M stentorian
vol. XXX, issue 2
north Carolina school of science and mathematics
december 2009
stentorian@ncssm.edu
Mixers Banned on Halls
Administration cites fire safety problems
By Peter McNeary
Earlier this year, the school
administration banned hall
lounge mixers. The ban was
a direct result of safety viola
tions that occurred during the
Fourth West mixer that took
place at the beginning of the
school year.
Attendance levels at the
mixer exceeded the legal car
rying capacity of the lounge.
The lack of safety precautions
became apparent when fog
machines set off the fire alarm.
Kevin Cromwell, Director of
Student Services, explained
that while the administration
is in full support of the stu
dent body’s right to organize
student-run dances, the school
does not want to be held liable
in an obviously unsafe situa
tion.
“Looking at and evaluat
ing the enthusiasm and student
participation in the fourth west
mixer at the start of the school
year in the fourth west lounge
made us realize that in the long
run we want venues where
more students can participate
and at the same time have a
safe environment if something
were to occur,” said Crom
well.
Evacuation during the fire
drill took over five minutes.
Had there actually been a fire,
the results could have been cat
astrophic. Despite the blatant
disappointment of the student
body, students have been very
accepting of the ban.
David Stoy, a Fourth West
resident and DJ of the Fourth
West mixer, understood the
reasons behind the ban.
“It was a clear fire hazard.
It makes sense. It’s not like it
was unjustified,” said Stoy.
Although mixers are no
longer permitted on residence
halls, all other forms of dance
party have been deemed per
missible provided that they are
held in suitable spaces. The
misconception that types of
dance parties other than on-
hall mixers have been banned
has become widespread.
“Through SG and through
other places, people have come
to me to say, ‘you’ve banned
DYAO, you’ve banned danc
es,’ but that’s not the case,”
said Cromwell.
The school administration
wishes to make it known that
student are still encouraged to
organize parties on campus,
but that the regulations for par
ties will be more stringent in
the future.
The administration has also
made it clear to student gov
ernment that spontaneity also
factors into a dance party’s
eligibility. Because spontane
ous parties are not advertised
beforehand, they are therefore
expected to attract fewer guests
and help keep party size under
control.
The Fourth West Lounge will no longer be home to the Fourth
West Mixer at the beginning of future years. *Photo by David Stoy
Student Researchers Take Projects to Siemens
By Jen Zhu and Alex lew
Students and administrators
alike are proud of NCSSM’s
strong record at the prestigious
Siemens researeh competition,
a record continued this year by
five students who advanced to
the regional competition and
beyond. But not many students
know exactly what research
their peers are conducting, or
what the Siemens experience
is like.
On Nov. 7, seniors Judy
Deng, Damien Jiang, Lanair
Lett, Jinge Su, and Patrick
Yang traveled to Atlanta,
Georgia to represent the school
at the Region Six Siemens
competition. Lett, who took
first place, traveled last week
to the National Siemens
Competition in Math, Scienee,
and Technology, taking fourth
place and a $30,000 scholarship
in the extremely competitive
event.
“It was a great experience,”
gushed Lett. It was not all work:
one of the days of Siemens
1^^
National Finals was dedicated
to rewarding the competitors
with some fun inNewYorkCity.
The competition organizers
arranged for the student
researchers to see a Broadway
production of Mary Poppins,
go bowling, and visit Dave and
Busters. “Everybody [the other
Siemens competitors] was
shockingly down to earth.”
The other competitors, who
won $1000 scholarships at
the regional competition, also
enjoyed the experience.
“Presenting at Siemens was
awesome,” Deng said in an
email interview. “It felt good
to be knowledgeable about
a subject not many people
knew about, and to present this
knowledge to others.”
Some thought the event
itself was anticlimactic. “The
getting to it [Siemens Regional
Finals] part was a great feeling
of accomplishment. The actual
experience was actually kind
of bland,” Su said.
Students enjoyed being
surrounded by other young
A good luck banner was created by Lett s hall, 4 th West, before he left for the
National Siemens Competition, which took place Dec. 3-7. They also lined the
hall with good-luck balloons. • Photo by Dustin Burleson
researchers. “The other
[Siemens Regional Finalists]
were awesome. I found it funny
that before the competition,
everyone was all formal, and
at the social afterwards, we all
started acting like normal high
school students,” said Jiang.
“I was impressed by most of
the projects; lots were about
energy or diseases. I guess
Siemens likes those things?
But I guess they’re also the
most ‘useful’.”
Jiang’s project itself was
perhaps less immediately
practical. One of few high
school students pursuing
original research in
mathematics, Jiang worked
to prove, a conjecture about
the chip-firing game, an
interesting and challenging
problem in graph theory and
combinatorics.
Student research spanned
the gamut from mathematics
to biology to chemistry and
computer science. Lett’s
winning project investigated
how the gene HDAC-1
contributes to
insulin production,
an important
question related
to diabetes. Su
did a purely
computational
project in finding
binding sites that
allow the bacteria
Clostridium
thermocellum to
produce ethanol
from biomass.
Deng and Yang,
who entered as a team,
created a novel method for
measuring bond strength using
ferrofluids.
“I watched a YouTube video
about ferrofluids, and decided
I wanted to learn more about
them,” Yang explained. “So
we Googled ‘ferrofluids Duke’
and emailed the first professor
that came up.”
Deng also realized the
potential of the ferrofluids.
“Patrick was interested in
this thing called ‘ferrofluid’,
[a] really cool magnetizable
suspension,” Deng said. “1
agreed it was awesome, so
we looked up any nearby
professors that were working
with ferrofluids. [Our idea was
to] apply force [to the bonds]
using a magnetic field. We
create a system where- there
are many bonds within the
ferrofluid solution, and because
of some high-level physics, the
magnetic field will cause the
bonds to break apart.”
Because Deng and Yang
increased the magnetic field’s
intensity at a constant rate,
they were then able to measure
the exact force at which the
bonds broke. The results
were stunning: a method for
measuring chemical bonds that
could not only measure many
bonds’ strengths at once, but
also could measure weaker
bonds by accounting for “lower
forces than previous methods
[could],” Deng said.
Three of the five students,
Jiang, Lett, and Su, are not
enrolled in any research classes
at NCSSM. Deng and Yang are
Research in Physics students.
They all conducted research
over the summer.
Jiang and Lett conducted
their research as part of summer
research programs. While Jiang
went to thq Massachusetts
Institute of Technology for
the highly selective Research
Science Institute (RSI), Lett
stayed close to home, working
with the Science Educational
Experience for High School
Students (Project SEED)
Research Program. “Finding
a good summer mentor can
probably give you at least as
good a chance [at doing well
in the Siemens competition] as
the R-science kids. Be prepared
to put in a couple hundred
hours at least, though. And to
endure lots of pain when stuff
goes wrong, and more pain
when you write your paper,”
commented Jiang. Jiang later
revealed that he spent more
than 200 hours preparing for
Siemens competition.
Lett agreed, noting that
he constantly worked on his
research project with eight-
hour days and seven days a
week over the course of seven
weeks.
Five of the sixteen
competitors at Siemens
Regionals were from NCSSM.
Senior Neil Shah, a fonner
NCSSM student, and his
partner took 1st place in the
team division at Regionals.
Shah and his partner won 2nd
place at National Siemens
Finals.