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CO N T E N T S RES NOVAE 4 Sweet Dreams You stare at the teacher, mouth hanging open and eyes drooping. Time and time again your eyes drift closed, but you are jerked awake by the murmurs of fellow students around you. oooooooooooooooooooooooo
6 Glass Half Empty Brown is the new green. Burgundy blotches cover Santa Clara county on drought watch maps. A hotline even allows you to report that pesky water-wasting neighbor. ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oo
» p.4
8 So Close, Yet so Far: The Development of AI Technology Last Thanksgiving, instead of finding a recipe for turkey online or in a cooking magazine, I scoured the internet and came across Chef Watson, an artificial intelligence project launched by IBM about four years ago. oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oo
10 Looking for a Cure » p.10
» p.8
Cancer / kans r/ noun: An abnormal growth of cells which tend to proliferate in an uncontrolled way and in some cases, spread. ooooooooooooo
12 JAVA End of the Year Projects From testing to creating buttons, JAVA students know it all at the end of the year. As the school year comes to an end, these students create their own educational JAVA game. oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
14 From Sputnik to Supercomputers
» p.14
It was October of 1957, an especially tense period of the Cold War. The Soviet Union had just successfully launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to reach space.
B u s i n e s s M a g a z i n e | A p r i l 2 0 11
4 | C O R P O R AT E A N N U A L R E P O R T
Dear fellow Monta Vista students T ake a moment to fully absorb what you are holding in your hands. The smell, the look, the texture— it physically feels like there is nothing special to it. But understand this: what you are about to read contains the beauty of a year’s worth of human innovation in science and technology.
Our writers and editors have worked hard throughout the 2015 - 2016 school year, and every single one of the articles in this magazine tell a story not only about science itself, but also the author’s intricate thought process and scientific mind, weaving opinions and facts into one perfect golden thread. Therefore, we are proud to present to you the first edition of the Res Novae magazine! Enjoy, and stay revolutionary.
Royce Yang
Editor In Chief and Co-President
Sandhya Kannan Editor in Chief and Co-President
Kevin Li Lead Editor
Sneha Gaur Lead Writer
Res Novae Staff Members Jeremy Chen
Julianna Liu
Andrea Schlitt
Shreya Parjan
Designer
Assistant Editor
Kevin Li
Treasurer
Secretary
Bhavna Sud
Shriya Deshpande Public Relations
Justin Chen
Assistant Editor
Contributing Writer
Contributing Writer
Nikhita Shanker
Amog Patankar
Bhargava Matta
Contributing Writer
Contributing Writer
Haritha Shah
Suhana Kumar
Staff Writer
Mingjie Zhong
Staff Writer
Staff Writer
Staff Writer
Sweet Dreams Exploring why we limit our sleep and how it affects us STORY BY BHAVNA SUD PHOTO AND ILLUSTRATION BY SNEHA GAUR
You stare at the teacher, mouth hanging open and eyes drooping. Time and time again your eyes drift closed, but you are jerked awake by the murmurs of fellow students around you. Almost every MV student has found themselves in this situation at least once struggling to stay awake in class due to the lack of sleep they had the night before. A survey of 65 MV students found that 69% of them had fallen asleep in class at least once, and 24% of these students found themselves repeating this often. “I think that school has affected the amount of sleep I get since I've had to find times to catch up,” Nguyên said. “Ultimately, my sleep pattern has become a huge mess. I still
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function because I'm used to it. Would I say that this is healthy? Not really.” Like Nguyên, many MV students find that the huge workload of school often keeps them awake at night. Freshman Anjali Thontakudi, who
*taken from a survey of 65 students
spends waking not only working on her MV homework but also running cross-country and track, explains how she experiences this problem. For her, she says that in addition to her extracurricular activities, the extra self-learning she must do outside of class adds to her workload and forces her to stay up later and lose sleep. Especially with finals and end of the year projects, Thontakudi and many other Monta Vista students are forced to sacrifice precious hours of sleep. But as more and more students find themselves giving up another hour of sleep every day, the health risks quickly become more evident. Gary H. Gibbons, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), writes that getting the proper amount of sleep plays a vital role in “mental health, physical health, quality of life, and safety.” While someone sleeps, their brain focuses on forming more mental pathways to hold new information. In addition, during sleep, their body starts to strengthen it’s heart and vessels, preventing heart disease and high blood pressure. “It's like sprinting. You sprint,” Nguyên said. “Then you rest because you're tired and you need a break. Then you sprint again.” A study by Jeffrey S. Durmer and David F. Dinges, titled “Neurocognitive Consequences of Sleep Deprivation”, found that when people experienced even temporary sleep deprivation, a
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“loss of temporal lobe activation” only 24% of MV students report themselves coming to class with their was observed in the prefrontal cortex, getting the recommended eight or eyes half-closed, due to sleeping late the area of the brain that regulates more hours of the previous the “anterior and posterior attention sleep on school “Often, in your sleep night. Often, control area.” This corresponded to a nights. The the idea of a deprived fervor, you good grade is difficulty in paying attention for the resulting students rest of the day. are limited in their as miss this critical point used Despite the difficulties lack of capability to learn motivation sleep may cause, many students are and to process where you absolutely to prioritize motivated to sacrifice their sleep to information, work over should go to sleep sleep, allot more time to prepare for an because they are exam. However, getting more sleep is decreasing the because you're now despite the actually more beneficial to amount that their negative performance on exams than studying brains can doing more harm than health through the night. UCLA psychiatry process. effects this good.” professor, Andrew J. Fuligni, explains In addition, as may have. that if more time is spent to study in Lordan explains, a “If place of sleep, a student is more room of sleepskipping a likely to have academic difficulty the deprived students can greatly detract Youtube video means a little more next day because their memory and from classroom atmosphere. sleep, I would say go for it,” ability to pay attention are decreased. “In losing sleep staying up late Thontakudi said. “But also don’t Michael Lordan, Pre-Calculus and for a test, you can end up not only overwork yourself: at the end of the Physics teacher at Monta Vista, sees negatively impacting your day, an all-nighter probably won’t get how such late night cramming often performance on the test but also your you the grade you're hoping for, but a ends up harming his students’ efforts performance in all of your other little bit of sleep can go a long way.” to perform well on an exam. classes as well,” Lordan said. “A class Thontakudi’s advice applies “Often, in your sleep full of sleepy students can be extra especially to the MV community, deprived fervor, you miss this critical hard to stay focused in because so where sleep is often sacrificed for the point where you absolutely should go much of the energy and enthusiasm thought of a better grade. But, as to sleep has been sapped many students have seen, such because dry.” dreams are often hard to reach. you're Yet this “It's like sprinting. You now problem is not doing impossible to sprint, then you rest more solve, and harm students are because you're tired and than already looking you need a break. Then you good”, to innovative Lordan solutions to get sprint again.” said. the proper “Come amount of the day sleep. Nguyên, of the for example, test you describes her can barely stay awake, let alone recall strategy to study early to save sleep anything you worked so hard for the during finals. For her De Anza night before.” classes, Nguyên explains how she The National Sleep Foundation reads over her materials and makes indicates that the appropriate an active effort to sleep earlier as the amount for sleep for teenagers is 8 to finals approach, focusing on her sleep 10 hours. Unfortunately, many Monta as a necessary part of her Vista students are getting little more preparation. than half this number. Of a Facebook Despite efforts like these, survey conducted of 65 MV students, many Monta Vista students still find
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Glass Half Empty Cupertino reservoirs are depleting due to Catch-22 STORY AND PHOTO BY SHREYA PARJAN ILLUSTRATION BY SHRIYA DESPHANDE
Brown is the new green. Burgundy blotches cover Santa Clara county on drought watch maps. A hotline even allows you to report that pesky water-wasting neighbor. And so we forge ahead. Another year of drought. Another year of meeting the stringent county goals of water usage reduction. California has a history of releasing water from its reservoirs in winter to leave room for runoff and prevent flooding. However, when up to 40% of a reservoir's water is emptied into SF Bay without rain to
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fill it, we are at risk of dry reservoirs for subsequent months. While the reservoir capacity restrictions seem practical in theory,
ultimately, county residents are more concerned with the threat of dry reservoirs in the summers due to unnecessary drainage than with floods that never come. January 1st, 1997. As millions of Californians eagerly welcomed the new year, the largest flood in the state’s recorded history dampened their spirits. According to the California Department of Water Resources (CDWR), “warm moist winds from the southwest blowing over the Sierra Nevada poured more than 30 inches of rain onto watersheds that were already saturated by one of the wettest Decembers on record.” The consequences were
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brutal. Despite the damages of the floods themselves, most important was the control measures taken to prevent reservoirs and dams from overflowing at a time when reservoirs seemed likely to overflow (CDWR). With less rain following the climactic start to the year, 6 controlled releases channeled water downstream and restored the reservoirs to safe capacities. Yet sometimes, the exact opposite might happen. Reservoirs that were once overflowing and contributing to flood damage to the state dipped to dangerously low levels after a summer of heavy water consumption, the same year. Nearly 20 years later, the question remains: Is there a safer and more informed way to both prevent flooding in times of immediate crisis, as was the case in 1997, but also to avoid long-term threats in times of drought, as we see today? In response to the dilemma, UC San Diego is working on a system of forecast-informed reservoir operations (FIRO) to give four to five days notice before the storms that are typical during El Niño so that reservoirs are not emptied without probable cause. Given that premature draining of reservoirs has lead to low lake levels and drought conditions in the past, despite similar El Niño conditions, the FIRO team hopes to use long-term forecasts to manage the retention and release of water. FIRO will use data from watershed monitoring and general forecasting to generate optimal times and conditions for release of water on a case-by-case basis. Thus, resource exacerbation crises like those during the drought two decades ago that left reservoirs waiting for nonexistent flooding are avoided. Sophomore Lucy Huang also believes that beyond the obvious environmental perks of forecastinformed operations, there are
financial benefits to the system as well. “It makes sense that we should look at weather patterns to base our decisions and weigh the damage,” Huang reasoned. While UCSD is taking large-scale efforts to create a statewide system of forecast-informed reservoir management, an exclusive interview with Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD) employees reveals that similar mechanis ms are being employed locally. In contrast with the exclusively forecastdependent approach UCSD hopes to apply to water districts across California, SCVWD studies the local ecosystem to minimize any adverse consequences of water release. Shaikh, a civil engineer, describes how much water we start with and how much we can release, an important factor in sustainable resource management. SCVWD studies also agree that the technology developed by UCSD provides a useful supplement to
local practices currently employed by the district. “It’s great that both the district and UCSD are being proactive,” Huang added. “After crises ranging from flooding to drought, their long-term actions to prevent more damage is more effective than continuing to act in response to damage.” After discussion with the state director of natural resources, MVHS AP Environmental Science teacher Andrew Goldenkranz feels that the reservoir initiative s are a positive step. “The operatio ns system is promisin g,” Goldenkr anz acknowle dged. “You can move water between reservoirs, like from smaller to larger ones, to further eliminate draining of reservoir water into, say, the San Francisco Bay, as has been done in the past.” It remains questionable as to how effective draining is. However, it is clear that more informed operations will both bolster community sentiment and allow for better management of the state’s water supply.
“Nearly 20 years later, the question remains: Is there a safer and more informed way… to avoid long-term threats in times of drought, as we see today?”
these
“After crises ranging from flooding to drought, their long-term actions to prevent more damage is more effective than continuing to act in response to damage.”
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Coding into Life Recent AI applications bring benefits to daily life STORY BY JUSTIN CHEN ILLUSTRATION BY JEREMY CHEN
Last Thanksgiving, instead of finding a recipe for turkey online or in a cooking magazine, I scoured the internet and came across Chef Watson, an artificial intelligence project launched by IBM about four years ago. Watson, touted as an “ultimate assistant to professionals in industries including retail, healthcare, financial services,” and in this case, culinary assistance, which only further piqued my interest. It promised to deliver recipes that were not only creative, but actually edible and perhaps appetizing — all without being able to taste, see, or smell food. On the web app, I inputted the meal type (Thanksgiving dinner) and ingredients (turkey) and Watson provided me with a list of meals including ones that seemed relatively normal, like turkey cutlets and turkey meat roast, as well as recipes I would
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food chemistry, human taste be too scared to even preferences (called hedonic attempt to make, much psychophysics), and regional cooking less eat, such as turkey styles, allowing Watson to meals to noodles and turkey cater to your needs. tacos. Despite the Social media, something absurdity of these dishes, that has become ingrained in our artificial intelligence daily lives, is also affected by the development has been development of AI. Google, with its improved to a level where a new update for its Inbox app, hopes program is able to read to make that process more thousands of recipes from efficient. It uses an artificial neural the food magazine Bon network that it calls Smart Reply to Appetit, and after learning generate replies for emails. An different patterns, create artificial neural network is a crude its own. This process is model of the human brain. It very similar to how attempts to emulate the system of humans use general neurons, where each neuron receives knowledge about cooking information, processes it by applying in order to formulate their functions to the input, and then own recipes. outputs the generated data to other While Watson lacks the neurons. creativity that most Google’s model is actually two humans have, it does have one such systems, where one of them advantage: it is able to create reads and analyzes an email, connections between ingredients that encoding it in a humans are way such that unwilling or the program can unable to “It promised to deliver actually make. For understand it, example, recipes that were not and another most system that gives only creative, but humans suggests possible would never actually edible and replies. The way associate that the app African bird perhaps appetizing — “understands” peppers all without being able to the email is quite with blue complex because crab, but taste, see, or smell of the large Watson amount of food” listed permutations of numerous various types of options, questions and including bird pepper dumplings, replies. In order to have a basic chowder, and spaghetti. Its vast understanding of what the email database contains information about
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contains, it uses what its creators call lead Tay to change from a bubbly “thought vectors, ” which are character, saying things like “humans essentially just numbers that are super cool,” to a dark Hitler distinguish one type of question from sympathizer, saying things like another or relates to similar “Hitler was right” and denying the questions Holocaust together, happened. “We do not have to allowing Technically, the Microsoft was follow an AI’s suggestion program to successful in frame a implementing to respond to a teacher’s proper an AI that email with a terse threeanswer. sounded like a For typical human, letter reply or let strange instance, at least on the= while internet. A social media bots affect “Let’s large portion of us.” meet up the internet is tomorrow comprised of at the troublemakers library” and “Do you want to meet at who joke about serious topics like the library” are basically the same genocides (see Godwin’s Law) and questions, “Please come over to help wars and Tay does accurately us on our project” is an entirely represent that. However, from the different question. The former pair various Twitter users Tay would have similar thought vectors encountered, she was able to start while the latter would have an creating her own offensive content, entirely different one. Currently, ranging from disparaging comments Smart Reply can only generate short about women to images praising responses, but after a period of time, it can be further optimized and developed to generate longer, more meaningful replies. While most AIs aim to aid humans and most usually succeed in doing so, others follow instructions too well and can cause unintended chaos. In March, Microsoft unveiled an AI bot on Twitter named Tay that attempted to emulate the language of a teenager, using acronyms and slang that a normal high schooler would use. According to Microsoft’s Technology and Research Team, the dictators. The fact that Tay was able initial tweets were based on “mining to learn quickly and use her new relevant public data" and combining knowledge in such strange that with input from editorial staff, applications brings up questions "including improvisational about how to ensure AIs will utilize comedians." However, it was also concepts they learn in a helpful programmed to evolve and develop manner instead of using the new its own language capabilities based information to harass humans. on direct messages with users, which
Looking back at these applications, it is evident that AIs have come a far way but still have some limitations. Many scientists have tried to program AI to write stories and reports and have only been marginally successful. For instance, AI’s have been able to receive input such as the box score of a basketball game and write a report about it, even incorporating a little humor at times. PageKicker, another AI, is even able to write a story based on numerous inputs from online sources. However, as far as creating completely original works, people have struggled to create software that adequately communicates ideas. Overall, artificial intelligence evidently can be quite beneficial. Critics may point out that our reliance on AI’s may cause a decrease in creativity and erratic behavior (as proven by the erratic Tay), but if we use them as starting points that can branch out into new ideas, they may facilitate us in our daily lives. We are not robots ourselves; we do not have to follow an AI’s suggestion to respond to a teacher’s email with a terse threeletter reply, comply with recipes involving something strange like turkey noodles, or let strange social media bots affect us. Instead, we can simply recognize that these are the best interpretations that these AIs have for various situations, and combine the processing power of computers with the cleverness of humans to make logical, but also empathetic, decisions.
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Journey to the Cure With written essays in scientific research, three MVHS students leave their impact on the scientific community STORY BY ANDREA SCHLITT
Cancer /ˈkans"r/ noun: An abnormal growth of cells which tend to proliferate in an uncontrolled way and in some cases, spread A simple definition of a common word, and yet when a patient hears this word in their diagnosis it is anything but simple. It’s lifeless, almost surreal, as the magnanimity of the issue truly comes into light. In that moment, the doctor becomes the patient’s guide through their next few months or even years of treatment and hopefully, recovery. But it doesn’t stop with that one patient. The issue of cancer research involves a network of patients and their own unique diagnoses until some consensus can be reached on the causes of the formation of cancer cells. Researchers, entrepreneurs and computer programmers alike come together to tackle one of the world’s most unexpected disease. And it all begins with our generation. FOR JUNIOR CASSANDRA LEM, it all started with a magazine exploring the lesser known aspects of cancer. Lem read about important but often neglected problems such as women's cancer in third world countries. It was one of her only experiences with cancer research, but she knew that it was an issue she wanted to contribute to solving. “I just found it really interesting because it's something that we don't really think about a lot,” Lem said. “You would think that there are tons of scientists out there doing research but the magazine listed a lot of really valid reasons as to why there's not a lot of research.” One of those reasons is the lack of unorthodox solutions in treating childhood cancer. Lem recalls reading an article on a girl whose dad discovered an experimental treatment which the doctors rejected
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as a solution, but ultimately helped slow her progression of cancer. And that's what inspired her to write about childhood cancer in her essay. “It made me think like wow, there are a lot of kids with cancer out there and they could benefit from these trials with unorthodox drugs,” Lem said. “All it takes is to just spread the word and to get the word out there more.” As Lem began to write her essay, she felt confident about her approach to the topic, which ultimately paid off. She was one of the winners of the competition and received an opportunity to conduct a research project with a mentoring scientist, along with $1500 for expenses and a Chromebook. Although Lem hasn’t been assigned a scientist yet, she is already looking into what she wants to do in the future with her business experience. “I want to [...] start a nonprofit to get the word out about childhood cancer research,” Lem said, “because even after doing all the research we still need everybody, not just the scientists, to be involved with [research] so we can get more kids involved in these trials and save more lives.” SOPHOMORE ADITI always knew that she wanted to be a doctor. It was second grade when her parents bought her a human anatomy book that to this day she still finds extremely interesting. This interest carried on to her freshman year at MVHS, and her decision to take the STEM class as her elective. So when she found out about the opportunity to write an essay about cancer research, she jumped at the opportunity and wrote about a
project she conducted in that STEM class. She investigated a particular protein called the aurora b kinase and its relationship to cancer. “I was like, I wonder if something happened to this protein, like pretend you didn't have it or if you had a mutation that prevented the phosphorylation of the protein, then would this lead to cancer?” Gnanasekar said. “That was what my experiment was and it did actually lead to cancer.” Gnanasekar used the results of her project to talk about what she could do in the future with cancer research, specifically implementing a system to keep track of all observations made on diagnosing cancer patients to speed up the process. After finding out that she had won, she was extremely excited to see what the future could hold with her passion for science. “It's always been my long-sought dream to go into medicine or pursue a career in research or bio because that's what interests me,” Gnanasekar said, “and since cancer is such a prevalent issue today I feel like it's an issue that I want to be a part of, and if I can make a change I should try to make it.” Junior Dhanya Mahesh took JAVA in freshman year on a whim. She didn’t know that the subject would interest her, nor did ever imagine writing about its application to cancer research. As she began to develop a passion in computer science, she tried to find ways to look at it in a broader sense and find more uses in the real world. “I just liked the feeling of completing something like after you
“All it takes is to just spread the word and to get the word out there more.”
try really hard with all these different ways of writing the program,” Mahesh said, “and when it finally works it feels really good.” After deciding to apply, Mahesh wrote about how she would focus on diagnosing cancer through emphasizing the connection to programming. She believes that finding cancer at the early stages will ease the treatment process and also open up new ways to find treatments. One unique way to perform an early diagnosis is through computer science. “I do a lot of computer science and I think that it's important to also focus on the biology aspect of it,” Mahesh said. “Computers could help us with diagnosis through the use of huge supercomputers and MRI scans.” And the significance of programming for cancer research can be seen everywhere. Scientists may attempt to personalize treatments by sequencing a piece of DNA in seconds––what once took years to do. The ability to gather and synthesize large amounts of data aids cancer holds endless possibilities for finding a cure, and that’s what Mahesh hopes can be accomplished. Cancer research is something that will continue to push and inspire doctors to find a solution to one of the most complex issues in the science community. But it’s not just the doctors who aspire to do so. It’s the entrepreneurs, the researchers, the programmers, the high school students. And through the work of Lem, Gnanasekar, and Mahesh, the research on cancer will continue advance as more and more people will be able to find their individual cures to one of the most complex diseases that exists.
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Pushing the key JAVA students describe the creative process behind their end-of-the-year projects
STORY BY NIKHITA SHANKER
From testing to creating buttons, JAVA students know it all at the end of the year. As the school year comes to an end, these students create their own educational games using the skills that they have learned from the JAVA course over the course of the year, setting up goals, rules, and feedback within their very own JAVA game.
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Through the application of testing to small projects over the course of the year, students understand the importance of testing by the end of the year. Throught the end of the year project, students learn the importance of testing their programs. Through the testing process in which they focus on the emotions and actions of the
testers, students realize the value testing has in making a program reliable and usable. Sophomore Ankita Mitra, for example, created her own virtual “Physics Park” as her end of the year JAVA project as a freshman. After going through the process of testing, Mitra learned that users get the best feedback and make the most progress when they see a combination of text, images, and animations. “I noticed during testing that using visuals was definitely a more effective approach to teaching younger kids than plain text,”Mitra said. “For instance, I used a model of a slide, and let the students connect to someone sliding down a slide, so the students can see the real life implications of gravity.” Freshman Amit Palekar who created a program that puts an educational spin on “Chutes and Ladders” sees the project as a challenge for JAVA students. He believes that the project is unique because students apply the concepts they learn in class to create a game that consists of many components. He found that joining these individual components together was a challenging task that is new to JAVA students. “Creating the individual components is easy, but piecing it all together to create a whole game is harder than the programs that we have done in class,” Palekar said. “This is an actual application of what we do in class.” While JAVA students are creating their educational games, David Greenstein’s AP Computer Science students are challenged to create their own processing
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project written in JAVA. Students often push themselves further by researching more advanced programming concepts allowing them to make more elaborate projects and learn far more from the process. Junior Saagar Jha who took on the challenge last year created a 3-dimensional flight simulator. Due to Saagar’s expertise in JAVA programming, he independently researched advanced topics that would enhance the functionality of his project. He incorporated wide range of concepts which included ones taught in the AP Computer Science Curriculum and others that he taught himself.” He used a two dimensional array which is which essentially a grid made up of rows and columns to store the terrain or the environment that was used in his simulator. “I modeled my terrain look like what a video game would look like,” Jha said. “The terrain is stored as a 2-D array which we learned in AP Computer Science. It’s basically a giant grid and manipulating the grid applies a lot of what we learned in AP Computer Science.” Terrain Generation is one of the algorithms that he independently researched. This algorithm helped him generate the terrain or the environment that the user sees in the simulator. “Terrain generation makes stuff look like actual hills and valleys,” Jha said. “You may have seen in a videogame, the ground isn’t really flat, and you have landforms, and you have water. So terrain generation generates that. Instead of me programming
that in, the program does it class because they could not have itself.” does this project at the beginning Another algorithm that he of the year,” Frazier said. “They independently researched was a feel very proud particularly when modified Diamond-Square I point out to them that if they Algorithm which he used to alter worked at a job, they worked one the perspective of the user based whole week of work, even though on which point of the simulation we spend one hour a day and they are currently at. spread it across five weeks.” “You make really big After students are able to mountains and valleys, and later share their end product, Frazier you modify them,” Jha said. “The finds that the feedback that algorithm makes smaller features students get on their projects and later in the program. So in the the development of their ability beginning of the program you get to analyze the tools that they use a big picture view and later you are invaluable. can see smaller details.” “It’s really neat for students to He believes that learning show other students, not only to ahead was the most rewarding get other students excited about decision he made for the project what they could do in a really because it allowed him to add short time, but to get some concepts feedback and that were really start “Most of the students feel not part thinking about of the the products like they have learned a curriculu we play with,” whole heck of a lot m and Frazier said. build a The end of because coming into the better the year class because they could project. projects give not have does this project He JAVA and AP advises Computer at the beginning of the future Science year.” students students the to learn opportunity to ahead as not only apply well, so year-long they can concepts but create more elaborate projects. also learn new topics. It’s a JAVA teacher, Debbie Frazier challenge for students to put it believes that students feel proud together, but after completing after finishing the end of the year the project, they leave the class project because they can apply as better programmers and with the wide range of programming their heads held high. skills they learned into a project which requires the same amount of time as a week of work at a job. “Most of the students feel like they have learned a whole heck of a lot because coming into the
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From Sputnik to Supercomputers MVHS students and teachers reflect on 50 years of technological growth STORY BY KEVIN LI GRAPHICS BY SNEHA GAUR IT WAS OCTOBER OF 1957, an especially tense period of the Cold War. The Soviet Union had just successfully launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to reach space. The incident shocked
Americans, who had previously thought they were far ahead in science and technology, and even raised serious concerns about the possibility of a Soviet missile attack. “It scared the bejesus out of America,” said Calculus teacher Jon Stark, who was in first grade at the time. “We felt the Russians were backward peasant farmer types, and suddenly they had the ability to rain death down on us from the skies.” In response, the United States government instituted a series of sweeping education reforms to encourage American schoolchildren to help reclaim
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their country’s position as the leader in space exploration. “The great pressure on anybody at that time who could do math and science [was that] they should do math and science, because it was a matter of national survival to be able to compete with the Soviets,” Stark explained. Growing up in this new wave of enthusiasm for technology, Stark would go on to pursue undergraduate and graduate studies in mathematics, economics, and astrophysics, just to name a few. For Stark and many other American students, a lifetime of math and science pursuits had all started with the Space Race.
“We felt the Russians were backward peasant farmer types, and suddenly they had the ability to rain death down on us from the skies.”
WHEN STARK TAUGHT university courses in the 1970s, the fate of computer science still seemed uncertain. “It wasn’t clear if the engineers were going to do it or the mathematicians,” Stark said. “There were no gains, you see. If you were doing programming, it was because you needed a problem solved.” This might not seem surprising considering the kind of technology students had to work with. Computer programs were created through combinations of holes on physical punch cards, not digital files. Programs often contained hundreds or thousands of cards, and if they were unsuccessful, the compiler would give no details—not even where in the huge stack the error had occurred. As Stark explained, “Basically, they just said ‘fatal error, boom’.” OVER THE NEXT THREE decades after Stark attended school, technology continued to grow at an amazing rate. By the start of the 21st century, many far more recognizable innovations, like Google, Windows XP, and Mac OS X, had already been released. It was in this new environment that Physics teacher Michael Lordan began to study
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mechanical engineering in college. Lordan, who attended UC Davis from 2004 to 2008, saw
firsthand how technological improvements could fundamentally change the way scientists work. Before becoming a teacher at Monta Vista, Lordan designed and tested satellites as a lead thermal engineer at an aerospace company called Space Systems Loral. Taking full advantage of the newer technology available, he created detailed computer models of his satellites, used machines to simulate space-like conditions, and even performed tests once the satellites reached outer space. But only after talking to older employees did Lordan realize how crucial recent improvements were to his work. “They can do so much more with the computer power they have now than they could have done 20 years ago,” Lordan emphasized. “Just the detail of the spacecraft models that they could build has grown exponentially.” THE BREATHTAKING technological advancements that
Lordan described have only algorithms, there’s this whole continued to gain momentum into class of problems that becomes a the 21st century. From the clubs lot easier to solve.” and interests at Monta Vista, it’s Cheerla is the co-founder of clear that technology has gained a MathAndCoding, a non-profit widespread appeal among organization of high schoolers students. who teach programming to Junior Jananni Rathnagiri is students in the Bay Area. Since its an officer of MV Technovation, a inception in 2014, the group has club that encourages women to grown to 30 volunteer teachers pursue programming through a and organized courses at over 20 national app library branches. competition. As Cheerla “If you know how recognizes that a logical thinker who took an today, with the to understand endless amounts interest in computers and of information programming machines from on the internet, a young age, no and algorithms, students she naturally longer have to there’s this whole wait began coding in until seventh grade. college to delve class of problems deeper Rathnagiri into recognizes that programming. that becomes a for students He encourages growing up in lot easier to people curious an era of about solve.” smartphones technology to and high-speed take advantage internet, of advanced technology has become online courses that are now easily ubiquitous in daily activities. available to them. “Technology is linked in “There’s way more online almost every aspect of life,” she resources than you think there said, drawing a sharp contrast are,” Cheerla noted. “In some with the state of computers in the ways, you don’t have to sit in a 1970s. “If you want to go traditional class...you can actually somewhere, you use your take [Stanford programming GPS. If you want to look courses] by yourself if you up what restaurant to go wanted to.” to, you use your computer, If one thing is clear from these or your iPhone.” diverse student experiences, it’s Nikhil Cheerla, another that we’ve certainly come a long MVHS student, sees enormous way since the era of Sputnik and potential in the future for people punch cards. We live in a with programming knowledge. thriving environment with “It’s almost like a language everything from smartphones to and a way of thinking,” said online classes—now, it’s up to us Cheerla. “If you know how to to seize the opportunity to learn understand programming and and explore.
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