Last full day of the camp started with 4 wonderful lectures that gathered roughly equal interest. Vicka Bershadsky spoke about Renaissance art and compared the technology used by artists of that golden era to the one used by artists in antiquity. Dr. Boris Podobedov from Brookhaven National Laboratory explained how to produce the brightest beam of light on Earth and discussed unique properties of synchrotron produced light. Dr. Tatiana Pyatina, also from BNL, gave an original and entertaining presentation about the history, technology, craft and architectural expressions in the invention and use of concrete. Last, but far from the least, Sigma Camp was honored to host Dr. Maxim Kontsevich, professor at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France, one of the top mathematicians of our time, recipient of the Henri Poincaré Prize, the Fields Medal (considered by many a "matematician's Noble prize"), the Crafoord Prize, the Fundamental Physics Prize, the Milner-Zuckerberg Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics. Dr. Kontsevich spoke about tropical mathematics, lightheartedly named, but absolutely legitimate area of recent mathematical research, complete with its own algebra and geometry and useful for dealing with either very large or very small numbers.
After another tasty lunch, campers competed in Sigma Olympics, an individual event where they had to collect most point on 21 stations, ranging from chemistry to juggling. After 3 recounts of the results and essentially a photo-finish, Lolita Nazarov came up on top, followed by a three-way tie between Andrew Gritsevsky, Sophia Abanov and Nestor Tkachenko, with Michele Roitgarts getting the third place.
When emotions of Olympics calmed down a bit, it was time for the Sigma Awards and Closing ceremony. All of the campers that participated in the Young Instructor program and prepared their own workshops were honored. The team Mu received the prizes for winning Sigma Tournament and so did the above-mentioned Sigma Olympics winners. Leonard Liu received the prize for winning Sigma Chess Tournament. Each and every camper received a custom-written diploma created by his/her counselors with humor and care, highlighting the camper's personal Sigma experiences. Each camper also received a book from Sigma library selected to fit the most the camper's interests. The counselors also received their diplomas, these were written by the instructors. Everyone signed a glass vessel for Sigma Spirit, to be used later that night.
After the last dinner of Sigma 2014, it was time for Sigma "Movie" Festival. The theme this year was "Adventures of Winnie the Pooh at Sigma Camp." With the size of camper population growing this year, the camper teams were paired up. The five resulting combo-teams plus the team from staff participated in the drawing of genres, held during breakfast. This year the "movies" (all right, we know they are not actually movies, but rather plays) were supposed to be rendered in the styles of Western, Sci-Fi, Dark Comedy, Reality TV, and Drama. Each performance had to last under 8 minutes. The performances were so funny we laughed our heads off.
And after the laughter died out, Sigma 2014 came to a grand finale - at the campfire, under the skies full of stars (seriously, you can't see anything like that closer to the city. The Milky Way actually looks milky! Breathtaking) the Sigma Spirit 2014 was collected and sealed in its gorgeous vessel. To be let out next year!
Thank you all for all the fun. As much as we could fit of Olympic photos are here now.
Your sleepless photo team
