Gems in STEM: A Quick Study of Ballots — It all started in fourth grade when I finished my debut novel The Magic Inside, a 10,000 word masterpiece for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) about three friends who learn magic together and unite to defeat an evil sorcerer…definitely not a Harry Potter rip off. As I proudly typed my…

Gems in STEM: Introduction to Quantum Dots — Does size matter? It’s an age-old question in all sorts of areas. Is it always “the bigger the better”? (If you think so, you might like Texas!) Or, can small prevail over tall (like a David v. Goliath type beat)? Honestly, the answer to this debate varies person-to-person. We constantly…

Gems in STEM: The Friendship Paradox — You aren’t popular. Don’t take it personally, but mathematically speaking, on average, your friends have more friends than you do. Cue the Friends theme song, “So no one told you life was gonna be this waaaay!” You might be thinking, “What friends?” It’s okay, I’m your friend, and one is…

Gems in STEM: The Microscopic Structure of Tears — What’s the big deal about crying anyway? You cry. I cry. Well, I guess I cry a lot. But it’s all totally warranted, like when I’m stressed about meeting deadlines or laughing at TikTok cats or watching those videos of returning soldiers reuniting with their dogs. I cry when I…

Gems in STEM: A Comprehensive Intro to Artificial Intelligence — Jarvis, please pull up some quick articles to teach me about AI…Jarvis? JARVIS? Oh wait, my bad, I forgot that you’re not real outside of Marvel. …

Gems in STEM: An Introduction to Elliptic Curves — Good MORNING (or afternoon or evening), readers! I am so psyched you’re here and ready to work that brain–now let’s ride! Let’s start off slow by first defining what an elliptic curve is. (To quickly catch you up, we’re going to learn about elliptic curves as though we are in…

Gems in STEM: The Basics of Spherical Geometry (Pt. 2) — Last time, I left you all on a bit of a cliff-hanger (totally my bad). In particular, we had defined the basic tools of spherical geometry (i.e. great circles), but didn’t answer some other questions about other objects on spheres! For example, if there are no straight lines in this…

Gems in STEM: An Intro to Spherical Geometry — Who run the world? Girls! (As Beyonce dictates.) But, I am personally not a good runner, so I want to know the shortest possible distance required to “run” the world. In particular, given any two points on the globe (which we assume is a sphere, for simplicity), I need to…

Gems in STEM: Introduction to Public-Key Cryptography — I remember watching Spy Kids when I was younger and wishing that I, too, was a spy. I would daydream about doing killer gymnastics between sharp red laser beams and flying with those insane gadgets that they somehow let tiny children use. …

Gems in STEM: Quick Intro to Cryptography — Before we get started, let me tell you why I’ve decided that it is my duty to help equip the masses with the basics of cryptography by writing this column. My sister is a major Swiftie and literally every week she claims that Taylor Swift will be releasing something huge…

Gems in STEM: The Liar’s Paradox and Fuzzy Logic — I seem to have found myself in a…complicated situation. I’ll save you from the details of how, but I’m trapped in the Pinocchio movie and I need to find a way to get out. I don’t have the patience to play through the movie, so I just have to find…

Gems in STEM: Tessellations — Before we get started, I need some help. I keep hearing about Harry’s Tiles everywhere I go, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what people are talking about?! Let me give you some examples: “Wow, did you see that Vogue featured Harry’s Tiles?” …

Gems in STEM: The History of the Abacus — Unfortunately, during the pandemic, most of us are unable to enjoy the beaches. It’s a shame we can’t see the beautiful waves, feel the refreshing wind on our faces, and move pebbles between lines in the sand to painstakingly and meticulously count our cattle and goods. What? You don’t do…

Gems in STEM: A Discussion of Fractals — It’s time for our souls to spiral in frozen fractals all around, as Idina Menzel iconically sings in Frozen’s “Let it Go.” In particular, this week we’re taking a look at fractals! …

Gems in STEM: A Discussion of Partitions — Now it’s time for a breakdown… (cue En Vogue’s My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)) In particular, a breakdown of numbers! Today we’ll be talking about partitions of numbers. At first glance, they’re a fairly simple concept: a partition of a positive number n is a way to break…

Hi everyone! Quick recap: this bi-weekly column, Gems in STEM, is a place to learn about various STEM topics that I find exciting, and that I hope will excite you too. …

Gems in STEM: The History of Zero — What are we going to talk about today? Nothing! Okay, okay, today we’ll be briefly discussing the fascinating history of the number zero. Now, using the term “number” is a little presumptuous, because it first came into play as a placeholder. In particular, the first known appearance of this idea…

Gems in STEM: An Introduction to Knot Theory — What are knots? When you think of knots, you might think of your double-knotted shoelaces or your hopelessly tangled earbuds. I personally think of garlic knots. However, these sorts of knots are different from mathematical knots. What kind of snob wouldn’t consider garlic knots valid knots? Well, the difference is that “knots” like…

Gems in STEM: A Discussion of Primes — Hi everyone! I’m Apoorva, a high-schooler who enjoys mathematics (and terrible jokes, as seen from the title). I’ve loved math ever since I was a kid, and have been involved in math competitions since elementary school. Additionally, I’ve co-authored two published papers in number theory. I’ll be using this platform…