In which the 21st century proves not as exciting as anticipated

You may remember a previous post in which I waxed enthusiastic about our new online registration system. While I still think getting the program launched in the first place is a major coup for an office without any technical support, there have been a few -- how shall I say it -- blips as we adjust to the new system, particularly the online booking for off-campus interviews. Like, say, an entire day of New Jersey interviews appearing fully booked when in fact vacant. Or the fact that you can spend ten minutes entering all your personal information into the computer, only to discover that the day of interviews you wanted is fully booked, and if you select a different day, you'll have to enter all of that same information again. Aggravating.

The one thing that hasn't changed is that in the more popular cities -- Denver, San Diego, Seattle, Washington DC -- the interviews, no matter how many we offer, book next to instantly and result in a lot of frustrated phone calls and e-mails. We've had to stop doing counselor interviews altogether in San Francisco, because even sixty interview slots still yielded a waitlist of forty.

In other news, I depart tomorrow for my home state of New Jersey, for a whirlwind four-day-seven-school-visit-sixteen-interview-and-hopefully-time-for-a-load-of-laundry visit, and thence directly to Minnesota, for which I am packing an umbrella, fleece scarf, and sunglasses, because the ten-day forecast shows everything from highs of 71 to lows of freezing, and how am I supposed to dress for that? Still, despite the suitcase quandary, I'm eager to go see some autumn, because we just don't have that season here in SoCal. Minneapolis, I am counting on you for some pretty fall leaves and pumpkin spice lattes.

Coming up soon

HMC is sponsoring Out To Innovate, a one-day conference for LGBT students, faculty, and professionals in the STEM fields. The conference will be held on the USC campus on October 9. You can attend as a high school student, and there's even a special section in the poster conference for high school entries. If you're interested, you can register online.

Trip #1 Complete

Well, young people, I've successfully returned from the first of my fall travels. I went to the East Bay and Marin for three days, racked up a few Southwest points, and spent a lot of time lost. I took some notes for a future "day in the life" post, but for now, here's a quick synopsis of the trip.

Miles driven: 303
High schools visited: 13
Students met: 58 (go East Bay!)
Caffeinated beverages: 5
# of times lost: 7
# of times awake before 6 am: 2

I met some great students (so many I actually ran out of publications on my last visit), reconnected with a few favorite counselors, stayed in a great Pleasant Hill hotel (they stocked the room with Twinings tea! be still my heart!), and remembered that I hate traveling during NPR's fall fundraising drive. And I'm back. In one piece. And happy to have a two-mile commute for the next few days.

In which HMC students are perceived to be frauds

Nathan Jones '10 (now a second lieutenant in the US Army) spent his summer making a video for the Career Services Office. I just saw it for the first time and most of the six minutes in gleeful snickers. Seriously, you must watch it, if only for the reference to "CalMITech." Nate, if the Army thing doesn't work out, I think you could have a brilliant career as an investigative reporter for the Daily Show.

PS You can watch other Mudd videos at the HMC YouTube Channel.

In which we enter the 21st century

After many months of prep and planning, our online event signup system is now fully functional! You can register for tours, interviews, and campus programs without having to wait for normal business hours. A lot of colleges do this already, so you might be wondering, what's so special?

Well, my friends, I will tell you. Those other colleges of which you speak -- they have tech support. People specifically dedicated to the setup and maintenance of all relevant computer programs. We don't. We did it all ourselves. And by "we" I mean "Raissa," a biology major who had to teach herself everything about programming 422 from scratch. So to finally have the event manager system up and running is a really big deal for us.

You can see the results of Raissa's handiwork at http://em.422x.com/hmc. Please feel free to praise extravagantly.

Building a solar cell from white paint and berries: a tutorial

When chemistry professor Hal Van Ryswyk invited the admission staff to test out the new first-year chem lab, we jumped at the opportunity. I mean -- solar cells from paint and berries? It didn't seem possible. And a chance to wear these stylish goggles again? Ah, high school flashbacks.




Unlike most actual labs at Mudd, Prof. Van Ryswyk had absolutely everything set up for us and guided us through the entire process step-by-step (normally we encourage students to actually read the directions). And since some of Prof. Van Ryswyk's research involves creating low-cost photovoltaics, this was a good introduction to how chemists are trying to save the planet. Here's the how-to, much of which is taken verbatim from the frosh chem lab handout:



1) Grind about .5 grams of nanocrystalline titanium dioxide (found in white paint).

2) Tape off three sides of a small piece of conductive glass, then spread on a thin layer of the nanocrystalline titanium dioxide. After the paint dries, pull off the tape, and place paint side up on an extremely toasty hot plate for twenty minutes. (You can see the hot plate in the foreground of the picture below.)

3) Heat a second piece of tin oxide glass, conducting side down, over a candle flame to coat the conducting side with carbon. (Tongs are very important for this step!) After the glass cools, wipe off three of the edges with a q-tip, trying to keep the shape similar to the paint on the other piece of glass.

4) Grind the berries of your choice! Thyra and I used bing cherries, Peter used raspberries, and Raissa used blackberries. Later, in the grand reveal, I'll tell you which worked best.

5) Staring helps the nanoparticles sinter faster.

6) Assemble your two glass plates into a sandwich with coated sides together, but offset so that uncoated glass extends beyond the sandwich. Attach with binder clips. It's nice to do this step with a professor, so that when you screw it up, as most of us did, he can fix your sandwich for you. Add a few drops of a triiodide solution to the edge of the plate.

7) Connect a multimeter using an alligator clip to each plate. Turn on the overhead projector.

8) Watch the computer measure the current and voltage produced by the solar cell. Have Prof. Van Ryswyk do the math calculations for you to find the overall efficiency of your cell. First-years, sorry, you have to do the math yourselves. Bring a calculator!

The big winner? Blackberries! Raissa's blackberries far outperformed the bing cherries (not your best bet for photovoltaics) and moderately outperformed the raspberries. In fact, Raissa's blackberry cell set a Mudd record and Prof. Van Ryswyk printed out an extra copy of the results for his lab. Go Raissa! Go blackberries! Antioxidants and photovoltaic potential all in one delicious package!

Research with a side of sushi

Yesterday I went to the summer research poster conference here on Mudd's campus. Most Mudders make an appearance at the conference -- not surprising when you figure that nearly half the student body had a poster in the conference. And in addition, there was food, and the students were enthusiastically applying themselves to the raspberry cheesecake and the chicken cornucopias. Even a safe distance away from the sushi table, the conference was packed, so I didn't get a good glimpse of every poster, but a few that looked interesting were Development of an Aquatic Robot, Optimization of Renewable Energy, and Social Science Games. And like a dutiful blogger, I snagged a couple of photos.



This is Tselil standing in front of "Adventures in Coevolution with Jane." (You can see Anak, another student involved with this project, standing second from the left.) This was a crossover project using computers to compare evolutionary trees of different species with symbiotic relationships, to see if the species may have evolved together. I hope I got that right. The project has a website, so you can check my synopsis if you'd like. Even though the project certainly has biology overtones, Anak is a computer science major and Tselil is doing a joint major in math & CS, which is one of the cool things about Mudd -- because of the Core, students have opportunities to do projects that don't fit neatly into one discipline.

Please note the specially designed lizard catching pole being demonstrated in this photograph.

Speaking of crossover projects, here is Johnson Qu (far left), an engineer, talking about his biology summer research with Prof. Steve Adolph. I've mentioned lizards and Johnson a time or two on this blog already, but hey, I really like both of them. The team was using equipment from Prof. Nancy Lape's engineering lab, trying to figure out what it is about the composition of particular types of reptile eggs that allows them to expand to up to three times their original size.

The research posters were all very interesting, but seriously, those chicken cornucopias were delicious.