Blog Post – Frank Jun 21st

Author: Frank X.

On Tuesday, I went for an unforgettable observation of an asteroid.

It was 1:00a.m. In the morning when I got out of the dorm with my teammates. Then soon after we began walking to the astronomy building, we realized how hardworking the creatures in the campus are: imagine how surprising it is to come under a streetlight and see five cockroaches gathering under your feet! Apart from that, I was impressed by the biodiversity of the campus: ants, grasshoppers, moths…… They all welcomed us with overwhelming passion. 

Eventually, we managed to reach the astronomy building and start observing. To be honest, our chances of getting good pictures seemed bleak: it was the first night of observation, totally lack of experiences, large possibility of cloudiness, late night shift……

But it turns out to be a wonderful experience! Sitting in a dark room, monitoring and operating a telescope with eight windows opening (or seeing your teammate do this), I felt like I am really a science person for the first time! We did encounter many issues: we attempted to match the pattern of stars with our finding chart for 20 minutes before we realized that the image from telescope was up side down 🙁  Yet we managed to get over those issues, which entirely cover the frustration of the issues with thrill and enjoyment. 

Time flies. As days pass, we become uncovering secrets of our host campus, NMSU, among which a story is the most engaging: 

It was a summer of early 2020s. Mr. Somebody  went out of the classroom at night. The wind rose, wandering around the campus like a floating ghost, invisible, only leaving its traces in rustling bushes. 

Mr. Somebody went under a tree, exhausted, wishing a rest.

Suddenly, a shadow fell on him. A tiny dot at first, then in Mr. Somebody’s sight, expanding rapidly into a……

WALNUT!

He cracked it open, putting it into his mouth and hum……it tasted wonderful! 

The following part of the story is so familiar that I do not need to talk about it: please see this image——

Everybody else: “It tastes wonderful!”

Apart from eating walnuts, there are even more joys when I am with my peers. As participants in one of the most challenging academic enrichment programs, my peers are filled with passion to do science. Besides working in the classroom until midnight, we often enrich our meals with original problem set, which includes:

  1. It is a tradition to eat noodle for longevity in China. The longer noodles, the longer life. A hundred-year-old elderly has a meal of 12 feet long noodles on their birthday. Assume linear relationship between length of noodle and life expectancy, calculate:

(a) How long do you live if you eat the world’s longest noodle (3000m).

(b) Assume you keep on eating one noodle and elongating it on the other end, what is the amount of noodle everyday to support your life to eternity?

(c) As people ages, their health condition worsens. Assume that the rate of eating noodle to sustain a person’s life at birth is the answer in (b), and the rate required doubles every year. The maximum rate (world record) of eating noodles is 91m in 12 seconds. Calculate the longest time you can live. 

By the way, to find the answer to this problem, please scan the code : )

About me:

import hap.py as hp

def Frank(你好):

    location=[China(Shenzhen)], [global citizen]

    Hobby=MUSIC**999

    Composer=hp.array([Bach, Mozart,Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Ravel, Prokofiev])

    for music in Composer:

        print(“I love the pieces composed by”, music)

    String=“I love Astronomy, since the universe has endless possibilities and endless surprises. In SSP, we are scientists; we are explorers of the boundless cosmos!”

    while we_laugh_in_DrRs_class: 

        return String