It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon. You are babysitting your neighbor’s two children, Mark and Sarah, ages two and three respectively. Today is pizza day — which, unfortunately for you, is usually a headache, since Mark and Sarah never want to share evenly and always fight over who gets a larger…

Walking down the streets of Philadelphia, you see a large commotion by a nearby store. It just so happens that one of your brother’s best friends — let’s call him Kwaku — is involved in the fight. You squint your eyes and see the name of the store written in…

Grateful. Joyful. Full of love. Heartbroken. Exasperated. Tired. Emotions, while intangible and never easily understood, are what make us who we are. To me, emotions can be roughly divided into two basic categories: positive emotions and negative emotions. Everyone will inevitably experience both sides of the spectrum, some more extreme…

I consider myself to be very blessed and fortunate. To feel this way requires perspective — to consider not only my life’s circumstances but also the circumstances of other people in my community and beyond. Sometimes when people like me who’ve grown up in a well-off community feel down or…

“What is the sensitivity of an MRI scan to detect liver cancer?” I briefly blanked. As I was sifting through all the MRI facts I’d read about a couple of days ago, I could tell that our science fair judge at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) —…

I remember this one weird epiphany moment when my family and I were at this Asian buffet near my cousin’s house in Connecticut. To be honest, it wasn’t really anything special — just your usual hibachi stand behind the rows and rows of Chinese food mixed in with some out-of-place…

I used to immediately associate science with facts, numbers, data, etc. How much ATP is used up in each step of cellular respiration? What is the chemical formula of hydrogen sulfide? Why does DNA behave the way it does? …

Music has always been a huge part of my life. Whether I realize it or not, it is something that I can always rely on — both in times of stress and joy. …

If you read my last blog post, I touched on one of those “deep” questions that make me think the most. It’s this question that challenges not only the basic principles of life itself, but also seems to create an inseparable rift between the different cultures and beliefs that we…