The judging begins

Today was the first day of judging. For something so hyped up, they really weren't that bad! I had three today; some people had two (I'll have my fourth tomorrow, while others then have to have both of their last tomorrow). I'm personally glad I got the third one out of the way. Each room had three judges (for twelve in total), just asking you questions and talking science with you for fifteen minutes. They seemed to go by very quickly: I'm not sure how well they can differentiate between the forty of us based on these short interviews, but I'm sure more factors into it. The decision seems to be very meticulously made.

I felt that the sessions on the whole weren't too bad. Of course no one will know everything and I certainly didn't, but I think I reasoned most things out well enough. We'll see how it goes! There were a lot more questions on math/physics/astronomy than I expected, too. That certainly surprised me. I don't want to divulge too much of the questioning (some of which were unique, often based on your application, and some of which a few people got), but since Amber Hess did it, I guess it's OK if I discuss a few here. So here are some examples, for the curious:

• If you were the director of national energy policy, what would your energy policy be?
• What is a Type II supernova (based on the fact that one of my essays dealt with Type I supernovae, Type Ia in particular)?
• If you have a round table, and you play a game taking turns putting quarters on the table, where the loser is the one who is left with no room on the table to put a quarter (you can't move any), what is your winning strategy? Do you go first or second? How do you play?
• What is an ideal gas, why are gases not ideal, and which gases are the most ideal?
• How do stem cells work in patients?
• Why do you like U.S. history (based on that being one of my favorite subjects, as listed in the application)?
• Why is it possible/impossible for organisms based on silicon, instead of carbon, to exist? Why are we carbon-based lifeforms?
• What causes the tides? Where do high tides occur in relation to the moon's orbit? Why are there high tides on both the side of the Earth in relation to the moon?

So it was harrowing, and fairly intense, but an enjoyable series of discussions of science, social policy, and otherwise, and all three flew by really quickly.

Then there was a bit of downtime and finally, the alumni banquet. Right before dinner we had the guest alumnus speaker, Dr. Eric Lander of MIT (1st place, STS '77). He was fantastic. Before (and after) his talk, we got a bit of his history (first from the Science Service president, then from Dr. Lander himself). He actually did a math project--"Quasi-Perfect Numbers"--when he was at STS in 1977, went on to Princeton and got a bachelor's in math, then got a math Ph.D. from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He went to Harvard Business School to teach Managerial Economics and one day read some material on the brain that his brother Arthur, an STS finalist in 1978, sent him. His reading led him to genomics and he was fascinated. After a bit of a (well, a hugely major) career risk, he ended up helping to lead the Human Genome Project, with which he still works to this day.

So what is genomics? It's the study--as I'm sure many of you blog readers know (referring here to the prospective STSers of the future!)--of the human genome, coding and decoding it, figuring out what is where and what does what. So he gave a talk about his work with the project, the project's work, and its current discoveries and future goals. The research was very interesting and I think Dr. Lander can be seen as the quintessential example of career flexibility. It is extremely comforting to know that no matter how set you are on a path--as I am on astrophysics--even after getting a Ph.D. you can still do a complete 180 and still become a leading expert in the field (although not in every case--he said he became an expert because genomics was then so new, there were no experts!!).

After that we had a lovely dinner in a big fancy ballroom at the St. Regis--such a nice, formal dinner, in fact, that we were assigned tables. Yep. I got to sit with some other space people (Harley, Elyse, and Lucas), and some Intel bigwigs, plus Dr. Grant Stokes of MIT.

Now, this is really exciting. Dr. Stokes is the head of the LINEAR program at MIT, a near-Earth asteroid-tracing program that discovers something like 60% of all newly-discovered NEAs. So they have a program called the Ceres Connection which names the asteroids after various people of accomplishment--Einstein, Curie, etc. There are over 22,000 asteroids thus far discovered since Ceres in 1801, and since so many exist they are unique to astronomy in that they are among the few classes of objects where the discoverers still reserve the right to name them. The IAU--International Astronomical Union--makes the rules for naming astronomical objects, and the standard convention is to involve the coordinates in the name of an object, so that its name tells you where it is, hence fun, snappy, roll-off-the-tongue names like "2MASS 1615422+491029". However, solar system objects--particularly asteroids, that are very close to us and zip around the Sun very quickly--have very rapidly-changing coordinates in our sky, so the idea of naming an asteroid based on its coordinates makes sense for about three hours.

So, asteroid discoverers are given naming privileges, meaning LINEAR has a big stash of asteroids just waiting to be named (often for as long as 8 years). And guess who got their own asteroids--that's right--the 40 finalists (except those who already got one at ISEF, etc.)! Next time my mentor goes observing, she is so looking up asteroid 22551 Adamsolomon. It's about the coolest thing we've gotten all week :D

After that, the best part of the night--dessert. It included chocolate computers and a chocolate fountain. Yum!! Deeelish.

After that, I went out with Carmi, Shoshana, and Joe in search of a Starbucks. We located three within a block of the hotel--two within sight of each other--but none were open, so we walked back, where we met up with Sukrit and Eric. Somehow S. + V. got separated and the rest of us ended up in the lobby, where we had a big discussion on politics, religion, a tiny bit of science, etc. It was a really great thing, and the people are really becoming one of the best things about this week. Everyone is really great.

Now I am sitting in the "e-lounge" with Minh, who wanted to be mentioned.