Inviting All Young Minds Summer Internship Prog…

So I got this link from school to apply for this internship programme to be conducted by Mathematical Sciences Foundation, Sat. Stephens. And I decided to give it a shot. Filled up a form and was asked to choose from a no. of projects I’d like to do. Chose search engine for images, traffic flow and Jantar Mantar and wrote in 15 words why I wanted to be a part of this. This was open for both school and college students.Its being held in DPS RKP.

Got selected and was assigned Jantar Mantar as my project. The whole programme is damn good. I mean, the day starts with a 1 hour math session where we’ve studied set theory, vectors, probability, plane geometry, exponential functions etc etc! That’s followed by a math communication session where we’re also working on a separate project i.e. we’re preparing a lesson plan kind of a presentation on the topic alloted. After lunch, we had our computer class where we were taught Flash and Excel (surprise surprise!). This was followed by our project time where we worked on our main project.

Now almost 3 weeks into this, we’re in the computer lab all the time putting our best efforts into completing our projects and doing all that we can. We’ve been getting good food (:D) everyday in the mess and that’s kept me going through this time…:P The professors here are truly amazing. Its a great experience although I would regret missing out on the June Holidays

Meanwhile, why don’t you check out their blog at Blogspot . Has my pic there too…:P

CBSE ‘Boreds’ 2009

Had to have a post on this. CBSE has once again proven how badly they suck and how they like to push the papers to THE limit where one can yank his/her hair off the scalp. Papers are utterly rubbish and the checking is a waste of time. Here’s how my scoresheet looks:

English: CBSE sucks (refer to previous para). I thought my paper was good and the lowest I could expect was around 85. How much do I get? A freaking 79. Couldn’t believe it.

German: As expected. Knew that I would get 96. DID get 96. COULD have got 99. Easily.

Math: 98. BAD. I messed up a diameter-radius question. 100 was sure shot!

Science: Wonder where I lost marks. Expected more than 95 but got stuck at that score. Meritnation.com tells me that I should have got full marks. Re-evaluate please.

Social science: 99?!?!? Unbelievable. Couldn’t believe this either. After a string of ’42s’/80 in both Preboards, This_was_unbelievable. But I STILL wonder where I lost that ONE mark…:P

Introductory IT: 100! I went to give the exam to get 100 because then I could get a certificate from CBSE. Happy.

Overall, not REALLY satisfied, especially after what I got in English. But yes, whatever may be the case, I don’t really think these marks matter….do they?

Anyone there?!?!?!

—Clears a thick layer of dust, cobwebs and what-not from the interface—

IS anyone there??? Are people still coming to this blog? Sorry folks, long time, no posts. Its just that I’ve been partying too much lately that I haven’t really put up stuff on my blog. So what have I been upto lately?
Partying (haha)
Photoshop (haha)
Piano (haha)
Facebooking (haha)
Haha-ing (:P)

Basically all that I wanted to do after my boards. That reminds me, I have to get a post thru specially for the boards. And yes, just caught up on some movies, music, a gig in school etc etc. And along with that came RESONANCE….:( LOTS of studying to do, considering the fact that with studies come tests, which I have successfully evaded till now.

Currently I’m doing a summer internship prog with St. Stephens college. Its basically a work and learn programme, so I will earn some money too…:P

Ok folks, time for some topic based posts. I’ve missed posts on the IPL, the French Open and will try to cover with the T20 World cup! GO INDIA!

The End or a new beginning?

My Boards ended about 4 days back and I, to be honest, have gone out every single day apart from 31st March, when I decided to stay at home *duh*. Anyways, the boards had been truly remarkable and I hope that the checking is fair and favourable .

So, what’s in store this month for me? Apart from appearing for those admission tests to coaching institutes like Vidyamandir or Resonance, I plan to go to KOTA for a week since Resonance has invited me to a camp for Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yogana training. This is an exam for science students who can get upto Rs. 7000 per month if you clear the exam. So, I’ll might be off to Kota on the 13th of this month and will be back by 18th or 19th.

Other things this month include the THEME Piano Concert where I’ll be playing and singing a few ABBA numbers with a group. This is on the 25th of this month so there is a lot of practice to do since I had taken a break from piano from January to March. That’s it for April.

This year is a crazy year for me atleast since we have a lot of things planned for our school, a lot of competitions to go to and lot to study because I don’t wanna flunk class 11 roflmao. There are lots of things like SAT I and II for which I have to prepare along with the Grade 8 piano exam and the IITJEE coachings.

 

This academic year is going to be a pain. Hope it goes well!

Indian to International

The Indian Premier League was always an international league with many foreign cricketers being a part of it. The charm of the tournament was the concept of home and away matches, inter-city rivalry and the large crowds that turned out just to support their team (I went to see Delhi Daredevils twice and screamed my lungs out!).
This year around, IPL 2 has been moved out to South Africa due to the elections clashing with the matches in the states and the ministry of home affairs being incompetent of providing paramilitary forces for the protection of the players, specially after what the Srilankan cricketers faced in Pakistan. The league and Mr. Lalit Modi had just 2 options – either to scrap the league or move it out of the country. Scrapping the league was out of the question and thus came the big question: where would the league be held? The choices came down to England and South Africa as the two probable venues. England, which is the host of the ICC T20 World Cup this year, would have been a great venue and would have also offered the valuable match practice in ideal conditions. But the IPL would have clashed with the County Twenty20 which is scheduled to start on April 1. Also, the G20 summit, which is being held in England. required the presence of the London Police and this would have made life difficult in providing the ideal security cover for the cricketers. The weather conditions were also unfavourable with chances of 70% of the matches to be washed out. This led to South Africa being chosen as this year’s IPL venue.
South Africa, having hosted the T20 World Cup last year, know what is required to host such an event. Also, the conditions are just fine for a game of cricket. Keeping the logistics in mind, the cost for travelling would be greatly reduced however there would be a problem in the availability of hotels. The CSA board has readily agreed to host the IPL and Nicholls Steyn group will be providing the security cover. All matches will be held like last year at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. IST.
The selected cities to host the IPL this year are Cape Town, Pretoria, Johannesburg, Bloemfontain, Durban and Prot Elizabeth. Each stadium is supposed to get equal matches. The edition has also been truncated from 4 weeks to 3 weeks. That means that the IPL starts on 18 April and ends on 24 May with all the 59 matches being played. There will be no home or away game system this year. The league has certainly gone international!
Franchisees also have to now face a tough time sorting the money matters since they have lost on the dues they would have got had the league been held in India. They cannot afford to carry extra players who may sit out through the tournament.
Well then, the IPL is finally happening! Hope to see Delhi Daredevils crowned as champions this year around.

More MCQs + Science Question Bank

Here are some more MCQ questions for practice which were ‘earlier’ uploaded by CBSE but later removed.

The Science question bank has been put up by the Directorate of Education consisting of questions for all chapters and 3 sample papers each for theory and mcq.

Additional MCQ for Assessment

Answers for the MCQs (*NEW*)

Science Question Bank

All the best to all for the last two exams!!

It’s Not Over….

….But atleast Social Science is!!! YAY! After all that I’ve been through throughout the year…scoring sub-60 marks and to know almost all if not all answers in my paper was just amazing…..!

I dunno…I had this ‘mental block’ or something regarding the whole issue. Social science was that ONE subject where I managed to bungee and take the result along with it…without it i had been crossing 90 like anything. So how did I manage? Here’s how Jan-Feb shaped up:

January:
Flunked Geography/Eco. Went for spaceset…so no study.

February
Tried studying till about the 15th and went for the 2nd preboard. Barely passed in both his/pol and geo/eco. I thought…this was the time to work up and I literally SLOGGED during the past 2 weeks or so….i was doing about 5-10 hours distributed evenly in the day along with cricket matches, football and the works….

Morning, 4 march
Got up and realized that I did not remember ANYTHING. I completely blanked out…There came Slayer( for those who dont know, slayer is this LOUD band I would not recommend to the faint hearted types) and mental peace was restored….

I was calm enough during the test….that helped a lot!

To be honest, Set 1 WAS easy….the other sets required a LOT of thinking……GOD! Thank you luck was on my side!!

German day after…….so preparing for that now..

ALL THE BEST TO ALL!

Addenda: Heredity and Evolution

There was a slight confusion regarding a question in the NCERT which states:

A man with blood group A marries a woman with blood group O and their daughter has blood group O. Is this information enough to tell you which of the traits – blood group A or O is dominant? Why or why not?

Answer:
The information is INSUFFICIENT to tell whether A or O is dominant.

If ‘A’ is dominant, then:
Father (genotype may be AA/AO) since he has blood group A.
Mother is O, thus, genotype is OO (assuming that it is recessive).
Then it is possible to obtain a child with blood group O when father’s blood group is AO and mother’s is OO.

If ‘O’ is dominant, then:
Father’s Blood group A will be AA.
Mother’s blood group O will be OA or OO.
In this case also, after drawing the cross, we see that the child may have blood group O since OA also represents O.

Therefore, since on either of the assumptions the child can have blood group O, we CANNOT establish which characteristic is dominant.

Any queries regarding this can be written in the comments or mailed to nalinichandola@gmail.com OR agrim.singh@gmail.com

All the best for the boards to one and all! Only 12 days (sigh!) to go!

Agrim

A New Doodle: Jackson Pollock

Google has recently commemorated Jackson Pollock and his so called weird art with a Google Doodle on his birthday. Using the technique of ‘dripping paint’ he makes all sorts of paintings and designs. Here’s the google doodle:

The Google Doodle

Also, if you would like to try and make your name in this fashion, have a go at this app at Jackson Pollock’s website. To save an image, use the print screen function.

What is the SpaceSet thing??

Many people have been asking that WTF is Space Set. It happens to be a competition, also known as the Asian Region Space Settlement Design Competition. It is, as you have read, on the Asian level, excluding Russia and China.

The registered schools are assigned a company Northdonning Heedwell who are given a Request for Proposal to build a space settlement/colony for Earthlings in space. Now, the settlement to be designed at the initial levels is always in orbit, only the langaragian points (L1-L5) vary. The proposal consists of all the minimum requirements to be met by all departments like the Operations, Human Factors, Automation, Structure Design etc. A 40 page proposal is them submitted complete with robots, charts, tables etc.

To design the structure, one basically uses a torus in most cases since it offers equal gravity at all points. Like this ,one ends up designing the settlement keeping in mind what the Foundation Society, or the contractor demands. So while designing, one needs a lot of math, science and knowledge about the things around you. While designing the robots, I intend on using 3d models – they offer a better perspective of what one would like to show.

4 Indian semi-finalists and 4 Non-indian semifinalists along with 4 invited teams are invited for the Asian finals. One from each group are paired together and divided into companies. We are then supposed to attend a series of workshops and finally are given a proposal which has to be prepared under a day and presented.

So, that’s what Space Set is all about. The top 12 teams every year go to the Asian finals where the Indian and the Non-indian winners get to go to NASA while the invited team gets another chance to submit the proposal once again. I am part of an invited team and hope to win it here in the Finals so that we can send our proposal again.

So long!