Blog

After another somewhat rainy morning, campers began to finish up what they’ve been doing in their semilabs over the past few days. In the Unseen World of the Sea, students looked at fish under the microscope while in Surprises in Probability they learned about tree diagrams and played a counterintuitive probability game. After a break, campers headed to lectures about scientific writing, algorithms for streams, and quantum mechanics. After a filling lunch, campers went to their second semilabs and then headed to the Sigma tournament to compete in linguistics and applied science questions.

We have now finished two full days of Sigma 2019! After waking up to invigorating music and doing some exercise to wake up and get ready for the day, teams headed to the dining hall for a scrumptious breakfast. Afterwards, we were captivated by discussions of how we use math to explain language patterns, phase transitions and predicting future election votes, probability of what happens today given only the events of yesterday, and how nuclear bombs are made.

Day three at Sigma went wonderfully! The campers started the day off with lectures on optogenetics, the mathematics of card games, the chemistry of Jules Vernes' works, and more. As the day went on, campers dove deeper into the intricacies of their semilabs and watched a fascinating Experiment of the Day. In the evening, workshops featured meditation, Brazilian food, a look at unsolved mysteries, and, of course, more glassblowing. Finally, to round out the day, a beautiful classical music concert showed us how incredibly talented our campers and counselors are.