NEWS FROM COSMOS-UCI, WEEK 1

INTRODUCING COSMOS 2008 FACULTY
Twenty UCI faculty members have designed courses especially for COSMOS students. We welcome faculty from Chapman University, Cal State Fullerton, and Cerritos College as well. UCI Faculty and Scientists: Drs. Kenneth Mease, Faryar Jabbari, Gamero-Castano, Villac, Dunn-Rankin, (Airplanes/Engineering of Flight); Drs. Tammy Smecker-Hane and James Bullock (Astronomy/Physics); Drs. Lowengrub and Mumm (Crystal Growth/Mathematical Modeling and Materials Science); Drs. Stanley Tyler and Peter Bryant (Environmental Sciences); Drs. Arvo and Frey (Mathematical Puzzles & Games); Mr. Jim Simmons and Mr. John Crooks (Mathematics of Music); Drs. Engesser-Cesar and Belcher (Neuroscience); Dr. Potma, Lead, with Drs. Apkarian, Mukamel, Ho, Collins, Mills and Ge (World of Molecules/Chemistry at Nano-scale). Bios appear in the COSMOS handbook, online.

COSMOS: Our passion is science, engineering, math, technology -- STEM! Our vision is to bring these broad fields into focus and show their interrelationships.
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TEACHER FELLOWS
High school science and math teachers are an integral part of the COSMOS teaching team.  Each cluster benefits from the expertise of teachers whose strength in the subject area, as well as leadership at their respective schools, ensures that students master essential concepts for their success in the program.  The fellowships are supported by private donors. The 2008 Teacher Fellows are:

  • Cluster 1: Ms. Roberta Johnson, Masters of Physics, Cal State Long Beach;
    Long Beach Unified School District
  • Cluster 2: Mr. Sean Fletcher, Bachelor's Degree, Cal State Long Beach; Laguna Hills High School
  • Cluster 3:  Ms. Phuong Vo, Bachelor's Degree, Cal State Fullerton; Century High School
  • Cluster 4: Ms. Erin Arredondo, Master's of Education, Pepperdine University; Northwood High School
  • Cluster 5: Ms. Chi Tran, Master's in Teaching, UC Irvine; Saddleback High School
  • Cluster 6: Ms. Ania Briscoe, Master's of Arts in Music, Academy of Music, Krakow, Poland; Saddleback High School
  • Cluster 7: Ms. Lisa Fox, Master's in Education, Alliant International University; Northwood High School
  • Cluster 8: Dr. Paul Fan, Doctorate in Biological Chemistry, University of Michigan; Woodbridge High School

Be Famous. Always Wear Your Name Tag!
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SPECIAL GUEST PRESENTATION
“Here’s a friendly zero. I like zeroes.” This is just one of the captivating phrases used by this week’s special guest, who has presented all over the world, most recently in Australia, Brussels, and Japan. Each Wednesday afternoon we have an all-COSMOS special presentation. For Week 1, our tradition has been the Mathemagics presentation by Dr. Arthur Benjamin, Professor of Mathematics, Harvey Mudd College, has dazzled COSMOS students with his rapid mental calculation abilities since our first program nine years ago. His Mathemagics is an amazing display of mathematics and magic, hence his unique performance. Dr. Benjamin shared his math wizardry through a variety of mind-bending operations, including square roots and the magic square. His feats of mental math ability were much appreciated and enthusiastically enjoyed by all. He demonstrated (and shares the secrets of) rapid mental calculation and took many questions from the students. He told students, “I do all multiplying in my head from left to right - the opposite of what you’re taught in school.” He adds, “By doing it from left to right, you can start your answer while you’re still calculating.” He told students, “I love games, especially probability and combinatorics, that’s how I got started in math.”

Dr. Benjamin earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University. He is co-author of several books on teaching mathematics and is the inventor of the Mathematics course in rapid mental calculation. His latest book is “The Secrets of Mental Math.” He invited students to consider applying to Harvey Mudd College. “I’ll be one of your math professors, which can be pretty good or pretty scary, depending on how fast you like your math.” For his grand finale, he squared a five-digit number that the students created. Learn more at hmc.edu.
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COMMUNITY LIFE/SOCIAL ACTIVITIES
Welcome to COSMOS! Each week has a theme with related activities -- for Week 1 it’s welcome week, of course. Students arrived Sunday, June 29, and moved into the dorms. Men’s dorms are Whispering Wood and Woodhall; Girls dorms are Balin and Harowdale. All are part of Middle Earth Housing, named for mythical & memorable places in The Hobbitt & Lord of the Rings trilogy. Introductions and orientation as well as outdoor activities (including and old favorite, Steal the Bacon played under the bright lights of the outdoor basketball court) rounded out the evening. Monday’s first day of classes got under way and soon everyone seemed to know everyone else. Students are quickly making friends and finding their comfort level. Monday evening students were in the COSMOS computer lab, outfitted with iMacs, on the green playing “human” Rock, Paper, Scissors, and trying their hand at ping pong, billiards and foosball in the Brandywine game room. They also enjoyed the “trust walk,” in which one student leads another (eyes closed!) around the housing quad -- building trust and bonding among students. Sports, board games, videos, and crafts are options for students in the evenings, as well as quiet time for class preparation. The Resident Advisors offer no shortage of opportunities for social interaction. On Tuesday night, it was movie charades in the park.

Take me out to the Ball Game. Students remaining on campus for the holiday weekend enjoyed a double treat: a 4th of July carnival, complete with red, white & blue banners, and a rousing baseball game at Angels' Stadium. Carnival games included old-fashioned bobbing for apples. Outdoor movies rounded out the day. At the ball game Saturday evening everyone wore their yellow COSMOS t-shirts and rooted for the home team. The Angels played the Toronto Blue Jays to a sell-out crowd--43,786 fans! The Rally Monkey brought the house down!
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ACADEMICS IN BRIEF
All 8 of our clusters are in full throttle. Airplanes & Rockets students have their hand-shaped airplane wings under way. The Astronomy students began their orientation to the UCI Observatory and its 24-inch telescope soon after dark Monday evening. The environmental science students have already had two field trips off campus to nature reserves. Crystal growth, math/computer modeling students had their first taste of the software they’ll be using -- Matlab and Mathematica, as well as their first materials science labs. Neuroscience students dissected a sheep brain in lab and had a tour of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. Mathematics of Music students are getting acquainted with LogicExpress8, software that allows you to “translate musical inspiration into professional recordings.” The program, with many features including sequencer and audio recording capabilities, is on iBook laptops that each Math of Music student will use throughout COSMOS.
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ONLINE RESOURCES/SCIENCE LIBRARY
Students in each cluster have begun a special online resources orientation to specialized electronic databases by science librarians. Teacher Fellows accompany students to the Science Library for these one-hour sessions. The focus is on licensed internet resources in the “deep web,” a virtual treasure trove of information in science and math fields. Students have access to scientific databases, including Illumina and Infomine, and other subscriptions not available to the general public. This high level scholarly information supports the subject content, the student projects, and the writing of a scientific abstract related to the projects.
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Cluster Highlights, Week 1

Cluster 1-- AIRPLANES & ROCKETS
The students have gotten off to a great start. There is lots of cluster pride which manifests when the students are coming up with their own cluster chant. Students have been introduced to the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering fields and have gained an idea of what working with mechanical, aeronautical, and astronautical systems entails. This week, they are learning about the scaling of power and energy, and have discovered the place of human power in the world. On the specific issue of combustion, the students will learn about the production of power and the characteristics of various types of flames. On the aerospace side, they are presented with the concepts of lift, drag, stall, and moments and how to apply these laws to the design of aircraft. In the labs, they have already begun designing and constructing a small-scale, working airplane, which they will fly near the end of the program.

Cluster 2-- ASTRONOMY/ASTROPHYSICS
Students have already begun their nightly visits to the UCI Observatory. On Monday night, a perfectly clear night, students had their orientation at the Observatory. The UCI Observatory is located in the upper fields on the outskirts of campus.  It has a large computer-controlled telescope and numerous other smaller, portable, telescopes. The observatory's main computer-controlled telescope has a 24-inch primary mirror and 8.5-inch secondary mirror. The telescope is operated in person or remotely via the ethernet with a LINUX-based control program. They received instruction on the basics of downloading “live data” from space and taking in the conceptual framework, vocabulary, and the perspective of astronomers. Students are starting to gather data on star clusters, binary stars, and stellar spectra. They have had a brief introduction to photometry and a lesson on “Powers of Ten,” Newton’s laws, force, motion, gravity, electromagnetic spectrum and Doppler Effect. The 20 students are organized into small groups to provide optimum hands-on experience in the Observatory.

Cluster 3-- CRYSTAL GROWTH: Mathematical & Computer Modeling
During the first week of COSMOS, the students in the cluster on Crystal Growth were introduced to the basics of crystal growth. The students learned about the growth of snowflakes. They learned how snowflakes form in the atmosphere, why they have such beautiful symmetry and about the instabilities that result in their complex shapes. They learned how to start modeling crystal growth mathematically and about the crystal structure, lattices and descriptors that are needed to describe crystal growth in general. In the computational labs, the students tested a variety of different mathematical models that have been used to simulate growing crystals. In fact, the students tested computationally the growth of crystals with different lattice symmetries. In the experimental labs, the students built sample crystal lattice structures and, even in the Southern California summer, grew snow crystals!

Cluster 4-- ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
Cluster 4 had an AWESOME first week! We not only had the opportunity to learn from the great minds of Dr. Bryant and Dr. Tyler, but we have also participated in some exciting lab activities and field trips. This week we visited the San Joaquin Wild Life Sanctuary where the Sea and Sage Audubon gave us a bird-watching tour. With binoculars in hand, we were able to see many different birds such as the infamous osprey (fish hawk). We also went to Little Corona Beach to observe the many critters in the tide pools. After our morning trip to the tide pools we headed to the Back Bay Science Center where David Meyer and his staff showed us a variety of marine life. While at the Back Bay Science Center we participated in a mud grab and plankton sweep to collect organisms. Then we examined and identified the marine life we collected under microscopes. The highlight of the trip had to be witnessing baby octopi actually hatching right before our eyes! On the UCI campus we did some cool hands on activities like comparing the relative concentration of CO2 in background air, human air, and car exhaust. We also modeled the vibration of molecules that are in our atmosphere, measured the solar constant, illustrated the greenhouse effect with simple simulated models of the Earth, and examined gas laws and the relationships between pressure, temperature, and volume. Lastly, through computer simulations, we had the opportunity to explore the effects of ozone concentration and pollution on the atmosphere and weather.
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Cluster 5-- MATH PUZZLES & GAMES
On Monday, Dr. Frey started the day with the COSMOS Classmate Hunt game, which gave the students an opportunity to make acquaintance with each other, and Scavenge Hunt game, in which the answers to math problems familiarized the students with the facilities in the building. Later Dr. Arvo introduced Lisp, a computer programming language that uses a simple data structure called a list for both codes and data. For technical writing, the students discussed with Mrs. Tran about communication in mathematics and how to write a game design document. 
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the students analyzed a new game, Nim. Working in groups, they tried to find strategies to play the game and how to record the game using different math notations. They also had a hands-on experience with Lisp by practicing different commands on computers. Everyone expressed their enjoyment and appreciation for the "All-COSMOS" special guest presentation Wednesday afternoon by Dr. Benjamin, Professor of Mathematics, Harvey Mudd College.
On Thursday, the students were introduced to the project that they need to complete at the end of this course. Working in their assigned groups for almost two hours, the students played and analyzed several games from which they would pick one to practice their oral presentations in front of their cluster. The best presentation was chosen to receive an edible reward from Dr. Frey. In the afternoon, the students continued to practice with Lisp in the lab. The students concluded the first week in excitement and with anticipation of what's to come.

Cluster 6--MATHEMATICS OF MUSIC
This week we started using Cosmos' laptops (iBooks) to compose and produce music. The students are learning to use computers and MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) to create and record songs and transfer then into CD format. Each student will compose, record, and produce two compositions this month. We also began our study of the roots of the European tonal system by learning about the mathematical structure of major and minor scales. Using computers and the monochord (an ancient tool for studying pitch) the students are learning how math is part of the music we hear every day. All the students play musical instruments. This is a very talented group; they have learned the Logic Express 8 computer software which has taught them composition skills. All of them are great team players, work well with their partners, and have good communication skills. It is a pleasure working with these students.

Cluster 7-- NEUROSCIENCE
What an amazing group of energetic, bright young minds!We've had a busy week in Cluster 7, with lectures given by Dr. Mimi Belcher on the major divisions of the nervous system, location and function of the most prominent brain areas, what damage to the brain causes and what it can teach us, famous people with brain damage, anatomy of a neuron (brain cell,) types of neurons, resting and action potentials (how brain cells talk to each other,) cellular mechanisms of simple learning and memory, and brain systems and memory. Additionally, graduate student Sabrina Segal led students in a detailed dissection of a sheep brain, while graduate student Shara Stough directed students in conducting various neurological exams on each other! In their Science Communication course, students refined their approach to reading science journals and finding periodical information with a science library orientation, led by UCI science librarians, and in the process enjoyed an article linking research on the role of aerobic exercise in improving academic ability and possibly reducing the risk of degenerative disease such as Alzheimer's.  In a Lego building contest, students put their procedure writing/following abilities to the test as they attempted to rebuild structures designed by their partners. Students also practiced their skills in experimental design and the peer review process by presenting to the class possible experiments that could be conducted in the field of learning. They also participated in some heart-felt debate on the use of animal models in research. Finally, students toured the UC Irvine CNLM (Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory), which included visits and demonstrations with graduate students using Aplysia (our local "Sea Slug") as a research model, and utilizing structural and functional MRI scanning techniques. All in all it was a jam-packed week; we really enjoyed meeting each other and really came together as a tight-knit class. Students signed up this week to work one-on-one with UC Irvine graduate students next week, when they will have the opportunity to observe them conduct their research. Students will receive data sets and use various statistical/analytical tests to draw conclusions and eventually will present this data in a culminating poster project. Happy 4th of July to all; can't wait until next week!

Cluster 8-- THE WORLD OF MOLECULES: Chem at the Nano-Scale
In the first week of COSMOS, the students were introduced to the theoretical building blocks of chemistry. This theory, called Quantum Mechanics, is quite a departure from regular classical physics, but it provides a fundamental explanation of the configuration of atoms and molecules. With the quantum mechanical concepts freshly in their minds, the students dissected the structure and systematic of the well-known periodic table of elements. The lectures also laid bare the essence of the chemical bond by discussing the combination of elements and identifying the binding role of electrons. By the end of week one, the warp and woof of different types of chemical bonds, including the atomic bonds in metals and semiconductors, were no longer a mystery. In the lab, students learned about different techniques that help scientists to investigate atoms and molecules. In one experiment, for instance, images of so called carbon nanotubes were recorded with a resolution so minute that nanoscale features could be resolved. In another lab, the concentration of alcohol in mouthwash and vodka was determined using infrared lightwaves.
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last updated: 8/8/08
Voices of COSMOS
“It’s great! We’re doing simple games now and more complex games later. The professors are great. They’re very interested in our learning and very supportive.”
--Dylan Sures, Cluster 5

“We get a lot of one-on-one interaction with the professors, and get to use cool high tech machines. It [COSMOS] helps you decide if you actually like what you think you like - so you don't have to change your major two or three times [in college]." You also get a great variety of food!”
--Tatyana Dyndikova, Cluster 8
“I'm going to have the opportunity to teach things that students would not get anywhere else, high school or college.”
--Mr. John Crooks, Instructor, Mathematics of Music Cluster

“We made s'mores over a bunsen burner in lab!  It's nice being around smart people.”
--Steven Rhodes, Cluster 1
“The hike was fun. It’s all an interesting experience. You get to see the different species. It’s a good experience [preparing] for college too.”
--Stephanie Lai, Cluster 4

“I love and I love games; putting them together is great.  Outside of academics, it's great interacting with other individuals on your intellectual level.”
--David Hou, Cluster 5
“I like it a lot. We have a lot of fun learning about astronomy. I like looking through the telescope.”
--Nora Pacheco, Cluster 2

“COSMOS is more than academics; it's a lot of fun. It's a relaxed atmosphere. I chose UCI specifically for this cluster, Airplanes and Rockets. I lab we fired an actual model rocket. We calculated the angle with a protractor, and also calculated the thrust. Also, I love SoBe diet cranberry grapefruit and Pippin's has it! It's so good, I get it every day.”
--William Schoellkopf, Cluster 1
“It’s been fun. We got to dissect a sheep brain, which I wouldn’t have gotten to do otherwise. It’s the college experience.”
--Alexandra Khitun, Cluster 7

“I like the BSC (Brandywine Student  Center). It has ping pong tables, and
I brought my own custom made paddles.”
--Steven Ji, Cluster 1

“The field trips are fun and educational. You learn tactilely.”
--Nicole Isaacson, Cluster 4
“This morning in lab we worked on our planes. We did calculations on a model engine. We can design our plane however we want.”
--Kelsey Brongo, Cluster 1

“COSMOS gives us a sense of how college will be. It's a good opportunity to learn about the research being conducted here at UCI.  I can't decide if I want to pursue biology or psychology. But now I can pretty much name all parts of the brain. Before I didn't know where anything was.”
--Ari Garnica, Cluster 7
“The professors are really devoted.  I like how I get to interact with people who share my interests. And I enjoy studying in-depth. In lab, it's really fun finding out how much carbon dioxide is in the air.”
--Jimena Garcia, Cluster 4

“It’s good! I like the observatory. You’re actually looking at Jupiter and Mars and Saturn. I looked at some nebulae. The labs are fun.”
--Annika Gustafsson, Cluster 2
“I like how you meet so many people who don't live that far away -- you will be able to keep in touch after the program.  Last summer I went to DC and New York for the Global Young Leaders Conference, and people were from all over the world. You couldn't really stay in touch.  So it's nice to meet people that you could visit.  I liked the Back Bay Science Center.”
--Ashley McKay, Cluster 4

“It's gone above my expectations. You have actual college professors, and it's a taste of college life. It's up to you what you make of the experience. The COSMOS professors and the RAs care about you and if you interact with others in your cluster as well as in the dorms.”
--Nichole Obeso, Cluster 6
“The professors are cool and they’re there for you. It’s been a good experience meeting new people. There’s a lot of diversity on the campus.”
--Kacy Rodriguez, Cluster 5

“It's a different experience [for me], since I've grown up with the same people in school. It really opens your eyes to what's out there. The professors are amazing. I appreciate the roommate part, because it encourages you to get along.”
--Joseph Lee, Cluster 1
“I’m taking what I learned from last summer’s COSMOS program and applying it. I’m proud of these kids. It’s only Day 2 and they’re already gaining so much -- a balanced life of friendship and education.”
--John Quimas, Night RA

“It's my first time away from home. Everyone is friendly! The professors are really nice to us. They give us paper to write down our questions.  It gets you prepared, and takes you to a higher level. It's worth everything.”
--Maria Gutierrez, Cluster 7
COSMOS CONTACTS
Marjorie DeMartino, Director
Griselda Rodriguez, Program Coordinator, 949-824-6806

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