COLLEGE SPIRIT WEEK
This week students enjoyed college spirit by wearing shirts from favorite colleges and universities (including UC Irvine naturally!). Proudly worn shirts from Michigan (Go Blue!), Harvard, Cal, UC Santa Barbara, Stanford, and other high profile universities made a collegial showing, especially at mealtimes.

Get ready for college! Presentations on preparing that effective resume for a summer internship, and a college application workshop reflected the “business” side of the college experience. For careers in teaching, students attended a special panel presentation by program staff and students of the UCI California Teach Science and Math Initiative. COSMOS students were encouraged to “Make a Difference - Join The Movement!” and become a science or math teacher. The need for qualified math and science teachers is expected to increase with the current wave of teacher retirements. The strategies are to: a) offer undergraduates opportunities to explore math and science teaching as a career option; and b) offer degree program options that combine a bachelor’s degree in math, the sciences, or a related discipline with teacher education coursework.

On the cultural side, students learned about Native American customs and culture through a presentation by the American Indian Eagle Spirit Dancers. The presentation was a collaboration with the UCI American Indian Resource Program/American Indian Summer Academy and colleagues at the UCI Center for Educational Partnerships. The Eagle Spirit Dancers performed traditional dances and songs from the Plains Indians, including the Eagle Dance, Swan Dance, Oklahoma Slow Woman’s Dance, Horse Dance, Hoop Dance, and the Circle Dance. Mr. Benjamin “Ben” Hale, of the Navajo Nation, narrated the dances and explained the traditions and beliefs surrounding the performances. He explained that the Pow Wow clothes have special significance: bells, belt, breastplate, headdress, and other items all convey certain meaning. He described how the dances connect to the changes of the seasons, and to Indian philosophy and values. Students learned that there are more than 550 Indian nations in North America and Alaska, with 200 languages and 7 major language groups. California has the largest number of tribes. Students joined in the circle dance in the grand finale.

“We have a lot of cluster pride, we have a lot of competition, and we want to be the best.” --Rajan Murgai, Cluster 1
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ACADEMIC FIELD TRIPS
This week, Environmental Science students enjoyed an all-day excursion to the James Reserve Wildlife Observatory in the San Jacinto Mountains, Riverside County. They explored ecosystems and learned to identify various botanical species. The James Reserve is a natural ecological reserve and biological field station dedicated to providing a permanently protected location for educational and scientific purposes. Dr. Bryant bought a tree to plant at UCI on behalf of the COSMOS environmental students!

Astronomy students also had a full day off campus. They visited the Palomar Observatory, with its amazing 5-meter telescope, in northern San Diego County. The Palomar is home to five telescopes that are used for a wide variety of astronomical research programs. The observatory is owned and operated by CalTech. The Astro cluster completed their outing with a visit to the beach. See cluster highlights for details.
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Crystal Growth, Mathematical & Computer Modeling has a website with class notes and other information: http://www.geocities.com/cosmosuci/index.htmll
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Cluster 1-- AIRPLANES & ROCKETS
Cluster 1 completed a week full of building and testing water rockets. The students were able to design their rocket using a NASA water rocket simulation program that gave the students a greater understanding of the tradeoffs that must be made to create a successful design. All designs had unique features: from wings that were designed to purposefully shear to a nose cone made of rocks. All launches gave interesting results including groups that were able to launch their design easily over 100 feet in the air to a group whose rocket transformed into a glider. Launches were recorded using a high speed camera, which show students their wonderful work in slow motion.

Cluster 2-- ASTRONOMY/ASTROPHYSICS
In our second week, the students already have established their routines and are working very hard. All groups have begun gathering data for their projects at the UCI Observatory, and many groups have already started developing the structure of their final presentations. In the Science Communication course, students refined their research question and hypothesis. In the computer simulation lab, students constructed and utilized an H-R diagram to determine the distance to the Pleiades star cluster. Lecture topics included the physics of light and objects of the cosmos, including black holes. This week’s highlight was our field trip to see the 5-meter telescope at Palomar Observatory in San Diego County. For many years, this telescope was the largest in the world, and even today it is still doing cutting edge astronomical research every night, including pioneering the use of adaptive optics that counteracts the blurring caused by starlight passing through the Earth's atmosphere. We capped the day with a stop at the beach, where students and staff relaxed in the beautiful San Diego sunshine.

Cluster 3-- CRYSTAL GROWTH: Mathematical & Computer Modeling
Students have been engaged in a picture contest on mathematical theory, due on Thursday’s lab. The students were to consider a plot showing the interfacial energy as a function of an angle. They needed to answer several questions, such as ‘how does anisotropy change with temperature? why?’ They worked on several exercises on the set of graphs and had to determine the symmetry (the value of n in ‘n-fold symmetry’), perform the Wulff construction; and, based on their investigations, form a conclusion about the relationship between the symmetry of the interfacial energy and that of the equilibrium shape. (don’t worry -- the students understand it!) Students also read a professional scientific journal article, “Nonlinear morphological control of growing crystals,” with Professor John S. Lowengrub co-author (Dr. Lowengrub is Chair of the UCI Math Department and the lead instructor in this cluster). Students had intensive exposure to sophisticated mathematics and areas of research such as macroscopic driving forces, microscopic interfacial forces, and associated time scales. They learned vocabulary and concepts such as formation of complex shapes and Mullins-Sekerka instability -- related to growing crystals with compact shapes when the supercooling is kept sub-critical. (students are invited to “soak up” what they can during this short time).

Cluster 4-- ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
Cluster 4 had another exciting week full of unforgettable field trips, exhilarating lectures, and fun labs! In Dr. Bryant’s class we learned about two more ecosystems: the chaparral and the coastal sage brush community. In Dr. Tyler’s class we learned how ozone is depleted in the atmosphere, and we also learned how and why the tectonic plates move. These lectures were complemented by a lab and many field trips. In our chemistry lab we measured the pH of various acid rain solutions that we created by mixing a series of chemicals. Using sophisticated computer software we were able to analyze the differences in acidity due to the various chemicals. Our first field trip this week was to the Tree of Life Nursery where Dr. Bryant purchased an oak tree on behalf of Cluster 4 to be planted on UCI’s campus so we can return in the years to come and remember the wonderful experience we had at COSMOS during the summer of 2008. Then we went for a short 2 mile hike (at least that’s what Dr. Bryant told us…with the heat it felt more like 10 miles!) through the Cleveland National Forest to see the chaparral ecosystem first hand. Some of us got a few bug bites, but we were all able to steer clear of the poison oak! Our next stop was at the James Reserve in Riverside County where we learned about all of the exciting research that takes place right at their site! Our final trip this week was to the western side of the San Joaquin Marsh where we learned about the history of the wetlands and why it is important to preserve the biodiversity still present. We can’t wait until next week where we get to start working on our projects with our brilliant professors and staff!
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