Empowerly

Student profile

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A Mad Scientist is Born

Clad in an oversized white lab coat, a beaten-up pair of safety goggles, and sporting a head of curly white hair, the scientist in front of me juggles a mysterious substance in his hands. The world around me vanishes as my eyes fixate on the curious substance and its effervescent glow. When I finally take a look around, I see a trail of mystical, gray steam hovering in the air and feel a chill permeating the room. At Chabot Space and Science Center, such a breathtaking sight is not uncommon, but it was this moment of utter confusion and awe-inspiring wonder that started my lifelong journey of exploration—a journey that began as just a curious seven-year-old eagerly exploring the exhibits and looking to find explanations for these astounding natural phenomena. It was on this fateful day that my eyes fell upon the perplexing substance that would become an integral part of the journey that still mesmerizes me today—dry ice. 

In shock from the spectacle I had just witnessed, I run up to the scientist’s table just in time to see him drop the dry ice into the boiling water. Suddenly, a thunderous roar erupts and an eerie white cloud of smoke billows out, slowly trickling down the side of the bowl. I am shocked and speechless. A wave of questions floods my brain, “What just happened?! Where did the dry ice go? How did this fog form?”

This was my birth as a mad scientist, albeit an unconventional one. While I didn’t yet have the curly white hair, I did have a glimpse at the wonders of science, from the emotions they invoke to the endless discoveries they inspire. The complexity of dry ice, from its ability to sublimate, or turn directly from a solid to a gas, to the odd nature of its pH, parallels the uncertainties of the world—uncertainties that I was born to uncover. From constructing exploding volcanos to mixing dangerous chemical concoctions, my free time is always filled with experiments. I have long been captivated by the world of science—the world of what ifs, the world of how stuff works. Experiment after experiment, I hope to reveal the secrets hidden within the world of science.

When I became an engineer of solutions to our world’s sustainability issues through challenges issued as part of The Junior Academy—an international community of STEM students dedicated to solving our world’s biggest problems—dry ice appeared once again. The same drive and curiosity that dry ice had sparked within me guided me through sleepless nights working on Junior Academy challenges. From Skyping, researching, sketching, and crudely experimenting, that passion I discovered years ago helped me realize the positive impact I could make by harnessing the power of exploration, curiosity and science. No matter what came my way, whether it was redesigning our Ebola survivor observation system or modifying our photosynthesizing artificial leaf for the thousandth time, I always looked for what I could learn, what questions I could ask, and how I could make things better. Dry ice, being frozen carbon dioxide, served as the base of my endeavors both figuratively, pushing me to question and explore, but also literally, since many of our sustainable solutions focused on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. 

Dry ice has shaped me into the mad scientist I am today. In fact, as a volunteer at Chabot Space and Science Center, I now present the dry ice experiment that wowed me as a child. Not only am I able to teach young students about my passion, I am also able to inspire them to explore and question as I had done years before. While I may not know exactly when I will see dry ice again, I do know that an oversized white lab coat and a beaten-up pair of safety goggles are waiting for me right around the corner.