I love that William and I have completely embraced our nerdiness. Tonight we went to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair to see some of the projects done by high school students around the world. William, the brilliant genius that he is, actually WON the entire competition back in 1996 with "Making an Octet Library to Quicken DNA Sequencing." Here is he with his award winning presentation. Since the competition was being held in San Jose this year, William was able to volunteer his time to represent Google for a few hours on Monday. He took an hour to go see some of the presentations but that was no where near enough time so he brought me back tonight- Thursday night- since it was the day the public could visit. We were there for an hour and a half and we probably only saw less than 1/5th of the posters. None of the presenters were there for us to ask questions or see demos, which would have been super cool in some instances. We really wanted to see the robot who could solve a scrambled rubix cube in 45 seconds, a laptop that uses and stores power from when you type (GENIUS), and an electronic that floats on top of a water (like a water skeeter). We also learned that there are over 20 possible cures for cancers and that it is out of control how much access these kids have to high end technologies. Several of them were able to work with stem cells and MRIs- I definitely didn't have these opportunities when I was in high school! They have also upgraded the quality of the presentations- several had huge poster size professional banners that must have cost at least several hundred dollars to produce. One student had the brilliant idea of incorporating digital picture frames into the poster so that it would cycle through the findings so that they were easily readable from a distance. It was so interesting to see what projects are capturing the attention of high school students. The Google area was super cool too- they had one of the street view cars, a microwave where William melted CDs to show the power meter in terms of real time energy use (I think he just really enjoyed experimenting with non-traditional items :-), and the holladeck (a nearly 360 degree view of Google Earth in 3D). Yes, these are the types of things that we enjoy doing as a date :-) We love being nerds!! We like to think of ourselves as "cool nerds" though :-)
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Nerd Night Out
I love that William and I have completely embraced our nerdiness. Tonight we went to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair to see some of the projects done by high school students around the world. William, the brilliant genius that he is, actually WON the entire competition back in 1996 with "Making an Octet Library to Quicken DNA Sequencing." Here is he with his award winning presentation. Since the competition was being held in San Jose this year, William was able to volunteer his time to represent Google for a few hours on Monday. He took an hour to go see some of the presentations but that was no where near enough time so he brought me back tonight- Thursday night- since it was the day the public could visit. We were there for an hour and a half and we probably only saw less than 1/5th of the posters. None of the presenters were there for us to ask questions or see demos, which would have been super cool in some instances. We really wanted to see the robot who could solve a scrambled rubix cube in 45 seconds, a laptop that uses and stores power from when you type (GENIUS), and an electronic that floats on top of a water (like a water skeeter). We also learned that there are over 20 possible cures for cancers and that it is out of control how much access these kids have to high end technologies. Several of them were able to work with stem cells and MRIs- I definitely didn't have these opportunities when I was in high school! They have also upgraded the quality of the presentations- several had huge poster size professional banners that must have cost at least several hundred dollars to produce. One student had the brilliant idea of incorporating digital picture frames into the poster so that it would cycle through the findings so that they were easily readable from a distance. It was so interesting to see what projects are capturing the attention of high school students. The Google area was super cool too- they had one of the street view cars, a microwave where William melted CDs to show the power meter in terms of real time energy use (I think he just really enjoyed experimenting with non-traditional items :-), and the holladeck (a nearly 360 degree view of Google Earth in 3D). Yes, these are the types of things that we enjoy doing as a date :-) We love being nerds!! We like to think of ourselves as "cool nerds" though :-)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Definitely the coolest nerds I know!
Girl, nerds have more fun! I thought we established that in high school. At our house, we prefer the term geek though. :)
I think that is definately the best thing about marriage.....letting your nerdiness hang out! "Cool" is for people who don't have any fun!
awesome!
one of my students went to that--he placed 4th! I was so proud of him---and his "nerdiness". Nerdiness earned him a $50,000 scholarship!
Post a Comment