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Tell us about a person who has influenced you in a significant way.
A butterfly floated above our heads. Pointing, my cousin asked, with an all-too-excited voice, "Do you know what that is?" I paused for a moment to think. "Well...Do you?" he pestered.
"I haven't the slightest idea what it is," I said in return.
"It's a monarch butterfly!" he bursted, responding to the very question he had asked just about twelve seconds ago. I quickly noted that in my mental journal and took its picture as he remarked, "Don't you learn anything in school?"
That night, I asked my father "Dad, do you know what this is?" holding out the picture from that morning.
"Why, isn't that a monarch butterfly?" Me nodding as he replied, he wondered aloud, "Why so curious all of a sudden?" I explained that morning's events and he chuckled. "Let's think about this more. This butterfly you have here," he said, tapping at the picture, "is a monarch butterfly to us. But in China, it's a diwang dieh, in India a raja bataraphlaya, in Italy a farfalla monarca, and so on. And in learning all of that, you have still will not have learned anything about the butterfly. You will just have learned about humans and what they call the butterfly. Now, let's actually look at the animal." That day, I learned how butterflies fly and why they have the colors they do. Yet, I learned something more than about butterflies that day: that people should explore what's behind a name, rather than just the name itself. From here, a passion was ignited to explore nature and all that modern society has created. Both "worlds" are complex systems, which I believe contain a symmetry and beauty best described, simplified, and understood through the lenses of physics and applied maths.
Here we are, years later, and that fire of discovery continues to rage on, one that neither I nor my father have been able to quell. Last summer, I began conducting research on fusion, for I I care about energy and believed fusion offered the most complete, single worldwide energy solution. When I met with my PPPL Research Professor to discuss the work we were planning to do, we spent countless hours discussing the intricacies of tokamaks and lasers, my father closely trailing behind, listening to the discussion. After following the professor and myself around for hours, my father finally sat back into the car, followed shortly by me...And my father wondered, "So, what exactly was going on back there?"
I was at a loss for words: after 11 years, the roles had flipped. It had never occurred to me that all of us are only capable of learning so much: my father, in my naïve years, was akin to a walking, definitely interesting, encyclopedia of knowledge just waiting to be explored. But, it turned out that there were some entries missing in this encyclopedia that I could now fill myself. Yet, here I was, now able to fill those very pages, which imbued in me something more: exploring the world is a grand task...one that we cannot do alone.
Tell us about a person who has influenced you in a significant way.
A butterfly floated above our heads. Pointing, my cousin asked, with an all-too-excited voice, "Do you know what that is?" I paused for a moment to think. "Well...Do you?" he pestered.
"I haven't the slightest idea what it is," I said in return.
"It's a monarch butterfly!" he bursted, responding to the very question he had asked just about twelve seconds ago. I quickly noted that in my mental journal and took its picture as he remarked, "Don't you learn anything in school?"
That night, I asked my father "Dad, do you know what this is?" holding out the picture from that morning.
"Why, isn't that a monarch butterfly?" Me nodding as he replied, he wondered aloud, "Why so curious all of a sudden?" I explained that morning's events and he chuckled. "Let's think about this more. This butterfly you have here," he said, tapping at the picture, "is a monarch butterfly to us. But in China, it's a diwang dieh, in India a raja bataraphlaya, in Italy a farfalla monarca, and so on. And in learning all of that, you have still will not have learned anything about the butterfly. You will just have learned about humans and what they call the butterfly. Now, let's actually look at the animal." That day, I learned how butterflies fly and why they have the colors they do. Yet, I learned something more than about butterflies that day: that people should explore what's behind a name, rather than just the name itself. From here, a passion was ignited to explore nature and all that modern society has created. Both "worlds" are complex systems, which I believe contain a symmetry and beauty best described, simplified, and understood through the lenses of physics and applied maths.
Here we are, years later, and that fire of discovery continues to rage on, one that neither I nor my father have been able to quell. Last summer, I began conducting research on fusion, for I I care about energy and believed fusion offered the most complete, single worldwide energy solution. When I met with my PPPL Research Professor to discuss the work we were planning to do, we spent countless hours discussing the intricacies of tokamaks and lasers, my father closely trailing behind, listening to the discussion. After following the professor and myself around for hours, my father finally sat back into the car, followed shortly by me...And my father wondered, "So, what exactly was going on back there?"
I was at a loss for words: after 11 years, the roles had flipped. It had never occurred to me that all of us are only capable of learning so much: my father, in my naïve years, was akin to a walking, definitely interesting, encyclopedia of knowledge just waiting to be explored. But, it turned out that there were some entries missing in this encyclopedia that I could now fill myself. Yet, here I was, now able to fill those very pages, which imbued in me something more: exploring the world is a grand task...one that we cannot do alone.
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