Celina Chang

Period 1
I first encountered science when I was in first grade. I clearly remember that our lesson

was about evaporation and condensation. At that time, I went to New Avenue School and had a

group of friends who with me witnessed the magical experience of water disappearing in thin air

in the midst of the summer heat. Our teacher had us stand in the back alley behind the classroom

and pour water on the ground and a couple minutes later, voila! The water disappeared!

Although my first experience with science, in retrospect, was not anything amazing there were

no fireworks, no corn starch that became a flame thrower (which was demonstrated to me in fifth

grade by Mr. Lai) but it was special in the fact that I was hot and thirsty enough to engrave the

fifteen minutes of heat and exhaustion into my mind, probably for life. But besides the extreme

heat and perspiration that I was experiencing, that point in time marked my first realization the

science is life: its a process that continues to occur even without notice.

At Keppel, I took Biology Honors with Ms. Hake; it was a class that changed my entire

perspective about school and science. Prior to the class, I took science as a chill kind of class

where one simply has to read and participate in class discussions to get a good grade. But Ive

realized that science isnt simply a read-listen-lecture kind of subject. It involves practical real

life applications; something that isnt taught in a usual mathematics or social science class. This

led to my enthusiasm when I took Physics B AP in my junior year. To my amazement, science is

math with applications. I often joked around with friends stating that gravity is just two

numbers: 9.8 meters per second squared. I loved how numbers can be multiplied, divided, and

calculated to give such a real answer, and thats what I love most about science that it takes

theories and puts it into applications.

My most memorable encounter with science was probably the physics lab final that I did

my junior year. For the lab final, the class was told to explore the world of physics and find a
 Celina Chang
Period 1
lab, experiment, or research that we didnt fully study in the course of the school year. At first, I

just joked around with my friend asking her if she wanted to make a rail gun solely because of

an online third person shooter game we had played. But after my pushing the joke repeatedly,

she agreed, and we were on our way to making an actual rail gun! We spent countless hours in

my fathers warehouse scrapping for parts, cutting the aluminum parts we needed, ravaging for

screws and wires and materials, testing prototype after prototype, and finally build a miniature

working rail gun. We taught the class how a rail gun worked and demonstrated our fully

working rail gun. Of course it wasnt anything big; we only shot a copper wire, but the sparks

and distance the copper wire traveled was pretty impressive.

I hope to further learn more about Biology this year. When I think of AP Biology, I think

of something like Ms. Hakes class where I was able to do several amazing labs such as the

fermentation lab and fly eye lab. I look forward to learning more about life science; after the

summer assignment, I do expect to learn more about evolution, but I look forward to learning a

little about the organism particularly the nervous system because I have always held an interest

in the human body, especially after taking Psychology AP with Mr. Luong chapter two about

synapses and human muscle reaction has changed me forever.

So thats me, I am a student who works more based on interest than rote memorization. I

believe I am more intrinsically motivated than extrinsically. I am a very curious person and I

like to learn more about what blows my mind, in the case of physics, rail guns from an online

third person shooter game was interesting enough to get me to make a miniature prototype. I am

excited to do the way in AP Biology.