Friday 7/19

After hours of hard work, our Ethics Presentations were finally due. We continued analysis of our biodiesel in the morning and listened to a few guest speakers in the afternoon. Dale Stokes and Anton Samoylov gave us insight into their unique projects, from marine work at SOARS to innovative solar cell production.

Saturday 7/20, Sunday 7/21

This weekend was family weekend! Many of us left the UCSD COSMOS campus to reunite with our families after a few weeks apart.

Those who stayed went to the San Diego Zoo, enjoying the warm weather and the many animals, including but not limited to fennec foxes, red pandas, and elephants.

On Sunday night we had casino night, a COSMOS tradition! Our cluster's Teacher Fellow, Mr. T, supplied the camp with his own roulette, blackjack, and poker tables and we dressed up to gamble all of our money away (disclaimer: no money was exchanged to play these games, but some concerning poker addictions seemed to have stemmed from the activity). 

Tuesday 7/23

At NSB, we went over what to do for presentations on our final projects.  In the afternoon, we continued working in our project groups. (One pot polyol made their first foam!)

Wednesday 7/24

In the morning, we went to York Hall to do our fourth round of testing on our biodiesel. 

After lunch, we finished the lecture with Bomb Calorimetry, Viscosity, and Karl Fischer Titration. There was a fun challenge at the end where we would use bond enthalpies to calculate the enthalpy of the reaction with a certain FAME. The winners got mugs with the chemical symbol for caffeine! We also went through a fun presentation where Brian told us how he used chemistry in his experiences with detecting counterfeit forgery and explosives (and a story about Bill's toupee).