Prompt: Interest in math, science, or engineering manifests itself in many forms. Caltech professor and Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman (1918-1988) explained, 'I'd make a motor, I'd make a gadget that would go off when something passed a photocell, I'd play around with selenium'; he was exploring his interest in science, as he put it, by 'piddling around all the time.' In a page, more or less, tell the Admissions Committee how you express your interest, curiosity, or excitement about math, science or engineering.
Before answering this question, you might ask those around you - family, friends, or teachers - how they see you as a mathematician, scientist or engineer. They may offer insightful observations!
Prof Richard Feynman is a role model when it comes to being extremely passionate about what you do. Anybody can learn a lot from this brilliant professor, not only academically, but also from his attitude towards what he truly loved.
I have always loved math and science. In my free time, I would think about different things, looking for anything that doesn't have an obvious explanation and contemplating for why and how it happens. Whenever I find that oddity, I usually go into a phase of hyper-focus and I am deep-in-thought about that oddity, thinking why it happens. This has particularly proved helpful during my bus ride between school and home, which is a 40 minute drive that I can't use since I am the only senior in my bus and I have motion sickness.
Last year, a friend called me and asked me help with a math problem. While telling me that equation, she accidentally added an extra X in the power of another X. The actual question would have taken me 5 seconds to solve, however, with the new X, it became much more interesting. I spent 30 minutes on the question before she told me that she did a mistake. After giving her the answer and explaining how I answered it, I looked back on the 3 pages of attempts to answer the equation and I tried to answer the question again. Over the next day, I spent most of my free time on the question, finally, I asked my math teacher about it. He told me that he wasn't free, however, that I could go to the Math's department where there were 3 free teachers. I went there, and after spending 20 minutes on the question, they told me that they didn't have an "immediate" answer for it, and gave me the 2 other concepts that I had to know in order to answer the equation. After I returned home, I opened the computer and learned about those two concepts, I returned to the equation. I made some progress; however, I was still stuck. Finally, I decided to graph it, as I was simply anxious to know the answer. As I waited for the computer to graph the question, waiting for the answer that I've been trying to achieve over the past two days, I found none. The equation didn't have an answer. At first, I was disappointed. However, as I thought about the whole thing, I realized how much fun it was working on that equation for all that time and I remembered when I used to spend a lot of time thinking about riddles when I was younger.
When I was 12, my school sponsored a competition that was created by a cartoon channel to support their most popular cartoon "Sabek wa Lahek". This was a show about two 12 year old boys who created their own toy cars and raced with them. All my friends bought these cars and we all anticipated this competition. Inspired by the show, I choose to take the car I bought from the store and edit it. My first idea was to remove the 3 volt motor and replace it with a 9 volt motor. This should have tripled my car's speed and guaranteed my victory. However, I couldn't buy a 9 volt motor which had the same size as the already existing 3 volt motor. Although these motors were made, they weren't sold in Egypt. I was discouraged by this, but I still had to improve my car somehow. I removed the car's frame, which existed only for show, and made my car lower, which make it more streamlined. This worked and as I was racing my friends for fun before the contest, I beat them easily. I didn't believe the difference that was caused by this little modification. Unfortunately, since the cars aren't remote controlled, on one of the races before the competition, my car had an "accident" where one of the wires got cut and the entire car was surrounded by dust. I did my best to fix it. During the actual race, my car had a good start, it was leading the race, yet, during one of the turns, the wire got cut and the car stopped. I watched as all the other cars went past mine. Although I lost the race, I knew that if not for that accident, I would have won, and ever since, I always believed in my ideas and learned that if I want to be successful, I have to take the road less traveled.
Please tell me what you think and be as harsh as u can .. thanks a lot
Before answering this question, you might ask those around you - family, friends, or teachers - how they see you as a mathematician, scientist or engineer. They may offer insightful observations!
Prof Richard Feynman is a role model when it comes to being extremely passionate about what you do. Anybody can learn a lot from this brilliant professor, not only academically, but also from his attitude towards what he truly loved.
I have always loved math and science. In my free time, I would think about different things, looking for anything that doesn't have an obvious explanation and contemplating for why and how it happens. Whenever I find that oddity, I usually go into a phase of hyper-focus and I am deep-in-thought about that oddity, thinking why it happens. This has particularly proved helpful during my bus ride between school and home, which is a 40 minute drive that I can't use since I am the only senior in my bus and I have motion sickness.
Last year, a friend called me and asked me help with a math problem. While telling me that equation, she accidentally added an extra X in the power of another X. The actual question would have taken me 5 seconds to solve, however, with the new X, it became much more interesting. I spent 30 minutes on the question before she told me that she did a mistake. After giving her the answer and explaining how I answered it, I looked back on the 3 pages of attempts to answer the equation and I tried to answer the question again. Over the next day, I spent most of my free time on the question, finally, I asked my math teacher about it. He told me that he wasn't free, however, that I could go to the Math's department where there were 3 free teachers. I went there, and after spending 20 minutes on the question, they told me that they didn't have an "immediate" answer for it, and gave me the 2 other concepts that I had to know in order to answer the equation. After I returned home, I opened the computer and learned about those two concepts, I returned to the equation. I made some progress; however, I was still stuck. Finally, I decided to graph it, as I was simply anxious to know the answer. As I waited for the computer to graph the question, waiting for the answer that I've been trying to achieve over the past two days, I found none. The equation didn't have an answer. At first, I was disappointed. However, as I thought about the whole thing, I realized how much fun it was working on that equation for all that time and I remembered when I used to spend a lot of time thinking about riddles when I was younger.
When I was 12, my school sponsored a competition that was created by a cartoon channel to support their most popular cartoon "Sabek wa Lahek". This was a show about two 12 year old boys who created their own toy cars and raced with them. All my friends bought these cars and we all anticipated this competition. Inspired by the show, I choose to take the car I bought from the store and edit it. My first idea was to remove the 3 volt motor and replace it with a 9 volt motor. This should have tripled my car's speed and guaranteed my victory. However, I couldn't buy a 9 volt motor which had the same size as the already existing 3 volt motor. Although these motors were made, they weren't sold in Egypt. I was discouraged by this, but I still had to improve my car somehow. I removed the car's frame, which existed only for show, and made my car lower, which make it more streamlined. This worked and as I was racing my friends for fun before the contest, I beat them easily. I didn't believe the difference that was caused by this little modification. Unfortunately, since the cars aren't remote controlled, on one of the races before the competition, my car had an "accident" where one of the wires got cut and the entire car was surrounded by dust. I did my best to fix it. During the actual race, my car had a good start, it was leading the race, yet, during one of the turns, the wire got cut and the car stopped. I watched as all the other cars went past mine. Although I lost the race, I knew that if not for that accident, I would have won, and ever since, I always believed in my ideas and learned that if I want to be successful, I have to take the road less traveled.
Please tell me what you think and be as harsh as u can .. thanks a lot