an image-intensive ppt that was able to explain the rationale and successes of the program. I’m still quite proud of what I’ve made!

Still, actually getting to the round table discussion was entirely a different monster to take care of. There were about 8 Chinese graduate students and 3 German graduate students from Heidelberg university, all of them experts in imaging and ultracold atoms. I was expecting the meeting to take maybe 10 minutes for me, and then move on to the next person who wanted to present, so I was planning on only providing simple explanations. But, lo and behold, the entire thing took a full 45 minutes to conclude, and then 20 more minutes to answer lingering questions and propose new designs. I was very worried that I was only wasting these student’s time, but Yaxiong helped save the presentation by presenting heavily on the mathematics. I think that I could have explained it as well, and I’m proud to say that I understood the discussion, but clearly Yaxiong deserved the lion’s share of the credit here. I’m still mostly a code-junkie, trying to diligently work out each of the knots in python, while Yaxiong was the one who discovered the original paper and had the idea to solve the algorithm in this fashion.

I’m still a bit exhausted from yesterday night, partially because of the ridiculous intensity of it all. For the past three days, my life has been sleep, work out, eat, code, eat, code, eat, code, sleep, rinse and repeat. Other than the meals, where I would chat with Yaxiong about life in China, there really aren’t other people for me to talk to. I don’t want to distract the graduate students here – the office really is deathly quiet, as everyone has their own giant project that they are trying to solve – and obviously there are not any other high school students around that I can hang out with. Even my Facebook friends are out of reach, simply because of the horrible horrible HORRIBLE internet here. So I guess you can say that I’m a little tired right now. But chatting with some friends back home in a glorious hour of internet last night helped rejuvenate me a bit, so I should be ready to face a completely new challenge today :)

A … Negative Result?

My dad told me that I should always seek to be the last person in the lab at night, to be working and burning the midnight oil. Unfortunately for me, I’m working with grad students here, who seem to need absolutely no sleep, not even coffee, because the projects are much more important and deserving of their attention. This results in…

An empty office...

An empty office in the morning…

... and a nice, clean cubical!

… and a nice, clean cubical!

But hey, I don’t blame them. Once you get in the zone, whether for programming or for physics calculations, it’s hard to pull yourself away. And once your sleeping pattern starts to get late, it is quite hard to pull it back! These days, I’m forcing myself to sleep early, at around 11pm. It’s a lot easier to fall asleep when there’s no wifi connection in your room! That being said, I’m also waking up much earlier – getting up around 6:30ish for a morning run in this muggy weather. Gotta get fit for this FOOT trip – 6 days in the wilderness won’t be easy.

My humble adobe!

My humble adobe!

Even though my dorm is rather peaceful, there’s nowhere better to do work than in the student office that I am in these days. This place is usually more quiet than a Swiss patent office, AND there is just Absolutely Terrible connections to Facebook and Gmail. Along with the fact that there is so much to be done, the opportunity and the motivation to procrastinate seems to almost have disappeared, albeit temporarily.

Yesterday was a furious coding session as I attempted to 1) relearn Python, 2) learn linear algebra, 3) learn image processing tricks, and 4) create a script for the lab to use. It turns out that even though I have extremely limited background knowledge, I’m still capable of quickly learning the main challenges and solutions to physics problems here, and can ask good questions while brainstorming solutions. If nothing else, I can also type rather quickly :) The coding session reminded me of something almost exactly a year ago, at the Summer Science Program where we also had to write an Orbital Determination program for our asteroid, 214088 (2004 JN13). Along with Joan and Hannah, we worked on that program for hours, perfecting each individual part until the whole thing ran smoothly (or at least somewhat smoothly… with quite a couple lingering bugs…) Now, I’m doing a similarly herculean task, but without the help and camaraderie of very good friends. It’s a little lonely, but I still get to talk to professors and graduate students during meal times, and the problems are definitely extremely interesting!

During the afternoon, I was typing furiously at my computer, trying to solve a bug with NumPy’s MaskedArray class, when Zhao Laoshi passed by my cubicle. He remarked that, perhaps in the essay he sent me, I didn’t fully understand Fast Fourier Transforms, so Control Theory may be a bit challenging for me. I sheepishly looked at him and admitted that I had not been working on the Control Theory aspect yesterday; instead, I was working on the project that Yaxiong had assigned me. But I was almost done with the Image Processing program and can read up on it this afternoon, maybe tomorrow! Zhao Laoshi was a bit confused, he said that he didn’t assign that project to me because he was worried it would take too long for me to complete. How are you close to being done with it already?

Just as I was feeling a bit proud at being a fast learner and diligent student, he asked me to explain the process of the algorithm that I was implementing. Having gone through it several times with Yaxiong and Fan Laoshi, I was fairly confident in my explanation, and had the sample images and comments in my code to prove it. But as I explained, the eyebrows on Zhao Laoshi’s face continued to rise up and up. “I’m just not sure if your algorithm works!” he exclaimed, and my heart sank. A solid 18 hours of coding, for nought? Was this simply a negative result?

Later on, as Yaxiong helped explain some of the complex linear algebra theory behind the image processing and as we discussed, it is still possible that the code works. We just need to test it and see if, experimentally, it really is good at cleaning noise. But even before then, I had decided on one thing. Even if all of this programming was ultimately useless, that would be fine too! I had gained so much from going through the process of learning Python (again) and discovering how graduate students approach complex problems. I broke down this initially ridiculous task (Yaxiong explained it to me as decomposing a vector into it’s basis states within n-dimensions, with each column having a length of 512×512, and then recombining the image) into small, doable steps and found methods that could really help me to learn.

Today, I’ll be working on fixing the final bugs in this code, and perhaps moving on to something else. Zhao Laoshi said that if everything goes fine, perhaps I could speak to the other 5 grad students about this image processing method along with Yaxiong – that would truly be very exciting. But there’s a lot more to do before then, so let’s get cracking!

A Very Small Fish in a Very Big Pond

The mugginess presses you down and wraps you up, like the blankets your mother used when you were sick. You didn’t want them, but hey, you don’t have much choice! Outside, the air tastes vaguely of sweat and ozone, of too many researchers bundled up together close to very, very carefully tuned instruments. This is the University of Science and Technology of China – Shanghai Institute for Advanced Studies Branch, and this is my home for the next two weeks.

IMG_0597

My new cubicle, and my ID badge lunch card (they don’t have ID badges here huehuehue)

I am so excited to be at USTC-SIAS (Such a mouthful!) for the next two weeks, working with professors and graduate students on quantum information and ultracold atoms! There’s such a large world of physics out there, and for the time being, I get to be a small cog in this large scientific apparatus. But when I say small, what I really mean is tiny. Speck-like. Miniscule. Microscopic. Unnoticeable. See, the Shanghai Institute for Advanced Studies is really a graduate school for the USTC, which is already China’s premier science/engineering school. Everyone here is in their second year of their PhD or above! My high school knowledge doesn’t even compare – perhaps the only thing I might be better at than some of these people is my English, but seeing that there are also exchange students from Germany and Canada, I doubt even that is true.

Still, I’m resolute to not let my limited knowledge restrict me from helping and learning. Luckily, through Interlake High School (and yes, the IB programme… ugh), I’m fairly adapt at researching and reading papers that are above my skill level, and slowly wrestling each topic into submission. So yesterday, I read a 200-page thesis by a MIT PhD student and proceeded to study Linear Algebra for 3 hours, just to get myself up to the baseline level required of even the lab grunts here.

Note that item number 1 is: Learn Linalg

Note that item number 1 is: Learn Linalg

It’s tough work, but so very enjoyable at the same time. I can truly understand what I am capable of when I am not able to keep up. I learn where my boundaries are, where my shortfallings are, and – very importantly – where my strengths lie.

Of course, I’m not alone here. How I got here is a story for another day, but right now, I’m working under Professor Zhao, a theorist and experimentalist working with ultracold atoms and mixing fermionic-bosonic atoms. (I haven’t signed a NDA or anything, but I suppose that the secrecy here is rather high, so I’ll leave out all of the details :D ) Working with me is Yaxiong Liu, a 2nd year PhD student who is brilliant and can speak English fairly well too. I’m sorry that he just got a High School student dumped on him to babysit, but I’m trying to learn to be competent ASAP!

Yesterday, after the lab tour, I essentially sat in the Graduate Student Office with 40 other students until 10pm, hacking away at gaining personal understanding and also on an algorithm program that I am working towards. These people here don’t really seem to sleep at night, working far later than any students I have seen in high school. But, as I’ve also learned in high school, late nights usually mean late mornings, and now I’m taking advantage of an empty office at 7AM to write this blog post :) I hope to be able to follow that pattern of early sleeping and early waking, so that I can have some time to reflect every morning of what I’ve learned and what I want to do. It’s a quiet and meditative time, something that I’ve really wanted to do for a while.

Better get started – the new day awaits!

Hello World!

It’s always exciting to start a new blog.

With the stroke of midnight, I have at last graduated from high school and entered the odd in-between period before formally entering college. It’s a time for reflection and for celebration, for creation and reinvention. This is the small sliver of time where there are no pressures, no outside forces, and no rules and restrictions.

When I was younger, I dreaded these long, sticky summers as I would always run out of activities to occupy the boredom. But nowadays, there are barely enough hours of sunlight to get half of what I want accomplished. I look forwards and there’s this large blank canvas for me to paint. Imagination, run wild and be free!

… blank spaces are quite scary.

While it’s typically easy to work on something that is established and familiar, creating something new always has twinges of growing pains and adolescent awkwardness associated with it. During this time of reflection, I’ve revisited the first blog posts I’ve written, read over the letter I sent myself from freshmen year, and saw the notes that I left my teachers through the ages. Each one made me cringe, but that’s a good thing. To see that my past is no longer good enough means that I am growing and maturing! One day, I will revisit upon these posts with embarrassment, but it’s a good feeling.

And with that in mind, Hello, World!

Muon TeXtbook

This is it.

This is the culmination of so many long, sleepless nights and hours of bussing to the University of Washington. I’m so excited to be releasing my Muon TeXtbook to the public today!

For those unfamiliar, I have been working with and researching Cosmic Ray Muons for the past year at the University of Washington, working under Dr. Shih-Chieh Hsu and Nicholas Dreyer, alongside Zhanpei Fang. Using the FermiLab QuarkNet equipment, I have researched many different aspects of the muons that emerge from cosmic events. After conducting some preliminary research, I decided that perhaps the best way to give back to the community would be to create a free and accessible resource for new high school students wanting to learn about this fascinating research.

So, please feel free to explore the below textbook and share it with your friends! I hope that you will gain a bit more of the love for science as I have experienced all this year.

Ding_Muon_TeXtbook_v2.0

A Collection of High School Papers

I’ve written quite a couple of essays and papers in my high school years. Under the tutelage of the International Baccalaureate programme, I’ve been guided through paper after paper of history, science, math, and english, as well as quite a couple of more interesting topics of my own choosing. Since I am now complete with high school and there could not possibly be any retribution for posting them, I’m releasing all of these papers on here, so that other students can perhaps use them as guidelines or for inspiration.

Note: I’m choosing to release these under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoCommercial-NoDeriv, which is the most restrictive license I could find. Basically, don’t be an idiot and plagiarize. Just try to learn something new!

EDIT: While you are here, why don’t you also check out a new project that I have started, an online Quantum Computing Journal Club? I would love to receive more correspondence and hear from your thoughts :) Feel free to contact me, about QCJC or about these below papers, at chunyang.ding (at) yale.edu.

Altruism Paper
Biology Presentation
Catalase Lab
Chem Clock Lab
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
ChunyangDing_RISEAct
ChunyangDing_StarryStarryNight
Coffee Filter Lab
Derivative Portfolio
DingChunyang_SSP_Paper
Flow Rate Lab
Foxes_and_Hares_Research_Paper
Gold Medal Portfolio
Gummy Bear Lab
Hamlet Essay
Heat Percent Yield Lab
Hero of Our Time Essay
Historical Investigation
History of the Americas 1 Essay
History of the Americas 2 Essay
History of the Americas 3 Essay
Hot Chocolate Lab
HSHSP Application
Jane Eyre Essay
Lacsap’s Fractions Portfolio
Math IA Paper – Portfolio
Medusa Play
Net Neutrality Act
On Authority CDF Paper
Origins of the Cold War Essay
Origins of World War I Essay
Origins of World War II Essay
Osmotic Potential Lab
Pendulum Lab
Physics Extended Essay
Pinochet Paper
Prime_Derivative_Research_Paper
Raspberry Pi Lesson Outlines
RISE Act
RSI Application
Simple Joy of Math Essay
SSP Application
SSPPaper001
Sunrise Portfolio
Teacher Interviews
The Scarlet Letter IOP Presentation
The Stranger Essay
Viscosity Lab
Your Inner Fish Essay

In total, this is somewhere around 1000 pages of typed pages. Not bad for a high school student!

ChunnysReview – Math HL Calc