Caltech

Liquid O2 is Blue

I didn’t know that liquid oxygen is blue until last Friday, when my physics professor brought it to class and let us play with the three-hundred-Celsius-below-zero substance. A bar magnet (ferromagnetic), liquid oxygen (paramagnetic), and liquid nitrogen (diamagnetic) I did have a vague recollection of being told before that liquid oxygen is magnetic, but in class, we briefly learned why. Although liquid oxygen has an even number of electrons, molecular orbital theory decrees that two of these electrons abstain from... Read more →

Good Night Sunrise

Last weekend I slept in a tent in the desert with three friends, squeezed together side by side like sardines, while infants’ wails rang from the tent in front of us and snoring blared from the one behind. The one of two campgrounds with running water in Joshua Tree National Park seems to be pretty popular for Memorial Day getaways. At 4 a.m., our tent was the obnoxious one. My alarm chimed loudly enough for the occupants of all twenty... Read more →

My First 짜장면 (Jajangmyeon)

Today, for the first time, my friends and I cooked Korean food on our own. My mom is Korean, and when she makes Korean food, I’m typically assigned the task of chopping vegetables or mixing salt into rice or some else mundane. The most pivotal role I’ve played in Korean food prep up until today has been spreading rice and vegetables on a sheet of seaweed and rolling it up to make kimbap, the Korean lookalike of sushi. Even then,... Read more →

Brioche + Berries + Bollywood

It was a fun Sunday evening. First, there was dessert. Then there was dancing. Brioche is French butter bread. It has a soft, velvety texture and a rich, slightly sweet flavor. My friends and I had purchased some from Trader Joe’s after being tantalized with samples. We really didn’t want to know how many hundred and seventy calories each slice contained. But that didn’t stop us from slathering our slices with vanilla cream cheese frosting and piling lemon-raspberry sauce on... Read more →

Swedish Meatballs

Meal planning, among many other things, is difficult when you’re indecisive. It’s even more so when you have a big book of four-hundred recipes out of America’s Test Kitchen. Thanks to my sister for this neat cookbook! And excuse the messy desk... After flipping through the book from front to back and then again from back to front, my friends and I still hadn’t picked a dinner recipe. However, inspiration can come from strange sources, such a furniture store’s cafeteria... Read more →

Ge 1 Field Trip (Part 2)

At the end of my last post, I was riding the bus towards camp and dinner. That night, after a hearty pasta dinner, we explored the camp. Behind our cabin was a hill, which looked like it'd have a really nice view of the mountains behind, so after eating, we set out for the top. It was nearing dark, but the distance looked mild. I had no doubt we’d make it up in fifteen minutes. Cabin on the left, hill... Read more →

Ge 1 Field Trip (Part 1)

I never planned to take geology in college. I knew nothing about earth science and was perfectly fine leaving things that way. I was just never interested in rocks. In fact, I dodged the earth science part of middle school curriculums when I switched schools in seventh grade. My mom taught earth science, and seeing the ordinary, dusty specimens of her students’ rock collections assured me that I hadn’t missed anything. If I’d gone anywhere but Caltech, it’s likely that... Read more →

Succulents at the Huntington Gardens

What type of plant is prickly and ugly—nothing but a nuisance? Not cacti, I’m now convinced after visiting the Huntington Gardens. Only a fifteen-minute walk from campus, Huntington contains twelve themed botanical gardens, one of which has a conservatory full of succulents both soft and spiny from deserts in Africa, Mexico, and more. Some were so adorable I wanted to pet them; others were whimsical, even fantastical, as if spawned in the imagination of Dr. Seuss. There were succulents with... Read more →

Plants on Campus

When I was choosing a college, there was one aspect of Caltech which I could not get out my head. It wasn’t its rigorous academics, its world-renowned research, or even its number one rank by Times Higher Education. In fact, the strongest pull I felt from Caltech had nothing to do with education at all. I was in love with the plants. I visited Caltech in the spring, when the orange trees lining the walkway by the South Houses are... Read more →

Sweet as Sugar

It was a dark and stormy night, and I had a research proposal to write and two electronics projects to complete. The pileup of work was somewhat self-inflicted, but it seemed hopelessly heavy. On the way to dinner, I stopped at the mailroom to check if a book I’d ordered had arrived. Instead, there was a flexible, lumpy package. Confused, I tore it open, and out peeked the frosty gleam of a Ziploc bag over the caramel brown of… cookies?!... Read more →