Past Offerings

Learn the basics of coding a simple program using the C++ language. Students will have a chance to program their own game by the end of the session.

In a world full of iPhones and 4K video, have you stopped to think about what it means to take a picture? What is happening when you hit record and instantly capture an image? In this class, we will follow the history of cameras from the very beginning: With experiments from two thousand years ago that you can replicate at home, film camera dissections and demos, and even experiments you can do with your very own smartphone camera, we can start to understand what light really is, and how we can control it.

Colored fire. Elephant toothpaste. Mentos and Coke. What better way to learn chemistry than to perform experiments? You will not only learn how to perform the experiments, but also understand the chemistry of what exactly is happening to cause the phenomenon you see in Tiktoks and Youtube videos. Join us as I guide you through a new chemistry experiment every class, and help you learn to see the world like a chemist.

This class can equip you to succeed in a high school chemistry class, or give you a chance to apply what you've learned in a high school chemistry course. It's also a lot of fun.
Prerequisites: None!

Ever wonder what chocolate and airplane wings have in common? What about whipped cream and styrofoam? Ice cream and solar cells? Learn about cutting-edge research and engineering through hands-on food science! Each session will be themed by a reaction or class of materials, including guided at-home food labs for the day. These include scientific concepts that students will use to build chemical intuition and understanding, which can be applied in school and in the kitchen.

Sample bits of cryptographic history, test your cipher cracking skills, and learn new ways to keep secrets. Each session is independent of the others, so students can attend any number of classes. Come check out monoalphabetic substitution, transpositions, and some sneaky steganography. Wii csy mr gpeww!

Everybody always wants the piece of cake with the frosting flower on it, right? We'll try to answer the question of what it means to divide something "fairly," and look at a few strategies for doing so. We recommend this lecture for students who are interested in exactly what it means to be fair.

Multiplayer games are a complex and delicate illusion. Because while it seems like you and your friend are standing in a virtual world together, you're not. You each have separate copies of the world, *and of each other*, and a delicate dance of message sending keeps those copies in sync. (Or at least tries to!) But what do we two when two players simultaneously open a door, or when somebody disconnects entirely? In this class, we'll hop into Rec Room in order to investigate a particular flavor of peer-to-peer networking, understanding its pitfalls and how to overcome them. We'll work together to build a few simple programs (and maybe even a small game), and learn how to handle the problems that unfold when we try to run them in a multiplayer context.

Although controversial when it was first proposed, it's now scientific consensus that humans are part of the primate order. But the journey from the tiny proto-primates of the Eocene epoch to anatomically modern humans is a long and complicated one, and there's still a lot we don't know. In this class, we'll explore humanity's extended family tree -- from Neanderthals and australopithecines to apes, monkeys, and beyond -- to understand where we came from, and what makes us "human."

This workshop will ask the question: what is left for us to write about? In the glut of franchised content we live and enjoy craft, how might we make a space for ourselves when so many other stories, some near and dear, have already been told? The session will focus on an influential technique from Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky—Defamiliarization—and allow students the opportunity to deconstruct and reinvent their readers’ relationship to subject matter ranging from the mundane to the fantastical.

By the end of the workshop, students will have practiced rudimentary defamiliarization, applying the technique in multiple ways to considerations of voice, character, perspective, setting, and description.

Please note that topics in this class range up to a PG-13 rating.

You have a choice of three doors at a game show. One is a fabulous prize, but the other two are empty. Once you choose a door, the host opens one to reveal one of the empty rooms. You’re given the chance to switch your choice to the remaining door. Should you? Can you tell if “This statement is false.” is true or false? In arithmetic, we learn that dividing by zero does not work… most of the time. So, when can we? How big is infinity? We’ll answer the answerable questions and show why the unanswerable questions are impossible.

Microbes, organisms that can only been seen through a microscope, are everywhere. They were the first forms of life on Earth, made and continue to make the Earth habitable for us, and they hold the trophy for being the most abundant and diverse organisms out there. There are microbes living 4 miles underground, at heights taller than Mount Everest, at 130 degrees Celsius, in 12.8 pH bases, at pressures of 2000 atmospheres, or under extreme radiation.



So microbial live is thriving everywhere you look (including in your eyes!), so let’s talk about them! How do they work? How can we study them if they’re so small? What do they do that we can learn from?

The scientific consensus is that living organisms evolve over time. But how does this process happen? Science's understanding of evolution has also changed over time, thanks to centuries of debate and new discoveries. In our two hours, we'll explore how the theory of evolution... has evolved!

All algebra from the very beginning, when letters like "x" and "y" are first introduced, all the way through factoring and solving polynomials. All the most relevant things you need to succeed in high school math and beyond. Great for learning it for the first time, or for finally addressing things you find confusing.

Additionally, do you feel like math textbooks are boring or confusing? This course follows a novel teaching approach that Matt is writing his own textbook on. Your participation will help guide and playtest his curriculum and explanations.

Prerequisites: can multiply numbers and add and subtract positive and negative numbers

Did you know that aluminum (yes, what soda cans are made of) used to be a precious metal? So precious that Napoleon III is said to have given his least favorite party guests gold tableware at dinner, and only his honored friends got to eat with aluminum forks and knives. Why is this, and how did we get to TV dinners made from aluminum foil 100 years later? Journey through history with a magnifying glass pointed at technology, and you will find surprising stories that weave together culture, economics, and the drama that surrounds it. Together, we’ll uncover the hidden tales of mundane things (the color blue, clocks, and beyond!) and trace the invisible power of technology in history.

Have you ever heard that you shouldn't vote for a third-party candidate in the US? Why is that? And why doesn't Australia have that problem? Come to think of it, what does it mean (mathematically) to "take a vote?" Join us as we explore a number of different voting systems, learn some mathematical ways to analyze their strengths and shortcomings, and search for a system that is provably, perfectly fair.

This workshop will investigate the art and nuance of making authentic characters: narrative personages that, despite being little more than ink splotches on the page, believably live and breathe within the diegetic world of a story. We will practice assembling the moving parts that produce a believable character and, conversely, what relationship they bear to considerations of setting, structure, and perspective.

By the end of the workshop, students will have gained a heuristic toolset for building characters and a fundamental grasp on narrative setting and perspective.

Please note that topics in this class range up to a PG-13 rating.

Don’t say “like” too much. Say “I’m doing well, not I’m doing good”. It’s Sally and I, not Sally and me. We’ve all heard these rules repeated to us since before we can remember, but where did these rules come from? Explore the origins of the rules of language, the ways in which they’re real, the ways in which they’re sort of made-up, and the ways they contribute to racism, sexism, and classism.