Students in Raji Swaminathan’s Gr. 7 science class used computer software to perform an experiment on static and kinetic friction on Sept. 21. “Students used a Vernier dual range force sensor and LoggerPro software to study and graph static and kinetic friction acting when a wooden block with a one-kilogram mass is pulled,” Swaminathan said. “They learn that a static friction force acting in the opposite direction increases to match their pulling force.” Static friction is what holds an object in place, such as a wooden block on a ramp, while kinetic friction occurs when two objects move against one another, such as a sled moving downhill.
“Furthermore, there is a maximum static friction force possible for two given surfaces in contact and they see that when they overcome that max static friction, the block starts moving,” Swaminathan said. “The graph that they plot helps them to see that the kinetic friction is smaller than the max static friction.” Their experiments also showed them that when the applied force on the block is equal to the opposing friction force, it moves at a constant velocity, and the block will accelerate if the applied force is greater than the opposing friction force.
On Sept. 18, Raji Swaminathan’s Gr. 7 science students performed an experiment in speed, velocity and motion, and also studied Newton’s laws of motion. “This lab helps students to investigate motion such as walking at a constant velocity away or towards a sensor, speeding up or slowing down and standing at rest,” Swaminathan said. “They use a Vernier motion detector and LoggerPro software to achieve this.” Students first made a prediction of different types of motion graphically and tried to simulate their predictions on the computer and see how closely they matched. “This lab helps them to understand that on a position-versus-time graph, a straight line going up or down represents constant velocity, a horizontal line is when a student is at rest and a curve represents changing speed.” The students also learned that walking more quickly creates a steeper slope on the graph, which helps them to understand that the slope of the position-versus-time graph indicates speed.
Five representatives from Singapore’s Ministry of Education and two representatives from the National University of Singapore came to The Harker Upper School on Sept. 15 to learn more about Harker’s computer science curriculum.
The visitors hope to generate interest in computer science programs in Singapore’s students, and wanted to learn how high schools in the United States were implementing computer science programs. They were led to Harker due to its recognition by the College Board as having one of the top computer science curricula in its size range (300-799 students) and by its development of University of California-approved courses. Their trip also included visits to Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon.
The day began with a meeting between Barnabas Tan, curriculum planning officer for the Singapore Ministry of Education, and Eric Nelson, computer science department chair. During the meeting, Nelson shared and discussed information about the various aspects of the program.
Following the discussion, they headed to Nichols Hall to observe Susan King’s AP Computer Science class, in order gain a better understanding of what goes on in the classroom from day to day. They then received a tour of the Saratoga campus’ facilities courtesy of Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs.
The group then headed back to Nichols Hall to observe a programming class taught by Richard Page, who then accompanied Tan to lunch, which they enjoyed with the rest of Harker’s computer science faculty.
The representatives mentioned that they were impressed with the caliber of Harker’s programs and with the many interdisciplinary connections within its computer science curriculum. “They expressed interest in our focus on algorithmic thinking, a common theme they found among their university visits,” Gargano said.
In late July, 10 US students along with US science department chair Anita Chetty embarked on an eye-opening journey to scenic Costa Rica. Accompanied by US physics teacher Chris Spenner, the group spent approximately two weeks performing research, conservation work and keeping tabs on the country’s wildlife.
Students on the trip were Amy Rorabaugh, Noriko Ishisoko, Miriam Lee, Adrienne Wong, Tiffany Kyi, Erica Hansen, Carina Fernandes, Alex Creasman, Brittany Chu and Melanie Herscher, all currently Gr. 12.
After arriving in Costa Rica with five large tubs of research equipment, the team embarked on a lengthy bus and boat trek to Tortuguero National Park the following day. On Sunday morning, the students performed a beach clean-up to prepare for tagging sea turtles for the Caribbean Conservation League that evening.
Creasman nearly became “the first Harker student whose turtle built a nest and for all intents and purposes, was on target to deposit eggs,” Chetty said. Just as Creasman was about to start counting, however, the turtle had a change of heart and decided not to lay eggs after all!
A highlight of the trip to Tortuguero was the opportunity to work with Costa Rican school children in educating the locals about electricity use and carbon load. “The local people tend to leave their lights on throughout the night as a safety and security measure,” Chetty said. “Our students worked with local school children to create posters advertising the advantages of using compact fluorescent light bulbs instead of regular incandescent bulbs. They then walked through the town distributing bulbs that we purchased in San Jose. The local shopkeepers were very enthusiastic about putting up the posters in their shops and the people were very grateful to receive the bulbs, which are very expensive in Costa Rica.” Chetty added, “This was a great chance to practice Spanish as well.”
After two days of turtle tagging and egg counting (Chu was the record holder at 92 eggs counted), students headed back to the hotel to begin research projects in the conference-room-turned-research-lab. “The objective of the trip was to immerse students in field research so they could experience first-hand the excitement of discovery with the challenges of conducting research in the wilderness,” Chetty said. “Unlike a controlled laboratory setting, the field presents many unpredictable variables such as sudden weather changes, bugs and just simply the unpredictability of animal behavior.”
It was a great opportunity for the young scientists to display their problem-solving and troubleshooting skills. Ishisoko discovered a long PVC pipe in a remote hardware store and used it to connect to her microphone. The long pipe allowed her to record frog calls at a safe distance so that the frog behavior was not affected by her presence.
Spenner’s skills in computer programming came in handy when he helped Chu and Creasman predict the behavior of leaf cutter ants. A program he created predicted how long it would take a disturbed leaf cutter ant to reorient itself back to its original path. Chu and Creasman then conducted studies to determine how long it actually took the ants to find their old path and compared it to the predicted value.
Lee and Kyi spent many hours collecting ants that gathered around flowering plants. Their prediction was that ants were unlikely pollinators of plants. Carrying their digital microscopes all over Costa Rica, Kyi and Lee collected and stained ants and the pollen that collected on their bodies, taking digital images to show that pollen that collects on ants does not germinate.
Hansen examined soils in banana and coffee plantations to determine whether the overuse of fertilizers might be impacting the nitrate levels in water that leeches out of the soils. She was fortunate to culminate her research in Monteverde under the mentorship of a soil scientist. Herscher reconstructed hummingbird feeders trying to examine how the presence of feeders affects those birds’ social behavior, while Wong examined butterfly diversity in forests and plantations. Rorabaugh and Fernandes conducted a water quality assessment using digital monitoring equipment.
At Monteverde Institute (MVI), the students worked many hours refining and writing up their research findings. They presented their findings at the institute and are expected to present at Harker’s own research symposium in March. “The mentors at MVI became so attached to our students that the director of the program shed tears as we were leaving,” Chetty said. “She ordinarily works with UC students and told me that she had never met such talented and motivated students.”
The next stage of the trip took place back at the MVI, where the students continued their work alongside research assistants. They did more field work, examining Costa Rica’s abundance of varied wildlife, although the elements nearly stymied their efforts. “It rained hard last night and we are waiting for things to dry up so they can observe their leaf cutter ants,” Chetty wrote in one of her frequent updates back to Harker. Students caught some notable lectures, one given by Dr. Alan Pounds, whose papers in the journal “Nature” have shed light upon the relationship between climate change and the extinction of the golden toad. They also attended a talk by world-renowned bat specialist Dr. Richard LaVal.
Days of field work, research, observation and preparation at last culminated toward the end of the trip when the students presented their results at the Monteverde Institute.
At various points during the trip, the student researchers also managed to get away for some fun, spending some time whitewater rafting, swimming and even salsa dancing. They also went zipline riding and visited a cacao plantation, where they learned how the “drink of the gods” was made for the Mayan kings. “Grinding roasted cocoa beans and making hot chocolate and chocolate bars was a highlight,” Chetty said.
Chetty said next year’s trip to Costa Rica will occur over the same time period. She explained that there will be some changes made to the itinerary and that a new collaboration with the University of Georgia will expand the research component of the trip.
Alumnus Will Jarvis’ Harker-nurtured wine has won a gold medal in the Beverage Testing Institute 2009 World Wine Championships for his Cabernet Franc, “Will Jarvis’ Science Project 2007.” Jarvis developed the prototype for his wine in a science experiment in Gr. 8 while at Harker.” Read the full story of Jarvis’ experiment and development of the wine! “We didn’t know what to expect when we tried Will’s original Science Project blend a few years ago,” said Will’s father William Jarvis, president of JARVIS. “The outcome was sensational, though, and our winemaker, Dimitri Tchelistcheff, agreed. So it was from Will’s original experiment that this new wine was born.” The wine, which earned the Gold Medal & Cellar Selection awards Aug. 19, is one of four JARVIS wins at the tasting. Several of the wines, including “Science Project,” have been prizes for Harker fundraisers.
Students in Gr. 1-8 who wanted to “zoom” through a theme- and project-based class this summer attended a variety of two-week classes at the Bucknall campus.
In Gr. 1-4, students attended thematic, hands-on academic classes until noon each day for two weeks, and then moved to afternoon groups where they participated in traditional summer camp activities including archery, swimming and dance. Older students, Gr. 5-8, remained in their themed academic classes until 3:30 each day, with recreation periods included in their day.
For the younger campers, the theme of summer guided their activities, which included different topics each session. For the Gr. 3-4 students, Session A focused on bugs, so students spent time investigating live bugs, performing the story “The Grouchy Ladybug” and making homemade lemonade and popcorn. These students took a walking field trip to Dolphin Pet Village, where they got to touch some of the animals, including a snake!
During Session B, Gr. 3-4 students could be found constructing mini-skateboard parks, marble raceways and amusement parks, and surveying students on their favorite crackers. According to Kathleen Ferretti, Gr. 3 math and language arts teacher, “Of the choices of Saltines, Ritz and Goldfish, the winner was Ritz by an overwhelming majority!” Students during this session also took a walking field trip to U.S. Bank, which included a walk through the vault and seeing the inside of the ATM.
In the third session, third and fourth graders constructed artistic models of sea stars and sea anemones, made imaginative sea creature pictures and under the sea dioramas sparkling with glitter, shells, fish, seaweed and sand. They also made scientific fish models from play dough. This group’s walking trip was to Nob Hill grocery store including the produce section, where students toured the freezer, kept at -5 to 5 degrees F, the shipping area, the meat department, and the deli. Afterward, the class enjoyed trays of cookies, salami and cheese as well as goodie bags.
Campers in Gr. 5-8 had a variety of choices for their project-based classes, including a Crime Scene Investigation class, the journalism option of Camp Chronicle, Debate, Art, Rockets and Robotics. The latter class, which was new this summer, had one of the largest enrollments of the Zoom courses.
Michael Schmidt, middle school computer science teacher, instructed the robotics course, and thoroughly enjoyed himself. “With four meetings per day, we could go from concept to building to programming to testing in just one day,” said Schmidt. The kids made robots that they could control with their own handmade remote controls. They made robots that played music, avoided obstacles and raced along a line the fastest to the finish. On the final day, the students displayed their robots to their parents and showed them their programs. “I personally was amazed with how much we covered in just two weeks,” he added. “But the kids took everything I offered them and ran with it. They were amazing!”
Victor Chen and Vishesh Jain, both Gr. 12, were just two of the many students keeping busy with internships this summer. Both, along with fellow senior Navin Sabharwal and Tiphane Delapine, Gr. 9, were interns at Hunter Laboratories in Campbell, which is owned by Harker parents Chris and Marcia Riedel (Randall, Gr. 9, and Hunter, Gr. 6). “I chose to do this internship because it offered me a great opportunity to work in an actual clinical laboratory setting,” Chen said. “I was able to gain insight into the routines, rules and regulations of the lab workplace, and the project that I chose has a significant and direct impact on patients’ health.”
While at Hunter Chen spent most of his time working on his own research project. “My project focused on human papillomavirus (HPV) and the effectiveness of a new test, based on messenger RNA, as a screening method for HPV infection and cervical cancer,” he said. His duties included assisting with the tests and analyzing the results.
Jain chose to do an internship at Hunter Labs “because it offered both a chance to experience science and research in the corporate realm and an opportunity to write a research article for a scholarly journal,” he said. “Further, the actual parameters and final destination of the internship were rather vague at first, but I enjoyed that flexibility and the choices it gave me throughout the summer.”
During the internship, Jain was given the responsibility of running a variety of calculations on the “enormous data collection of various cardiovascular tests and questions for over 3,000 patients,” he said. “I was given this data bank to sort and run a myriad of calculations with, from creating histograms for the tests, age and risk factors to revealing the prevalence of hidden risk markers in the population.”
Using his findings, Jain began writing an article “which involved additional calculations, research into other publications and preparation of a manuscript for review,” he said. He hopes that the article will be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Jain said his favorite part of the internship was participating in meetings with Hunter Laboratories executives, which often included people from other companies. “These meetings both allowed me to practice presenting scientific material in an intelligible manner and gave me a glimpse into the real mechanisms and relationships in the corporate world,” he said.
Chen enjoyed the opportunity to work in the lab, “not just doing number crunching. I was very pleased that I could research with actual patient samples and have access to various high-tech equipment.”
One of several Harker students undertaking internships over the summer, Namrata Anand, Gr. 12, spent hers studying astronomy at UC Santa Cruz.
“I have always been interested in physics and engineering, but never truly realized the immense scale that physics extends to: the universe!” Anand said of her reasons to arrange the internship. “As a kid, I always wanted to be an astronaut, so when I noticed that Harker was offering an astrophysics internship, I leapt at the chance to virtually explore our sister galaxy, Andromeda.”
Anand, who was joined at UC Santa Cruz by fellow seniors Andrew Zhou and Kevin Zhang, studied the chemical makeup of the galaxy Andromeda. UCSC researchers, professors and students “have collected data over the past several years and I was given access to this data for my project,” Anand said. “I looked mainly at chemical spectra to detect the changing amounts of chemicals in stars and the appearance of different chemicals in various Andromeda star populations.”
The environment at UCSC was one of Anand’s favorite parts of the internship. “My professor and the college students were helpful, fun and encouraging. I was not expecting my internship experience to be so casual,” said Anand, who noted that much of what she learned was a result of the casual conversations she had with her mentors and fellow Harker students.
“This internship has not only piqued my interest in astrophysics but has given me a glimpse into what college will be like next year!” she said.
Senior Alex Han spent his summer as an intern at Stanford University’s Clark Center, where he studied bioengineering.
Growing up with eczema, asthma and allergies to various foods, Han became interested in immunology, and believed the internship would provide him with the access and tools to explore the field further.
“I thought that the research lab’s focus on both understanding the mechanisms of diseases such as cancer as well as testing drugs and gene therapy would give me a firsthand experience with immunological research,” Han said. “The lab also works closely with Stanford’s medical clinics, and … I felt that it would be a great opportunity to work with the researchers who are at the forefront of developing and improving medical treatments for children afflicted with cancer and other life-threatening diseases.”
Han chose to do a research project at the Clark Center “in order to give myself the most consummate understanding of the research process and the greatest freedom with designing my own methods and ideas,” he said.
Although at first somewhat daunted by the task, Han went ahead with his plan to find out if the drug celastrol could induce heme oxygenase-1. “Because heme oxygenase-1 has been shown to promote wound healing and protect against various cellular stresses such as heat and oxidative shock, induction of the gene would demonstrate celastrol’s tremendous potential as a clinical treatment,” Han said.
In addition to learning more about his preferred field of study, Han also relished the chance to work in a top-flight laboratory, as well as meet and work with researchers from many disciplines. “Conducting biological research in a wet lab for the first time was a tremendous experience in of itself,” he said. “But being surrounded by such intelligent and enthusiastic researchers and having some of the most advanced resources in the field available for use made the internship truly memorable.”
On Aug. 25 over 350 students, parents, alumni and faculty gathered for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony of the science and technology building, Nichols Hall.
Preceding the ribbon-cutting, science teachers shared their favorite aspects of the building including the new collaborative space, robotics room, special projects room and, in the atrium, a large-screen monitor displaying energy savings from the solar array on the green roof.
Anita Chetty, US science department chair, noted, “As Harker teachers, we get to play everyday. We get to think. We get to create. And now in this incredible facility, we get to do it as anyone would dream of doing.”
Lon Allan, chairman of Harker’s Board of Trustees, recognized the contributions of lifetime trustees Howard and Diana Nichols for their “extraordinary vision, dedication and leadership at The Harker School for more than four decades,” by announcing the Board’s unanimous decision to name the new building Nichols Hall.
MS history teacher Patricia White admired the building, pointing out the beautiful aesthetics. “I think we really needed the space for students and this brings us up to being a world-class prep school,” White said. She thinks that the LEED certification will “put us on the map as a very progressive school. We’re known for our science. We’re known for our math…We are putting our priorities in the right order and we are actually fulfilling what we preach.”
After the Nichols’ cut the ribbon, attendees poured into the new building, exploring the new classrooms and teaching space. “I wish I was a high school student right now,” Anshu Das ’05 said, shaking his head in disbelief as he looked at the Foucault pendulum in the rotunda. “I think it is starting to set a standard. Any building made from here on out only has to be better than the last.” Neil Shah ’08 added, “I have never seen anything of such caliber. It certainly changes the way you look not only at this campus, but of course at science and technology.”
Howard Nichols addressed the guests and discussed the 20-year planning process and the hard work of all who were involved in the project. “Our vision has always been to build the best school in the world,” he said. “I don’t know if anyone can claim that distinction but we certainly know we are one of the best, and we are only going to get better.” Diana Nichols added, “It pleases me to think that, in this building, the next generation of scientists will start forming ideas that will fuel the future.