Easy as PI

I knew this kid from Governor's School years back who memorized a ridiculous number of digits of PI. Impressive, but why?

The WashingtonPost ran an interesting piece about America's Student Physics Team that recently competed in the 2007 International Physics Olympiad and performed really well. Congrats all. I remember those days of high-school AP Physics. Every morning for 1.5 hours learning about Kinematics and Electromagnetism. Good stuff. Saved me from having to take college physics.

On another note, my Master's capstone group project (I can send it to you if you're interested) discussed America's decreasing competitiveness with the rest of the world in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. What are my thoughts? Well, simply put the STEM fields are hard. I remember my freshman calculus class where we were given a pre-test. The scores were posted and a lot of people dropped out of the class and dropped out of the engineering school. For kids who are naturally smart and like STEM subjects then going into these fields is a no-brainer. For everyone else it takes dedication and a good work ethic. From my experience I just didn't see many American college students willing to put forth the effort. For the most part, in America its not "cool" to be smart. Countries like China and India turn out college graduates who not only work harder than the average American but could complete the same job more efficiently. American kids need to be taught the value of education at an early age. Just because something is difficult doesn't mean one can't become good at it. We need to spark children's interest in the STEM fields at an early age. Unfortunately, I don't see the American situation improving a whole lot in the future but it remains to be seen.