2024-2025 School Year
My classes, along with classes of science teachers Ms. Lulla and Ms. Litt, played the online game Freerice, which was created by the World Food Programme, for about 3 minutes each day for a week. We challenged students to answer as many questions as possible, in subjects ranging from science and math to world languages and flags of the world, and many more. For each correct answer, 10 grains of rice are donated to the WFP. The final total was 166,800 grains, meaning our students correctly answered 16,680 questions. This is an awesome way to have some fun, learn a bit, and contribute to a great cause!! I recommend to everyone to try Freerice, and help some of the hungriest people on the planet.
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Congratulations to senior Mia Darer, who is off to the state competition in tennis. She made it playing doubles with teammate Linden Wadsworth. Good luck!!
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Congratulations to senior Harrison Stracks and junior Kieran Low, who helped the Golf Team tie for 1st in the state! They ended up being placed as state runner-up through a tiebreaker, which was a one-stroke difference. A wonderful accomplishment!
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Sixteen seniors from Evanston Township High School have been named Semifinalists in the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program.
The ETHS Semifinalists are: Hershel Abraham, Una Breen, Eli Coustan, Cameron Eaton-Strong, Daniel Green, Maxwell Matsis, Daniel O’Connor, Isaac Peng, Katherine Schober, Leah Shaman, Harrison Stracks, Patrick Tu, Philippa Walker, Andrew Watson, William Zalmezak, and Kathryn Zehr.
This is a wonderful accomplishment, and hopefully some will be Finalists and winners of scholarships!
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2023-2024 School Year
We are wiring an additional $310 to our friends and schools in Malawi, Africa, to continue to support our EMPATHY Project. This is equivalent to 520,000 kwacha, their currency, which will continue to help about 24 schools plant and maintain crops and harvests that will feed on order of 10,000 children throughout their school year. We will continue to raise funds before summer break. Contact Doc V if you have any wishes to help out with this effort!
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Congratulations to both of our math modeling teams to take on the MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge. They are in the top 20% to have moved into contention for scholarships and are being considered to be national winners and finalists.
One team has juniors Leo Lopez-Gilson, Emil Frommer, Somil Bose, Daniel O'Connor, and William Zalmezak.
The second team has juniors Emir Bombaci, Eli Coustan, Ethan Ravi, Patrick Tu, and Andrew Schober.
We are waiting to find out if the teams advance to the next levels of recognition, but this is a significant accomplishment since they are in competition with hundreds of other school's best teams! Great work!
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Congratulations to seniors Sarah Schulkin and Graham McKee, who moved on to the Academic Challenge Sectional as individuals. Sarah advances for English, and Graham for Engineering Graphics!
Well done!
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A huge thank you to Sofia Shewfelt, for nominating Doc V for the University of Chicago Outstanding Educator Award! It is a true honor to have former students think of you in this manner, to say the least. Sofia will do remarkable things at UC and beyond, and I'll always be proud of her!
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Congratulations go out to two of our COMAP High School Math Modeling Contest teams!
This is an international challenge where high school students tackle complex, real-world, open-ended problems by developing mathematical models that lead to viable solutions to the problem. Open-ended problems do not have a single correct answer because a team must make a number of assumptions about the problem, and this drives the solution that is ultimately developed from large datasets and other information that leads to a mathematical model for the problem. Students use all of their STEM and other academic skills to do this over a two-week period, and then must write up a paper explaining their proposed solution.
This year's two problem options were:
- Option A: Are dandelions a friend or foe? Math models for the spread of this plant needed to be developed for a variety of environmental conditions, and predict what the distribution would be under those conditions. Also, students had to create a model that quantifies the benefits and problems of dandelions on the environment via an 'impact factor' a team needed to develop and define.
- Option B: This had to do with developing models that would lead to a proposal to city governments about the transition from today's bus fleets to e-bus fleets. Students had to include budgetary concerns, funding concerns, and the environmental and ecological concerns of the transition for a city of 500,000.
These are not the typical problems students get in their classes. They had to sift through large datasets and then figure out the best analytical pathways to organize and use those datasets, and then ideally write computer programs that incorporated mathematical models they developed based on assumptions and data trends.
One team earned a Finalist status, which places them in the top 6% of papers from around the world (by far, the most teams were from China; there were 967 papers submitted this year for this contest). The members are juniors Leonardo Lopez-Gilson and William Zalmezak.
The other team earned Meritorious status, which places them in the top 20% of all papers. The members are juniors Emir Bombaci, Eli Coustan, Andrew Schober, and Patrick Tu.
Both teams qualify to try the International Math Modeling Contest, where two papers will be selected from U.S. schools that will be the national representative papers against others from countries around the world. These two teams will also represent ETHS in the MathWorks Math Modeling Competition.
One other team earned Honorable Mention status, and 6 teams were Successful Participants. A total of 34 students took on this challenge.
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Congratulations to seniors Tolu Adeosun, Daniel Jung, and Hector Suarez, and junior Finley Weiler, for helping present at the Association For Learning Environments national convention in Chicago. The LearningScapes conference brings together mostly architects who work on schools and other educational spaces around the country. The presentation topic was on what makes a Welcoming and Safe School, and was presented in part by Doc V, along with three colleagues from the American Institute of Architects (AIA). The students did a fabulous job bringing the presentation and workshop to a conclusion!!
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Congratulations to seniors Sarah Schulkin and Jacob DiCrescenzo, who were named National Merit Semifinalists!! Awesome job!
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Dr. Campbell and Doc V were invited to and attended the Mental Health Symposium run and hosted by the ORTUS Foundation on September 22. A multidisciplinary group was in attendance to network and discuss the broad crisis facing the US. Speakers included Sen. Cory Booker (NJ) and John Macphee of the JED Foundation. Possible partnerships may stem from this.
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Doc V was invited to and attended the Santa Fe Renaissance Weekend in early September. This is an invitation-only conference that is 'off the record', where thought leaders in any and all fields get together to present their ideas and work in any number of top issues our country faces. Relationships and partnerships form, and new ideas and approaches to solving problems are hatched.
2022-2023 School Year
Congratulations to our Assistive Technology team, which made their final presentation of their work on a MIT platform. Seniors Luca Zerega, Meris Goldfarb, Sofia Shewfelt, and juniors Tolu Adeosun and Liam Sieland, have worked with junior Joe Salgado throughout the second semester to develop a toothbrush holder that is wirelessly controlled and can rotate, so someone restricted to a wheelchair and who does not have use of their arms can more independently brush their own teeth.
This notion of 'assistive technology and engineering' is something we will continue to do into the future. More to come on this as we progress into the 2023-24 school year.
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We thank Prof. Sasha Tchekhovskoy, an expert in computational astrophysics who specializes in how neutron stars and black holes interact with their environments, for spending an afternoon meeting with and lecturing on the role magnetism plays with black holes in our senior level 4 Chem/Phys classes. It is fascinating to learn how some of the 'basic' electromagnetism theory we learn in high school works not only for desktop devices, but also on scales that are a million light-years and for the largest, weirdest objects we know about, which are black holes (both stellar and supermassive black holes)!
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Congratulations to the Academic Challenge team, which took 2nd place at Regionals and now moves on to Sectional Competition! Buffalo Grove was 1st, and New Trier in 3rd place.
Individual medals were won by:
Computational Science: Luca Zerega (2nd place)
Biology: Tate Darin (5th place)
Math: Luca Zerega (1st place); Caroline Klearman, Rohil Bose and Will Comess (all tied for 3rd place)
Physics: Oliver Finamore (3rd place)
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A team of 6 students has been accepted and is working on the MIT Assistive Technology Challenge! This is one of the teams around the nation working on developing a solution and device to help someone in the community who has some sort of disability or special need. Our Co-creator is junior Joe Salgado, who has multiple sclerosis and is confined to a wheelchair, and the other members are seniors Luca Zerega, Meris Goldfarb, Sofia Shewfelt, and juniors Tolu Adeosun and Liam Sieland. This is a unique challenge and one the team gladly accepts!
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The ETHS Chess Team took 2nd place at the State Finals! Congratulations to Elijah Platnick (Board 1), Nathan Melnikov, Luca Zerega, Meris Goldfarb, Rohil Bose, and Jonah Chen for their awesome play!
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Congratulations to juniors Kathleen Carrasco and Maya Thadhani, who medaled at the DECA Regionals!
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Congratulations to senior Jessie Gerber for being named a semifinalist at the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium! Her paper, Probability of Pattern Occurrence in Fractures of an Amorphous Material, will be presented in poster session, and if named a finalist, will do an oral presentation before judges (who are professors). She will also present at the IJAS Science Fair in March!
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Congratulations to senior Jessie Gerber for submitting a research paper to the Regeneron Science Talent Search! Very few high school students do original science research, and then write it up, so this in its own right is a good achievement!
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Good luck to the 6 teams participating in this year's COMAP High School Math Modeling Competition!
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THANK YOUs go out to everyone who helped either in school or online, where we raised a quick $1020 to send to our friends in Malawi! This is equivalent to 1.042 million kwacha, and will be used by some new schools to prepare land for planting crops as they go into their spring and planting season. Our model will help over 10,000 children once the couple dozen schools harvest their crops towards the end of their summer in 2023. Each harvest will feed the kids at the school for an entire year, and this model has largely been adopted as a national model to avoid famine and kids missing school due to hunger.
See our EMPATHY Project site for details. We also have a GoFundMe site to raise money any time. Check out a nice article about the project in the Evanstonian...we're grateful for the coverage!
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Doc V is invited to present and facilitate sessions at a symposium in Portland Nov. 5. This is on school safety and run by the American Institute of Architects' Committee on Architecture for Education, which is associated with the Reimagine America's Schools group, and approaches education and safety from a design-architectural perspective. He will include work done by the National Coalition for Safe Schools. He spoke on "Safe & Welcoming Schools" at a multidisciplinary gathering of teachers, administrators, Homeland Security, Architects, community organizers, social and design justice experts, and medical and psychological fields.
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Congratulations to seven seniors who have been named National Merit Semifinalists! They are:
Emmet Ebels Duggan, Caroline Klearman, Jason McDermott, Sofia Shewfelt, Max Smith, Rex Wallin, and Luca Zerega. Two other seniors were also named, Frances Brady and Jane Watson. Good luck going into the round where Finalists and then scholarship winners will be named later in the school year!
2021-2022 School Year
The TED Talk is online if interested: Quantum Revolution in Education
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Congratulations to Kai Li-Caldwell and George O'Carroll were named National Merit Scholarship winners!! Awesome news for two wonderful young men!
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Lots of students doing summer research, so congratulations and good luck to Isabel Amromin, Anna Frederick, Jessie Gerber, and Ahania Soni who are working independently; Duncan Blaha, Rohil Bose, Will Comess, Jackson Drape, and Zoltan Moran with CIERA; Sofia Shewfelt and Lily Shure with the Gray lab; Jack Clair and Emily Felts with the Stern lab; Peter Golemis, Elijah Platnick, and Luca Zerega with the Chandrashakhar lab; Caroline Klearman, Nathan Melnikov, and Michael Pollack with the Amaral lab; Emmet Ebels Duggan and Kai Li-Caldwell in the Research Center; Torin Ravi with the NU Geoscience summer program.
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CONGRATULATIONS to the Class of 2022!! They graduated on May 22, 2022. I'm PROUD of each and every one of them, and am thrilled they now have a chance to figure out what they want to pursue with their education, as well as what they want to do with their adult lives! I hope they try to make the world just a little better, for they will figure out a way to do just that.
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And thank you to one of those graduating seniors, where Mira nominated me for the U. of Chicago Outstanding Educator award. It comes with some UC swag, so I thank her profusely! One cannot have enough UC swag, because remember one of their old sayings is, "Where fun comes to die!" Mira will certainly keep things hopping!
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This year’s National Merit $2500 Scholarship winners include two seniors from Evanston Township High School. Sophie Lammers and George Weiler are among the Merit Scholar designees who were chosen from more than 15,000 Finalists in the 2022 National Merit Scholarship Program. Congratualtions to them both - they and all the seniors will be missed!
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Doc V had a commentary article published in The Science Teacher, the leading journal for HS science teachers, on the quantum mechanical student. This outlines how we adults should have a change in mindset about how we think about students as complex human beings with personality and intellectual 'wave functions', and that how we interact with them helps select the state of each student for that day. In addition, this mindset naturally plays on the fact that every student will learn differently from the same lesson, and this acceptance in how we think about each student naturally forces us to change how we run a classroom.
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Congratulations to our CubeSat team! They finished 2nd in the nation after the final presentations were given!!
They were one of 20 teams selected from across the country to participate in the first CubeSat Challenge developed by the Beaver Works group at MIT, and one of 6 to be included in the final presentations at the national (online) conference.
The team consisted of members:
Connor McGuire, Luca Zerega, Rohil Bose, Meris Goldfarb, and William Comess.
Nicely done! This was a highly technical project involving learning about, through online coursework, space science, satellite systems, electronics built around a Raspberry Pi and Bluetooth platform, and computer programming to make it all work. You can watch final presentations here. ETHS's begins around the 33:25 minute mark of the finals.
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Congratulations on the senior science award winners:
Connor McGuire won the Robert Horton Award for Physics
Kai Li-Caldwell won the Hall Award for Chemistry
Raya Goulding & Annika Macy won the Society for Women Engineers Award
Jobs VERY WELL done!!!
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Congratulations to this year's seniors for making it through the way too long college application process. With May 1 having come and gone, which is national commitment day, they have lined up where they want to go for the next few years, as they figure out what they would like to study and do well into their bright futures! SO PROUD OF THEM!!!
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Doc V gave one of the featured TEDx talks at Northwestern University's Momentum conference on May 15, 2022. This conference will focus on original education reform ideas, and he will talk about the need for a total change in both educator and student mindsets and approach in K-12 education from a 'Newtonian' student (industrial, assembly line/fast food, and deterministic approach of the last century) to a 'Quantum Mechanical' student model (individual, special order, and probabilistic) approach.
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Doc V was invited and a proud member of a panel put together by the Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology to discuss the question: What is Quantum Science and Why Should I Care? With Quantum Science projected to be a trillion dollar future for a variety of technologies, energies, medical advances, and foundation of nanoscience, it is nearly absent in K-12 education. We make an argument and call to action to begin to change this, for the sake of young students. We need them to at the very least be aware of this, and the opportunities that they could become part of.
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Congratulations go out to five students of the Academic Challenge team, who individually qualified for the State Finals in April. The team missed advancing by about ten points out of possible 500. Kudos to Deerfield, New Trier, Stevenson, and Buffalo Grove for making it with their whole teams.
The advancing students are:
English: seniors Sophie Lammers (3rd place medal at Sectionals) and Annika Macy
Mathematics: juniors Elijah Platnick (3rd place medal at Sectionals) and Luca Zerega
Physics: senior Connor McGuire (3rd place medal at Sectionals)
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Congratulations to one of our MathWorks Math Modeling teams, which has made it through the first round of judging. While they did not win a scholarship, they are in the top 18% of the many hundreds of papers submitted from top schools all over the country!
The team members are: Erin Elliott, Raya Goulding, Emma Nissan, Annika Macy and Caroline Klearman.
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THANK YOUs go to the many students, colleagues, parents and community members who donated and helped collect donations for our EMPATHY Project with friends in Malawi! We collected and wired $2000 to teachers, led by Andres Nchessie, who are using this for new crops as well as money for new schools to begin the process of purchasing land and planting crops owned by the schools. Over the last five years ETHS has sent some $17,000, and each harvest has fed over 1500 students for the entire school year. Congratulations to everyone involved!
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Congratulations go to the students on the Academic Challenge team, after placing 3rd at our regional competition (a team trophy will be sent to us, since everything is remote). The team is preparing for the Sectional competition in two weeks.
The AC team consists of 13 students, with each student taking on two different subjects out of: Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, English, Mathematics, and Physics.
Each student takes a test in each of their two subjects, and the two highest individual scores are used to compute a team score.
Individuals who will medal are:
3rd place in Computer Science: Elijah Platnick
2nd place in English: Sophie Lammers
3rd place in Math: Elijah Platnick and Luca Zerega
2nd place in Physics: Connor McGuire
Other students on the team are: Isabel Aldort, Caroline Castellino, Cole Fleming, Raya Goulding, August Hassard, Lauren Jennings, Jack Lloyd, Annika Macy, and Carmen Tracy-Amoroso.
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Congratulations to the Chess Team for taking 3rd in State!!
Team members Elijah Platnick was a gold medal winner on Board 1, and Nathan Melnikov was a bronze medal winner on Board 2. Other team members of the team include Rohil Bose, Jonah Chen, Meris Goldfarb, Peter Kezdy, Boaz Lieberman, Isabela Maiewski, Ozan Mixon, Patrick O’Sullivan, and Luca Zerega. The students in bold are in my classes.
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Congratulations to the National Merit 2022 Finalists from ETHS: Jacob Chiss, Cornelia Di Gioia, Paxton Fetters, Sophie Lammers, Kai Li-Caldwell, Annika Macy, Aaron Martin, George O’Carroll, Noa Polish, Maeve Schanou, Jack Sokol, Sydney Ter Molen, Carmen Tracy-Amoroso, George Weiler, and Brandon Wui. The students in bold are in my classes.
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Congratulations go to one of our COMAP High School Math Modeling teams, who finished with a Meritorious ranking in this international contest, and therefore qualified and has been invited to try to be one of two teams whose papers represent the U.S. in the International Math Modeling Competition. Only 38 American teams are invited to try this year.
The team of juniors Abby Buell, Jessica Gerber, Sagnik Guha Ray, and sophomore Daniel Jung, participated remotely in this year's contest, where teams have a 2-week period to work on a complex, real-world, open-ended problem that requires the development of a mathematical model to develop a viable solution to the problem. Teams of up to four students then write up their solutions and are judged by professional applied mathematicians. This team's paper was in the top 20% of the hundreds submitted from around the world.
The problem they addressed had to do with the development of an energy storage system for a solar powered house, and a number of related issues with this.
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Congratulations to a team of 5 students who were accepted to take on the Build a CubeSat Challenge, sponsored through a group at MIT and several other organizational sponsors. This is one of 20 teams around the country that will receive a CubeSat kit and have access to a technical online course to learn all about the technologies used for satellite applications. The challenge will continue through the 2nd semester, with a final presentation and online conference on May 14.
The Evanston "Space or Bust" Wildkit team is: Rohil Bose, William Comess, Meris Goldfarb, Connor McGuire, and Luca Zerega.
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CONGRATULATIONS to our three teams that worked the last two weeks on the COMAP HiMCM math modeling contest!! Teams of four students can work on complex, open-ended, real-world problems that deal with just about anything out in the world. These are problems that applied mathematicians do for a living, and are often really data-intensive and have levels of complexity that overlap multiple fields. There are no single correct answers to open-ended problems, so this is a different experience for high school students, who are used to solving problems with a single answer.
Kudos to juniors:
Caroline Klearman, Nathan Melnikov, Elijah Platnick, Luca Zerega;
Rohil Bose, William Comess, Meris Goldfarb, Rex Wallin;
Abby Buell, Jessie Gerber, Daniel Jung, and Sagnik Guha Ray.
The teams worked on a problem in solar energy, specifically in the design of an energy storage system that can be used by a typical 1600 square-foot house for evening and cloudy day use. Results for the ~1000 papers will be available in late January.
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CONGRATULATIONS to junior Emily Felts, who was selected to serve on the Student Advisory Panel for Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). ANL is one of our national labs, and is not too far from our other national lab in the Chicago area, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). Emily is the first to make it through the competitive selection process from ETHS, and she will have a direct input into the educational outreach and programs that ANL develops in the next year. This is awesome news, and we thank Emily for her service in this role!!
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CONGRATULATIONS to National Merit Semifinalists: Jacob Chiss, Cornelia Di Gioia, Paxton Fetters, Sophie Lammers, Kai Li-Caldwell, Annika Macy, Aaron Martin, George O’Carroll, Noa Polish, Maeve Schanou, Jack Sokol, Sydney Ter Molen, Carmen Tracy-Amoroso, George Weiler, and Brandon Wui
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Doc V participated in the Quantum science statewide summit on a panel addressing what it might take and look like to include more quantum science in K-12 education, especially how it pertains to applications with things like quantum computing. There is a tremendous need to, at the very least, make the next generation aware that QM exists and is used in SO many areas of life already - there will be a need for scientists and engineers for numerous good jobs coming from this sector of research and technologies. He is also being asked to help with this process in the foreseeable future.
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We are back with in-person school! Everyone is being wonderful about wearing the required facemasks. HAPPY 2021-2022!!
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2020-2021 School Year
Doc V thanks NU for being part of the graduation ceremony. He provided a recorded speech to graduates, and especially graduating engineer Noah DeMar who nominated him, as part of the Distinguished Secondary School Teacher Award. The prize money awarded to the school will be used for global projects and student efforts with UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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Doc V will be a member on a 3-person panel for a session in a statewide summit on how and what to teach from quantum mechanics (QM) in K-12 education, particularly in relation to quantum computing. In addition, the panel will also address what the role of quantum computing might be and look like in American schools, and what it means for today's students. The summit, run through UIUC, is in late September, 2021. This is part of the National Quantum Initiative, written into law and funded since 2018, with Illinois universities (major research institutions like UIUC, NU, UC) and national labs being key members of the multi-billion dollar program.
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Congratulations to Alan Wang, who over the summer of 2021, was the only high school student to be accepted and participate in the summer internships at Argonne National Laboratory, about one hour from ETHS. He worked on both robotics applications as well as designed and coded an automated biology laboratory. This is part of ANL's Learning Off the Lawn summer research program. All of the other ~100 participants were from colleges all over the country; ETHS was the only high school acknowledged as being a part of the program this year.
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Congratulations to Alex Gerber, who went on to earn not only Gold Medal status at the State Science Fair for her paper and presentation of the effects of rain on Raspberry Pi RSSI values, but also one of only four Exceptional Project In Category (EPIC Award) in engineering! A nice way to end her high school career!
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Congratulations to seniors Alan Wang and Ezra Steinberg, who medaled at the state finals of the Academic Challenge. Alan earned a silver medal for Computer Science, and Ezra earned bronze medals in both mathematics and physics. Well done!
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Congratulations to senior Alexis Gerber, who was recognized as Best in Category for Engineering at the IJAS Regional Science Fair! Her paper is entitled "Effects of Rain on Raspberry Pi RSSI values."
AND, congratulations to Emily Hauser for being selected one of only five students to participate in the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) for her work on surface deformations on hydraulic jump!
Both won gold medals at the Regional Fair, and will present in the State Science Fair. And both did their research outside professional labs, and at their homes. Wonderful!
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Congratulations go to several of our Academic Challenge students for their effort in the Sectional, and who qualified for the State Finals. The team missed qualifying by a single point (out of a possible 500), so close!
Individuals moving on to state are:
Biology: Ava Santos-Volpe
Computer Science: Alan Wang, also won a silver medal at Sectional
English: Asher Baron, Emily Hauser, Ava Santos-Volpe
Math: Zachary Bahar, Benjamin Barbaro, Quintin Brown, Alan Wang, and Ezra Steinberg. Note
that Ezra had the only perfect score in the state and won the gold medal at Sectional.
Physics: Zachary Bahar, Ezra Steinberg; Ezra won a silver medal at Sectional
We'll see if any of them medal at State, but a really great effort by the entire team!
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Congratulations go out to seniors Emily Hauser and Alexis Kaiser, both of whom were just announced as Gold Medalists and qualified for the state finals of the IJAS Science Fair.
The regional fair was, of course, done virtually this year, with students submitting their papers and screencasts of PowerPoint presentations submitted to judges. Judging took place late last week and over the weekend. Both are additionally in the running for Best in Category awards (Emily for physics and Alex for engineering) and also the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).
Emily's research into fluid dynamics is entitled, "Effect of surface deformations on hydraulic jump." Alex did work related to weather conditions affecting efficiencies of using wireless devices for contact tracing during the COVID pandemic, with a title "Effects of Rain on Raspberry Pi RSSI values." Both did their research at home. Alex got the idea and presented her work virtually in the late summer through MIT's Beaver Works Program, where her paper was judged in the top 10 (compared to dozens from projects of top students around the country).
We are thankful to the dozens of colleagues in our region who put this together online for the first time, and Mr. Ruber has been our lead teacher to help pull this off for the past three years.
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Doc V is part of a small international team that will be working with the UNESCO's (U.N.'s education department) Paris office to create a Futures Literacy Laboratory focused on educating the whole child, using a mindset no longer built in a newtonian sense (traditional, deterministic, industrial type model of education) but rather the quantum mechanical sense (multidisiciplinary overlap and entanglement, all pathways possible, interconnectedness of humanity with nature). This is led by Aggeliki Pappa in Greece, and the team has partners on four continents (Europe, Asia, N. and S. America).
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Congratulations go out to the students on the Academic Challenge team, who did their online Regional competition and finished in 3rd place! The team will receive a trophy, and now moves on to the Sectional round of competition.
The Academic Challenge is run through Eastern Illinois University, and we thank them for going above and beyond to set up an entirely virtual state competition. Each member of the team takes exams in two different subject areas that include Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, English, Mathematics and Physics. The two highest individual scores in each subject contribute to the team score.
Members of the team are: Zachary Bahar, Ben Barbaro, Asher Baron, Quintin Brown, Ian Dunbar, Emily Hauser, Zoe Henke, Sofia Hletko, Ava Santos-Volpe, Ezra Steinberg, Alan Wang, and Braden Weiss.
And individual medals on subject tests went to:
Computer Science: Alan Wang 1st
Math: Ezra Steinberg 1st, Quintin Brown 3rd
Physics: Ezra Steinberg 1st*****
Because of their performance in the COMAP High School Math Modeling Competition, the team of juniors Erin Elliott, Raya Goulding, Sophie Lammers, and Carmen Tracy-Amoroso were invited to compete in the 7th Annual International Mathematical Modeling Challenge (IM2C) scheduled for March 8, 2021 through May 3, 2021. Each competing team solves the same modeling problem during a consecutive 5-day period of their choosing within the contest window. From all US papers submitted, COMAP IM2C judges will choose two papers to represent the United States in the International round of judging.
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Congratulations go out to two of our COMAP High School Math Modeling Competition teams. This contest provides teams of up to four students two options of real-world, open-ended problems, and over a two-week period they have a chance to write up a solution paper on one of the problems that uses a mathematical model the team develops.
This is an international contest, with hundreds of teams from other countries (especially China and Singapore). What's different about these types of problems is there are many possible solutions, each of which is unique and based on assumptions each team must make, and then justify with data. A mathematical model develops from best-fit functions to data, or through statistical models, depending on the problem and how the students think about it.
This year the two problems teams could choose between were:
i) how teens could evaluate numerically what 'the best' summer job would be for them; or
ii) a model for the best distribution of limited funds to maximize biodiversity conservation.
These are not the typical one-answer problems students mostly get in math and science classes.
Our top team was selected as a Finalist, the second highest ranking and in the top 8% of all papers. The members are juniors Erin Elliott, Raya Goulding, Sophie Lammers, and Carmen Tracy-Amoroso.
We had one other team selected as Honorable Mention. The members are seniors Alex Gerber, Danny Faibishenko, and Astrid Pene.
Both teams will be invited to be our two allowed teams to participate in the MathWorks Math Modeling Competition later in the year, which is a similar task only students have to complete it in just 14 hours; a challenge, indeed!
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A heartfelt thank you to all who helped with our latest fundraising effort for our friends in Malawi. Dozens of donations during these challenging times for all, allowed us to hit our target of $3000; we raised $3001!!
This was wired to Andrews Nchessie, the lead teacher on the ground, and this is equivalent to 2.3 million kwacha. They will purchase new land to expand the crops to not only help feed some 1500 students for the entire school year, but also help feed the surrounding villages, which have been affected by COVID. This will happen immediately! There will also be funds to maintain the irrigation system that was installed last year. Our multi-year project has created a new model for schools to avoid severe hunger and famine in the future, as they have become self-sustaining and self-sufficient by growing their own food, having the farms become the central theme of curriculum.
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Congratulations to all 119 of my students who have taken on projects relating to one of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). You can see a summary of what is being worked on. Everything from information campaigns to beach and environmental clean ups, to fundraising for important causes and taking actions to reduce water, food and energy waste, to volunteering and helping others through tutoring and mentoring, to teaching younger students and participating in global collaborations, and even political action. Everyone of us can help solve problems that impact human beings on whatever scale you're comfortable with. Every positive action helps. Every act of love matters. Yes, these may be single drops that don't appear to do much, but if we all contribute our own drops, collectively an ocean forms. We just need to find the will to take a few small actions every now and then, and discover the better world that results!
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This is something different!
The ETHS eSports Overwatch team took home the High School ESports League (HSEL) Fall Major Championship this week. The players on the team are Vince Martinez, Simon Perez, Andrew Haab, Nick Hurst, Sam Reber and Royin Suwanratanabus.
This ETHS team competed in HSEL’s national competition involving the fantasy game Overwatch, where two teams of six go head to head and fight over various map locations in the game-- from a futuristic African city to a research station on the moon-- in an attempt to gain control of these areas and claim victory.
With their championship win, each ETHS student received a $1000 scholarship.
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National Merit Students:
Eight seniors from Evanston Township High School have been named semifinalists and 37 more have been named Commended Students in the 66th annual 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program.
The ETHS Semifinalists are: Zachary Bahar, Benjamin Barbaro, Celia Chambers, Ian Dunbar, Alexander Johnson, Madeline Rodriguez, Ezra Steinberg, and Anna Taufen.
The ETHS Commended Students are: Brynn Aaronson, Patrick Alonso, Asher Baron, Anaïs Belfor, Henry Blickenstaff, Julia Bondi, Quintin Brown, Marc Dunand, William Fine, Ilan Friedman, Gabrielle Froum, Adeline Galich, Lucy Gallun, Lucia Goldberg, Aiden Goodman, Josie Hansen, Emily Hauser, Margaret Johnson, Samuel Johnson, Alexis Kaiser, Gabriel Karsh, Andrew Klearman, Alisa Kondratyev, Josephine McCartney, William O’Brien, Karlovac Papa, Astrid Pene Njine Monthe, Samuel Reber, Hannah Rein, Celia Reinhart, Quinn Sciarra, Logan Talmage, Gwen Tucker, Mackenzie Tucker, Cole Wagner, Benjamin Ward, and Madeline Young.
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Congratulations to two seniors who served on a youth panel for student thoughts and contributions to the Institute for Ethical AI in Education data collection for its eventual report on ethical policy for future AI use in schools around the world. Nora Miller and Aiden Goodman joined a little over one dozen other students from Canada, the USA, Mexico and Columbia, as they addressed issues such as receiving praise from computers over human teachers, what should policy be for accessing a wealth of private information and data an AI would collect on every student, how might an AI make school more engaging for students, should AIs grade student work rather than human teachers, and other questions.
The report will be submitted to British Parliament when completed.
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Doc V served on an expert panel at the Institute for Ethical AI in Education's Global Summit, where he helped debate ideas for a "bill of rights" for teachers, students and parents when it comes to having AI in classrooms. This is part of an effort for preparing the world for numerous ethical challenges this developing technology presents in all aspects of a human's educational experience in coming decades.
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Over the summer leading into the school year, rising senior Alex Gerber did research in MIT's Beaver Works Summer Institute, where she worked on the effect of rain on Bluetooth signal transmission, especially in mobile devices being used in contact tracing work used in outbreaks such as COVID-19 pandemic. She was recognized as a Top-10 paper out of the over 130 papers written by other top science students from around the country. Great job!
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2019-20 School Year:
Congratulations to some seniors!!
This year's Senior awards go to:
Robert Hall Chemistry Award: Brendan Long
Robert Horton Physics Award: Ronan Soni
Society of Women Engineers: Ally Hurd and Mayher Matharu
These are never easy to choose, and there are SO many worthy students, but we congratulate these seniors for what they did in the classroom, but also outside of the classroom, and their attitude and pure joy for learning.
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We have results from the state finals of the Academic Challenge in Engineering and Science (ACES), run through Eastern Illinois University:
Congratulations to rising senior Ezra Steinberg, who placed 2nd in state in Math, and to now graduate Ronan Soni, who placed 4th in state in Physics.
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Congratulations to rising senior Carmiya Bady, who won the election for student representative to the Board of Education. She is obviously a leader, passionate when speaking about what she believes in, and she looks forward to representing the student voice in our district. In the year of COVID-19, not only do we have academic concerns and challenges, but also the emotional and mental effects isolation has on humans (and especially teens), we need someone who considers the whole student and remind us adults that the mental health needs to come before the academic progress students are asked to achieve.
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Doc V was asked to write about suggestions for online teaching - blog post on UNESCO's International Task Force for Teachers on Education 2030, Online Teaching during the COVID-19 Crisis
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Congratulations to junior Ezra Steinberg and senior Ronan Soni, who qualified for the state finals in math and physics, respectively, for the Academic Challenge run through Eastern Illinois University. They had an online sectional, and Ezra and Ronan were able to get very high scores to qualify.
This year's Senior awards go to:
Robert Hall Chemistry Award: Brendan Long
Robert Horton Physics Award: Ronan Soni
Society of Women Engineers: Ally Hurd and Mayher Matharu
These are never easy to choose, and there are SO many worthy students, but we congratulate these seniors for what they did in the classroom, but also outside of the classroom, and their attitude and pure joy for learning.
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We have results from the state finals of the Academic Challenge in Engineering and Science (ACES), run through Eastern Illinois University:
Congratulations to rising senior Ezra Steinberg, who placed 2nd in state in Math, and to now graduate Ronan Soni, who placed 4th in state in Physics.
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Congratulations to rising senior Carmiya Bady, who won the election for student representative to the Board of Education. She is obviously a leader, passionate when speaking about what she believes in, and she looks forward to representing the student voice in our district. In the year of COVID-19, not only do we have academic concerns and challenges, but also the emotional and mental effects isolation has on humans (and especially teens), we need someone who considers the whole student and remind us adults that the mental health needs to come before the academic progress students are asked to achieve.
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Doc V was asked to write about suggestions for online teaching - blog post on UNESCO's International Task Force for Teachers on Education 2030, Online Teaching during the COVID-19 Crisis
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Congratulations to junior Ezra Steinberg and senior Ronan Soni, who qualified for the state finals in math and physics, respectively, for the Academic Challenge run through Eastern Illinois University. They had an online sectional, and Ezra and Ronan were able to get very high scores to qualify.
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Students helped create the Excite Club, which will try to begin to implement social-emotional learning skills and promote good, positive results, activities, and everyday events happening in District 65 and ETHS, and also try to keep a focus on what we can do to help reduce academic achievement and opportunity gaps between white students and students of color in our community.
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Unfortunately, since March 16, 2020, all activities in schools around the country have been cancelled in an unprecedented way, due to the global COVID-19 virus. It is unfortunate that students will be unable to pursue and complete SO MANY different activities, in all areas, but at the same time it is the right thing to do for public health.
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Congratulations to one of our MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge teams, that has advanced in the judging rounds by being rated among the top 20% of teams in the nation! This group of teams now move on, and are eligible for possible scholarship money, and six teams will be deemed as the National Finalists. The team members are juniors Lucia Goldberg, Sofia Hletko, Rachel Lichter, Astrid Pene Njine, and Ana Sweeney.
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Unfortunately, since March 16, 2020, all activities in schools around the country have been cancelled in an unprecedented way, due to the global COVID-19 virus. It is unfortunate that students will be unable to pursue and complete SO MANY different activities, in all areas, but at the same time it is the right thing to do for public health.
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Congratulations to one of our MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge teams, that has advanced in the judging rounds by being rated among the top 20% of teams in the nation! This group of teams now move on, and are eligible for possible scholarship money, and six teams will be deemed as the National Finalists. The team members are juniors Lucia Goldberg, Sofia Hletko, Rachel Lichter, Astrid Pene Njine, and Ana Sweeney.
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Congratulations to senior Ronan Soni, who was named a national semifinalist for the 2nd straight year in the U.S. Physics Olympiad competition!! He will take a very challenging semifinal exam in late April - good luck!!
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Congratulations to seniors Joshua Ahn and Ulo Freitas - both qualified for the IJAS State Science Fair, which will be held May 1-2 at Millikan University. In addition, Joshua won Best in Category for Astronomy, while Ulo was selected as one of the five students our region will send to the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), which will be in California this year.
Joshua's work involved doing calibrations on photos and other imaging of candidate systems of binary neutron star mergers, which he did after being trained by astrophysics scientists at Northwestern's CIERA group this past summer. The mergers are first identified through gravitational wave signatures from the LIGO experiment (whose members won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017), and then viewed optically - but there are 'artifacts,' or basically light noise in those photos, that scientists are trying to reduce and eliminate. Josh's work is showing what percentage of images are 'noisy' and recommends that an artificial intelligence algorithm may be the best thing to try to enhance the images. It is these types of mergers that produce the heavy elements above iron, that we are all made of. His paper can be viewed here: .https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8nURwQwI2RacElJTGhqQ24ydjFqVHFDVmZDZEVRV3ZPZUtr/view
Ulo's work was done in our Research Center, and involved new fluid dynamics measurements of two hydraulic jumps that interfered with each other on an inclined surface. His work will be expanded to use his functional fits to data to modify existing theoretical models of the hydraulic jump, which do not include parameters related to interference or inclined surfaces. We plan on trying to publish his work in a teaching journal, since this can now be used as a lab/inquiry project for other physics classes around the country. His paper and description of his work can be found on my CABS site:
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One way professors run their research programs, and as they go from year to year and have new graduate students joining their team while old...
basement-science.blogspot.com
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Ulo purposely looked for a 'basement' science project because he wants to help demonstrate that original work and discovery can happen in all sorts of experiments that use common household and school materials. The CABS site shares this type of work, as well as hundreds more research options, for any school/student/teacher to use; there are thousands of high schools that do not have access to university labs and do not have research programs of their own, even though there are plenty of students who would like to try research. We want to help those students and schools.
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Congratulations to seniors Eleanor Ward, Alex Duncan, and Brendan Long, who are named National Merit Finalists for 2019-20!! Good luck!
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The Academic Challenge team (formerly called the WYSE team) won their regional competition today, beating out 2nd place New Trier and 3rd place Buffalo Grove. ETHS and New Trier will now move on to one of the toughest sectional competitions in the state, later in March. If the sectional goes well, the team could advance to the state finals, held at Eastern Illinois University in April.
The Academic Challenge has teams of 14 students compete in Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, English, Math, and Physics. Each student takes two of the subjects, and takes challenging exams in those. The top two individual scores are combined to go towards the team score, and there are also individual medals for those in the top three highest scores.
Individual medalists are:
Computer Science: Ezra Steinberg, 3rd place
English: Ally Hurd and Saige Severin tied for 2nd place
Math: Ezra Steinberg and Ronan Soni tied for 2nd place
Physics: Jonah Doppelt, 3rd place; Brendan Long, 2nd place; Ronan Soni, 1st place
Other members of the team:
Joshua Ahn, Gillian Brown, Ana Glassman, Liz Krema, Oliver Leopold, Jacob Platnick, Ananya Visweswaran, and Alan Wang.
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Congratulations to seniors Joshua Ahn and Ulo Freitas for submitting papers on the science research to the IJAS Science Fair. Joshua submitted to the poster session, and Ulo submitted to both the paper and poster sessions.
Joshua's work was based on his work with Northwestern's CIERA astrophysics group this past summer. He worked on determining the quality of the image subtraction technique astronomers are using to detect and study neutron star mergers. These events are thought to be the driving force behind the production of heavy elements in the universe. Ulo did his fluid dynamics work in the new ETHS Research Center, and looked at the properties of two, interfering hydraulic jumps while on an incline. This type of study cannot be found in the literature, and will help contribute to the knowledge base of the mixing of fluids, the transition from laminar to turbulent flow under the influence of gravity, and any structure of flow from multiple water jets hitting the incline.
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Senior Ronan Soni took the preliminary Physics Olympiad exam. We will wait and see if he makes the national semifinal round - good luck to him!
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There is some interest in our science labs with minimal materials for the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Koen Timmers, from Belgium and a former Top 10 Finalist in the Global Teacher Prize, is setting up schools in the camp in February, and will be doing a paper airplane lesson with the kids during the grand opening of the schools. Also, Vikas Pota, former CEO of the Varkey Foundation, made sure the Minister of Education of Sierra Leone has our site and can recommend this work on a national scale. Former Chem/Phys student Anna Pierrehumbert is developing a series of math lessons with basic manipulatives for a math event in the schools.
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We raised and sent $1800 in change and (many!) dollar bills for our Malawi friends during the last couple weeks of January. This is about 1.33 million kwacha, and will pay off costs of fertilizer for the new land they purchased with our last donations, as well as a savings account for future maintenance and costs that come up. The land is up to 35 acres, and with a working irrigation system the schools are now food self-sufficient, which was the goal when we started this project four years ago!! We are also looking forward to one more fundraiser, as there is more interest from the tennis team to do a spring event! Can't wait to hit some balls with the team!
***** We were thrilled to have a visitor and former Chem/Phys student John Preston, Class of 1969, come in and talk with our current students on Dec. 6.
He talked about STEM careers and where different industries are heading. He is a leading expert in emerging technologies, and has been highly successful in environmental, energy, medical, and other sectors, as well as raising capital for newer companies. He has been a leader in these areas at MIT, as well.
He has chaired and served on panels for Presidents Reagan, Clinton, and Bush, as well as Prince Charles; received international awards from Al Gore and President Mitterrand of France, testified before Congress on numerous occasions, worked with leading tech companies and organizations, and so on.
His bio is at: http://v-entllc.com/about/team/john-t-preston/
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Congratulations to Dresden (senior) and Riley (junior) Lubic, who will be working on an experimental microgravity project that will be taken up to the International Space Station (ISS)! Looking forward to seeing what they come up with! They are working with Space Tango.
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Teachers on the ground in Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries in the world, are using science lessons and labs created, developed and tested, and some corresponding training videos made by ETHS students, in their classes. This is the first time students and teachers have done hands-on experiments and activities in Sierra Leone. One of the interesting facets of this project is that the materials are bare basics - string, rubber bands, sand, water, containers, paper, and not much more - and NO electricity or Internet resources. Things are going well, and they will even hold their first ever science fair! Check out some lessons, and students will renew the effort in 2020.
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Congratulations to the following seniors who are National Merit Semifinalists: Alex Duncan, Brendan Long, and Eleanor Ward. Great job!
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Doc V is proud and humbled to be the recipient of the Contemporary Physics in Education Project's (CPEP) 2019 National Teacher of the Year, for the inclusion of contemporary physics topics mixed in with the standard classical material we study, as well as student research into such topics.
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The four-year fundraising project we have had with schools in Malawi has been completed, at least for now, with some $10,000 being sent. The schools in the village we worked with has over 20 acres of crops, as well as a newly installed irrigation system. The last three harvests have fed some 1500+ students for the full school year, and the hope is they are self-sustaining even when the next drought happens. This is a wonderful bit of work by the entire ETHS community!! We hope to have academic collaborations in the future with these schools.
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2018-19 School Year:
Dr. Vondracek was part of a panel that presented at the Global Education and Skills Forum, held in Dubai March 22-24. He helped present a public briefing session on the National Coalition for Safe Schools summit that was held March 1-3 in Birmingham, Alabama, which he is national chair of its planning committee. This is an unprecedented teacher-led effort to place a national spotlight on teen violence and social-emotional-mental health in the classroom, which we believe needs to have an emphasis on par with content and testing. In Dubai, educators and media from other countries such as Brazil, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Canada, and others contacted him to collaborate since they, too, have seen increases in teen violence of different types. To join the NCSS, go to https://www.notinmyschool.com/.
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We learned today that four of our five TSA TEAMS teams qualified to go to the national finals. TSA is the Technology Student Association, and one of the contests they run is the Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science. This is a competition where teams of 8 students work collaboratively on real engineering topics and problems. There is a team essay, a test covering eight topics that belong to the theme for the year, and finally a design-build-test session which is a huge hit with students. Each student takes one of the topics and must study to become the team 'expert' on that topic.
This year the theme was "Engineering the Brain." The eight topics included cognitive neuroscience, considering the brain as hardware, engineering the invertebrate brain, artificial neural networks, the brain as a computer, traffic engineering and human behavior, probability, and the use of decision trees in engineering. If a team's combined score is above a national cutoff, the team is qualified to go to the national finals.
Congratulations to the following teams:
Our highest scoring team had juniors -
Emilie Duquet, Ciara Connell, Sam Fiete, Gavin Hansen, Jacob Platnick, Madeleine Ross, Aananya Visweswaran, and Eleanor Ward;
Seniors - Callie Benson-Williams, Jaime Berkovich, Polina Cherapanova, Jack Idler, Grace Palmer, Lexi Larsen, Kyra Wernick, and Ezra Yang;
Seniors - Max Baliga, Sarah Bloom, Michael Frim, Ariel Redmond, Austin Savari, Peyton Vannatta, Audrey Wientjes, and Maddie Yang;
Juniors - Christian Calian, Jonah Doppelt, Alex Duncan, Maddie Finkel, Glenn Foley, Cole Hawker, Ally Hurd, and Eve Rubovits.
We should be getting state rankings next week.
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Congratulations to seniors Michael Frim and Zack Andalman, for their performance at the IJAS Regional Science Fair. Both received Gold ratings, and both qualified for the state science fair. Zack also received the Best in Category Award for Physics, for his computational study of how a star passing near a supermassive black hole and is torn apart by tidal forces contributes to the formation of an accretion disk around that supermassive black hole. Michael went on to be invited as one of the five from our region to attend the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), to be held in Arizona in May. His work was in an unstudied aspect of splashing of non-Newtonian fluids, making use of high-speed video technologies at Northwestern.
It had been some 18 years since ETHS has sent students to the IJAS fair, but we are back and had a pretty good result with our two entries! With the addition of our school-wide Research Center, we hope to get numerous students in all disciplines to participate in IJAS in coming years!
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Congratulations to junior Ronan Soni, who was named a national semifinalist in the US Physics Olympiad program. He scored a 19/25, which is really hard to do! The national average is 9. He is the 28th national semifinalist for ETHS, and the first junior to make it.
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Our two top COMAP teams have been invited to compete in the 5th Annual International Mathematical Modeling Challenge (IM2C) scheduled for March 11, 2018 through April 19, 2019. Each competing team solves the same modeling problem during a consecutive 5-day period of their choosing within the contest window. From all US papers submitted, COMAP IM2C judges will choose two papers to represent the United States in the International round of judging. The international judges select the winning teams and offer these teams the opportunity to present their solution in China Hong Kong SAR in late July in connection with the ICTMA (International Congress of the Teaching of Mathematical Modeling and Applications).
The teams are:
- Michael Frim, Beni Keown, Nikesh Mehrotra, and Owen Travis
- Chris Gottardi-Littell, Joe Meyer, Chris Wolfe, and Madison Yang
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Doc V is the chair of a planning committee of American Varkey Teacher Ambassadors (VTA) who are putting together an unprecedented teacher-led national summit on school safety. An invited list of nationally and globally recognized US teachers are heading to Birmingham, Alabama, the weekend of March 1-3, to begin a process of identifying, putting into practice, recommending, and sharing best practices for school safety protocols, drills, training, professional development, and what should be done in all classrooms as far as social-emotional learning and mental health considerations. We want to try and help ALL students be fully healthy, including emotionally and mentally, so that violence does not result.
He is also on the Advisory Board for the VTA Program, which is run by the London-based Varkey Foundation. Doc V is helping plan and run the VTA Summit for the third year in a row, which is taking place in Dubai, UAE, later in March. He will welcome and present to the 2019 class of VTAs, who are this year's Top 50 Finalists in the Global Teacher Prize, as well as be on a panel that will provide the Global Education and Skills Forum attendees with a public briefing on the U.S. school safety summit with other US VTAs. There are now nearly 250 VTAs, from over 65 countries. The mission is to raise the stature of the teaching profession, and serve as role models and exemplars of national and global work in teaching and the learning process of children.
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Congratulations to junior Ronan Soni for advancing in both the AMIE and AMC math competitions! He's advancing in the Mathematics Olympiad, which is the process of creating a national team.
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Congratulations go to the Academic Challenge team, which placed third at its regional and moved on to the sectional competition. This competition was formerly known as the Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering (WYSE) Academic Challenge, but the WYSE group at UIUC let go of it after last year. Eastern Illinois University now runs the competition. Our regional was at Oakton Community College, where there was a tight race for the top three between ETHS and the winning school, New Trier, and the 2nd place school, Fremd. We'll do our best to get 'em at sectionals!
A team of 14 students was selected, and each takes tests in two subject areas, which include biology, chemistry, computer science, English, math, and physics. The two highest individual scores in each subject are then used to find a team score, so advancement requires a true team effort.
Several students earned medals for their individual scores.
Chemistry: Benjamin Keown tied for 2nd, Owen Travis tied for 3rd
English: Chris Gottardi-Littell was 3rd
Physics: Zachary Andalman and Ronan Soni tied for 3rd
The members of the team are:
Seniors: Echo Allen, Zachary Andalman, Jaime Berkovich, Polina Cherepanova, Benjamin Keown, Chris Gottardi-Littell, Owen Janssen, Daniel Linder, Isabella Miller, Ronan Soni, Tabbytha, Spyrison, Ezra Steinberg, Benjamin Timmons, Owen Travis
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Congratulations go out to two of our COMAP teams, which placed at high levels of this year's high school math modeling competition. This is an international competition. https://www.comap.com/highschool/contests/himcm/index.html
This competition has teams of four students work over the course of a week on complex, open-ended, real-world problems that are typical of what applied mathematicians work on. These are problems students generally do not ever get a chance to work on, where there is no single correct answer. Instead, assumptions must be made to simplify a problem, and then those assumptions drive where the team can go as they try to develop a viable mathematical model that leads to a possible solution. Students often must go through large datasets they find online, and must test their models to see what they output and compare to real situations.
This year, one team of seniors placed in the second-highest level of Finalist. The only level higher is Outstanding, and only 7 teams were selected this year in the top category (and only one US team was Outstanding, with one from Singapore and five from China). The team is in the top 7% of papers. Nearly 800 teams from around the world submitted papers. Members are:
- Michael Frim, Beni Keown, Nikesh Mehrotra, and Owen Travis
A second team of seniors placed in the Meritorious category, which is the top 14%. The members are:
- Chris Gottardi-Littell, Joe Meyer, Chris Wolfe, and Madison Yang
All US teams in these top three categories will now be invited to try the International Math Modeling Contest. Over three dozen countries will send two papers to be judged in the international contest. Invited US teams will have the chance to try a new problem, submit their solution paper, and try to be one of those two papers the US submits!
This year's two problems teams could select from were:
- Create an objective quantitative algorithm that can rate roller coaster experiences for riders (i.e. the 'thrill' a rider would experience) that is developed from large datasets of many dozens of coasters around the world
or
- Create a smart-home algorithm an online phone app would use to control the indoor climate of a house, ranging from a single room apartment to multi-room, multi-floor homes. The app must account for temperatures (both indoor and outdoor), humidity control, size of house, allergen concentrations, time of day, and geographic location.
These two teams will also represent ETHS in the MathWorks Mathematical Modeling Contest, since schools are only allowed two teams of up to five students. This comes up in March.
We also recognize 7 other teams that took on the COMAP challenge!
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We have sent $2400 to Andrews Nchessie in Malawi. There, some additional land will be purchased for growing sweet potatoes in addition to the corn and beans already being harvested. But also construction has begun on the irrigation system for the crops. This is key to becoming self-sufficient for the schools and villages, and this also serves as a model for other villages across the country of how to prepare for the next drought. We do not want any more famines to ever happen to our friends again!
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Congratulations to seniors Zack Andalman and Michael Frim, both of whom were able to submit papers and applications to the Regeneron Science Talent Search (STS)! Only a fraction of a percent of high school seniors do serious, original research and get submissions to the STS, which is known as the 'Nobel Prize for high school.' Thirteen finalists in this contest over the years have actually gone on to win the Nobel Prize! The STS is looking to identify the top, most promising science talent in the country, and will award a top prize of $250,000 to a single student in January.
Zack worked on theoretical predictions for the formation of disks around black holes, and Michael used very high-speed camera analysis (hundreds of thousands of fps) to get new results for the formation of certain droplets, called trickles, when Newtonian fluids splash. The Northwestern group Zack worked with is looking to publish the results, with Zack as lead author.
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This year's list of National Merit Commended students, who were just a handful of points away from the cutoff of being a National Merit Semifinalist:
Max Baliga, Polina Cherepanova, Anna Clemson, Michael Frim, Dennis Melonides, Izzy Miller, Liam O'Carroll, Michael Schroeder, Luke Stover, Anna TerMolen, Ben Timmins, Owen Travis, Peyton Vannatta, Kyra Wernick, Joe Whitcomb, and Audrey Wientjes.
Congratulations!!
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Doc V had the honor of introducing ETHS Distinguished Alumni Award winner Astro Teller at the Family Action Network event on October 9. Dr. Teller, whose grandfather was physicist Edward Teller, will be meeting with some of our Chem/Phys classes. He and his wife are charming people.
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Congratulations to the following seniors who are named National Merit Semifinalists!
- Zack Andalman, Callie Benson-Williams, Sarah Bloom, Abe Frohlichstein-Appel, Chris Gottardi-Littell, Ben Keown, Nick Marcotte, and Grace Parmer.
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We are so thankful to Chem/Phys alum Justin Schwartz, Class of '82, who is the Dean of Engineering at Penn State University. He visited the school and met with some students in the morning, prior to his flight home. He discussed all sorts of ways engineers are looking to find solutions to the world's problems.
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We have begun collecting donations for our Malawi friends. We want to help them complete an irrigation system for crops, and in the process become self-sufficient when the next drought hits. Thanks to all the students and teachers who are helping with this! We have a website to collect donations at https://www.gofundme.com/ethsformalawi.
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Over the summer of 2018, we have a core group of seniors who are working on a truly worthwhile project to help our friends in places like Sierra Leone and Malawi. In some of the poorest regions on earth, in rural schools that literally have dirt floors and no real set of supplies and materials for STEM activities and labs, science is largely memorization, reading and lecture. To help teachers learn how to do active experimentation and projects with their students, training sessions will start making use of some labs we are developing, as well as demonstration videos shared via YouTube, using as basic materials as we have, such as rubber bands, string, basic stopwatches on the few cell phones in those schools, and so on.
Senior Peyton Vannatta took the lead and recruited our core team: Sarah Bloom, Nolan Clarke, Audrey Freeman, Michael Frim, Lexi Larson, Grace Parmer, Nick Rosenfeld, Michael Schroeder, and Anna TerMolen. We will likely be looking for other volunteers as school starts, and develop a nice library of lessons and videos that may be useful to schools in similar circumstances around the world!
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Early in the summer of 2018, we came across a video contest that is actually really cool, and has a $250,000 top prize for a student to boot! It is the Breakthrough Junior Challenge. One student was able to produce a 3-minute or less video in a short couple weeks before the July 1 deadline, but this could be the start of a new contest our students participate in from here on out. Congrats to senior Jaime Berkovich, who produced a video that is one second under the limit on the cause of superconductivity! Well done, and thanks for providing the example for future students to use as a model!
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Congratulations to senior Sarah Bloom, who now has an experiment she helped design on the International Space Station (ISS)!! As part of a summer program she participated in last summer, the Go for Launch program run through Higher Orbits, an experiment designed to study the behaviors of bees and their vital role in pollination was part of the cargo on a SpaceX supply launch to the ISS this morning (June 29).
Sarah is at Cape Canaveral to watch the launch live, and also made and presented a poster prior to the launch! Way to go, Sarah!!
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2017-18 School Year:
Another year of fun times and wonderful accomplishments by so many students!
We are clearing the Chem/Phys rooms out, for Tuesday, June 5, the demolition teams come in and start tearing it apart...classrooms and the Theory Center are in for renovation, as we get plumbing, electrical and gas up to code; new work spaces and working infrastructure; and a research center for the school to use!! Thank you to all donors, who contributed $1.4M of the $1.6M to do this, most notably Mr. Leonard Schaeffer and his amazing gift over the next four years, as well as the Latimer family who made a matching challenge to complete the Foundation fundraising!!
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Congratulations to our senior award winners! For the Hall Award for Excellence in Chemistry, Nathan (JJ) Shankar; the Horton Award for Excellence in Physics, Gavi Welbel and Leo Loubieres; and the Society of Women Engineers Award went to Emma Estberg and Meg Eisfelder. Amazing job, everyone!!
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Congratulations to one of our two teams that participated in the MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge. The team with members (all juniors) Ben Keown, Liam O'Carroll, Nikesh Mehrotra, Chris Gottardi-Littel, and Owen Travis made the first cut. The top 20% of papers made this cut, and from this group the six teams that will attend the national finals and additional scholarship winning teams will be announced in early April.
The other team that participated included seniors Andrew Borland, Nathan Shankar, Ben Brewster, Daniel Frederick, and Eytan Kaplan.
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Doc V attended the Global Education and Skills Forum (GESF) and Varkey Teacher Ambassador Leadership Summit in Dubai for the third consecutive year. While at the GESF, he was on a panel at a public briefing about violence in American schools. He sat on the panel with Mike Soskil of Pennsylvania and Nadia Lopez of New York City. Journalist Bobby Ghosh was the moderator, and there was a student from Parkland, Lewis Mizen. To see the briefing, click here. He also made three additional presentations at the teacher summit, where he serves on the Advisory Board.
He is also the team leader for a group of five educators who are all Global Teacher Prize Top 50 Finalists whose proposal was selected to a national Teach to Lead conference in Nashville in late April. There, the group will work on planning for a national summit to develop actionable plans for schools to try to help students who are in pain and may be prone to acting out violently. Teach to Lead is a program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education.
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Congratulations to Nathan Shankar, who tied for 1st place in chemistry at the WYSE Sectional, with a perfect 40/40 score! He qualifies to go to the state finals in Champaign in April.
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Congratulations go out to three teams that have done well on the preliminary TSA TEAMS competition. TEAMS stands for Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics, and Science, and is a collaborative team effort to try problems and solve scenarios of a specific real-world engineering topic. This year's theme is 'Engineering a Greener World' and had sub-topics that included durability of materials, insects and climate change, efficiency of solar power, and the economics of green engineering. Students work together to answer ten questions and problems on each of the eight sub-topics, wrote a team essay on how they would take a building in their community to make it more environmentally friendly, and did a design and build challenge on the spot.
In the state rankings, three teams ended up in the top ten. Two tied for 7th place:
- seniors Andrew Borland, Daniel Frederick, Noah Guale, Jennifer Lane-Murcia, Ian Salamon, Maggie Sereika, Clara Stein, and Gavi Welbel;
- seniors Mattias Amezquita-Fox, Oliver Brady, Mallen Clifton, Posey Cohen, Emma Estberg, Simon Lequar, Leo Loubieres, and Ben Silverman.
And tied for 9th place:
- seniors AJ Brown, Jacob Cvetas, Jacob Glassman, Matt Ho, JJ Shankar, Elizabeth Sperti, Theresa Tsagarris, and Zach Volpe.
We will wait to see national scores once the essays are included, and whether any of our six teams qualify for national rankings.
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Congratulations go out to senior Chirasree Mandal, who was named a Finalist in the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS) at Loyola University! Chirasree is one of just ten students from Illinois to make the list, and was selected because of work done on ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters, which are the proteins in all cells that help transport molecules in and out of cells. Classifying these types of proteins, and understanding a variety of properties is quite difficult to do in the lab, and requires time-consuming lab processes. Chirasree was able to develop a novel computer-based method to sort through these and determine a variety of properties of the proteins that bypasses the long experimental protocols. Included in this new method are eye-catching 3-D graphical representations of the proteins. This work was done in the lab of Prof. Pinkett at Northwestern. She has worked in this lab the past two years.
She will have a chance to present her work in March. The top three students will win scholarships of $2000, $1500, and $1000, respectively, and also then have a trip to the national JSHS event, where top winners will earn an additional $16,000 in scholarships. Great job!!
Senior Noah Guale also sent a paper in for work he is doing with DNA studies.
Senior Noah Guale also sent a paper in for work he is doing with DNA studies.
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Based on rankings in the COMAP Math Modeling Contest, we have 5 teams that have been invited to take on a challenge to be the national representative in the International Math Modeling Challenge. COMAP offers this to teams that are ranked Outstanding, Finalist, and Meritorious. Teams would have up to 5 days to work on this math modeling power.
The students are
Seniors: Andrew Borland, Ben Brewster, Daniel Frederick, Eytan Kaplan; Oliver Brady, Noah Guale, Nathan Shankar, and Oscar Michel
Great job!!
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Congratulations go out to two teams that were ranked in the top 7% of all submitted papers in the COMAP High School Math Modeling Contest, better known as the 36-hour problem! This level is called the Finalist ranking in this international competition. There were over 940 teams, with hundreds being from overseas, especially China and Singapore.
Math modeling contests like this provide complex, real-world problems to teams of four students, and their job is to develop a viable solution and paper that explains it. Because there is no single solution to these problems, students start off by making a number of assumptions they must justify, then use them to develop a mathematical model that can be tested with data, and used to make predictions. Students use math, science, computer science, and computational thinking skills to develop these models, and must then write it up clearly and in detail.
The two problems students could choose between were: develop a drone light-show using dozens of drones, which would need to form a series of formations in the sky; or identify North American properties that could be developed into ski slopes that would be of Olympic quality.
For this contest, students work for up to 36 consecutive hours to produce their paper.
The members of the two Finalist teams are:
Seniors Andrew Borland, Ben Brewster, Daniel Frederick, Eytan Kaplan;
Juniors Ben Keown, Nikesh Mehrotra, Liam O'Carroll, and Owen Travis.
Both teams have also qualified to compete in the International Math Modeling Contest because of their high placement. This select group of teams will have the option of trying to develop solutions to another problem, and the top two U.S. teams will then go against the top two papers from over 30 other countries. Next up, a chance to represent ETHS in the MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge (formerly Moody's Mega Math Challenge)!
Note that there were 17 teams participating this year, tying our record high. Three of these other teams gained Meritorious ratings (top 20%) and six more teams were Honorable Mention, placing in the top half of all submissions.
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Good news: Our Chem-Phys classrooms will be completely renovated in the summer of 2018! These classrooms were last worked on around 1966, so some 50+ years ago. We will simultaneously be constructing a research center with the Theory Center, which will allow any student to take on research that does not require professional labs, as well as develop project ideas and research questions for 'basement science' that we will share with the world as part of our CABS project. This is exciting, as ETHS will continue to be a leader of high school independent research and academic achievement in the physical sciences. The school is putting in a relatively small amount of funding for these projects - the large majority of funds is coming from donations through the ETHS Educational Foundation. THANK YOU to everyone who has contributed to these projects!! This will make a difference for our students for the next few decades!!
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Over the past 1.5 years, ETHS students and teachers have helped raise funds for friends in Malawi and Kenyan schools. ETHS sent $6400 to Malawi schools that are working with star teacher Andrews Nchessie, where land was purchased by the schools for their own crops. In addition, seed, fertilizer, materials for chicken coups, and funding to drill wells and put in irrigation systems were purchased so the schools can be self-sustaining during future droughts, and avoid the rampant famine from the past three years in that part of Africa.
For Kenya, $400 was wired in order for Makonjamare Primary School to purchase sporting equipment. This school is in rural Kenya, and they do not have any real balls or other equipment to play with. This school has another star teacher, Jacqueline Jumba-Kehura, who is our contact. Jacque founded the Lifting the Barriers Program in Kenya, and has helped teachers develop new teaching methods for rural, poor schools across the country. She has gained international recognition for this work!
We hope to develop some other collaborative classroom projects with these schools in the near future, which should be great fun!
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We had 17 teams compete in the COMAP High School Math Modeling Contest this year!! That ties our record for most teams, and had 68 students spending nearly a full weekend geeking out with math modeling problems! These are open-ended, complex, real-world problems that require students to make any number of assumptions, justify those assumptions, and then develop a mathematically based, viable solution for their problem. They also identify strengths and weaknesses, and do sensitivity testing of their math models, putting together a solutions paper for submission. We will have results in late January.
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Congratulations to this year's 33 seniors have been named Commended Students in the National Merit Scholarship competition! Those in bold are in my classes.
The following ETHS students have been recognized for the 2017-18 school year:
Jordi Amaral, Richard Bahmandeji, Andrew Borland, Julia Borland, Posey Cohen, Lauren Collins, Jacob Cvetas, Theodore Dove, Paulina Durham, Benjamin Ellman, Emma Estberg, Joseph Fitzgerald, Naama Friedman, Clio Hancock, Joshua James, Samantha Kaiser, Tessa Kashner, Theodore Lambert, Simon Lequar, Leo Loubieres, Kip Macsai-Goren, Chirasree Mandal, Adam Marquardt, Oscar Michel, Jacob Nagle, Gianni Pinna, Joshua Prager, Benjamin Silverman, Leila Sinclair, Neha Singh, Gavrielle Welbel, Remi Welbel, and Mathew Young.
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Doc V was invited to the Society for Science and the Public (SSP) Research Teacher Conference in Washington, DC, on October 13-15. Two hundred high school teachers and research advisers came out and had all costs covered by SSP and Regeneron, which is a biotech company that sponsors the Science Talent Search, also known as the Nobel Prize for high school. Doc V co-presented on Doing Research with Limited Resources, and provided hundreds of research questions and topics to dozens of teachers new to high school research. The site with these resources is at http://basement-science.blogspot.com/.
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Congratulations go out to senior Chirasree Mandal, who was named a Siemens Science Competition national semifinalist! Chirasree is one of just nine students from Illinois to make the list, and was selected because of work done on ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters, which are the proteins in all cells that help transport molecules in and out of cells. Classifying these types of proteins, and understanding a variety of properties is quite difficult to do in the lab, and requires time-consuming lab processes. Chirasree was able to develop a novel computer-based method to sort through these and determine a variety of properties of the proteins that bypasses the long experimental protocols. Included in this new method are eye-catching 3-D graphical representations of the proteins. We will soon find out if this work qualifies as a Regional Finalist (top 30 in nation). This work was done in the lab of Prof. Pinkett at Northwestern. She has worked in this lab the past two years.
The Siemens Science Competition, which started in 2000, has a $100,000 top prize for the winning student. If selected as a Regional Finalist, Chirasree would need to prepare a presentation and poster for the Midwest site, which is the University of Notre Dame. Chirasree is the 17th national semifinalist for ETHS, and up to now there have been 8 Regional Finalists and 2 National Finalists.
If curious, the paper is at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8nURwQwI2RaT0s0UHd2Rl95dlE/view.
Congratulations also go out to senior Oliver Brady, who also submitted a paper on using high-energy X-rays at Argonne National Lab's Advanced Photon Source (APS) to study the behavior of lithium ions near the interface of battery electrodes and ionic liquids. The goal is to ultimately use this new information to improve battery efficiency and energy storage for cars and many other devices. He worked with Prof. Dutta's group at Northwestern.
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Congratulations to our latest National Merit Semifinalists! These seniors are in the running to become finalists in a couple months, and hopefully some will receive a National Merit scholarship for college. This year we celebrate Ben Ballmer, Anika Blitzstein, AJ Brown, Mallen Clifton, Judson Kuhrman, James Porter, and Nathan (JJ) Shankar. In addition, congratulations to three not in my classes: Meredith Byrnes, Jasper Davidoff, and Sophia Hachten.
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Over the summer, special thanks go to Ben Silverman, Noah Guale, Posey Cohen, Elizabeth Sperti, and Noni Shelton, who put together a GoFundMe site for our friends in Malawi, Africa. The donations are going to help complete the drilling of water wells and irrigation systems for the crops that were planted with last year's donations. To date, $5100 have been raised and wired to Malawi, which has paid for 8 acres of land, seed and fertilizer for the crops of maize and corn, and enough food for some 1500 children for the year in the schools. The site is: https://www.gofundme.com/ethsformalawi.
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2016-17 School Year:
Another year of fun times and wonderful accomplishments!
Our big senior award winners:
Award in Chemistry - Ellie Finkel and Jakob Reinke
Robert Horton Award in Physics - Abby Stein and Nate Tracy-Amoroso
Society of Women Engineers - Allison Grimsted and Allison Neggers
Congratulations to each of these talented students!
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Senior Allison Neggers was selected as a semifinalist in the Presidential Scholars Program! Amazing job!
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Congratulations to junior Chirasree Mandal, who is a National Center for Women and Information Technology honorable mention for their Aspirations in Computing award!
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Congratulations to the seniors who got National Merit Scholarships:
Joey Chafetz, Holly Cunningham, Ellie Finkel, Gabe Hull, Alec Jacobson, and Allison Neggers. Awesome!
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Congrats to one of our COMAP Math Modeling teams, that qualified and participated in the International Math Modeling Competition. Their paper will be considered to represent the U.S. in international competition. The team members are juniors Nicholas Fiete, Matt Ho, Simon Lequar, and Leo Loubieres.
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Turns out all 6 of our TSA TEAMS teams qualified for the national finals. We will almost certainly not attend, but a great job for every team to score above the cutoff score!
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Congratulations go out to some of our TSA TEAMS teams, which did well in state competition.
Congratulations go out to some of our TSA TEAMS teams, which did well in state competition.
TEAMS stands for Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science, and is a collaborative experience for teams of 8 students. They work on different engineering topics and problems, in the form of a multiple choice section, a team essay, and a design challenge. ETHS had six teams compete at Illinois Tech (formerly Illinois Institute of Technology) in early March.
Three of our teams ended up in the top ten in Illinois, as ETHS is the only school to do this in the final, overall state rankings.
These teams consisted of the following students:
4th in state were seniors Ilana Baker, Conrad Burghardt, Michael Faibishanko, Adrian Fullmer, Alfredo Gomez, Isabella Green, and Caitlin Sweeney.
9th in state were juniors Mattias Amezquita-Fox, Oliver Brady, Mallen Clifton, Posey Cohen, Emma Estberg, Simon Lequar, Leo Loubieres, and Ben Silverman.
10th in state were seniors Jeff Abraham, Megan Chambers, Molly Conover, Emma Dzwierzynski, Nadia Goldberg, Alec Jacobson, Drew Kersnar, Peter Kishler, and Bundev Sawhney.
This year's theme was Engineering the Environment, with topics that included biomimetics, climate change, energy efficient homes, geothermal energy, water treatment, and smart cars, and self-contained ecosystems. Students must use their science, math, writing, problem solving, and engineering skills to work their way through this wide variety of topics, all in a collaborative manner just as professional engineers do on a daily basis. The design challenge had the teams design, build and test a 'robotic arm' that needed to optimize cost of materials and the time needed to lift and move water bottles to specific landing spots. It was truly enjoyable watching the hundreds of students, including our 48, get into these challenges!
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Kudos to seniors Ilana Baker and Alec Jacobson, who taught a 5th grade class in Pennsylvania about cells. This was done via Skype, and was arranged with Pennsylvania's Teacher of the Year, Michael Soskil, class. We look forward to hopefully many more Skype partnerships with many other schools in the months and years to come!
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Congratulations go to the many colleagues and students who helped raise another $1400 in cash donations for schools in Malawi, Africa. These funds, along with $1600 sent earlier in the school year, are helping three schools plant, raise and harvest crops to fight the severe famine that has ravaged that part of Africa for the past year. The schools will use the new funds to help raise chickens, and to build windmills that will pump water to the crops in a irrigation system. The combined total converts to over 2 million kwachas! We are also expecting some donations from Warren Township High School, through the efforts of Joshua Vondracek. Our students are literally saving lives, and are becoming global citizens!
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Doc V was proud to represent U.S. teachers at the Varkey Foundation's Global Education & Skills Forum (GESF) and the Varkey Teacher Ambassador (VTA) Summit in Dubai, from March 16-19, 2017. Being one of five on the VTA Advisory Board, he helped advise on the summit agenda and helped write and present the objectives and guiding principles of the VTA Program, defining its direction in the years to come.
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Congratulations go out to one of our (six) teams in the TSA TEAMS Competition, which was held at Illinois Tech (formerly IIT).
A junior team took 3rd place on the first portion of the contest, and this will place them at least in the top ten teams in the state once we have results from other sites.
This is an engineering contest where teams of eight students work collaboratively on real engineering and science problems. The theme this year was Engineering the Environment, which included working on issues in biomimetics, smart homes, climate change, geothermal energy systems, metro transportation systems, and others. The placement so far involves a testing portion of the contest, where each student learned about one of eight topics within the theme, and then worked on ten questions for their topic. Students then worked together to help each other and complete the questions.
There are two other parts of the competition that will lead to national rankings. Students completed a team essay on an energy source relevant to their state (our teams all chose wind energy production systems), and there is also a design/build challenge that was done at Illinois Tech. The task was to use a required set of materials to design and build a 'robotic arm' that could move water bottles to a target, in a minimized amount of time. Teams had to be clever and use as little of the materials to keep the 'cost' as low as possible, while still being able to do the task in a short time period. All of the couple hundred students on site really had a good time with this challenge! And having watched the testing of the devices the teams built, all six of our teams were successful and had significantly shorter times than almost all of the other teams from other schools. The essay and design portions will be graded at a national office, and we will report results later.
The team consists of juniors Mattias Amezquita-Fox, Oliver Brady, Mallen Clifton, Posey Cohen, Emma Estberg, Simon Lequar, Leo Loubieres, and Ben Silverman.
We are hoping that this team, and possibly a couple others (we had six teams total, with 48 students participating), will have strong national placements!
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Congratulations go out to senior Allison Grimsted, who is a member of a research group at NU that has produced a new particle detector that will provide a new channel in trying to detect dark matter and neutrino interactions. Allison is a co-author on a newly published article on the Arxiv journal system, as well as on the Fermilab publication pipeline.
Allison has helped in the construction and testing of the new detector, which uses xenon in something called a bubble chamber - certain particles that move through the chamber leave a trail of bubbles due to ionization and other effects, so one can literally see evidence for the particle. In this case they are looking for signatures of so-called WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles. This is the name given to a new, hypothetical type of particle that may only interact gravitationally with other matter, and not through electromagnetic interactions. Most astronomers and physicists believe about one-quarter of the universe consists of 'dark matter,' which we cannot directly observe but provides the gravity needed to hold together the observed galaxies in the universe. Observable matter, the stuff we are made from, is only about 4% of the universe according to these models. This detector will assist in the search for new forms of matter! Oh, the other ~70% of the universe is presumably in the form of something referred to as 'dark energy.' Pretty cool stuff, even though we don't know what dark energy is yet! This is the term used for whatever is causing the universe to have an accelerating expansion rate being observed by outer galaxies.
It is a significant accomplishment and rarity for a high school student to do the high-level work necessary to be put on an author's list for a professional article, so we are really proud of Allison! The title is: First Demonstration of a Scintillating Xenon Bubble Chamber for Dark Matter and CEvNS Detection.
If you'd like to check out the article, it is at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.08861.pdf.
Congratulations to senior Thomas Fies, who is going to be a co-author on a paper describing research and field work he did with a Harvard group over the summer. The paper is entitled, 'The Curious Case of the Left-sided Dewlap: Directional Asymmetry in the Curacao Anole Anolis Lineatus.' The work revealed a directional bias of dewlaps of anolis lizards having their left sides being certain colors. This is to be published in Breviora - Museum of Comparative Biology.
Chirasree's paper is entitled 'Evolution and Classification of ABC Transporter Regulatory Domains,' which has to do with how cells transport different molecules into and out of cells through the cell membranes.
Congratulations to the National Merit Finalists:
Sam Bergman, Joey Chafetz, Paul Clarke, Holly Cunningham, Ellie Finkel, Nadia Goldman, Isabella Green, Gabe Hull, Alec Jacobson, Allison Neggers, Abby Stein. Also named are Evan Franshere and Hayley Latko. Well done!!
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Congratulations to two students who are among only three nominated for the prestigious Presidential Scholar Award. Congratulations to seniors Allison Neggers and Claire Wootton, who along with Julia Budde, are up for one of the most competitive high school awards in the country. Nominees are among the most well-rounded and talented seniors one can find, so congratulations to these three young ladies!
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While the WYSE team will not be moving on from a very tough regional, three students won individual medals in the competition. These students are:
- Hailey Stern, 3rd place in Biology
- Ellie Finkel, 3rd place in Chemistry
- Sophie Hachten, 2nd place in English
Congratulations!!
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Congratulations go out to two teams that were ranked in the top 10% of all submitted papers in the COMAP High School Math Modeling Contest, better known as the 36-hour problem. This level is called the Finalist ranking.
Math modeling contests like this provide complex, real-world problems to teams of four students, and their job is to develop a viable solution and paper that explains it. Because there is no single solution to these problems, students start off by making a number of assumptions they must justify, then use them to develop a mathematical model that can be tested with data, and used to make predictions. Students use math, science, computer science, and computational thinking skills to develop these models, and must then write it up clearly and in detail.
The two problems students could choose between were: develop a plan for a town to host a world-class triathlon and optimize the logistics of the event; or find the optimal placement of warehouses for a large distribution company in order to minimize the time for delivery of packages to customers.
For this contest, students work for up to 36 consecutive hours to produce their paper.
The members of the two Finalist teams are:
Seniors Megan Chambers, Molly Conover, Emma Dzwierzynski, and Nadia Goldberg;
Juniors Nick Fiete, Matt Ho, Simon Lequar, and Leo Loubieres.
ETHS and IMSA were the only Illinois schools to have teams ranked at or above the Finalist level.
Both teams have also qualified to compete in the International Math Modeling Contest because of their high placement. This select group of teams will have the option of trying to develop solutions to another problem, and the top two U.S. teams will then go against the top two papers from over 30 other countries. Last year, one of our teams was in the final ten to decide which were submitted internationally.
We have started working with another grant through Northwestern University, which involves developing lessons and curricula based on using Arduino boards and microprocessors to build scientific instrumentation. The eventual lessons will be piloted next year, and ultimately be made available to the country as we get going with NGSS in science classrooms. These lessons will include standards in engineering, design, constructions, scientific method, collaborative work, and technology standards. Students who are in our core group are Ben Drape, Jakob Reinke, Matt Ho, Leo Loubieres, Alfredo Gomez, and Peter Kishler. We will be expanding the club once this core group has some initial lessons designed, next semester.
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Our Chem-Phys classes are main participants in the CT-STEM effort, which is trying to create and pilot a number of science lessons that focus on computational thinking skills. Doc V and Ms. Gatchell are the lead teachers in this grant, run through Northwestern University. We will have our classes work on the lessons, and researchers will begin to use data to figure out the effectiveness of such lessons.
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I am SO proud of students and colleagues who helped raise $1600 for a teacher in Malawi, Africa. My colleague and friend, Andrews Nchessie, is trying to raise funds to purchase land, fertilizer and seed for crops for his schools. Malawi, one of the poorest nations on earth, and where 90% of its people live on $1-$2 per day, are in the midst of a drought and severe famine. Our money alone is being used to purchase 6 acres of land for two schools, which will soon be used for subsistence crops to feed a couple thousand children! This also shows our students how to help those who have it much worse than we do, and how we are in an age of global citizenry.
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Congratulations to senior Holly Cunningham, who has submitted a paper to the Regeneron Science Talent Search! Only a fraction of a percent of seniors are able to get high-level, independent research done and written up for the top science contest in the U.S. for high schools. We will find out in January what the results are, but this is a wonderful accomplishment.
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A new Science Club has begun, where three NU graduate students in astrophysics will work with dozens of ETHS seniors, juniors and sophomores so they learn some Python programming throughout the first semester. Later in the year, students will learn how to apply those programming skills to accessing and analyzing online datasets from all the major astronomical experiments. So by summer, juniors and sophomores would be able to begin real, original research projects.
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Congratulations to senior Holly Cunningham, who was named a national semifinalist in the Siemens Science and Technology Competition. Her work involved looking at certain chaperone proteins that, under various stresses and overexpression, cause changes in starch cell growth and can lead to various defects in the cells. Some of these effects in other types of cells can be related to cancers and other diseases. Well done! Her paper can be viewed here.
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Doc V was fortunate enough to be invited to NYC and the Clinton Global Initiative, for a special celebration of teachers that is hosted by the Varkey Foundation (U.K.) in September, 2016. Also, Doc V was interviewed by Physics Today, a leading physics journal with circulation of 135,000. The online interview is here.
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Congratulations to National Merit Commended students! They are seniors Emma Dzwierzynski, Thomas Fies, Adrian Fullmer, Allison Grimsted, Chapin Low, Abi Otwell, Freddy Pardoe, Jakob Reinke, Dylan TerMolen, and Nate Tracy-Amoroso.
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Congratulations to this year's National Merit Semifinalists! They are seniors Libby Apley, Sam Bergman, Joey Chafetz, Paul Clarke, Holly Cunningham, Ellie Finkel, Nadia Goldberg, Isabella Green, Gabe Hull, Alec Jacobson, Allison Neggers, and Abby Stein. Awesome job!!
2015-16 School Year:
Another year, and many more wonderful, amazing students to report on!
Congratulations to junior Abby Stein, who was accepted into the prestigious Summer Science Program, a competitive program that looks for top science talent and potential, and gives these students an immersion in the science process, with an emphasis on astrophysics topics and data. Great job!!
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Seniors Adrian Lafont-Mueller and Seth Paternostro are National Merit Scholarship winners!! Awesome job!!
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Congratulations to Mitchell Estberg and Alex Paternostro, who have advanced to the State Finals of WYSE! Mitchell for chemistry, and Alex for biology. Unfortunately, the team did not advance from a very loaded sectional...we'll get them next year!
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Curtis Lowder did a wonderful job at the JSHS finals at Loyola University. He was not in the top 5, but just missed and is the alternate to go to nationals should a top-five student be unable to attend. Great job! It is always so difficult to compare something like astrophysics to microbiology to biochemistry...all the students are to be commended!
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Congratulations to these students!
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Both Moody's Mega Math Challenge teams made it through the 'triage' judging round and are in the top 15% of papers in this national math modeling competition. The teams are now in the running to make it to the national finals, and/or other scholarships.
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Congratulations go out to one of our math modeling teams for their placement in the International Mathematical Modeling Challenge (IM2C). This competition is similar to the COMAP Math Modeling Contest, better known as the '36 hour problem,' only the teams that were invited had a maximum of five days to work on a viable solution to a complex, open-ended problem. These are problems with no single right answer, and are based largely on assumptions made by the team.
Top teams from the COMAP contest were invited to try the IM2C, and only two papers were selected that are then submitted in competition against the top papers from 35 other countries. ETHS had four of the 70 invited teams, and three were able to attempt a solution paper.
The team of seniors Ella Brady, Katherine Brady, Adam Masters, and Nick O'Brien was named a Finalist team, meaning they were in the top 10 papers considered to represent the U.S. Illinois was well represented, with three other teams in the top 10: one from Walter Payton College Prep, and two from IMSA.
The other two teams that participated were:
Seniors Nathan Holzmueller, Curtis Lowder, Nick Shankar, and Harry Zhang;
Juniors Holly Cunningham and Abby Stein
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Congratulations to Mitchell Estberg and Alex Paternostro, who have advanced to the State Finals of WYSE! Mitchell for chemistry, and Alex for biology. Unfortunately, the team did not advance from a very loaded sectional...we'll get them next year!
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Curtis Lowder did a wonderful job at the JSHS finals at Loyola University. He was not in the top 5, but just missed and is the alternate to go to nationals should a top-five student be unable to attend. Great job! It is always so difficult to compare something like astrophysics to microbiology to biochemistry...all the students are to be commended!
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Here is an update on the Moody's teams:
Both teams earned Honorable Mention status. This means they were in the last group of the top papers in the country being considered for the top six national finals slots. Both teams, although not moving on to the national finals, have won $1000 scholarships to be split evenly among the five members of each team. ETHS is one of only six schools that had both teams rated at this level or higher!
The teams are:
- Senior Zane Kashner and juniors Holly Cunningham, Alec Jacboson, Bundev Sawhney, and Abby Stein;
- Seniors Mitchell Estberg, Colby Lewis, Nora Linzer, Daniel Meyer, and Caitlin Westerfield.
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Both Moody's Mega Math Challenge teams made it through the 'triage' judging round and are in the top 15% of papers in this national math modeling competition. The teams are now in the running to make it to the national finals, and/or other scholarships.
The teams are:
Juniors Holly Cunningham, Alec Jacobson, Bundev Sawhney, Abby Stein, and senior Zane Kashner;
Seniors Mitchell Estberg, Colby Lewis, Nora Linzer, Daniel Meyer, and Caitlin Westerfield.
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Several ETHS TEAMS teams did well in our regional competition. We had teams take 3rd, 4th and 5th place at the Illinois Tech (formerly Illinois Institute of Technology) Chicago campus. We finished behind strong teams from Fenwick and Stevenson.
TEAMS, which stands for Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science, is a national competition in STEM areas, where teams of up to eight students work collaboratively on engineering and science based problems. The theme this year was Engineering the Tools of Innovation, with topics including genomics, space exploration, six-sigma high precision measuring devices, optical equipment including microscopes and telescopes, and energy efficiency.
In 3rd place were seniors Matteo DiBernardo, Zane Kashner, Colby Lewis, Nora Linzer, Peter Sparks, Abigail Steman, Sam Weidner, and Caitlin Westerfield;
In 4th place were juniors Sam Bergman, Megan Chambers, Holly Cunningham, Emma Dzwierzynski, Ellie Finkel, Nate Tracy-Amorosa, Chapin Low, and Allison Neggers;
In 5th place were seniors Kira Favakeh, Julia Fiorino, Christian Landis, Liora London, Curtis Lowder, Dan Meyer, Henry Peters, and Lucy Sattler.
We are hopeful that all three teams will finish in the top ten in the state, and that one or more will qualify for national rankings. National rankings will come out in early May.
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Congratulations to senior Curtis Lowder, who was named a finalist in the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium. He was recognized for his independent research into the gravitational effects of the asteroid belt on the LISA experiment satellites. Recently, the LIGO experiment produced the first direct evidence for gravitational waves, and the LISA experiment was planned to look in a difference frequency realm for gravitational radiation (first predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago).
Curtis wrote a detailed computer simulation to read in data from hundreds of thousands of asteroids, and computed the vector sum on LISA satellites. LISA is a space-based satellite experiment designed to detect gravitational waves. Prof. Shane Larson at NU worked with Curtis to get started on this research.
Junior Holly Cunningham's paper was selected as an alternate. Her paper was entitled, "The Identification of a Protein Involved in Cell Cycle Control," and she is working in the lab of Prof. Richard Morimoto at NU.
*****
Congratulations to seniors Matteo DiBernardo, Murielle Dunand, Nora Linzer, and Seth Paternostro, who are nominated for the Presidential Scholars Award!
*****
CONGRATULATIONS to our COMAP Finalist and National
Finalist teams from the 2015 contest who are invited to compete in the
International Mathematical Modeling Challenge. This is only the second year of
this international contest, and only 62 U.S. teams have been invited.
From the teams that participate in this new
challenge, COMAP will select the top 2 teams, which will then represent the
U.S. internationally by having their papers judged by an international panel against two teams
from any other country that participates.
This challenge allows for
a 5-day period to work on a problem, and develop up to a 20-page solutions paper.
It is the same process as the 36-hour problem, only on steroids!
Our invited teams are:
5791 Holly, Alec, Bundev,
Abby
5788 Mitchell, Colby, Nora,
Danny
5792 Nathan, Curtis, Nick,
Harry
5832 Ella, Katherine,
Adam, Nick
The website for the
International contest is http://immchallenge.org/Index.html.
Congratulations go to 64 students who spent the better part of a full weekend working on the COMAP High School Math Modeling Contest (HiMCM). Over 700 papers were submitted from around the country, as well as overseas with dozens of papers from China. Teams selected one of two problems:
- When there is road construction and lane reductions, develop a fresh analysis and recommendation for minimizing road rage among drivers;
- More of a 'big data' problem, students were given numerous data and statistics for a long list of crimes in a major city, and had to develop a math model that produces a numerical assessment of the safeness of the city.
We had several teams that did quite well.
One team (of juniors) earned National Finalist status, which puts it in the top 3% internationally. The students are Holly Cunningham, Alec Jacobson, Bundev Sawhney, and Abby Stein.
Three senior teams earned Finalist status, which is the top 10%.
- Mitchell Estberg, Colby Lewis, Nora Linzer, and Daniel Meyer
- Nathan Holzmueller, Curtis Lowder, Nick Shankhar, and Harry Zhang
- Ella Brady, Katherine Brady, Adam Masters, and Nick Obrien
Three teams earned Meritorious status, which is in the top third:
- Seniors Matteo DiBernardo, Zane Kashner, Adrian Lafont-Mueller, and Anu Raife
- Juniors Megan Chambers, Molly Conover, Emma Dzwierzynski, and Nadia Goldberg
- Juniors Jeff Abraham, Jesse Bernstein, Michael Faibishenko, Gabe Hull
Remaining teams earned status of Honorable Mention (6 teams) or Successful Participant (2 teams). The COMAP site is http://www.comap.com/highschool/contests/himcm/index.html.
Great job!!!******
Congratulations to senior Zane Kashner, who is now an Intel Science Talent Search National Semifinalist, recognized for his work in the development of a new analysis for hot Jupiter exoplanets and their climatic properties, using phase shifts in how heat flows and is transferred within those atmospheres. Significant differences in temperature distributions are found using Zane's methods. He will receive a $1000 scholarship (for Stanford), and is in the running to become a finalist. Finalists in the STS compete for top prizes of three $150,000 scholarships. The school also receives $1000, which will go into our research account.
I am so proud of seniors Lucy Sattler and Caitlin Westerfield, and junior Allison Neggers, for their outstanding leadership and commitment to WiSTEM, or Women in STEM! You are wonderful role models for young girls who will follow you on this journey!
Congratulations to senior Caitlin Westerfield, for being accepted into the Women's Health Mentoring Program, where she will work with the research group of Dr. Erik Andersen at NU. Caitlin will, in turn, mentor junior Molly Conover in this research.
Congratulations to several students who were awarded the Cook County Sheriff's Youth Service Medal of Honor, for at least 100 hours of community service. Senior Mitchell Estberg and juniors Michelle Milazzo and Laurianne Pene-Njine!
Congratulations to the dozens of students who made up 17 teams that participated in the COMAP HiMCM contest. This is the famous '36-hour contest' where students need to develop a mathematical model for real-world, complex open-ended problems. We'll see in January how they are rated, with our top two being the teams to be invited to represent ETHS in the Moody's Mega Math Challenge.
Congrats to those students who submitted papers to the Intel Science Talent Search: seniors Matteo Di Bernardo, Murielle Dunand, Zane Kashner, and Sam Weidner. Not many seniors do this level of original research to begin with, let alone write it up and submit to the biggest science contest of them all. Matteo worked on new ways of treating parasitic worms; Murielle looked at the trends of participation in Hollywood films as a function of gender; Zane helped develop a new analysis of data to more accurately determine the albedo and climate characteristics of hot Jupiter exoplanets; and Sam identified the effect an oscillating surface on hydraulic jump.
Congratulations to those in my classes who are named National Merit Semi-Finalists! Seniors Katherine Brady, Matteo Di Bernardo, Murielle Dunand, Zane Kashner, Adrian Lafont-Mueller, Nora Linzer, Seth Paternostro, Henry Peters, and Caitlin Westerfield. Awesome!!
Congratulations to senior Sam Weidner, who submitted a paper to the Siemens Science Competition. His research has a focus on a fluid phenomenon called hydraulic jump, and he looked at the effect an oscillating surface has on the jump. With significant differences observed and measured, he suggests empirical additions to the mathematical models governing the jump. It is a big accomplishment getting something submitted to one of the major high school science competitions!
2014-15 School Year:
Big Senior Award winners
Horton Award for Physics: Benedict Brady and Rachel Kornbluh
Hall Award for Chemistry: Ben Foutty
Society of Women Engineers: Micaela Homer and Millie Rosen
Class awards
3 Chem-Phys Juniors: Adrian Lefont-Mueller, Zane Kashner, Nora Linzer, Miranda Metz, Caitlin Westerfield
4 Chem-Phys Seniors: Ben Foutty, Micaela Homer, Rachel Kornbluh, Graham Straus, Nate Umbanhowar
AP Physics C: Josie Thomas (junior)
Awesome job the past two years...I will miss you!!
***
The WYSE team finished 7th in state!
*** For the TSA TEAMS competition, it looks like our top team took 2nd in state, and our next two teams tied for 5th in state. Great job, having 3 of the top 6 teams in Illinois! For national rankings within our division, based on Part 1 scores, our top senior team is 3rd in the nation, and the next two are tied for 10th in the nation...awesome! I am fairly sure we are the only school with three teams in the top ten at this point. We will wait for the Part 2 scores to be added in for the final national rankings - the top team is in the running for a national title!
***
Congratulations to seniors Graham Straus and Kevin Klyman, who are state champions in Public Forum debate! Awesome!
***
Congratulations to the WYSE team, which won its Sectional and now moves on to the State Finals at UIUC on April 13! The team has members:
Benedict Brady, Maddie Carr, Emma Chanen, Loudon Cohen, Ben Foutty, Micalea Homer, John Hruska, Zane Kashner, Rachel Kornbluh, Nikolai Lenney, Justin Liao, Emma Maxwell, Henry McDonald, Nate Umbanhowar.
***
Congratulations to four students who made the cut for the Chemistry Olympiad, to qualify for the national exam: seniors Ben Foutty, Henry McDonald, Maciej Olzsewski, and Jordan Rosen-Kaplan.
***
Congratulations to strong showings on the Physics Olympiad preliminary exam. Had it not been for a 50% increase in the scoring threshold, 6 students surpassed the cut score used in previous years for national semifinalist status. Two students just missed the new cutoff by one point: Ben Foutty and Rachel Kornbluh. What can you do?!
***
The two Moody's teams earned national recognition by making the 15% of solutions papers in the country!
***
Congratulations to our two teams who are representing ETHS in the Moody's Mega Math Challenge this year. They worked on March 1, and submitted their proposed solutions to an open-ended, complex problem that requires a mathematical model for a possible solution. The teams are:
Seniors Rebecca Conover, Ben Foutty, Micaela Homer, Rachel Kornbluh, and Jordan Rosen-Kaplan and
seniors Benedict Brady, Sean Finn-Samuels, Graham Straus, and Nate Umbanhowar, and junior Zane Kashner. These were our top two COMAP teams this year. We will have results in a few weeks!
***
Congratulations go out to senior Benedict Brady, who was named a finalist in the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS), which is run at Loyola University. He will present his research findings in front of all other finalists and judges, who are university professors who are experts in the fields. The judges will then determine the top three papers/presentations, and those students will move on to a national JSHS competition. In addition, the top three students will receive scholarships of $2000, $1500, and $1000, respectively. At nationals, students present against other national finalists from other states, and top winners will receive more scholarship money as well as a trip to London for an international event. Benedict is the 26th finalist since 2000 from ETHS. Two have gone on to London.
Benedict's work is in planetary dynamics, where he has run and analyzed complex computer simulations with advanced, professional software to determine the stability of our solar system's inner planets' orbits as a function of Jupiter's mass. Four other papers were
submitted by ETHS students (Atul Kumar, John Hruska, Ben Foutty, and Jordan Rosen-Kaplan), each of which described interesting, strong research projects ranging from swarm robotics to fractal analysis of Antarctica's coastline, a network theory analysis of mentorship, as well as looking at combined effects of nanoparticle contaminants on biological systems, respectively.
***
Congratulations go out to several TSA TEAMS teams that competed at one of the regional sites today. TEAMS is an engineering contest run through the Technology Student Association, a national organization that sponsors a number of STEM activities and contests. Groups of up to 8 students work collaboratively on taking large amounts of information and data to develop solutions to real-world engineering problems. This year's theme is Engineering in Energy, where topics include nuclear waste, solar and wind energy being put on the grid, smart homes and energy efficiencies, as well as environmental concerns for different energy sources.
ETHS had three of the top four teams at the event, with a team from the University of Chicago Lab School edging our top team by a single point.
Our top team, finishing 2nd, has seniors:
Benedict Brady, Rebecca Conover, Ben Foutty, Micaela Homer, Rachel Kornbluh, Justin Liao, Aly Singleton, and Nate Umbanhowar.
Note that this team finished 4th in state and 8th nationally last year as juniors.
Two teams tied for 3rd.
Seniors:
Emma Chanen, Loudon Cohen, Sean Finn-Samuels, John Hruska, Ryan Landis, Jordan Rosen-Kaplan, Graham Straus, and Camilla Zecker.
Note that this team finished 3rd in state and 12th nationally last year as juniors.
Juniors:
Matteo DiBernardo, Zane Kashner, Colby Lewis, Nora Linzer, Nick Shankar, Peter Sparks, Abby Steman, and Sam Weidner.
The next team was the top team from Stevenson.
We had three other teams compete, and are proud of their efforts, as well, making a total of 46 students doing some serious STEM work! We'll get state and national rankings over the next few weeks, but hopefully the top three teams will qualify for national rankings!
Congratulations to the National Achievement Finalists and National Merit Finalists in my classes:
National Achievement 2015 Finalists: Matthew G. Auston, Larenz R. Brown, Austin J. Klopfer, and Logan Z. Stuart.
National Merit 2015 Finalists: Benedict Q. Brady, Luke T. Calian, Emma F. Chanen, Benjamin A. Foutty, Ezra C. Garfield, Conrad E. Gordon, Noah J. Kanter, Rachel S. Kornbluh, Justin Liao, Emma H. Maxwell, John C. Muyres, Mildred J. Rosen, Logan Z. Stuart, Nathan E. Umbanhowar
***
Congratulations to the WYSE team for advancing to their sectional. The team won the regional, topping New Trier and Niles North! Individual medals go to:
Biology: Maddie Carr and Henry McDonald tied for 1st; Micaela Homer was 3rd
Chemistry: Ben Foutty took 1st; Maciej Olzsewski and Nate Umbanhowar tied for 3rd
English: Emma Maxwell took 1st, and Emma Chanen took 3rd
Math: Benedict Brady took 2nd
Physics: Ben Foutty took 2nd; Rachel Kornbluh and Nate Umbanhowar tied for 3rd
Others on the team are Loudon Cohen, John Hruska, Zane Kashner, Nikolai Lenney, and Justin Liao.
Way to go!
***
Congratulations go out to a number of students for
outstanding work and performance in the COMAP High School
The team of seniors Sean Finn-Samuels, Graham Straus, and
Nate Umbanhowar, and junior Zane Kashner, was selected as one of only nine top
papers, which is the Outstanding level of recognition. This team will have its
solution paper published in one or more of COMAP’s professional journals.
Several of the other nine Outstanding papers were from academies/magnet schools
(including one team from IMSA), and two from schools in China .
We had five other teams rank in the top 25% of solution
papers, which is a Meritorious ranking:
Seniors Rebecca Conover, Micaela Homer, Rachel Kornbluh, and
Jordan Rosen-Kaplan;
Seniors Benedict Brady, Emma Chanen, Justin Liao, and Henry
McDonald;
Seniors Ben Foutty, Kevin Klyman, Mille Rosen, and Aly
Singleton;
Juniors Christian Landis, Alex and Seth Paternostro, and
Andrew Simon;
Juniors Alex Brooke, Paul Clarke, and Spencer Eanes.
The two problems teams could choose were: i. Optimizing the
rate of unloading passengers from subway trains and having them exit the
station, or ii. Develop measures that can best contain the spread of a disease,
such as Ebola, in a small village in Indonesia .
We had eleven other teams of students who earned Honorable
Mention and Successful Participant status; this is a total of seventeen teams
(66 students) who voluntarily spent most of a weekend back in November doing intense
STEM work.
Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year’s contest!
****Congratulations to seniors Sean Finn-Samuels, Graham Straus, Nate Umbanhowar, and junior Zane Kashner, who have been selected as one of just 9 Outstanding papers in the COMAP High School Math Modeling Contest. Their paper will be published in one or more of COMAP's journals, as it is in the top 1% of papers in this international contest. IMSA also had one of the Outstanding papers. Two schools from China are among this set of papers. This contest has students take up to 36 hours to develop a math model and solution to open-ended, complex problems. Well done!
****
Teacher Mark Vondracek is among the top 50 teachers, representing 26 countries, who are in the running for the inaugural Global Teacher prize. One of these teachers will ultimately win $1 million, from the Varkey GEMS Foundation, stationed in the United Kingdom. This is worth mentioning because this whole process is to place teaching and education front and center with all other major professions around the world - putting it on the same level as those professions represented by the Nobel Prizes, for instance. Let's get more talented, compassionate, and passionate people into teaching!
****
Numerous students I have worked with have been recognized as Commended Students in the National Merit Program.
National Merit Commended Students: Larenz R. Brown, Katherine M. Budde, Jack G. Caplan, Joseph J. Erwin, Sean A. Finn-Samuels, Samuel H. Frolichstein-Appel, Micaela K. Homer, John S. Hruska, Ryan W. Landis, Sarah W. Latimer, Peter V. Regan, Jordan A. Rosen-Kaplan, Anastasia Shylnov, Graham P. Straus, James Williamson.
National Achievement Outstanding Participants: Andre J. Wallace
****Three teams of students submitted papers to the Siemens Science Competition. Loudon Cohen and John Hruska wrote computer simulations to use fractal analysis of the Antarctic coastline to determine the fractal dimension. They hypothesize that by repeating this over time, using satellite data, they may find trends and correlations that could help predict future patterns of sea ice. Atul Kumar was part of a team that built robots and tested swarm tactics in an outdoor neighborhood. Jordan Rosen-Kaplan and Eric Weine looked at the combined effects of silver and titanium nanoparticles on E. coli, which is the first extended study of the combined, rather than individual, effects of these particles on an environment
Congratulations to the following students who are in or have been in my classes - they are National Merit Semifinalists!
Benedict Brady, Luke Calian, Emma Chanen, Ben Foutty, Ezra Garfield, Conrad Gordan, Noah Kanter, Rachel Kornbluh, Justin Liao, Emma Maxwell, Henry McDonald, John Muyres, Millie Rosen, Logan Stewart, and Nate Umbanhowar. Good luck in the next rounds!!
Congratulations to seniors Emma Chanen, Ben Foutty, and Hannah Kaplan, who were recognized by the Kiwanis Club for their work in YAMO.
2013-14 School Year:
Adam Frim, Taylor Sims and Talia Weiss were three of the ten winners at the Northwestern High School Showcase, where any high school students from Chicagoland could come and do a poster presentation on school science projects or independent science research projects. They presented their work on mechanical oscillator synchronization (Adam) and XBONGs, which are rare, high x-ray emitting galaxies (Taylor and Talia). Another great job!
*****
Seniors, Class of 2014, are done! CONGRATULATIONS! Top awards go to: Talia Weiss, Society of Women Engineers; Manny Dallas and Aaron Stone, Hall Chemistry Award; Adam Frim, Robert Horton Award for Physics.
*****
Congratulations to Manny Dallas, who has now been named a national semifinalist in the Presidential Scholars Program. Later in May he will find out if he is one of the scholars! Great news!
*****
The TSA TEAMS state rankings are in, and are based on both the Part 1 and Part 2 scores. In our division, our team D was 3rd, team E was 5th, and team C was 12th! Overall, D was 5th, E was 8th, and C 17th. The overall rankings include all divisions, including a special division for magnet and state academies, such as IMSA. The D and E teams, both of which consist of juniors, qualify for the national meeting in Washington, DC, for the Best in Nation contest. This is another fantastic showing for our collaborative work in engineering and science problem solving!!
*****
At the WYSE state finals, junior Maddie Carr took 6th place in Biology, and senior Adam Frim took 3rd in Chemistry and 6th in Physics! Congratulations!
*****
We will have three teams qualified for national rankings in the TSA TEAMS contest. Teams needed to score a 60 (out of 80) on Part 1 of the contest - our E, D and C teams accomplished this. More to come once we get the national rankings.
*****
Update on Moody's: The team of Rebecca Conover, Micaela Homer, Rachel Kornbluh, Jordan Rosen-Kaplan, and Taylor Sims are an Honorable Mention team, meaning they were rated high enough nationally to receive a $1000 scholarship from the Moody's Foundation! This only happens for the top 5% of papers nationally - well done!
*****
ETHS is one of just a couple schools in the country to have both its teams in the Moody's Mega Math Challenge make the first cut and stay in the running for scholarships. Congratulations to Rebecca Conover, Micaela Homer, Rachel Kornbluh, Jordan Rosen-Kaplan, and Taylor Sims; and Benedict Brady, Emma Chanen, Justin Liao, Nikolai Lenney, and Henry McDonald. These teams are part of the top 200 in the country, with nearly 1200 submitted papers this year. Good luck!
*****
Congratulations to those individuals who qualified for the state finals for WYSE (unfortunately the team fell just short of advancing): Maddie Carr and Oliver Vickman in biology, and Manny Dallas, Adam Frim and Aaron Stone in chemistry. Good luck in Chambana!
*****
Congratulations to Talia Weiss, who took 3rd place at the JSHS at Loyola University for her research into XBONGs. She advances to the national symposium in Washington, DC, where she will present a poster of her work. She had teamed with Taylor Sims this past year. Adam Frim was also a finalist at Loyola, and did a wonderful job. Zach Favakeh was an alternate for the finals.
*****
Congratulations to Aaron Stone and Manny Dallas, who made the first cut in the Chemistry Olympiad and will take the national exam!! Good luck with the next round!
*****
A strong performance by one of our TSA TEAMS teams. The junior team of Emma Chanen, Loudon Cohen, Sean Finn-Samuels, John Hruska, Ryan Landis, Jordan Rosen-Kaplan, Nate Umbanhowar, and Camilla Zecker took 2nd at our IIT regional! We will find out where this puts them in state rankings, and later how our 6 teams did in national rankings. The theme this year is Engineering Tomorrow's Cities. Great job!
*****
Congratulations to the 4 students who scored the highest score of 36 on their ACTs: juniors Ben Foutty, Ezra Garfield, Rachel Kornbluh, and Nate Umbanhowar! Amazing job, and a rarity for a school to have multiple students who accomplish this!
*****
Congratulations to two students who are state finalists for this year's Presidential Scholars Program: seniors Manny Dallas and Anna Winter, who was in ETHS and Chem-Phys last year. Awesome job!
*****
Congratulations to this year's group who are National Merit Finalists! This is a difficult thing to do, and quite an accomplishment. Kudos go to Chem-Phys students Zach Favakeh, Henry Magnuson, Rebecca Posner, Nathan Shelly, and Talia Weiss. Joshua Davidoff is also a finalist. One of our National Achievement finalists is Taylor Sims.
Also, named as National Merit Commended students are (students in my classes): Josh Abraham, Isabel Avery, Ben Butler, James Carthew, Adam Frim, Ian McMurray, Paul Philbrick, Taylor Sims, Luke Spalding, and Aaron Stone. There are several others who need to be commended, as well, and can be found here.
*****Congratulations to the WYSE team, which moves on to Sectional competition in March. The team took 3rd in a tough Regional (Niles North was 1st, New Trier 2nd, so congrats to them). Individual medals went to Benedict Brady (2nd, math), Shai Markovich (3rd, chem), Manny Dallas (2nd, chem), and Adam Frim (1st, physics). Other members of the 14-person team are Andrew Bempah, Maddie Carr, Nick Easton, Zach Favakeh (will join us for Sectionals), Micaela Homer, Justin Liao, Aaron Stone, Dan Thomas, Oliver Vickman, and Liam Walsh.
*****
Congratulations to 3 COMAP High School Math Modeling teams, who participated in this contest (the famous 36-hour problem) and did quite well. Juniors Rebecca Conover, Micaela Homer, Rachel Kornbluh and Jordan Rosen-Kaplan and juniors Benedict Brady, Emma Chanen, Justin Liao and Henry McDonald had teams that were rated as Finalists, which is one of the higher rankings in this contest. This puts their solution papers to complex, open-ended problems in the top 4-10% of all papers submitted in this international contest. Also rated highly was a team of seniors, Manny Dallas, Zach Favakeh, Henry Magnuson and Aaron Stone, who were in the top third, which is a Meritorious ranking. ETHS had 9 other teams rated as Honorable Mentions. The only Illinois high school to have any teams rated ahead of ETHS was IMSA. Well done!
*****
Chem-Phys was highlighted in articles in South Korea's second most read newspaper and a magazine about South Korean debates on how to modify their national science curriculum for high school level students. A reporter visited one of our junior classes in November, as we were working on a lab that had a focus on multiple ways of timing and using computational thinking skills to develop an empirical mathematical rule for the period of a pendulum using data.
*****
Benedict Brady won the school bridge building contest, and will now go to IIT to try and make the nationals - great job!
***** Congratulations to senior Ben Moberly, and former student and senior Noah Eisfelder, who took 1st place in their topics at the Hoffman Estates Speech Contest!
***** Congratulations to seniors Zach Favakeh and Adam Frim for submitting papers to the Intel Science Talent Search. Good luck as we wait for January to see if either is selected as a national semifinalist in the most prestigious high school science contest there is.
*****
Congratulations to the 13 teams that participated in this year's COMAP High School Math Modeling Contest in November. We will find out results in January!
*****
Talia Weiss and Taylor Sims did ETHS proud at the Siemens Regional Finals, held at the Univeristy of Notre Dame in November! While not the national finalist team, they did a wonderful presentation and developed a professional poster, which we will put up once we find enough wall space. What an experience!
*****
BIG NEWS - Taylor and Talia are the only two Regional Finalists in Illinois for the Siemens Science Competition!! They will be getting ready to present their work in both a talk and poster session at the University of Notre Dame in early November...Congratulations!
*****
Congratulations to the students in my classes who are National Merit Semifinalists: Manny Dallas, Zach Favakeh, Henry Magnuson, Rebecca Posner, Nate Shelly, Talia Weiss, and Anna Winter. Taylor Sims is a National Achievement Semifinalist. Way to go!!
*****
Congratulations to seniors Zach Favakeh, Adam Frim, Taylor Sims and Talia Weiss for submitting papers to the Siemens Science Competition! Zach did simulation research into how the location of wide binary star systems affect planetary evolution; Adam experimentally looked at the synchronization of multiple mechanical oscillators; and Taylor and Talia teamed up to investigate observational evidence for how XBONGs (a relatively rare type of X-ray emitting galaxy) work.
2012-13 School Year:
Dina Sinclair and I will write up her work on Faraday waves on oscillating water droplets and try to get it published in The Physics Teacher journal.
*****
Congratulations to the senior science award winners: Katie Latimer and Dina Sinclair were the Horton Award winners for Physics; Lena Eskin won the Society of Women Engineers Award; Katie was also the Bugelas Award winner in Chemistry; and Gabe Stern the Hall Award winner in Chemistry.
*****
Update on Moody's Mega Math Challenge: The ladies ended up taking 5th in the nation! What an amazing day and a half trip to Manhattan for the national finals. We got to cruise around the city, do the contest, and even met Mayor Bloomberg.
*****
Congrats to Katie Latimer, who brought home a 5th place medal in physics from the WYSE State Finals! Way to go!
*****
Update on Moody's Mega Math Challenge: Our team of Maggie, Caroline, Laura, Katie and Dina are one of the six national finalist teams!!!! They go to New York City in late April to present their paper, and are now in the running for up to $20,000 to split! WAY TO GO, LADIES!
******
If you enjoyed the movie Flatland, check out Flatland 2: Sphereland, which is in the AV Center. Mr. Benson and Doc V were consultants on the movie, and it has some good lessons and visuals dealing with multiple dimensions, and even curved space.
******
Congratulations go to 4 of our twelve teams that participated in the 2012 COMAP High School Mathematical Modeling Contest. The four teams reached Meritorious status in this contest, which represents the top third of papers that present solutions to open ended problems that require high-level math, science and computational thinking skills. Teams have 36 consecutive hours to develop a solutions and submit a paper to COMAP, the sponsoring company of the contest. Professional mathematicians and computer scientists then judge the solutions teams develop. This is now an international contest, with many dozens of teams from math and science academies from China, South Korea, Hong Kong, and all throughout the United States. Over 500 papers were submitted this year.The teams are:
- seniors Maggie Davis, Katie Latimer, and Dina Sinclair
- sophomores Benedict Brady, Emma Chanen, Justin Liao, and Henry McDonald
- juniors Rebecca Posner, Emma Sonder, Kyla Steman, and Talia Weiss
- juniors Nick Easton, Quinn Foley, Adam Frim, and Alex Novak
The full problems are at http://www.comap.com/highschool/contests/himcm/2012problems.html.
*****
Congratulations go to the students on three of our five teams participating in the TSA TEAMS state and national competition. Formerly run by JETS (Junior Engineering and Technical Society), the Technology Student Association has taken over TEAMS (Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science).
One of our teams took 1st in state in our division, and 2nd overall in state. Nationally, this team tied for 6th place in our division and is 9th overall, which is the 'big school' and typically the most competitive division. The team had senior members:
Miles Dong, Jackie Gibbons, Lukas Gladic, Elise Gray-Gaillard, Jay Honnold, Kyle Lueptow, and Erin McKearnan.
A second team took 2nd place in state in our division and 3rd overall in state. Nationally, this team tied for 7th place in our division and is 13th overall. The team had senior members:
Lena Eskin, Katie Latimer, David McDonald, Sam Miller, Maddy Savage, Austin Schilling, Dina Sinclair, and Gabe Stern.
These two teams placed the highest in the nation of any other Illinois schools in our division.
A third team of juniors tied for 4th in state, and 9th overall. Nationally they tied for 10th place and were 25th overall. This team had members:
Manny Dallas, Nick Easton, Lewis Herman, Henry Magnuson, Shai Markovich, Paul Philbrick, Aaron Stone
Teams of up to eight students work collaboratively on engineering based problems. The theme for this year was Engineering a Secure Cyberspace. Students worked together to answer questions about cybersecurity, and develop plans for protecting computer networks. The contest tries to simulate how engineers need to work collaboratively and create practical solutions to real-world problems. ETHS has traditionally done well in this contest, including the overall national championship in 2005 and several other top ten placements in national rankings.
*******
Congratulations to one of our Moody's Mega Math Challenge teams, who have moved on to the second round of judging. Only 175 out of over 1050 teams made the second round, and are still in the running for up to $20,000 in scholarships. This is similar to the COMAP math modeling contest, but instead of 36 hours to work on a math-based solution to an open-ended, real world problem, teams of up to 5 students have 14 hours. This year the problem involved looking for solutions to recycling that cities can use. The team included seniors Maggie Davies, Caroline Duke, Laura Goetz, Katie Latimer and Dina Sinclair.
Schools are only allowed two teams, and our second team that took on the challenge had seniors Marc Bouchet, Jay Honnold, David McDonald, Sam Miller, and Austin Schilling.
*****
Four seniors, Marc Bouchet, Laura Goetz, David McDonald, and Dina Sinclair were named among the 13 finalists in the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, which is held at Loyola University. Laura took 2nd, David took 3rd, Dina took 4th, and Marc took 6th. Laura and David won scholarships ($1500 and $1000, respectively), and earned a trip to nationals where Laura will present with a chance to win as much as $12,000. Dina is the alternate for northern Illinois.
Marc's research involved making new types of multi-layer organic solar cells. Laura's work involved identifying genetic modifiers that are related to Huntington's disease, using C. elegans (microscopic worms). David's research involved stratification and segregation of granular solids in heap formation. Dina's research investigated properties of oscillating water droplets at high frequencies, and the patterns of Faraday waves that resulted.
******
Congratulations to seniors Katie Latimer and Sam Miller, who advanced to the WYSE sectionals. Katie took chemistry and physics, and Sam took computer science and math. Katie then advanced to the state finals in April in physics and will also take chemistry. Good luck!
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CONGRATULATIONS to senior Laura Goetz, who is named a national semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search!! This is a wonderful recognition for her research, and she receives a $1000 scholarship at this level. ETHS also receives a $1000 award to be used for future students. We will wait to learn who the 40 finalists are in late January, and those students will compete for a top prize of $100,000. Well done, Laura!
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We had a dozen teams work on this year's COMAP High School Math Modeling Contest, better known as the 36-hour problem! We will find results in February of 2013.
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Congratulations to Laura Goetz for submitting a paper and long application to the Intel Science Talent Search! Results begin coming out in January, 2013.
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BIG NEWS (10/19/12): Laura Goetz was named a national semifinalist in the Siemens Science and Technology Competition, and Sarah Posner and Marc Bouchet are Regional Finalists!! This is amazing recognition for their research efforts (see below). Sarah and Marc each win $1000 scholarships, and now can present at the University of Notre Dame in November for more scholarship money and advancement to the national finals. The top team will split a $100,000 scholarship later in December. Great job to these three students!!
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Congratulations to seniors Laura Goetz, Marc Bouchet, Sarah Posner and David McDonald for submitting papers to the Siemens Science and Technology Competition, one of the bigest science contests for high schools with prizes of up to $100,000 for the overall winners. Laura worked on genetics research relevant to Huntington's disease, Sara adn Marc worked on tandem organic solar cells and improving their efficiencies, and David worked on properties of mixed, different sized granular materials.
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Congratulations to former Chem-Physser Sarah Peters ('10), who co-authored a paper with me in the September issue of The Physics Teacher journal, which is the top journal for high school and introductory physics instructors. The paper is based on Sarah's research while at ETHS, and is entitled, "Counterintuitive Behavior in Mechanical Networks." Sarah is now at Williams College studying physics.
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2011-12 School Year:
Congratulations to one of our TSA TEAMS teams (formerly called JETS), which took 2nd in Illinois and 19th in the nation! Seniors Fiona West, Erin Roth, Margaret Omori, Gabi Dallas, Erik Baker, Sammy Straus, Elliot Chanen, and Sam Sagan made up this team, which worked on biomedical engineering problems.
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Congratulations to senior Julia Crowley-Farenga, who won the Loyola regional of the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium! She won $2000 and will present at nationals late in April, which will be held in Bethesda, MD. Sam Straus also presented and did a wonderful job with his research presentation.
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At the WYSE state finals, Sophie Kornbluh finished 5th in state for Biology, and Sam Straus finished 5th in state for Computer Science!
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Congratulations to senior Fiona West, who also qualified for the National Chemistry Olympiad semifinal exam! She is the first ETHS student to qualify for both the National Physics Olympiad and the National Chemistry semifinal tests!
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Congratulations to the following individuals, who qualified for the WYSE state finals in Champaign-Urbana. While the team fell a few points short of the finals, seniors Sophie Kornbluh (English and Biology), Erik Baker (English), James Hanford (Physics), Sammy Straus (Physics) and junior Isabel Strula (Biology) will compete for state titles.
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Good luck to Randy Ollie, Chris Rudnicki and the rest of the boys basketball team, who are in the Elite Eight in the state playoffs!!
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Congratulations to our top senior JETS team, which tied for second at its local event, and also 2nd for state rankings! They finished 1 point away from IMSA. In our Division, the team is the state champion! The team had members Erik Baker, Elliot Chanen, Gabi Dallas, Margaret Omori, Erin Roth, Sam Sagan, Sammy Straus, and Fiona West.
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Our WYSE team won its regional competition at OCC, and is getting ready for the sectional. If the team does well, it will advance to the state finals once again. Good luck!
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Congratulations to seniors James Hanford and Fiona West, who are named national senifinalists for the Physics Olympiad! They will take a tough test to see if they can make the national physics team. ETHS has had 26 semifinalists in the past decade, with one student making the national team.
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Congratulations go out to seniors Julia Crowley Farenga, Sammy Straus, and Fiona West, who were named finalists in the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, to be held in late March at Loyola University in Chicago. Their papers outlining their independent science research were selected for presentation. The overall winner receives $2000, 2nd place $1500, and 3rd place $1000. The top three students will also receive a trip to the national symposium in Bethesda, MD, in April, and winners there will go to an international exhibition in London. We have had 37 semifinalists, 19 finalists, 6 winners, and 2 students make it to London in the past dozen years.
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Congratulations go out to several teams that participated in the 2011 COMAP High School Math Modeling Contest, also known by students as the 36-hour problem. Teams of up to 4 students work on one of two problems that are open-ended, and require a combination of mathematics, science, and computer modeling skills to develop possible solutions. Teams have up to 36 consecutive hours over one of three weekends in November to work on their problem. The following teams then had to submit a strong written report in this international contest (there were dozens of teams from Hong Kong, China, South Korea). ETHS had 13 teams (50 students) compete this year.
We had three teams rated as Regional Outstanding, which were the top 15% of papers. The teams were:
Seniors:
Aja Klevs
Lauren Nortz
Alex Nierlich
Sammy Straus
Juniors:
Laura Goetz
Caroline Duke
Xena Becker
Dina Sinclair
Sophomores:
Lloyd Shatkin
Zach Favakeh
Manny Dallas
Henry Magnuson
One problem was to develop a 10-year plan for NASA for maintaining the International Space Station, now that the US has grounded the space shuttle fleet. Students had to include costs (both current and projected), payloads and flight schedules using information they had to research online, including figuring out the capabilities of the Russian space program, which is now being used to transport missions to the ISS.
The other problem option was a search and find problem. It was:
"Consider the following scenario: you have lost a small object, such as a class ring, in a small park see map 1. It is getting dark and you have your pen light flashlight available. If your light shines on the ring, you assume that you see it. You cannot possibly search 100% of the region. Determine how you will search the park in minimum time. An average person walks approximately 4 mph. You have about 2 hours to search. Determine the chance you will find the lost object. Using map 2, assume, a jogger is lost who was going on a 5 mile run. Determine how you search the region to have a good chance of finding the lost jogger (who might be unconscious). Assume it is night and you only have your pen light as a light source."
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Final word on the Siemens National Finals: Julia and Patrick finished 3rd in the nation in the team competition!! Congratulations!! This earns them a $40,000 scholarship that they will share.
Julia and Patrick won their Siemens Regional Final at MIT, and now go to the National Finals in Washington, DC!!! They have a 1 in 6 chance of getting the $100,000 scholarship. WOW!
Congratulations to Fiona West and Sammy Straus for submitting papers to the Intel Science Talent Search! Fiona's work was on the development of an analysis algorithm for a structural health monitoring system for bridges. The system was developed by Northwestern civil engineers, and Fiona's work provides a new way to get necessary information on the weights of heavy trucks, so the health of a bridge can be monitored and predicted into the future.
We have 14 teams in the process of doing the COMAP High School Math Modeling Contest! Good luck to all.
Congratulations to Julia Crowley-Farenga, Patrick Loftus and Sammy Straus, as they submitted papers to the Siemens Science and Technology Competition. This is a wonderful achievement, as it is quite a lot of work to do independent research and write up a technical paper about it. Julia and Patrick worked together and developed a new morphological classification scheme for post-starburst galaxies, and Sammy investigated how to optimize results in genetic programming algorithms.
ETHS welcomes three GK-12 fellows from Northwestern University. These three, who are graduate research students, will serve as resident scientists in three classrooms at ETHS throughout the entire school year. We welcome Jason Hwang, Meagan Morscher, and Daniel Sinkovits, who are paired up with GK-12 Teacher Fellows Dan DuBrow, Andy Miner, and Mark Vondracek, respectively. The main focus is on the role and use of computational science.
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August, 2011:
The summary paper for the High School Math Modeling Contest team of David Lenz, Paul Barnes, and Oliver Manheim has been published in COMAP's journal. This is a wonderful honor for a team that was rated as National Outstanding, meaning it was one of the top 10 papers in the international contest.
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May, 2011:
Congratulations to one of the ETHS Junior Engineering and Technical Society (JETS) teams, which finished 5th in the nation in its division, just 2 points from tying for first place! JETS is a national organization that sponsors a team competition, where up to eight students work collaboratively on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related questions and problems. This year, the theme was energy, and its vital role in the modern global society.
The team consisted of seniors: Adam Birnbaum, David Lenz, Zach Levine, Nathan Port, Danny Rothschild, Judah Schvimer, Will Sparks, and Sam Sprague.
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April, 2011:
The WYSE team went to Champaign for the state finals, and finished 10th in the state! Team members are:
Ileana Becker, Adam Birnbaum, Elliot Chanen, Leah Chernoff, Gabriel Dallas, Josh Isenstein, David Lenz, Judah Schvimer, Sam Sprague, Nathan Port, Judah Schvimer, Will Sparks, Sam Straus, Sora Tannenbaum, Regan Via
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March, 2011:
Congratulations to one of the ETHS Junior Engineering and Technical Society (JETS) teams, which finished 2nd in the state in its division. JETS is a national organization that sponsors a team competition, where up to eight students work collaboratively on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related questions and problems. This year, the theme was energy, and its vital role in the modern global society.
The team consisted of seniors: Adam Birnbaum, David Lenz, Zach Levine, Nathan Port, Danny Rothschild, Judah Schvimer, Will Sparks, and Sam Sprague.
The first place team was from Libertyville. The ETHS team beat out multiple teams from area schools.
ETHS had two other teams finish 12th and 13th in state. The 12th place team consisted of juniors: Erik Baker, Elliot Chanen, Gabriel Dallas, Joshua Isenstein, Nathan Livingston, Aaron Mann, Sam Sagan, and Sam Straus.
The 13th place team consisted of seniors: Paul Barnes, Matthew Foster, Alex Gilbert, Adam Gwilliam, George Sereika, Jessica Shatkin, Allison Slaughter, and Regan Via.
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February 11, 2011:
A group at Northwestern won a $10,000 grant from the American Physical Society (APS) called 'Flip for Physics.' High School students will have a chance to connect with physics research groups at NU, Argonne and Fermilab, and produce videos about the research taking place. A contest will be developed for the students, and the videos will be put on YouTube, teacher and professor web sites,and used for recruitment for the group as well as for inspiring young students to major in STEM subjects. In addition, students will network with professors and grad students, be exposed to cutting edge research, and perhaps work in the lab. Doc V is helping with this grant and you'll hear more about it in Fall of 2011!
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February 4, 2011:
Congratulations go out to our Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering (WYSE) team, which won their regional competition today and advanced to a tough sectional competition in March. WYSE allows for a team of up to 14 students to test in biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, mathematics, and English, and individuals as well as the team can win awards and advance in the statewide competition.
Individually, medals were won by the following students:
Biology: 1st place, Sora Tannenbaum; 3rd place, Ileana Becker
Computer Science: 3rd place, Sam Straus
English: 1st place, Ileana Becker; 3rd place, Leah Chernoff
Math: 1st place, Zach Levine
Other team members are:
Adam Birnbaum, Elliot Chanen, Gabriel Dallas, David Lenz, Judah Schvimer, Sam Sprague, Nathan Port, , Will Sparks, Regan Via
Now on to Sectionals, and hopefully back to State!
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January 25, 2011
Congratulations go out to 4 teams of students who did very well in the 2010 COMAP High School Math Modeling Competition.
This contest allows teams of 4 students to work on challenging, open-ended problems that require mathematical reasoning, models and solutions, often which are generated using computer algorithms the students develop. Teams are allowed 36 consecutive hours to work on the problem they select. Teams worked over one of three weekends back in November.
Receiving a top ranking of National Outstanding is a team with members Paul Barnes, Alex Dangel, David Lenz, and Oliver Manheim, all seniors. They are one of only 9 teams selected, which is the top 3% of entries from an international field (mostly US, but numerous papers came from multiple schools in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Any school can enter, including magnet schools (such as IMSA). These 9 papers will now be published in professional journals that are distributed from COMAP, a national math organization.
Two ETHS teams were ranked as Regional Outstanding papers. This puts them in the top 10%. The teams have members:
- Elliot Chanen, Gabriel Dallas, Josh Isenstein, and Sam Sagan, all juniors.
- Matthew Foster, Adam Gwilliam, Carie Tybout, and Seesha Takagishi, all seniors.
One team was rated Meritorious, which is the top third:
Erik Baker, Elias Friedman, Judah Schvimer, and Sam Straus. Judah is a senior, the others are juniors.
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January 4, 2011
ETHS the 1st Public High School Chapter (in the world!) to be asked to join the Triple Helix.
The Triple Helix is one of the largest student-run non-profits in the world. The dozens of college chapters organize, maintain, and publish both printed and electronic journals concerning science-related issues and their greater, integrated effects on global societies. ETHS students will soon have the chance to submit articles for E-publication, and will run it themselves with as little feedback or interference from Doc V as possible. This will be a great way for students to have their own voices and opinions heard, by doing the research and writing on any topic they are interested in. This is a unique opportunity for students, and I hope this will only grow over time!
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