[Student Profile]
[Prompt & Essay]
Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?
The most meaningful gift I have ever received was a box full of metal beams with screw holes, motors, and light bulbs. At the time, my four year old mind could not yet comprehend the possibilities that were enclosed in the cardboard. After struggling to carry the heavy box to my room, I opened my new Pandora’s box of sorts. Without instructions to guide my exploration, my imagination had no bounds. As I tinkered with the contents of the box, I realized that I could touch certain wires together to move motors and illuminate light bulbs. By performing countless experiments, I was exposed to concepts of electricity and magnetism. What began as a source of entertainment led to an enduring fascination with electronics.
Of the experiments I performed, the one that perplexed me the most was, ironically, a simple circuit. My father taught me to construct a circuit with light bulbs and a battery, connected by four wires. Within this circuit, I made a series of observations. For one, when I connected one light bulb to another's opposite terminals, they barely lit up. After I adjusted the terminal connections, I noticed that light bulbs that had all positive terminals connected to each other and all negative terminals connected to each other were much brighter.
My father explained that this occurred because the current is constant in a series circuit, but the voltage is divided among the bulbs, which explains why the light bulbs were dimmer initially. Although I did not know it at the time, I had just experimentally proven to myself a concept that I would not formally learn until high school. When I was taught about Ohm’s law and different kinds of circuits in school, I was reminded of the experiments I conducted as a child and was able to apply those learnings to the classroom.
My experiment with a simple circuit sparked new inspiration for me. As years passed, I began adding salvaged computer and television parts to the box. With each new addition, dozens more experiments came to mind and my curiosity grew even deeper. Inspired by Nikola Tesla’s use of coils, I designed my own coils of varying length and measured resistance to try to understand relationships between the two variables. The process I used to create these coils led to a new discovery when I wrapped the coil on an iron nail and attached a battery. I was baffled to see that a nearby nail rose up from the table and stuck to my coil-nail contraption like a magnet. To even more of my surprise, when I disconnected the battery, the nail fell back onto the table and my creation was no longer magnetic. I later realized that this was the definition of an electromagnet: a type of magnet in which the magnetic field is created by current. The cycle of making a discovery, trying to understand it, only to stumble upon another led to years of my childhood being devoted to grasping the root of my observations.
It is often said that the toys you play with as a child can influence your interests. This idea rings true for me, as this box of items one may find at a hardware store sparked my long-term desire to understand the mechanics of electronics. As my experiments became more complicated and my father was no longer able to be my sole source of answers, I sought out communities that could help me find answers to my countless questions. In my school’s robotics club, I was able to engage in meaningful discussions that furthered my curiosity. Using the knowledge I gained from robotics discussions, I participated in several VEX robotics competitions. My once small toy box has expanded to include electronic contraptions, physics textbooks, and robotics parts and will continue to grow alongside me throughout my life.