Splash
This weekend was Splash at MIT.
Splash is a program where MIT and Harvard students teach classes which are attended by high school and middle school students. Tom and Pete both went.
Peter had a class on surviving in Minecraft (but he already knew everything). However, he still had fun. There was only one person in the class who had never played Minecraft. The teacher had him take control of the computer with the projector, and start playing. Everyone else tried to help him along, but it usually ended up with a lot of yelling. It was quite entertaining. Peter also took a class about Blender which was easy to pick up, but needs a lot of practice to get good at it.
Tom missed several classes on Saturday because he had a really big burrito from Anna’s for lunch, then settled into a comfy chair in the Student Center and fell asleep. He also fell asleep on Sunday after the same large lunch, but didn’t miss any classes as he had a longer break. Tom decided materials science could be kind of interesting. On Sunday he saw a case in the materials science department that contained some Kevlar, a bullet that had been stopped by Kevlar and aerogel. The aerogel looked really cool. They also had some bulk metallic glass, which according to Tom, is really cool because it doesn’t deform when you drop something on it. So, if you drop a ball bearing on it, as long as it doesn’t hit something that can deform, it loses almost no energy, and it will keep bouncing for a very long time. Tom also came home all excited about Haskell. He likes Haskell because it’s really strange and does stuff funny.
We spent a bit of time running the kids in and out of town. We would have put them on the T, but they’re doing work on the Alewife line on weekends at the moment.
It was a beautiful weekend for it. Saturday night we all went to Mary Chung’s for dinner. This afternoon we met up for a walk to Toscanini’s. The B^3 ice cream was really good.
