Friday, December 09, 2005
We made a snowman
This is the snowman.
It looks like I have a really weird expression, but actually I don't, which you can see if you click and see the full-sized version. Valerie took this picture.
It snowed really hard today for about an hour. First there was rain coming down so hard it sounded like hail. Then it snowed like a blizzard with little tiny flakes blowing sideways. We had to go to the library, but we really couldn't, because it was so snowy out. Finally we put on all of our foul weather gear because we really had to go to the library. But then it was beautiful and sunny out, so we made a snowman. You see that we are both wearing foul weather gear, except that I took off the plastic pants when I went to get the camera.
The snow was really sticky, wet and heavy because it had both snowed and rained. When I rolled the snowball around, the whole layer of snow came off and it was green grass below. That was a little weird. The snowman has a carrot nose, but you can't really see it in the picture. You can see it fine in real life. Valerie found the rocks. I made the head and the bottom and Hilary made the middle. We basically think it's a great snowman. He's a little tilted. "Artistically crooked," one might say.
The snowman does not have a skinny waist. We put extra snow there to keep the snowballs together. "This is a Williams-Mystic snowman. He has had his snack." I said that.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Exeter, snow, hats, it's all good
I had a good talk at Exeter. The math club kids were very blank-faced and uncommunicative at the beginning, but they got more into it as it went along, and asked a bunch of great questions at the end, as did the teachers.
I stayed with Mr. Wolfson, who has these big windows in his house facing the woods, and when I woke up, there was this wonderful puffy snow falling out the windows against the dark trees. So, that was really nice. I had to study a lot on the weekend, but I was studying in my favorite place to study, so that was fine. When I was in the library, a kid came up to me and asked if he could ask me a math question. He asked what math class I was in. "I'm not taking any math" didn't seem like a very good answer, so I said "I graduated in 2003," which really doesn't answer the question at all, but you know, I answered his math question, so that's good.
If you have a solid sphere of radius c, and you take a drill bit of radius a and drill out a cylinder through the center (with spherical caps on the end), the amount of hollowed-out-sphere stuff you are left with has the same volume as a sphere of radius b, where a2+b2=c2. If anyone can give a geometric explanation for why this makes sense, I'd like to know about it.
Our policy exam was on Monday for three hours. My arm hurt afterwards. And there were some things I forgot to write, but there were a lot of things I remembered to write, too.
Dan came. So we met Dan. And we liked him.
Our English and science papers were also due. That was all right. We didn't get much sleep, though. And my science paper is 1.1 MB; Hilary's is 27 pages long (because of the figures), and Ashley's is 36 pages long. So, we wrote a lot, and killed a lot of trees (because we had to print out three copies).
In better news, we got our Team Zissou Standard Issue hats, and we wore them to history class this morning. I did not know what Zissou hats were when Hallie said she was ordering them for all of us, and I looked on Google and saw people wearing red hats, but I didn't really know what the deal was. Then Hilary and I watched the movie (Life Aquatic) yesterday after we turned in our science papers, and now I know what the deal is. They just wear red hats with their blue pajamas, and that's just the way it is. So now Williams-Mystic wears them, too.
Here is a picture of us walking to history class wearing hats. You can see all of them on Shutterfly here. You will notice two members of Albion house at the extreme left of the picture.
I stayed with Mr. Wolfson, who has these big windows in his house facing the woods, and when I woke up, there was this wonderful puffy snow falling out the windows against the dark trees. So, that was really nice. I had to study a lot on the weekend, but I was studying in my favorite place to study, so that was fine. When I was in the library, a kid came up to me and asked if he could ask me a math question. He asked what math class I was in. "I'm not taking any math" didn't seem like a very good answer, so I said "I graduated in 2003," which really doesn't answer the question at all, but you know, I answered his math question, so that's good.
If you have a solid sphere of radius c, and you take a drill bit of radius a and drill out a cylinder through the center (with spherical caps on the end), the amount of hollowed-out-sphere stuff you are left with has the same volume as a sphere of radius b, where a2+b2=c2. If anyone can give a geometric explanation for why this makes sense, I'd like to know about it.
Our policy exam was on Monday for three hours. My arm hurt afterwards. And there were some things I forgot to write, but there were a lot of things I remembered to write, too.
Dan came. So we met Dan. And we liked him.
Our English and science papers were also due. That was all right. We didn't get much sleep, though. And my science paper is 1.1 MB; Hilary's is 27 pages long (because of the figures), and Ashley's is 36 pages long. So, we wrote a lot, and killed a lot of trees (because we had to print out three copies).
In better news, we got our Team Zissou Standard Issue hats, and we wore them to history class this morning. I did not know what Zissou hats were when Hallie said she was ordering them for all of us, and I looked on Google and saw people wearing red hats, but I didn't really know what the deal was. Then Hilary and I watched the movie (Life Aquatic) yesterday after we turned in our science papers, and now I know what the deal is. They just wear red hats with their blue pajamas, and that's just the way it is. So now Williams-Mystic wears them, too.
Here is a picture of us walking to history class wearing hats. You can see all of them on Shutterfly here. You will notice two members of Albion house at the extreme left of the picture.
