SCIENCE GURUMountain View High School Science Magazine

Feb • Mar 2014The latest and hottest news about science from all around the world! We publish an issue every month; copies can be found in Dr. Thornburg’s room and issues are posted on our blog.

Editor-in-Chief: Kiana Nouri ⚛ Science Guru club meets every Friday at lunch in 120, Dr. Thornburg’s room

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10Science at the Winter OlympicsPratik Mulpury

Letter From the EditorThe Science of Getting Accepted to Your Top College: Part 1

Kiana Nouri

Why you should join Science Guru club?Hint: 1) You get accepted into a HPYSM early,2) You get early acceptance to Best Public University

in the World (Cal) 3) You get “Likely letter” from an IVY League

University!Most important of all: You will spread your passion of scientific knowledge

Kiana Nouri

Precision, Style, and a Strontium Atomic Clock

Jasmine Deng

College Review: Columbia UniversityKiana Nouri

The Las Vegas Consumer Electronics ShowKelyn WoodWingardium Leviosa!Jasmine DengMaking Stem Cells in 30 MinutesPratik Mulpury

Metabolic Compound Shown to Have Anti-Aging EffectsAvni Singhal

8 The Age of AsteroidsCarter Fox

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Supernova Alert!Carter Fox7What does MIT Physics Prof. Lewin & Miley Cyrus have in common?! Kiana Nouri

4 The Dark Future of the Universe: Death by IceOwen Noga

Have you ever been late to school or to an

important event be-cause your clock was a few minutes too slow? Have you been made fun of by your friends because your wrist-watch wasn’t classy enough?

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Science Guru wants you! Although we have had so many active members and contributors in our club and to our Maga-

zine and Blog, we are still recruiting. This cur-rent issue had an overflow of articles, we have had many freshmen and sophomores in the club and we are loosing 2 graduating seniors. So why are we recruiting more?

Continued page 11

“Can I please contact you in my senior year to get information on col-

lege applications?”Since I heard early accep-

tance from couple of my colleg-es, many non-senior members of Science Guru Club kept ask-ing me or sending me e-mails with the above query.

Continued page 2

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Then I started hearing the same from sophomores and juniors in my AP classes. Let me just tell you that being upperclassman has never made me superior to the lower classmen in my classes, but being able to share what I have learned in the last few years as far as college applications are concerned, makes me very proud. Why? First of all as a MVHS student, it would be my honor to have as many as possible students get accepted to top colleges in the upcoming years. MVHS is one of the best High schools in our area, California and U.S. and second, those who know me, are very well aware that I never boast about anything and I try to help anyone as much as possible. So it always makes me feel very good, when I can help anyone, espe-cially college apps. So I decided to write this article. Although it is not a science related article, still my experiences will help any sci-ence major. My other motivation for writing this article was to let many of you know that Science Guru had a lot with me to get ac-cepted to top colleges.

The most important factor in

getting prepared for college is to discover both your academic and non-academic passions early. It could be early high school, early middle school or elementary school. Believe it or not, I used to go to College information sessions, when I was in middle school and when I heard this line from College Admission people, I used to think this sentence is so clichéd. Today, I believe in it. If you love something, you are the most motivated to do it, you do not get tired of it, you will con-tinue to do it in college and your adult life. Do not do anything so that it looks good in college appli-cations, do it for the right reason, do it because you want to, not because you have to.

As many of you seniors have found out this year and as many of you non-seniors will find out, there are always things you do not know about this process, even if you are the most astute college application expert student.

For example, I never knew about “Rank” in high school until the summer before senior year. I had heard about it, but since MVHS transcripts never included it, I had no idea. MVHS does both Weighted GPA and

unweighted GPA ranking. For example all 4.0 GPA students are ranked first. But the weighted GPA rank can go even to a 5.0. The more honor and AP classes, the higher usually your GPA and hence your rank. At MVHS I al-ways took classes the I loved, I did not know about rank, and I took Orchestra, Peer Tutor, Teacher Aide, and Track & field, although all being non-honor and non-AP classes. When I was filling in my common- app in fall of senior year, I did not know my rank. I went to my counselor, asked him to write it for me on a piece of paper and never looked at it. Later on that day, I found out I was ranked 1st with highest weighted GPA between 435 MVHS seniors! Did I plan this? Not at all, my goal always was to get excellent grades while I learn and enjoy my learn-ing, passionately. Let me mention that starting next year, MVLA will not officially report rank to colleges, and that is excellent. Unfortunately, many IVY and top colleges still ask for Rank, and be-ing 1/435 did not hurt. But, even without rank, colleges looked at my weighted GPA and having an almost 4.9/4.0 weighted GPA, specially in the hardest years of

The Science of Getting Accepted to Your Top College: Part 1Letter From the Editor Kiana Nouri

Continued from page 1

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Letter From the Editor Kiana Nourihigh school (10-12), gives you an edge over other applicants. So yes, grades are the most important.

After grades, rigor of courses, what courses you have taken in the context of what courses your high school offers, matters greatly. University of California (UC) application does an excellent job of being connected to your high school’s course offerings.

Get yourself educated in col-lege app process. I attended local college information sessions by MIT, CalTech, Brown, Johns Hop-kins, Stanford, UCLA, Duke, Yale, and Cal (UC Berkeley) all during middle school. I just joined and listened to many web chat ses-sions. I learned from other stu-dents’ questions tremendously.

1. I took an MIT course Summer of junior year and I loved it. I had conversations with the professor and exchanged e-mails with her after the course as well. She gave me excellent advice. She was a female teach-ing an advanced math course and I became confident MIT could be one of my top choices. I later used my conversations with this professor and my ex-perience with the MIT course in my MIT application, and

I believe it was an important part of my application. Learn-ing so much from this class, I later made a monetary dona-tion to the department running these courses. Why? I felt this class and professor had made an impact on my future college decision and academic field.

2. UC Berkeley audio- web chat sessions live: I learned that my character and being a very good and caring human being is very important for them. I decided I would fit in perfectly. This was practically proven to me. I was one of 200 out of 60,000 invited applicants for prestigious Cal Regents Schol-arship, got early college accep-tance officially and was in-vited to meet one of my future professors. After our interesting conversation I was invited by him to become his intern in my 1st semester and later on he sent me more information and links about my academic inter-est and how Cal actually has an institute only in my intended field of interest. After meeting Cal Regent students and this professor, I became confident UC Berkeley is one of the best universities in the world, both

academically and personally. Cal is one of my top choices.

3. Art of Problem Solving college-chat live session by MIT: best math/engineering admission advice. MIT’s director of ad-mission personally conducted these sessions to recruit future MIT students.

The holistic admission ap-proach MIT admission uses was practically proven to me afterwards. ⚛

Kiana Nouri is the founder, presi-dent, and editor-in-chief of Science Guru Blog, Magazine, and Club. This issue of Science Guru is cre-ated, edited, and published by her.

Continued in next issues:Test Scores, Activities, Essays

Interviews, Early Acceptance, UC Regents

and Likely Letters

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Darkness. Our universe was created from what seemed like nothing, a tiny, infinitely dense point smaller than the smallest part of an atom. Then, 13.7 billion years ago, the universe literally inflated into existence, the Big

Bang. Space itself expanded even faster than light, because it is not subject to the same speed limitations on particles with mass. Galaxies took shape within a billion years. In one of these, a supernova would occur almost 9 billion years after the moment of creation. Part of its remaining debris would aid in the con-struction of a new solar system, one which would harbor 8 planets (I apologize for pluto advocates). Although the system faced much chaos in the first billion years of existence, life began to evolve on the third rock, 93 million miles from the central star. Finally, life became more complex, creating a young species with unlimited potential and curiosity, pondering where they came from, and what will become of them.

Although we have a fairly concrete understanding of how the universe began, we are yet to discover what is in store for us in the future. It may seem a daunting task to predict what will happen in the next decade, let alone millions, billions, or possibly trillions of years from now. However, our vast knowledge of how the universe works gives us many tools in predicting the future.

The most important factor to consider is a force known as dark energy. This mysterious force essentially works in the reverse of gravity, pushing space and matter apart, driving what we call the expansion of the universe. Many believe it could have provided the kick to jumpstart the big bang itself. This force in principle, will determine the age of the universe. It gives us three likely ways our universe could exist until its inevitable death.

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The Dark Future of the Universe: Death by Ice

This is Owen Noga’s first contribution to Science Guru.

Owen Noga

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In our first scenario, we as-sume this dark energy slowly weakens overtime. Eventually, it would allow gravity to gain the advantage, and in 20 billion years, according to the theory, the universe would reverse course, and contract. It would create enormous temperatures as all the galaxies collide, crunching their stars together. Finally, the uni-verse would collapse. All matter would then exist much as it was prior to the big bang, in a micro-scopic point.

This theory is often called The Big Crunch. It was a very widely accepted theory for many years. However measurements conducted over the past decade indicate the strength of dark energy is actually increasing, and the expansion of the universe is accelerating. This narrows us to two possibilities:

In the second scenario, dark energy steadily increases with time until it reaches a “tipping point”. This energy would become so great gravity would be over-powered, causing galaxies, stars, and planets to rip apart. We humans are bound by elec-tromagnetic forces, much stronger than gravity, but dark energy would over-power this force as well, killing all life (even if the earth still existed). This force would then become stronger than the

ultimate power, the strong nuclear force binding all atoms together. Essentially, everything in the uni-verse will be ripped apart, even atoms.

We like to call this theory The Big Rip. It is indeed the most gruesome end to the universe, but most astronomers agree it has little chance of taking place. This leaves one other scenario: The Big Freeze.

Just like the other theories, the big freeze is self explanatory. According to this model, the universe’s expansion will continue to increase, indefinitely, but never becoming strong enough to rip apart atoms. All stars would cease to shine in about 100 trillion years when almost all the hydrogen fuel necessary for nuclear fusion is used up. After the last star “dies”, our universe would enter a period called the degenerate era. At this age, the only objects would be the leftover “ashes” of stars called white dwarfs from star like the sun, neutron stars from stars that went supernova, and black holes from the most massive stars. These objects would manage to

hold makeshift galaxies together. White dwarfs would be most abundant because low mass stars are the most common in today’s universe. However, these objects would slowly be flung out of galaxies or consumed by black holes. Immense timescales in this era would make even 100 trillion years look like the blink of an eye. Black holes soon become the dominant power in most galax-ies that still exist. Even the white dwarfs and neutron stars that escape will decay over time. Thor-ough proton decay, all atoms will essentially fall apart in years.

We then enter the black hole era. Now all significantly mas-sive structures left in the universe are the mighty black holes. These objects “suck in” anything around them to grow. However, if there is no new material for them to swal-low, which will be the case, they evaporate through a phenomenon called hawking radiation. In sum-mary, they will evaporate away at incredibly slow rates. In a googol-plex years ( yrs), the most massive black holes will have evaporated.

The final era in our universe’s history would be the dark era. The uni-verse would be a truly cold, dark, desolate place, devoid of any-thing except for some scattered electrons and radiation in the huge void of space. Just as our universe rose out of the dark-ness, to the darkness it shall return. ⚛

The Dark Future of the Universe . . . Owen NogaContinued from previous page

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Columbia University is one of the world’s most important centers of research and at the same time a distinctive and distinguished learning envi-ronment for undergraduates and graduate students in many scholarly and

professional fields. The University is located in New York City and seeks to link its research and teaching to the vast resources in surrounding areas. Columbia attracts a diverse and international faculty and student body, to support research and teaching on global issues, and to create academic relationships with many countries and regions.

Columbia is one of the best Universities you can study science and Math, because of the quantity and quality of research opportunity availability for students starting in freshman year. What impressed me about the school is that, when I submitted my common Application for the Regular cycle but very early during the early cycle, the professors and graduate students sent me let-ters to mention what they are doing in their research and how interesting their research is. They pointed me to specific research being done currently and a detailed publication on the content and funding of each research starting fresh-man year in college. This was one of the best recruiting letters I had received from a college. They sold me just by sending me the booklet of current research projects in my field.

Second point you may not know about Columbia is that it has a core set of courses that is required to be taken but everyone, which is called CORE and it, is a combination of humanities and social sciences that are quite interesting. Many students complain about CORE, but delving more into content of these courses I became confident that they would be very useful.

Columbia’s student social life is in Manhattan area of city of New York, and since it is a quite expensive area, students end up living in the dorm for at least 4 years.

In case you did not know, our own president Obama attended Columbia. Other alumni are Warren Buffet whom I remember claimed that the school has one of the best business schools. Additionally President Clinton’s daughter Chelsea also attended the Master of Public Health program there. Columbia’s Medical school and the recent Institute of Data Science are some of the promi-nent parts of university.

Finally, Columbia is the largest Ivy League and has more than sixteen thou-sands students. The 75percentile Sat/ACT score for last year’s entering class was about 2300/35. If you are a research oriented science person, this place will be an academic heaven for you!

Continued next page

College Review: Columbia University

Kiana Nouri is the founder, president, and editor-in-chief of Science Guru Blog, Magazine, and Club. This issue of Science Guru is created, edited, and pub-lished by her.

Kiana Nouri

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Below is part of my Columbia’s Common App supplement appli-cation, hope it gives you an idea about this university and what it looks for in its student body:

List the books read for plea-sure that you enjoyed most in the past year. (150 words or less) Digital Fortress (Dan Brown), The Grand Design (Stephen Hawking), The signal and the noise (Nate Sil-ver), Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell)

List the films, concerts, shows, exhibits, lectures and other en-tertainments you enjoyed most in the past year. (150 words or less) Google Technovation Chal-lenge National Pitch event, The Hadoop Summit Exhibit in San Jose, The San Francisco Symphony (especially hearing Yundi Li play Chopin), the San Jose Earthquakes & Los Angeles Galaxy Soccer game at Stanford Stadium, Computer

History Museum, Palo Alto Cham-ber Orchestra at Stanford, the MIT Tech Fair (Techtalks, Hackathon), TedxStanford, Women 2.0 Silicon Valley, Lincoln (Movie), Free The Mind (Movie), Jobs (Movie)

Please tell us what you found meaningful about one of the above mentioned books, publications or cultural events. (300 words or less) “The future of humankind is dependent on Technovation girls,” announced well-known venture capitalist Ben Horowitz during the Technova-tion Challenge pitch event keynote. Sure he addressed a major chal-lenge our society faces—a gender imbalance in tech—but I couldn’t help but recognize the irony here: a male was talking about this imbal-ance. But that’s when it hit me – if there were more female VC’s, there would be more startup funding of

female-owned companies. Horow-itz later validated my idea: “On average, five people get educated because if you educate one girl, she will educate at least four other people through the course of her life. That’s just statistics.”

Through Technovation, an ap-plication development competition sponsored by Google and MIT, I took Horowitz’s approach to heart. As a female, I didn’t want to just educate four other people, I wanted to educate the 37% of high school students who don’t receive alcohol education. [. . .]

After building the prototype, creating a business plan, and pitch-ing it to venture capitalists, our application won first in California, third in nationals, and I was later interviewed by CNBC live. I see Intoxication Station as the first of many apps that will educate more than just four people. ⚛

Columbia University Kiana Nouri

This past January a supernova lit up the Cigar Galaxy, M82. Supernovae are so bright they can outshine an entire

galaxy. This image shows a before and after shot of the galaxy, clearly identifying the intensely bright explosion. ⚛

Supernova Alert! Carter Fox

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Asteroids are the left overs of the solar system, the remnants of plan-etesimals that could not endure the birth of the planets. When the sun first ignited it left a thick disk of dust and gas. These small particles of

dust clumped together to form little dust balls similar to dust bunnies under a bed. Electricity in the disk electrified this dust balls, forming hard pebbles. This meteorite, called Fukang was clearly built from these small pebbles. Small pebbles eventually collected to form rocks, growing and growing until the size of a massive boulder. This process, called accretion, continued until massive boulders had enough gravity to pull in nearby material, rather than gaining mass by random collisions. Planetesimals rapidly grew until several orbited the sun. This started a sort of cosmic stand off between the inner, rocky planets. They collided, smashing each other to smithereens or sticking together to create one large planet. Eventually, only the present inner planets of the solar system remained. Many of the leftover rock and dust accumulated to form the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter.

These prehistoric rocks may soon serve as stepping-stones to colonizing the galaxy. President Obama has set NASA a goal of sending a team of astronauts to an asteroid by 2025. This is a very intimidating task, but is underway and may lead to further colonization of the galaxy.

Continued next page

The Age of Asteroids

Carter has been an active mem-ber and a major article contribu-tor since we since he started at Mountain View High as a fresh-man. He has been in charge of PR and has recruited several new members to Science Guru.

Carter Fox

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To send astronauts to an asteroid NASA plans to send the Orion spacecraft to a near Earth asteroid about 7-10 meters across. The spacecraft will then hijack the asteroid by enclosing it in an enormous bag, as seen in the image. The spacecraft will proceed to tug the asteroid bag to Earth and place it in orbit around the Moon. NASA can then send astronauts to the spacecraft where they will drill samples in the rock by digging through small openings in the surface of the bag. Humans will be able to investigate the material of an ancient rock born in the formation of the planets. In addition, the asteroid may also turn into

the most profitable mining opera-tion in the solar system. Asteroids are rich in metals and may con-tain incredible deposits of gold,

iron, platinum, and other rare elements. These can be mined then transported back to Earth and sold in massive quantities.

Large deposits of unique metals in asteroids may soon lead to a new era in human history, the age of asteroids. Asteroids can serve as stepping-stones to other parts of the

galaxy. Humans could travel to an asteroid and set up factories using the metal deposits to build

new spacecrafts. The large volumes of water could be used to obtain oxygen for rocket fuel. A series of asteroid bases could be set up throughout solar systems, spreading the human race across the galaxy. ⚛

The Age of Asteroids Carter FoxContinued from previous page

Go to our Online Magazine science-guru18@blogspot.com and click on the below link to find out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ6_nOqtuLw

Just like me, many of you have watched MIT Physics professor, Prof. Lewin’s videos or at least heard about his famous fun physics teaching methods. Just search “Miley Cyrus, Prof Lewin and MIT” in YouTube and you will be laughing for hours! ⚛

What does MIT Physics Prof. Lewin Kiana Nouri & Miley Cyrus have in common?!

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Every year, a multitude of new products come out to make us look younger for longer, ranging from Botox to teeth whitening strips, but rarely is aging tackled at the cellular level. Researchers from the United States and

Australia led by David Sinclair recently found that a metabolic coenzyme that regulates electron transfer in cellular respiration, NAD+ (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide), could boost muscle function and reverse the effects of aging.

Aging normally involves senescence, the process of molecular and cell struc-ture changes disrupting metabolism over time and eventually leading to death. Muscles often become insulin resistant, so they can not take up the glucose they need for energy, causing elderly people to have reduced activity levels. This oc-curs because mitochondrial DNA, which is responsible for normal mitochondri-al function including generating ATP, stops interacting with the genes from the nucleus over time. The decreasing of NAD+ levels in older mice correlates with the decreased communication. By replenishing NAD+, scientists have been able to successfully reverse the aging of skeletal muscle in mice. Trials on two year old mice made them appear six months old. They experienced noticeable increases in muscle tone in under a week.

As explained by Harvard Medical School professor David Sinclair “The aging process we discovered is like a married couple. When they are young, they com-municate well, but over time, living in close quarters for many years, communi-cation breaks down. And just like a couple, restoring communication solved the problem.”

Human trials of NAD+ are expected to begin this year. According to scien-tists, if results are similar to those in mice, it will be like a sixty year old person having the fitness of a twenty year old person. In addition, because the chemical naturally exists in the body, side effects are expected to be minimal. Although treatments are expensive and conducting a study will require raising millions of dollars, the treatment could be revolutionary when it hits the market. This age reversal theory could help treat diseases like cancer, diabetes, and dementia. ⚛

Metabolic Compound Shown to Have Anti-Aging Effects

Avni has been an officer, active member, and article contributor since we started Science Guru and since she started at Mountain View High as a freshman. Currently she is Science Guru’s secretary.

Avni Singhal

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Mountain View High School is one of the best high schools in the nation, California and in Silicon Valley, especially in STEM fields. We have some of the best AP and Honor Science course curriculums. We just built a whole new Science wing with new classes, labs and technology. Most important of all, we have some of the best Science instructors, there is to have. Some of the Stanford University’s Science professors and PhD’s that I know and have worked with, are amazed by how high quality and hard our Physics and Chemistry advanced courses are.

Science Guru is Mountain View High School’s Science Magazine and we owe it to ourselves and our classmates and our community to make sure it con-tinues to get published with highest quality. Why? Because if you are a Science Guru, you want to spread scientific knowledge to others and if you want to be a scientist one day, spreading your science knowledge is your passion.

Here is a part of one of my short essays in my college applications About Science Guru. I got an e-mail from a College admission staff and was praised for this piece:

I’m a science guru; I stay up late watching PBS’s Nova instead of Friends and if it were possible, I would eat freeze-dried space food instead of mac & cheese. So, after reading “Mind-controlled Prosthetics,” an article that discussed how new bionic limbs mimic the human arm’s form, I spread the news. I created Science Guru, a science magazine and blog.

After distributing 1,550 copies around school, I never thought I would have seen the day. My peers were talking, excitedly, about articles I wrote – how Wnt pathways generate bad stem cells which might create supersized humans.

Although I’m only seventeen, I consider myself part of the scientific community. By creating Science Guru, I not only created another com-munity—one at my school—but also advanced science’s cardinal tenet – to spread knowledge. Now I just need to find freeze-dried mac & cheese!

Just e-mail us and join us: scienceguru18@gmail.com ⚛

Why you should join Science Guru club?

Kiana Nouri is the founder, president, and editor-in-chief of Science Guru Blog, Magazine, and Club. This issue of Science Guru is created, edited, and pub-lished by her.

Kiana Nouri Hint: 1) You get accepted into a HPYSM early,

2) You get early acceptance to Best Public University in the World (Cal) 3) You get “Likely letter” from an IVY League University!

Most important of all: You will spread your passion of scientific knowledge

Continued from page 1

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When one thinks of the Winter Olympics, the first thing that comes to mind definitely would be the eye-popping opening ceremony or the intense competition, not psychology, physics, or engineering. Unlike

many sporting events, there is an immense amount of science behind the winter olympics that I will cover in a few sections.

Happiness and the PodiumAlthough, this may come as a surprise to many people, bronze medalists tend to be more content than silver medalists. This is due to a fundamental sentiment in psychology, the actual achievements of a person matter less that how the person views the achievements. To put this in the context of something relateable, if you expected to fail a test and get a C, you would be more content than another student who expected to get an A on the same test and received a B. This is ex-plained by a concept in psychology that is called counterfactual thinking which involves the tendency of humans to create possible alternative situations to what actually happened. The medalists of events in the Winter Olympics each have different counterfactual thoughts that affect their state of mind after their event is over. On average, the gold medalist would feel positive due to the victory and would not have negative counterfactual thoughts as a result of their being a lack of alternative possibilities that are better than reality, while the silver medalist will focus on the fact that they almost won gold, and the bronze medalist would be glad as their counterfactual thoughts would be more focused on not even winning a medal by being fourth place and below.

Continued next page

Science at the Winter Olympics

Pratik has been an active member, and article contributor since we started Science Guru. Currently he is contributing to our task to put our on-line Magazines on iBook.

Pratik Mulpury

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The Engineering of The Half PipeOne of the most popular events in the Winter Olympics is the Half Pipe and it has led to the creation of many legends such as the American gold medalist Shaun White. Despite its simple appearance, there has been much effort by engineers to design the half pipe. At the Sochi Olympics, a 65 feet wide, 22 feet high, and 557 feet long half pipe has been constructed. This maximation of the radius (for which a height increase is necessary) is vital in order to allow for snowboarders to have a simpler time changing directions while traveling at high speeds. As snowboarders begin to change direction on the half pipe, they experience centripetal acceleration, which is acceleration that acts in a perpendicular direc-tion to the snowboarder due to the change of direction. In order to pull themselves up the turns snowboarders must carry their weight plus 2.5-2.75 times their weight due to the force. As the acceleration increases the amount of force exerted on the body of snowboarders increases. This is why the radius of the half-pipe is

a focal point for engineers. The larger the radius, the more the force caused by centripetal accel-eration is decreased. Due to this, the height and radius of the half pipe has been increasing in order to decrease the forces on the body of the snowboarders.

The Suits Of The OlympiansFor the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi Under Armour has claimed to have designed the most ad-vanced speed skating suits ever for the American speed skating team. These suits were designed with the intention of improving the aerodynamics of the athletes. One of the focal points that the engineers at Under Armour focused on was reducing friction. In order to accomplish this task,

a material called POSS is utilized in the suit to limit the friction created by limbs touching each other, due to it decreasing con-tact between two surfaces touch-ing each other as a result of the structure of POSS. Another major point of focus, was to reduce drag. Drag also known as air resistance refers to friction acting against an object moving through fluid such as air. The suits accomplish this by the inclusion of an unique slip-pery fabric that reduces air drag. The suit also incorporates small bumps and dips into the design as it was proven to be faster if air was disrupted by these. These suits have undergone extensive testing in wind tunnels as motion capture technology was used to create mannequins in common poses of speed skaters to use for testing. After using the wind tunnels, the engineers were able to determine the materials and design features necessary to maxi-mize performance while main-taining enough comfortability so athletes could use these suits for long periods of time. ⚛

Science at the Winter Olympics Pratik MulpuryContinued from previous page

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Well, never fear. We’ve all gone through similar situations (probably). And luckily for you, scientists have managed to create an atomic clock, the most pre-cise and classy clock yet – had this clock begun ticking when the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, it wouldn’t yet have gained or lost a single second. Over that span, a Swiss quartz watch would stray a couple thousand years, which would make you late for school for sure.

Humans have always been obsessed with time. Quite early on, there was the sundial, which inconveniently did not work at night or in cloudy weather. There was the water clock, the candle clock, the timestick, and the hourglass. Then came the more handy mechanical clocks in the 1300s and the pendulum clock invented in 1656. And now, we are dealing with atomic clocks, which are the most precise yet and what most of us use. (The Mayan calendar was fairly accurate as well, though wrong about the world ending in 2012. That’s a differ-ent topic, though.) With an atomic clock, you can time yourself to the precise nanosecond, picosecond, and yoctosecond.

Greater certainty in time is based on quantum mechanics. Einstein, in 1935, realized that, in theory, multiple particles, at first in a superposition state, could interact and maintain a strange connection once separated. If someone mea-sured one particle, they would be able to determine the properties of the others – and this connection holds true regardless of distance. Though it’s important to say that this is not the same thing as instantaneous messaging – instead, the

Continued next page

Precision, Style, and a Strontium Atomic Clock

Jasmine has been an officer and active member and article contributor since we started Science Guru. Currently she is Science Guru’s Community Coordinator.

Jasmine Deng

Continued from page 1

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measurement of one particle changes the universe in a way so that the other particle has a definite property to measure that it didn’t previously possess. This relationship was termed quantum entanglement. While nobody knows how what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance” works, this result can be used to consolidate pendulums.

The key to a good clock is a pendulum that oscillates at a con-stant rate – and we’ve found the perfect pendulum: atoms. Only discrete amounts of energy can cause an atom’s electron to jump between energy levels. Physicists have tuned lasers to shine with the exact energy amount to allow these energy jumps, and these in turn give rise to the consequent

microwave emission by the atom when the electron changes energy levels. There is also an electronic oscillator operating at microwave frequency, tuned in resonance with the frequency of the elec-tronic transition of, in this case, strontium. Time is derived from this frequency standard, mean-ing that the oscillator is used for frequency calibration of the clock.

The new strontium clocks, made by researcher Jun Ye, are more precise than the cesium clocks because the new clock uses shorter pendulum swings caused by visible-light lasers oscillating 430 trillion times a second and probes several thousand atoms rather than just one.

Using entanglement, though, atoms can act as one giant pen-dulum instead of many individ-ual pendulums, like the calcium atoms in Monz’s experiment. In 2011, an Austrian team including Thomas Monz entangled 14 cal-cium atoms. The result was that the 14 calcium atoms behaved like on mega-atom.

And using entanglement, we can go even further. Transmitting the visible-light signal from the new strontium clock is too dif-ficult, as it oscil-lates too quickly and there is no technology – yet – that is able to transmit it. But the more interest-ing idea proposed by Ye is to create

a network of entangled clocks that are also entangled with each other, another technology that is not possible – yet.

So luckily for you, the stron-tium clock can now have 430 tril-lion pendulum swings per second as opposed to the mere 9.2 billion pendulum swings per second in the cesium clock. If you get your hands on this, you’ll never be late again. If your friends keep mak-ing fun of you for your unstylish wristwatch, just whip out this beauty. (Of course, this is disre-garding the fact that the stron-tium clock needs to be kept as close to absolute zero as possible to still be precise. Also disregard-ing the fact that if you tried to wear the clock on your wrist, you would probably break your arm because it’s a wee bit heavy.)

And if you sleep in, all the strontium clocks in the world won’t be able to keep you from being late, in which case being able to time travel would be much more convenient. But you might need to content yourself with a strontium clock for now before that becomes possible. ⚛

Precision, Style, and a Strontium . . . Jasmine Deng

The basic principle of an atomic clock

Continued from previous page

Jun Ye’s strontium clock

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The electronics show in Las Vegas was a spectacular event, proof that humans can overcome almost any problem. From January 5th to January 9th this year, the coolest gadgets were on display for all to marvel at the

ingenuity in creating tomorrow’s world. The following gadgets were selected because they looked the coolest, and do not reflect everything that was shown at the show. Severla hundred products were exhibited. See the bottom of this article for websites to find additional awesome technology.

Ultra HD TV- the next generation of televisions is being born, with greater picture quality than ever before. New discs are also being worked on that will run in this class of television.

Virtual Reality Headset (Sony) Wearable HDTV/HMZ-T3W- this remark-able device places you in a virtual world, and moving your head up, down, etc. changes the view on the screen. Although it is reported that though light and confortable, assistance is required to get the headset on.

Stir- This company created a desk that prompts you to stand instead of just having you sit, which is bad for your health. After sitting for a while, the seat will move up an inch, telling you to stand. The desk then grows higher to ac-commodate you. The seat senses your presence via heat sensors installed in the chair. Settings will be changed from a screen in the desk itself.

3D Systems displayed their new ChefJet Pro, which created an array of beau-tiful sculptures made out of…melted sugar. The sugar is printed on the sheet, and then moistened so it bonds with the other granules to form a single solid. The printer also can print in chocolate.

Company Razer produced the new Nabu wristwatch that can play music and act as a health monitor, including pedometer, pulse, etc. Think iPod plus pe-dometer plus blood pressure monitor plus…

Thomas Serval created the Kolibree toothbrush, which tracks how well you brush your teeth, then sends the results to your smartphone. It is predicted that kids will spend more time playing games on the respective smartphone instead of learning how to brush their teeth.

Delphi Automotive PLC displayed a mostly driverless car. The prototype is a modified Tesla model S with an onboard computer. This computer navigates a map of the highway the car’s on, then moves inside the program. The results are transmitted to the wheel, gas, brakes, and clutch, thus driving the car. How-ever, this is only viable for highway travel, as stoplights are too complicated for

Continued next page

The Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show

Finally, Something in Vegas that is Fun for the Whole Family

Kelyn is a second-year member of Science Guru Club and a contributing writer to our magazine.

Kelyn Wood

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All other sources are from www.washingtonpost.com

a computer to figure out at this point. So, the system warns the driver when they will have to take over. The car is also equipped with technology that ensures it will not drift out of lanes or hit cars ahead of it.

Designer Amy Winters invented an all-purpose dress. Using fiber optics sewn into the material, the color of the dress can change when a button on the inside of the left sleeve is pressed. Or just spam the button for an interesting light show.

Taking painting into the

modern era, Rick Graham came up with the NomadBrush Flex, a stylus with small electric bristles (mimicking a paintbrush) that are sensed by the surface of an iPad. Now, it is possible to paint on your electronic devices without damaging them.

Liquid Image Apex goggles were a big hit. Essentially, they are large silver ski goggles that allow for pictures and video to be taken directly from the lenses. Though large, they are less bulky and unnaturally placed than GoPro cameras, which noticeably stick out from one’s head.

Acoustic Sheep came out with a new product called RunPhones. This invention is a headband like what one would wear while run-ning, but at the ear level, there are removable earphones, allowing for more efficient music listening while on the go.

Again, this list scratches the surface of the technology dis-played at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show. All of the prod-ucts featured in the show were exceptional, and hopefully tech-nology’s quality will continue to surprise us for years to come. ⚛

. . . Consumer Electronics Show Kelyn WoodContinued from previous page

NomadBrush Flex

Nabu wristband

www.techradar.com Delphi Automotive PLC

Sony virtual reality headset

LG ultra HDTV www.wtop.com ChefJet finished product

Color Changing Dress & Amy Winters

RunPhones

www.computerworld.com ChefJet oven

liquidimage apex HD camera goggles

Kolibree Toothbrush

www.usatoday.com Stir standing desk

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In the 21st century, we do not, unfortunately, have time machines or hovercars…yet. However, Jun Rekimoto has built a device that uses sound to levitate objects and, unlike many other machines that use sound to levitate

objects, Rekimoto’s machine is able to maneuver the object in all directions.Physicists before Rekimoto have been able to levitate millimeter-sized objects

by trapping them in the pockets of low pressure between the crest of one sound wave and the trough of another, a technique called acoustic levitation. But ma-neuvering these objects has been difficult. Jun Rekimoto and his team have gotten around this problem by setting up four arrays of speakers pointed at the center of a half-meter-wide chamber. They are able to move the object up and down, left and right, back and forth, by changing the intensity of waves in each array.

The team has been able to manipulate small things, such as feathers and alco-hol droplets, and eventually the technique could be used to remotely mix com-pounds to create pharmaceuticals without impurities.

Of course, this new technology may very well lead to hovercars and other inventions, but I doubt any of that will happen until we can start using Rekimo-to’s machine to levitate objects that are larger than a feather. ⚛

Wingardium Leviosa!

Jasmine has been an officer and active member and article contributor since we started Science Guru. Currently she is Science Guru’s Community Coordinator.

Jasmine Deng

A more complicated diagram explaining acoustic levitation

Jun Rekimoto’s machine for acoustic levitation

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Stem cell research, which has lately been a budding field in the world of medicine has recently made discoveries that may usher a new era of medi-cine, leading to the cure of devastating diseases such as Alzheimers and the

use of stem cells to regenerate damaged tissue in the body. Before I delve into this groundbreaking research, I must first discuss what a stem cell is and what it does.

Stem cells are the only type of cells in the body with the ability to differ-entiate into more specialized types of cells. All cells with specialized functions are generated from stem cells. Without stem cells, we cannot have specialized structures like the heart and blood cells that we learn about in biology class or any specialized structure at all. Due to this unique ability, stem cells have gotten an extreme amount of attention from a part of the medical community. There are many possible uses of stem cells such as learning how diseases occur and develop, replacing damaged and diseased cells with new and healthy cells, and the use of stem cells to test the effect of drugs on specific cells. The problem lies in the fact that only embryonic stem cells and reprogrammed adult cells are plu-ripotent, which means having the ability to turn into any type of cell. Sadly adult cells are not nearly as versatile and durable as the embryonic cells plus there are many setbacks that have been discovered while researching these adult cells that are reprogrammed into induced pluripotent stem cells. One of the most im-portant of these setbacks is carcinogenesis (the creation of cancer). This leaves embryonic cells as the most promising field of stem cell research, yet there are many ethical issues due to embryonic stem cells being obtained from early-stage embryos. This is considered by many to be unethical.

Continued next page

Making Stem Cells in 30 Minutes

Pratik has been an active member, and article contributor since we started Science Guru. Currently he is contributing to our task to put our on-line Magazines on iBook.

Pratik Mulpury

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This is where the importance of the discoveries by Haruto Obokata’s team at the Riken lab in Kobe, Japan lies. They have suc-cessfully showed they can trans-form mature white blood cells from newborn mice into cells that behave like stem cells. Moreover, Obokata and her team were able to do the same with brain, muscle, skin, bone marrow, lung and liver cells. This was done by stressing the cells by placing them in a mildly acidic solution with a pH of 5.5 for solely 30 min-utes. The creation of these

cells is called stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency also known as STAP. STAP cells are created when the body is put under stress and can form pla-cental tissue, which is something

that induced pluripotent cells and embryonic cells can not due. Furthermore, STAP cells can be created by almost all cell types.

This opens up many possibili-ties to future research such as the

creation of STAP cells to repair damaged and diseased body parts, or to study the mechanism by which STAP cells are cre-ated to learn how the age of cells is locked in. Also, it could make cloning remarkably easier and can replace embryonic cells in the field of regenerative medicine. ⚛

Making Stem Cells in 30 Minutes Pratik MulpuryContinued from previous page

On-line Blog: Scienceguru18.blogspot.comFrom the EditorDear Readers,

We hope you have enjoyed our February–March issue.Feel free to visit us online at scienceguru@blogspot.com or join our weekly club meetings every Friday at Lunch, room 120.

—Kiana Nouri

Science Guru Club Officers

Kiana NouriRohun Saxena

Varsha Suresh KumarJasmine DengAvni SinghalCarter Fox

Science Guru Club Members

Kelyn WoodPratik Mulpury

Owen Noga

AdvisorDr. Katie Thornburg

Mountain View High School3535 Truman Avenue,Mountain View, CA 94040

Officers and members of Science Guru Magazine, Blog and Club Left to right: Carter Fox, Pratik Mulpury, Varsha Suresh Kumar, Kelyn Wood, Kiana Nouri, Dr. Katie Thornburg (Faculty Advisor), Jasmine Deng, Avni Singhal, Rohun Saxena