Hobbies
Cross Country Running, Harp playing (orchestra and private lessons), Swimming, Teaching, Reading

Clubs
Comparative Eastern Religions Club, French Literature Club, German Club, Philosophy/Astronomy Club, Cross Country team, Swim team, San Francisco Youth Orchestra

Experience
National Merit Scholarship recipient, Wondercup Challenge (Science quiz competition), AMC and AIME, Cum Laude Society

Biography
I live in San Francisco, where I’m a senior at the Branson School. I began to love physics last year while I spent hours immersed in my AP prep book. I love the challenge of picking the right equation and the surprise that my answer matched the answer matched the answer I the book. I began to feel the ideas of force, inertia, and momentum as much in my body as in my mind. The equations I needed to memorize seemed to have been created by a union of mathematical beauty and common sense, and barely required memorization at all.

I love to manipulate formulas, and to emerge from my mathematical chaos to discover that I’ve derived an equation that makes intuitive magnetism. I try to work out the analogy and wonder why it works. I marvel that some useful figment of a physicist’s imagination can seem to create something real, as magnetic flux inducesan electric field that really does make a charge move. This is not pure math whose meaning lies only in its internal consistency, but a system that describes the world. The realness makes me want to continue to play with equations and to read other explanations until I feel I understand. Physics is math with meaning, or poetry written through logical steps. It is the perfect combination of creativity and exactitude.

Playing the harp requires the same combination of freedom and precision. A sharp ear is needed to tone a string. Critical thinking is necessary to identify the weak spots in a solo piece. The understanding of the beauty and harmony of the universe that I gain in physics class is crucial for an insightful interpretation of a modern composition. But when I practice at night, I barely notice that I am playing. My fingers fly across the strings like moths in the eerie glimmer of the halogen light. Strings startle to life as I pluck them, then narrow and fade away. The vibrating notes seem to advance in a mathematical progression that taunts my reason, hinting at a greater pattern just beyond the limits of my comprehension.

I also enjoy going for long runs as far off into nature as I can get, eating ridiculous quantities of green vegetables and teaching Sunday School to third grades. I am frustratingly and gloriously undecided about my major in college. I want to explore many different fields before settling on one. I’m excited to come to the AAPT training camp in order to explore physics and to meet other students who enjoy it as much as I do.