UW Update Monday 5/4/15

1.     UW Update Monday 5/4/15

a.     Woke at 9:10. Dressed quickly and headed down to physics. Quantum review.

b.     Linear midterm. A time crunch, as anticipated. I think I got a little flustered, but I did pretty well shifting back into normal mode afterwards—a few minutes of reading Diaspora in the CSE atrium did the trick.

c.      Met Troy, headed down to lunchbox. The professor was a biophysicist. He was interesting, but didn’t discuss his main research topic because he didn’t want to spoil the colloquium (which few lunchbox regulars attend). Fun fact: A cell in an embryo determines what distance it is from one end (and thus whether to become a neck, head, torso, etc) based on chemicals diffusing from the end placed there by the womb machinery. The chemicals break down at a known rate, so by the ratio of broken-down molecules to whole ones the cell determines the time, and the time, plus the total concentration of molecules, yields the distance from the chemical origin (because concentration falls off with distance but increases with time).

d.     Went to 311. Proofs using “Strong Induction”, where we assume a statement is true for all integers j: 0 <= j <= n for arbitrary integer n, prove the statement is true for n + 1; this, plus the base case that the statement is true for n = 0, implies that the statement is true for all n >= 0. This in contrast to normal induction, where we only assume the statement is true for n and prove n + 1. As the name implies, strong induction gives you more to work with and is thus potentially more powerful.

e.     Talked with Irena, Johan and Katie. Returned to Haggett.

f.      Did some physics hw, then went to physics colloquium, because the lunchbox professor had been holding out on me J. It was interesting—he was trying to come up with a plausible theory of statistical mechanics/”thermodynamics” for a system of “active” particles that brought energy of their own to the table, like bacteria trying to assemble into larger groups.

g.     Returned to Haggett. Signed into Google Hangouts for an orientation to Ayush’s distributed tutoring system, ACED. I liked Ayush’s partner Justin who led the orientation. Ayush managed to sign up almost 30 tutors(!), now all he needs is users. He’s planning one big advertisement push with the launch in a few days.

h.     Walked to Denny with my basketball, but ended up getting into a game of sand volleyball! Very laid back, which was good, ‘cuz it took a while for me to warm up.

i.       Walked to the 8, ordered a calzone. Read. Picked up my calzone and ate it in the lounge. Skyped with Mom and Dad for a while. Did a lot of physics homework and honed my Mathematica skillz.

j.       Emailed Ayush with mug shot, schedule for ACED.

k.     Wrote this log and went to bed.