Cluster Life
Catch up with the latest labs, lectures, and field trips!
Photo by Celina Chen
Cluster 2 had a very insightful and entertaining second week, building upon what we learned previously and having a lot of fun during lectures. To start off the week, Prof. Chen reviewed the properties of nanoparticles and introduced us to 1D nanomaterials such as a carbon nanotube. All of us were especially excited for the afternoon lectures since it was Prof. Terrill’s first in-person lecture. All of us were very engaged while learning about the Mo(o) Theory and how Homo sapiens are faithless weasels. Later on in the week, we spent time watching videos about Oppenheimer and playing with graphene sheets, layering them on top of each other to create an optical illusion. We even had the chance to create paper versions of a buckyball!
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Aside from our lectures, we participated in two labs. In the first lab we synthesized cadmium selenide quantum dot particles and put them under UV light for fluorescence. We had to be extremely careful while handling the chemicals as they are very toxic. In the following lab, we created magnetite nanoparticles and mixed them with other chemicals to make magnetic goo, ink, and plastic.
When we weren’t busy during labs and lectures, all of us enjoyed competing with each other in the game glow hockey, an app version of air hockey. One of our cluster mates, Katelyn, successfully won against everyone in our cluster, including Prof. Chen, whom she beat 7-0! We all downloaded the app to practice so that we can challenge her in a rematch. Through this game, and other entertaining activities, such as preparing for the lip sync battle, our cluster has been able to develop a strong covalent bond. Although our cluster chant states “what we do, we have no clue,” after this week, all of us are able to sort of understand what we do!
By Shrijani Buruganahalli
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Cluster 3 had a very busy week as we started to collect data on organisms for our final projects. Preparatory to venturing into the field, mammal expert Professor Gizelle Hurtado briefed us on camera traps, and how to set them up. Subsequently, we left our classroom to set up our own cameras, placing four traps around the Norris Center in hopes of capturing pictures of squirrels and other animals in the area. Not to be outdone, we traveled to Crown Meadow, on the campus reserve, to begin our bug collecting for the final projection. To our dismay, we found the meadow mowed and unusable for collection. The loss of flowers meant no pollinators for us to catch. However, we still had a good time walking the trails, catching insects for our personal collections, which we later pinned and learned how to identify.
The highlight of the week was definitely the field trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We had an eventful bus ride over, with our wheel blowing out halfway there, but after an hour's wait and a new bus, we arrived, excited to explore inside. After a quick lunch by the shore, we explored all the aquarium’s fascinating exhibits, moving from otters to penguins to jellyfish. The whole cluster left wishing we could stay there a few hours longer, but still immensely satisfied with all the animals we got to observe.
Despite a few bumps in our week, Cluster 3 had an amazing time, and we are eagerly anticipating week 3.
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This week has been all about qubits, or quantum bits. Monday’s lecture introduced us to electron spin with the Stern-Gerlach experiment and Tuesday morning focused on the Dirac comb. In the afternoon, we received our first taste of qubits, studying quantum parallelism and entanglement. While we haven’t killed bees like Cluster 3 has, there’s still been some excitement. On Wednesday, we welcomed our first guest speaker, Dr. Zhexuan Gong, who discussed qubit manipulation, leading quantum hardware candidates, and more. Prof. Sergey Syzranov followed this talk with a lesson on linear algebra, which we used to investigate various one-qubit and two-qubit gates. Our second week closed with superconducting qubits, quantum algorithms, and course assistant Shijun Sun’s lecture on quantum cryptography.
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The second week of our game design journey was focused on the materialization of prototypes and ideas into basic, playable games. We did this by learning a new game engine each day, going through documentation to learn to code and design in these engines.
Our week started off by learning Twine, a game engine primarily used to create immersive text-based games. Twine’s hyperlinks and smooth coding experience allowed it to be a user-friendly start to our game development journeys, as our class created games on topics ranging from intergalactic adventures to zombie apocalypses.
On Tuesday, Prof. Tamara taught us about Gameboy Studio (GB Studio). GB Studio required more visual creativity while still allowing for a relatively simple programming experience. This gave us the flexibility to toggle between Top Down 2D Games to Adventures and Shooter Games.
After this, we learned about Ren'Py, advancing into more complex scripts while depicting descriptive stories through a user interface. Our projects using Ren'Py allowed for collaboration amongst our peers and promoted teamwork (and some very funny memes) in order to create a storytelling game.
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6. Sustainable Power
Cluster 6’s second week as COSMOS was eventful and even more fast-paced than the first, with project research beginning in earnest as students toiled on project proposals.
This week marked our first time away from Prof. Yihsu Chen, who passed the reins to Prof. Yu Zhang. Shifting from microeconomics and policy to technical teachings on power, we studied the forces dictating AC and DC power, as well as learned about the quintessential formulas behind electricity. The week also saw the departure of our Python instructor Fargol Nematkhah, whose intro course on Python provided our cluster with the knowledge we will need for upcoming machine-learning lessons with our next instructor Jing Xiong.
On Friday we visited the Google headquarters with Cluster 2, where we learned about the inner workings of the company and toured the campus. While the trip was not particularly related to sustainability or power, we saw recently constructed buildings featuring “dragon scale” roof solar panels, which purport to maximize solar power absorption, with the roof tiles powering nearly the entire building while looking sleek and modern.
The fervor of the week culminated in a rousing lip-sync performance of Bruno Mars’s 24K Magic, which while hastily planned, was executed (in my opinion) extremely well.
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7. Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology
This week was filled to the brim with research and lab work! As of Monday, Cluster 7 had two projects overlapping, so we did what COSMOS students do best: multitask and generate ideas.
Our amazing instructor, Nettie Calvin, helped us plate samples and analyze bacteria in the lab. Many of us had gathered samples from campus flora, bathroom surfaces, and even our own mouths over the weekend. This week we discovered whether our various predictions were accurate – and how flexibility is key in biology experiments. Nettie taught us to employ the Multidimensional Diversity Index when classifying the bacteria growth we observed on our plates. On Thursday, all groups got the opportunity to present their findings after writing a final paper. The entire experience, from collecting samples to reflecting on flaws in our methods, was valuable to understanding the uncertainty and incredible possibility that research entails.
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8. Wonders of the Ocean
This week, Cluster 8 tackled marine mammal thermoregulation on our field trip to the Joseph M. Long Marine Laboratory! We met two Atlantic bottlenose dolphins, Donley and Rain, whose biometrics scientists measure and observe to collect data for research. They could show off their flippers and flukes to be measured, wear adorable wetsuits, as well as respond to the trainers’ hand signals and high-pitched dog whistles. However, we also were reminded that dolphins are wild animals, as Donley and Rain much preferred gulping down fish in comparison to listening to the trainers.
In the microbiology lab, we became cultured marine biologists by working with a variety of bacteria! We first counted E. coli colonies in the process of enumeration and used the spread plate method to create new ones. Then, through membrane filtration, we observed E. coli contamination in Santa Cruz coastal waters, using samples from Rio del Mar and Natural Bridges. Finally, in an ink-credible squid dissection, we extracted squid ink sacs to isolate the bioluminescent bacteria. We even got to take home the squid lenses and beak, much to the chagrin of our parents. As a reward for our hard work, our Cluster Fellow Iana treated us to a tour of the Jean H. Langenheim Greenhouse on the Thimann Labs rooftop, and coffee at Perk Coffee Bar in the Earth and Marine Sciences building. Cluster 8 made waves by winning the COSMOS 2023 Lip Sync Battle with our performance of Katy Perry’s “California Girls” (Shoutout to Danielle for the amazing choreography!), wrapping up a fin-tastic second week!
By Allison Cheng
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Video by Ellen Forte
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In the Cluster 9 lecture time, students were able to research and present their own findings on various research techniques used in microbiology. This was an opportunity for students to look into research papers and even at practices that they could one day conduct in the research field. The rest of the week, Dr. Wang continued his lesson on developmental biology topics including gastrulation and deterministic strategy.
As a cluster, our chant was never exciting, but one student found a unique way to showcase our knowledge with the chant, “Cluster 9, we can’t rhyme, but we know the Krebs Cycle: citrate, isocitrate, alpha-ketoglutarate, succinyl-CoA, succinate, fumarate, malate, oxaloacetate.”
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Video by Ruth Li
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12. Exploring the Structure of Quantum Materials
After returning from a weekend of kayaking and relaxing, Cluster 12 entered Week 2 with the task of finding a topic for our final research projects. In groups of 2-3, we explored the range of topics in the quantum realm to find the perfect match to what they were interested in. With the expectation of finishing our posters by the end of the third week, preliminary research topics ranged from quantum teleportation to plasmonics. To make sure we weren’t sitting at our desks too much, Professor Abe Wolcott led us in two different labs. In the labs we explored how UV and visible light can be absorbed into different crystals at specific wavelengths, proved by using a DLS instrument to show us the data. At high temperatures of 225°C, our aliquots displayed a beautiful array of colors ranging from yellow to red. Outside of the lab and classroom, Cluster 12 has been bonding, forced or otherwise. The lip sync battle was a cluster vs. cluster competition that had every group wanting to prove their creativity on stage to get the private pizza party that was promised to the winning cluster of the battle. Cluster 12 prepared a barely choreographed dance to High School Musical’s “Get Your Head in the Game,” which mostly included bouncing basketballs on stage while Ben sang as Troy Bolton. Although Cluster 12 did not place, we are looking forward to the Cluster Olympics and are ready to prove ourselves as the superior cluster in COSMOS.
By Lily Schroeder
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Video by Jacqueline Zhou
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