Whoo! I’m finally back from the California State Science Fair. [edit: It's taken me a long time to write this entry, so it's actually been 5 days since I got back. hehe] So many exciting things have happened, I can’t even begin to describe how fun it was. Good thing I have an entire album of pictures to help me.
Airport
This is Charles. :-)
The first people I got to know were the high school students sitting across from me at the airport gate. These were Charles, Adeline, and Boyuan. (10th, 11th, and 12th graders, respectively) Throughout my trip, I got to know them the most.
The plane is arriving!
When we arrived at the Los Angeles airport, we were nearly an hour late. The “exclusive” Prime Time shuttles weren’t there, and we spent a long time breathing smoggy, polluted air, waiting for the shuttles to come back.
Check-In
The shuttles took us to the USC dorm, where we checked in and dropped off our luggage. Then we grabbed our display boards, which arrived by car, and walked the four blocks across campus and Exposition Boulevard to the California ScienCenter.
The ScienCenter entrance was nicely decorated. Purple and pink stained skylights tinted the light and shone it onto suspended golden spheres, hanging in the air.
Relax!
After setting up my project, I bought an IMAX ticket for “Roar: Lions of the Kalahari.” The theater was huge! This is an attempt to take a picture of the IMAX theater seats, although it was too dark to see much.
At 5 PM that afternoon, we proceeded to listen to the Keynote Address at the Big Lab in the Annenburg Building. The wall was covered with mirrors! I say mirrors, because these were individually rotating mirrors. Zoom into the pictures above, and you’ll see many small squares. A fan blew on these mirrors, creating an effect that looked like rippling water.
The actual speech was pretty interesting, and talked about why people believe weird things, such as running on hot coals, psychics, acupuncture, dousing for water/marijuana/money/golf balls, and ridiculous junk science like that. It offered actual scientific reasons for why these may appear to work.
Dinner
After returning to the dorm lobby, we walked to the Sizzler across the street and had dinner there. I ordered a half chicken and the waitress was like, “Man, you sure be eatin’ a lot for such a little guy!” But I ate it all. [yawn] Joyce said that “that deserves a picture!”
Night at the Dorm
When we got back to the dorms, I played through the first level of Halo on Normal difficulty with Charles and Boyuan. I was glad I still had the disc image on my hard drive. Then I got ready for bed and tried to sleep, but my roommates (ahem) were busy talking. So I decided to take these pictures. Random, huh?
Continue reading Day Two!
awesome! ive been to that museum (the sciencenter)