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Inverted Airfoils’ Abilities to Prevent Wind Storm Roof Destruction
By Yolanda Zhou, VI Form
Inverted Airfoils’ Abilities to Prevent Wind Storm Roof Destruction
Student-Submitted Note: This paper investigates a new way to reduce aerodynamic lift created around houses’ roofs in extreme windstorms. Three test models were created in computer modeling software OnShape and simulated in CFD using OpenFOAM. This project was inspired by the concept of “downforce” used to stabilize Formula One race cars. This paper was written for submission to the High School Science Symposium (HiSci) in May 2023 as part of the STEM Fellowship.
Abstract
As severe windstorms increase in frequency and intensity, more residential houses are predicted to be vulnerable to structural damage by severe windstorms towards the end of the 21st century. Wind around the roof exerts a negative pressure that lifts the roof up and threatens the structural integrity of houses. In this paper, a novel method of mitigating lift using inverted airfoils was explored through CFD simulations. The performance of the model was assessed through three criteria: net lift coefficient, effectiveness under different wind directions, and manufacturability. Visual representations of pressure and velocity distribution of the airflow over the model were analyzed to validate simulation data. Single inverted airfoils and round airfoil-shaped roofs were tested for the first prototype. A further iteration of the prototypes improved the model performance. All roof configurations were able to reduce the overall lift of the system when compared to the control group. Single airfoil roof setup was most effective at reducing net lift, while round roof setup was effective in a wider range of wind direction conditions. Rectangular Roof setup combines the advantages of both setups and reduces more net lift than the Revolved Airfoil setup.
Introduction
As global climate change accelerates, the intensity and frequency of wind disasters, such as tropical cyclones and tornadoes, are predicted to increase significantly by the end of 21st century [8]. The increase in the intensity of tropical cyclones is found to be correlated to the rise of Sea Surface Temperatures [8]. Furthermore, Category 4 and 5 tropical cyclone activities, which have wind speeds that exceed 150 miles per hour, are likely to increase in the late 21st century [10]. Such tropical cyclones, although very rare, are catastrophic and account for around half of the economic damage done by all tropical cyclones in the US [6]. In 2013, an EF-5 category tornado hit Moore, Oklahoma. Reaching a speed of over 200 miles per hour, type EF-5 tornadoes are the rarest and most destructive type of tornado on Earth. The tornado caused 24 deaths, more than 200 injuries, and billions of dollars for repairing the destroyed houses and facilities [3]. Overall, tropical cyclone frequencies, intensities, and damages are projected to increase as the global climate continues to get warmer [10]. High School Science Symposium 2022
(more…)Snowballing Towards Anti-Ethnic Homogeneity
By Steven Zhang, VI Form
Snowballing Towards Anti-Ethnic Homogeneity
Editor’s Note: This project was made possible with the support of the Class of 1968 V Form Fellowship. At their 25th reunion, the Class of 1968 created a fund to provide grants to V Form students for independent study during the school year or, more commonly, during the summer between V and VI Forms. Their intent in establishing this fund was to reward independent thinking, ingenuity, and planning and to encourage the student in exploring non-traditional fields of inquiry or using non-traditional methods of investigation.
Student-Submitted Note: Over my Junior year, I embarked on an ambitious research project rooted in personal experience. Eight years ago, I left my town’s Asian church, noticing over time that older friends were departing too. What prompted so many people with similar backgrounds to collectively leave? I dove into academic research. I exhausted every accessible paper, emailing professors for copies when articles weren’t free. I spent months interviewing and writing, dedicating 2-3 weekday hours and 4-8 weekend hours. It was incredibly hard to conduct research all by myself. I submitted an abstract summarizing my findings to UC Berkeley’s conference on Asian Pacific American religions, and was accepted based on my paper and my paper’s abstract.
Abstract
Despite recent attention on second-generation Asian American Christians, many racialization and ethnicization theorists often neglect the migration of second-generations from mono-ethnic churches to multi-ethnic churches. Through an analysis of the oral histories of nine East Coast, American-born, East Asian college students, my paper argues how race and cultural factors in ethnic, predominantly white, and multi-ethnic churches influence second generation students’ desire for diverse congregations. This study contends that due to family pressure on youth and overbearing cultural values in an ethnic church, second generations avoid Asian-homogenous religious environments and their parents’ ethnically bounded faith. Leaving instead for predominantly white churches, they find that cultural awareness on issues of marginalization is lacking. In both churches, second generations grow averse to homogeneous environments as minorities with unique cultural differences. In college, they resolve the desire for heterogeneous religious environments through the diverse college campus that offers religious autonomy and a religious buffet of ministries. Among the various options, the multi-ethnic ministry especially appeals to second generations by creating a minority-focused space infused with different perspectives. My paper uncovers a pattern of religious attendance among second-generation Asian Americans, analyzing how, when, and why religious diversity in congregations is vital.
Paper presentation
Introduction
My paper focuses on second-generation Asian Americans who attend multi-ethnic churches and explores their motivations for desiring and attending diverse congregations.
I employ a snowball metaphor to demonstrate how different factors combine to create a desire for diversity. The “compounding factors” to the snowball of anti-homogeneity are family pressure that creates desires for separation and independence, overbearing cultural values that create a dislike for homogeneous environments, reduced marginalization that creates a desire for a diversity of members, and a desire for diverse theology. This snowball of anti-homogeneity stops rolling after entering college, where the accumulation is resolved through the diverse college campus that offers religious autonomy, a religious buffet of ministries, and more diverse perspectives.
My methodology was emailing and networking. I emailed nine East Coast, East Asian, college students on college campuses and college graduates from nearby multi-ethnic churches to ask them these questions.
Before I go into my findings, I would like to provide a literature review.
As many researchers have noted, second generations embark on the silent exodus, a mass migration away from their mother churches. They leave because of cultural differences between generations and intergenerational leadership difficulties. The question of where they go has been answered by numerous authors who argue that second generations stay in ethnic and racial enclaves. They either head to Asian American ministries, return to their ethnic churches, or pave a new pan-Asian path, which although different from their parents, often carries mono-ethnic notions.
(more…)My Election, My Will
By Juyoung (Kirsten) Pak, V Form
My Election, My Will
Student-Submitted Note: Inspired by my US Government class, I decided to enter in the John Locke competition. I answered the question, “Do the results of elections express the will of the people?”. The parameters of the competition was to write an argumentative essay while incorporating elements from a traditional research paper.
Introduction
In most modern democracies, one of the few outcomes people can directly influence are elections, meaning that elections are a critical conduit for the people’s will. But what exactly is the will of the people? “The people” is a nebulous term that encompasses a wide array of interests, views, and preferences, making it nearly impossible to cover the innumerous wants and needs of specific groups. As such, elections are imperfect systems that stitch together different voices in majoritarian fashion, delivering the ‘people’s will’ through general consensus. The results, however, are undermined by the complexities of modern democracies, diluting the purity of what can be broadly defined as ‘the people’s will’.
Will of the People: Majoritarian at Best
The inherent flaw with equating a bare majority as the people is that large swathes of the population are actually not represented, and candidates that most likely hold opposing beliefs to these people are elected into office. Take, for example, South Korea’s 2022 Presidential Election, when the People Power Party’s (PPP)Yoon Seok-Yeol won by just 0.73%. As a result, the voices of the 16.3 million supporters of Democratic Party’s liberal policies, which are antithetical to the conservative PPP’s, were effectively mollified. In the same year in Brazil, left-wing Lula da Silva defeated right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro by 1.8%, and the last six US presidential elections have been won by single digits. In these cases, nearly half of voters selected the losing candidate with polar opposite views to the winning candidate, meaning that nearly half of people’s views were not represented by the results. Though not all elections are so close, these extreme cases illustrate that election results are the will of the majority, not the people as a whole. Even for larger margins, elected officials can never capture the nuanced, and often contrasting, shades that wholly represent the people; elections simply do their best to corral as many votes as possible.
The same runs true for multi-party systems. While in two-party systems, parties aggregate votes from different groups, coalescing groups of voices under the same banner, coalition governments usually have to mix-and-match parties into a majority, weaving groups together into a patchwork quilt. For example, the 2021 German federal elections yielded a SPD-Greens-FDP coalition, a group with many differences, such as the FDP’s staunch support of neoliberalism that is in direct opposition to the Green’s support of strict regulation and the SDP’s socialist policies. In this sense, multi-party systems are intrinsically the same as two-party systems, but tents are built post-election and in a more complicated fashion. And just as in two-party systems, non-coalition votes are effectively negated, meaning that large swathes of voices are not represented in the final outcome.
(more…)Flourishing with Standards-Based Grading
By Colleen Finnerty, History and Social Sciences Faculty Member, Class of 2011
Flourishing with Standards-Based Grading
Faculty-Submitted Note: This paper was written for the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania. The task was to address the following question: Considering positive psychology’s aim to enhance human flourishing worldwide, how can the field make a significant impact on promoting healthy environments and institutions?
Traditional grading systems use grades as rewards for desired behavior and learning practices. These rewards come in the form of point values and percentages, and students work to maximize points or percentage. Grades incentivize achievement while undermining the value of effort and progress in the learning process (Olson, 1996). Traditional grading systems also foster competition among students rather than promoting a learning community. Students see grading as a “zero-sum” practice such that one student’s success is connected to another student’s failure because of curves and grade distributions (Olson, 1996). A common practice among high schools in the United States is to establish a class rank using cumulative grade point averages. Class ranks are offered to college admissions officers and used to award prizes upon graduation such as valedictorian. However, class rank does little to actually motivate students to become lifelong learners and instead pits students against each other in the classroom (Guskey, 2013). Traditional grading systems discourage risk-taking and creative learning; former valedictorians are often hardworking in their respective professions, but they are not the ones to take chances and propose innovative ideas (Arnold, 1995). To promote flourishing among the next generation, schools have an obligation to examine their grading policies by using tenets of positive psychology.
Educators who see themselves as tasked with identifying talented students do so with teaching, assessment, and grading practices that accentuate differences between students. Educators who see themselves as tasked with cultivating talent define clear learning objectives and work to ensure that all students have the opportunity to reach the learning objectives (Guskey, 2013). Students with higher levels of happiness and well-being are more likely to succeed in academic settings, feel more competent, and have more confidence than their peers (Clarke, 2020). To help students excel in the classroom, educational institutions need to implement policies and practices that enhance student well-being. Mandated use of standards-based grading (SBG) in primary and secondary schools would improve student well-being and develop lifelong learners.
(more…)The George Hill Burnett History Prize: How Unions Struggle: The 1913-1914 Copper Strike in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
By Avery King, Class of 2023
How Unions Struggle: The 1913-1914 Copper Strike in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
Editor’s Note: The George Hill Burnett History Prize is given to commemorate the graduation in 1902 of a grandson of the founder. It is awarded on the basis of a special essay in American history.
The small piece of copper my grandmother kept in her kitchen fascinated me as a child. When she saw me staring at its glowing hues masked by green verdigris, she would smile, explaining that it was shaped like Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. My dad’s side of the family immigrated to the Upper Peninsula from Finland in the 1880s. I was enthralled by stories about my great-grandfather, who worked for General Motors, and his dad, my great-great-grandfather, who worked in the copper mines. It was only when I got older, however, that I began to realize how important her stories about the copper mines are, not only for my family but for organized labor everywhere.
My great-great-grandfather on the paternal side of my family was a member of the Western Federation of Miners, a prominent mining union that operated in both the Colorado Coal Mines and the Michigan Copper Mines. On the night of Christmas Eve, 1913, my great-great-grandmother, Ida K. Putansu, took her six children (including my great-grandfather Richard Putansu, who was seven years old at the time) to a Christmas Party at Italian Hall in Calumet, Michigan. Italian Hall was a public meeting place and, this night, its second floor was the site of a Union supported Christmas celebration. This meant that one had to show proof of membership in the union or have another union member vouch for them to enter the hall. The party was a nice diversion for the union members, who had been involved in a bitter strike, and their families. The crowded party was full of laughter and celebration until an unknown person shouted, “Fire!” The ensuing chaos left seventy-three people dead.
(more…)The Old Firm Derby: How History Shapes Soccer and Society in Glasgow
By Alden Mehta
The Old Firm Derby: How History Shapes Soccer and Society in Glasgow
Editor’s Note: This paper was completed as a part of the History Research Fellowship, a one-semester course available to sixth form students.
In 1999, two rival soccer teams, Celtic FC and Rangers FC, went head to head in the Scottish Cup Final. Many of the local Glaswegians, unable to attend the game in person, gathered in pubs with their team’s fellow supporters to drink and watch the match. It was more than a game to many of them; they hated their opposition and that hatred ran deep. Rangers won the game 1-0, taking home the trophy. After a crushing defeat, sixteen-year-old Celtic supporter, Thomas McFadden, left the Life of Reilly’s pub. Heartbroken though he was, deep down he knew that life would go on. He was young and had a lifetime ahead of him to watch his team play. However, life did not go on for Thomas McFadden. Minutes later, he was murdered. On his way home after the game, Thomas encountered a heavily intoxicated Rangers supporter named David Hutton. It was not long after the final whistle. The emotions were still fresh. The two opposing fans confronted one another. Getting in each others’ faces, they chanted rival soccer songs. Before long, the confrontation escalated, and David Hutton stabbed Thomas four times in critical areas. In his final moments, Thomas was “staggering about with blood over his Celtic top.” As he bled to death, he sang a traditional Celtic song, faithfully representing his team until the very end.
I came to learn that while horrifying, this incident was not unexpected. Glasgow’s complex history has created the conditions for the sport of soccer to turn into something that resembles tribal warfare. In many parts of the world, soccer is considered to be more than just a game, but this claim is arguably most evident in Glasgow, Scotland, home of the Old Firm derby between Celtic FC and Rangers FC. The rivalry is referred to as a derby because both teams are from the same city. For decades, these two Glaswegian teams have dominated Scottish soccer. The name of the rivalry, the Old Firm, was supposedly coined in the late 1800s in recognition of the commercial benefits of the two teams’ encounters on the field. Many soccer enthusiasts, ex-professionals, and coaches deem the Old Firm to be the most heated sports rivalry in the world. Celtic legend Henrik Larsson played in both the Old Firm derby and the notorious El Clasico between Barcelona and Real Madrid. The El Clasico is by far the fiercest rivalry in Spain, and yet Larsson says, “Nothing compares to Celtic playing Rangers, absolutely nothing … You can talk about Barca against their old rivals from Madrid, but believe me, it’s not even close.” The Old Firm polarizes the two sides, produces a vicious hatred, and frequently spills over into violence.
I’ve grown up heavily involved in the sport of soccer, so much so that I feel it occupies a certain portion of who I am. In my experience, it has always brought people together. Whether through my experiences playing soccer or through watching events like the World Cup, I’ve seen the sport unite people across cultural, ethnic, and language differences. I’ve witnessed the mutual respect that results from the game. To me, “the beautiful game,” as soccer is often called, was and still is an apt description. Therefore, when I discovered that for nearly a century and a half soccer has fostered division in Glasgow, I sought to discover why.
(more…)Julius Caesar: Shakespeare’s Cautionary Tale
By Arjun Yerabothu
Julius Caesar: Shakespeare’s Cautionary Tale
Editor’s Note: This paper was completed as a part of the History Research Fellowship, a one-semester course available to sixth form students.
Student-Submitted Note: My paper examined the play Julius Caesar by Shakespeare and how he uses Julius Caesar to comment on the political instability of England in the late 16th century. I also looked at how subsequent productions used the play to comment on the political issues of their respective times.
Caesar salad. Little Caesars. The Julian Calendar. Caesars Palace. Cesarean sections.
No name in history has carried the influence “Julius Caesar” has. The name “Caesar” has a rich and storied legacy anchored mainly in the Roman Empire. However, it is also strongly felt in many contemporary cultures around the globe. Over the decades, it has been used to define not only the families of rulers, but also a variety of titles and references in literature, trade, and even food. It has come to symbolize not only a powerful ruler but also an ideal of leadership and influence. The term “Caesar” has crossed geographic boundaries and taken on a wide range of cultural applications.
Gaius Julius Caesar has been widely respected and scorned throughout history. Sometimes and in some places Caesar is revered as a hero. In other times and places, he has been viewed as a dictator. Additionally, the name “Caesar” itself refers to Julius Caesar and his legacy in some places, while serving as a synonym for “emperor” in others. Whatever the meaning, the name is widely recognized throughout the world.
Due in significant part to the Roman Empire’s growth and its influence on so many languages, many words have Latin roots. Some examples of “Caesar” meaning “emperor” in different languages are Csere in Old English and Keiser in Middle English. The German and Austrian emperors held the title of Kaiser through the conclusion of World War I. The name “Caesar” also influenced Slavic languages, where rulers acquired the titles “Czar” or “Tsar.” Russian Emperor Ivan the Terrible first used the title in 1547.
(more…)A Convenient Misremembrance: Hong Kong’s Colonial Legacy
By Mandy Hui
A Convenient Misremembrance: Hong Kong’s Colonial Legacy
Editor’s Note: This paper was completed as a part of the History Research Fellowship, a one-semester course available to sixth form students.
Is Hong Kong a part of China? The answer to that question depends upon whom you ask.
In 1842, Britain occupied the small island of Hong Kong. The colonial empire maintained political control for a century and a half, eventually returning the city to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1997. During the transfer of power, the PRC declared Hong Kong a special administrative region. This unique status permitted the city to operate separate legal and economic systems from those in mainland China, a principle embodied in the slogan “one country, two systems.” The Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping developed this idea during the 1980s in anticipation of Hong Kong’s reunification with China. The concept not only preserved Hong Kong’s capitalist system, it also granted the city a high-degree of autonomy until 2047. The agreement promised Hong Kong residents freedoms of speech, press, and assembly, all of which are not guaranteed in the mainland.
In recent years, many Hong Kong residents have prided themselves on their city’s civil liberties, in distinction from the more strict rule on the mainland. However, China began gradually limiting Hong Kong’s freedoms in many different ways, such as abducting Hong Kongers who sold books criticizing the PRC in the early 2010s. China’s repeated threats to strip Hong Kong of its autonomy have been met with mass demonstrations; thousands of pro-democracy residents rallied in the streets of Hong Kong, protesting the PRC’s infringement on the “one country, two systems” policy it had promised to retain for 50 years.
Growing up in Hong Kong, I witnessed protestors block familiar roads and businesses to force China’s authoritarian government to concede in its attempts to end Hong Kong’s democratic system. I have seen thousands symbolically use umbrellas and black clothing as a cry for freedom and democracy. For most of my life, my friends and I were too young to formulate our own informed opinions regarding these protests, but the events of 2019 and 2020 changed my perspective on what was unfolding before me.
In the midst of the 2019 protests, I had a conversation over lunch with one of my close friends about Hong Kong’s political crisis. I was conscious of my friend’s impassioned beliefs on the matter. Due to the topic’s sensitive nature, we decided to eat at a “yellow restaurant,” a title given to restaurants owned by pro-democracy supporters. I asked her about her thoughts. She described tension among her family members about China’s restrictions. She wanted to take part in the pro-democracy protests, however, her parents threatened to disown her if she associated herself with the demonstrators. At the end of her soliloquy, she let out a sigh and muttered, “I wish Hong Kong was a British colony again.”
This wasn’t the first time I’d heard pro-democracy supporters reminisce about the city’s colonial era. The week before, thousands of demonstrators gathered to sing the British national anthem, “God Save the Queen,” and hundreds waved Union Jacks as a sign of resistance against the PRC. I was confused. Why do many Hong Kong citizens look favorably on British colonial rule but bravely resist PRC’s control? How can the British Union Jack, the flag of Hong Kong’s former colonizer, be used as a symbol of democracy?
(more…)
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