Kicking Back

Looks like another week has come and gone as I watch the sands of summer run down the hourglass. It has been a pretty relaxing week for me. 

My class has started to work in one of the undergrad labs. We have been extracting dyes from plants.

Introduction to chromatography using ink, water, and a strip of paper.

Using a column to separate dye from spinach.

Beta carotene and chlorophyll extracted from spinach.

Notes from my video presentation on chromatography and how it was used in our experiment.

Apparatus used to extract oil from orange peels.

I took a detour earlier this week to crash some lab tours and explore campus. There's this nice pond with a bridge over it next to a library.

Yesterday, I got together with a couple of my friends to make some spam musubi. We used regular rice instead of sushi rice, so the rice had difficulty staying together, but it still tasted pretty good.

Spam musubi ingredients

This morning, I got up early to make some blueberry muffins.

Blueberry muffin batter

Crumble topping

Blueberry muffins

I am also in the middle of reading The Good Luck of Right Now and How to Read Literature like a Professor, so you might see me mention those books in the next post. Have a nice week.

Summer 2014

Hello there. Hope you're having a great summer. I'm just going to face it. I can't blog. However, I am still going to walk you through my summer through the photos I have taken.

So at the beginning of the summer, you may have remembered this photo I posted of my ambitious summer plans.

How have those plans gone? Well, not as planned. After my summer finally got rolling, I found myself straying further and further away from the path of productivity. Of the things that are shown above, I've done about four of them. I read Cosmos, worked on college applications, tried to study physics, and sort of went out.

What did I do instead? Well, I suppose my excuse for not achieving my goals is that the ??? turned into my main summer commitment. I began attending summer science classes. Yay. I'll try not to bore you with all the details, but here's a little timeline of what I have been doing.

This is liquid nitrogen turning into a gas as it reaches room temperature.

One of these is Gatorade and the other is a dye that I mixed to match the color of it.

This is a tiny flower that I photographed under a microscope.

This is a beaker of fruit flies in alcohol.

Okay, this was all funner than I make it sound. Actually, I've been having a really great time at this program. We've been going on lab tours, doing experiments, and even getting in some humanities lessons. I may elaborate later, but let's move on for now.

Besides playing with bugs and chemicals, I have also been doing some cooking and baking.

Cheese and Mushroom Omelette

Butter Cookies

Brownies

This is kind of where my summer went, not to mention the anime I've been watching. The last portion of my time went to reading Cosmos by Carl Sagan. 

I have to admit that this is one of the best books I have ever read. It is an excellent combination of science, history, and philosophy. I found myself reading about everything from the self-destruction of mankind to pulsars and quasars to other dimensions to the search for life elsewhere in the universe to the Library of Alexandria. It reminded me why I first became interested in science and astronomy and showed me how science can cross disciplines. I must say that reading Cosmos and watching Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey were different experiences, but the effect was still the same. I am still in awe by what people have been able to accomplish over the years and what surprises this universe still holds. After reading this book, the history of mankind seems more remarkable. At times, it seemed a little more like science fiction than reality, but I suppose this world can be pretty crazy.

Overall, I suppose you could say that my real goal for the summer was to immerse myself in science. I wanted to love it and breathe it. In a way, I guess I could say mission accomplished.

Well, that's all for now. Back to you in the studio. I'll check back in soon. Have a nice weekend, folks!

Welcome Summer!

Hello there! I'm back! How I missed the warm breezes, the evening skies, and the blissful carefree summer spirit.

So what have I been doing for the past nine months? Good question. I suppose the best answer would be exploring the delightful world of AP classes. Those AP tests are something. To sum up the experience, I would say that many trees were sacrificed and I need more sleep. I am glad the battle is over. Now, I get to enjoy the summer before my senior year of high school. Woah, I'm going to be a senior. That's trippy.

Anyways, it is sad to say that my AP classes basically took over most of my life and left room for little else, but luckily, I was able to do some recreational reading.

Here is the list of books that I have read so far this year:
1. The Moon and More (Sarah Dessen)
2. Into the Wild (Jon Krakauer)
3. Insurgent (Veronica Roth)
4. The Fault in Our Stars (John Green)
5. If I Stay (Gayle Forman)
6. Graceling (Kristin Cashore)
7. The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

I know, it's a short list. It's hard to read for fun when you are busy taking notes on the Nixon administration... or was it the Ford administration? Anyways, I intend to get more reading done soon and maybe start doing some book reviews. Here is my summer in a nutshell. (There is one more thing I would like to add to the list, but we'll see if the stars align.)

Time to spend another magical summer watching the stars, reading, working, and of course, blogging.

Image courtesy of bubblews.com

"Sometimes you want to fall in love. Sometimes you want to cry. Sometimes you want to go on a perilous journey to a distant land. Sometimes you want to escape the life you live for one more extraordinary. Sometimes you just want a friend."