Month: September 2020

In an earlier post, I discussed how the Java Certification course was established in my school. This time, I’ll talk about some of the challenges and opportunities that I was faced with during the class. Firstly, since this was the first time that something like this was being done, there was no set curriculum to follow. My teacher had to come up with a plan, and discussed it with us. He took the input of every student willing to enroll in the course and finally decided how to teach everyone the material. Since all of the students had already taken the AP Computer Science A course, no one had to learn Java from scratch, which made things easier. Most of the students already knew most of the material, so having one whole year to get ready for the test did not seem like a hard task. However, since this had never been done before, we were unaware about which parts we would struggle with and which parts we would not have problems with. Due to this, my teacher struggled to keep everyone on the same page, and most of the students, including me had to rely more on ourselves than the teacher. This was new territory for me teacher, so we could not rely on him as much. Personally, I did not think that there was anything that could not be taught to high-schoolers, but there definitely were a few topics and concepts that were difficult to grasp. After we learned the topics, we went on eclipse and tested its different applications and familiarized ourselves with. Other people often asked me for help. The teacher was doing his best, but could only help a handful of students at at time, so some of the other students in need of help asked people who were ahead of them. We all tried to help each other succeed and tried to make sure that everyone passed. I think that I got something unique out of this class, something that I would not have learned otherwise. Usually, classes are led by the teacher, and it’s mostly one way instruction with limited communication from the student’s side. However, in this course, our teacher learned with us every step of the way. Students were helping each other as best as they could, and I think that brought our whole class together. By the end of the year, we had all become really good friends and came to better understand each other. Usually, people want to do better than others, but in this class, I think most of us wanted success for ourselves as well as everyone else. In the end, most of us passed the test and the hard work that we put in during the year paid off. The course gave me a truly unique experience, and I think I learned what it means to be part of a supportive and positive community through the class.

When Einstein set out to explain why gravity works the way it does, he used three dimensions to illustrate the affect gravity has on objects. Similarly, Theodor Franz Eduard Kaluza, a German physicist, believed that there was a unified theory, that would help explain all of nature’s forces. He wanted to be able to explain electromagnetic force using the same principle that Einstein used. However, he could not do so with only the three dimensions known to man. This led to the idea that there might in fact be more dimensions than those we are aware of. By taking a fourth dimension into account while developing an equation, Kaluza ended up with the real equation used to deal with electromagnetic forces. However, when he tried to apply this equation to real life, it did not work. In our age, a new approach to unify the laws of physics is being explored. This theory is known as String theory. When zooming into an object far enough, one can see atoms, and atoms are made of quarks. A quark is a fundamental constituent of matter. Conventional ideas end here, but the String theory proposes that deep inside these quarks, there are filaments of energy that look like strings. Normally, when strings move at different vibrations, they create different sounds. However, these string-like filaments vibrate differently to create particles themselves, and are responsible for the different properties of particles. This relates back to the idea of multiple dimensions, because when equations took into account for the idea of the String Theory, the mathematics only works in a universe that has 10 different dimensions of space. So the String Theory also proposes that there are in fact, 10 different dimensions of space.

People from of all ages and from all around the world study computer science. Of these people, some study the Java programming language and choose to challenge themselves by taking the Java Certification test and becoming a certified Java programmer. Me and my friends were all part of this group. In high school, after taking the AP Computer Science A course, of which Java is the main focus, we decided that we were interested in delving deeper into Java and learn more about the programming language and learn higher level applications of Java. We decided to tell our computer science teacher about this, and he introduced us to the Java OCA Test, which is one of the three levels of certification tests. While we were discussing the topic, our teacher realized that he saw great potential in us, and wanted to give everyone the opportunity to take the test. In the next academic year (2019-2020), our school offered a course that helped prepare for the test and at the end of the year, allowed every student to take the certification test at no cost. This was the first class in the nation, that was offered by a high school, that prepared students to take a certification test.