I know you all have been on the edge of your seats this entire summer waiting for me to blog about math camp. Well wait no more!
Math Camp was broken up into two weeks. The first week I was at Rennsellar Polytechnic Institute in NY and the second I was at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in MA. The first week basically tries to prepare the grad students for the second week. We divided into groups and worked on either previously solved problems or problems that needed further work. The problem I worked on dealt with diffusion through the lens of the eye. We had data provided to us and we used what we learned about the chemistry and biology of the lens to create a model that would describe the data.
There were seven of us in our group which is quite large and for three days we sat in a windowless, clockless room and worked on this problem. Over those three days I learned a lot: what Bessel functions are, in England you call an eraser a board rubber, group work is incredibly tiring, and I'm still bossy.
On the last day we presented our findings, packed up and left for Worcester. We had the weekend free though so I took a side trip to Amherst and hung out with some friends there which was great as always.
At Worcester the grad students were no longer in control. These problems were "live" problems, meaning no one had solved them. Since they were live they were pretty difficult so the groups consisted of 3-4 professors and some grad students. The students role was to the grunt work like taking notes and typing them up. It was actually pretty interesting to sit in the back and watch these profs up at the board yelling at each and writing over each other to prove their points. It showed how no one's write 100% of the time.
The group I was in was working on a problem dealing with air bubbles in LCD screens. It dealt with fluid dynamics, which I know nothing about. Luckily, a professor from my university was at the camp and knew my shortcomings so every so often he would come over and get me up to speed about what the professors were yelling about. By the end of the week we had a decent amount accomplished that we were able to present to Corning.
Math camp was fun but it was tiring. After it was all done I stayed in Boston for a few days and caught up with some college friends. Those stories are way more interesting than math camp and will be relayed in the coming days.
