User:Pramirez
From MariachiWiki
Biography
I am currently entering 11th grade and taking 3 AP courses along with 2 honors courses. I have maintained an average of over 97 since the start of 9th grade and am one of the top students in my class at Sachem High School East. I am a 1st degree black belt with a background in several different fighting styles including Tai Boxing [1]. During the fall school season, I am a member of the cross country team and I participate in Winter and Spring Track the rest of the year. During the summer I will be continuing my running and have begun a strenuous weight lifting program in addition to that. My aspiration in life is to become a meteorologist and I believe that working and leaning under Dr. Takai and the MARIACHI program will help not only give me a strong background in science, but also teach me how scientific research is conducted and performed. Some of my hobbies and interests include listening to music; mostly rock, alternative, and classic rock; playing video games such as halo and final fantasy, playing football and basketball with my friends, and also spending time with my grandparents, whom I dedicate this wiki page and my research to.
Contents |
Mariachi
The past week, June 25 through June 29th, I have participated in a week-long "camp" for a program known as MARIACHI [2]. The program involves the study and analysis of cosmic rays, their origin, and their effects on human life [3].
The First Day
Several presentations were given explaining some general background information on the topic of cosmic rays. At the conclusion of the day, we broke up into several groups that were assigned a variety of different topics involving cosmic rays. My group's topic was The Effect of Cosmic Rays on Global Weather [4].
On the 2nd day
We began with a number of different questions posted on post-its by students and teachers alike that were answered by the people running the "camp" such as Dr. Helio Takai [5] and Dr. Michael Marx. Afterward, the students were divided up into a another series of groups. The 3 different groups each went to the 3 different stations that were set up around the room. My group during the 1st station learned about radio signals and about a sophisticated mathematical program known as MATLAB. After lunch concluded, we went to the 2nd station where we watchedflo data being collected by a group of scintillators. We then proceeded to collect data of our own from a group of scintillators, however my group had trouble using excel and we found out that someone had accidentally moved one of the scintillators out of place and it ruined our data (sad, isn't it?) [6].
Wednesday
There were a variety of presentations set up at different stations. Some of these included a map showing the various scintillator locations around Long Island that MARIACHI uses to collect its data [7] and also a cloud chamber which used alcohol in order to cause ionzation near the bottom of a fish tank (my favorite!!!!!) [8]. It was really quite amazing and I must have starred at it for over 10 minutes straight!!! At around 11:45, a ribbon cutting ceremony was conducted in order to commemorate the official opening of the MARIACHI Lab. Several important figures were there such as 2 New York State Assemblymen and many other important people as well. After the ribbon was cut, everyone went outside for a Mexican Fiasco, I mean Fiesta, where there was so much delicious food and live entertainment by the group MARIACHI (go figure). After everyone filled their bellies, including myself (although I may have filled it a little too much) we went back inside to listen to an hour-long presentation on complete schemes for compute networking known as GRIDS, which I found very insightful and interesting [9]. Lastly, everyone split up back into the groups that were formed on Monday to research several key aspects of cosmic rays.
Summer Research Program
Over the summer, I will be participating in a research program under Dr. Takai and other physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory focusing on developing my, along with my two partners Jessica and Akshay, science research project to enter in early October for the Seimans Westinghouse competition. We will be building and setting up our cosmic ray detectors, correlating them with our electrometer, and then finally gathering and analyzing our results. The program will begin on July 9th and last until August 9th, 5 days a week.
First week and a half
Although I had hopes of beginning the program on time, I was unable to attend the summer research program until Thursday, July 19th because BNL my mom had to forward information to BNL that had gotten misplaced or lost and also partly because BNL was slow in sending back a conformation email allowing me to participate in the program. Actually, I was supposed to begin my first of the program on Wednesday but a severe thunderstorm produced large amounts of flooding all across Long Island...including BNL. That day I actually made it to BNL before the rain arrived but, because I had to receive an I.D. badge which took awhile, the storm arrived and caused lightning to hit the Badge building (which I was in at the time), a flood inside the badge building (which I was also in at the time), many roadways to become severely flooded, and my pool to nearly overflow. Not a fun time.
My First Day
On Thursday, I arrived a little too early so I waited for Akshay, and I thought Dr. V and Dr. Takai, to arrive. Finally, when Akshay arrived he informed me of how Dr. Takai was holding a MARIACHI workshop for teachers and how Dr. V was attending the workshop. So... first Akshay decided to show me around the Physics Department. He began with the room known as the high bay in which a great deal of our work and research will be conducted. After that, he took me to Dr. Takai's room where we can come to get supplies, conduct research, or use the computers if we needed. Since Dr. V and Dr. Takai weren't there that day, me and Akshay met with a technician named Mr. Warasila who aided us in using and testing the electrometer for about an hour and a half. At noon, we wnet to the cafe to have lunch where we met with Billy Marsiglia and talked. Then we went back, worked further with the electrometer and finally at 3:00 Akshay's dad took both of us home.
My First Week There
A lot of things got done during the first week I was here. Among them included creating a poker game called Hadron Hold'em. The game is very similar to Texas Hold'em, but instead is based on physics and trying to form the best particles from a variety of different quarks and leptons like muons, tau, charm, and strange. There is still much of the same gameplay in Hadron Hold'em as in Texas Hold'em including rounds of betting, bluffing, and so on and so forth. After a week of hard work, we, along with Dr. V and Helio, basically finished the game with us working on testing the game and typing up the rules, Dr. V coming up with new ideas, and Helio creating an awesome card deck to be used for the game. Finally, for our project, we continued to work on the circuit board and prepare for putting the salad bowls together.
Monday and Tuesday, the 30th and 31st
On Monday, me and Akshay, along with help from Helio, drilled holes in each of the salad bowls and then put screws into each of the holes, thereby holding together the two bowls. However, although the screws held the bowls together well, there still was a little gap between the bowls which could be a problem because it could lead to too much air getting inside the bowls along with water and things of that nature. Furthermore, I also soddered most of my circuit board together actually rather well... but also ended up burning myself on one of my fingers (ouch). Then on Tuesday Dr. V brought in some aluminum tape which we used to wrap around the gap between the two salad bowls and it worked out rather nicely. Afterwards, we did some testing of Akshay's completed circuit board with the salad bowls and at first it was unsuccessful. Soon enough however, Helio worked his magic and found out what the problem was... that the cord connected to one of the electrical outlets was too close to the salad bowls and therefore throwing off the reading, which I knew all along of course(?).
August 1-3
During the second half of the week, me and akshay continued work on both our project as well as hadron hold 'em. One of the physics teachers from our school, Mr. Erickson, as well as Helio suggested that we make some changes to the game such as adding a list of mesons and changing the meV/geV value of each of the cards. Although it made the game more similar to the complete physics of particles, it also created a much more complicated and confusing game that may make it hard to understand for first-timers and high school students.
