ESP Biography



LUCY ZHANG, ESP Teacher




Major: Not available.

College/Employer: MIT

Year of Graduation: 2016

Picture of Lucy Zhang

Brief Biographical Sketch:

Not Available.



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

M7987: The Shape of Space in Splash! 2013 (Nov. 23 - 24, 2013)
The Earth seems flat at any given point, but it's actually (approximately) spherical, and if you keep walking in a certain direction for long enough, you'd end up where you started. But how can we tell whether the entire universe is curved, and whether it folds back in on itself? (What does that even mean?) What would it be like if the Earth were shaped like a donut or Moebius strip? Does Euclidean geometry apply on the surface of a sphere, or do we need a new system of geometry? We'll discuss answers to these questions, and even play some familiar games (tic-tac-toe, chess) on some unfamiliar surfaces (tori, Klein bottles).


M7261: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid in HSSP Summer 2013 (Jul. 07, 2013)
Hello, everyone. Today: We will learn how to mechanically generate believable English sentences. We will learn how to translate nucleic acids to proteins. We will learn how to certify that a koan has Buddha-nature. We will learn how to listen to canons and fugues. We will learn how to break record players. We will learn how to convince our friends to treat us to dinner on their birthdays. Finally, we will learn how to prove Gödel’s theorem that some true mathematical statements can never be proved.


S6826: Experimental Highlights from Modern Physics in HSSP Spring 2013 (Mar. 02, 2013)
Theoretical physicists get all the love and attention. Let's change that! Come learn about the experimental results that shaped our modern understanding of the physical world. We'll also discuss the relationship between theory and experiment, the role of technology, and the interpretation of data. Topics will be drawn from relativity, quantum theory, astrophysics, particle physics, and condensed matter physics. Come learn about galaxies, superconductors, the Large Hadron Collider, and more!


S7139: Neutrinos in Spark! 2013 (Mar. 16, 2013)
In the time it takes you to read this description, hundreds of trillions of neutrinos will have passed through your body. Come learn what neutrinos are, how they're produced, how we detect them, and why neutrino physics represents such an exciting frontier in physics.


M7140: The Mathematics of Dating in Spark! 2013 (Mar. 16, 2013)
They say mathematicians don't study anything useful. And that that's why mathematicians are single while the jocks, poets, starving artists, and Richard Feynmans have dates to the party. But mathematicians have an ace in the hole: MATH. We'll cover how to supercharge your dating life with results from calculus, combinatorics, graph theory, and computer science. Class will be ENTIRELY THEORETICAL; results may only be applicable to spherical dates in a frictionless vacuum.


S6162: The Mathematics of Special Relativity in Splash! 2012 (Nov. 17 - 18, 2012)
Physics is about symmetry, and special relativity is a theory that describes the underlying symmetries of spacetime. In this class, we'll discuss the role of symmetry in physics, and how group theory provides a natural and powerful description of symmetry. We'll build up the formalism of special relativity from a few mathematical postulates. We'll look at some particularly illuminating ways of describing spacetime symmetries. And then we'll use tools from various areas of math, such as projective geometry and complex analysis, to prove some fascinating physical results.


M6274: The Mathematics of Dating in Splash! 2012 (Nov. 17 - 18, 2012)
They say mathematicians don't study anything useful. And that that's why mathematicians are single while the jocks, poets, starving artists, and Richard Feynmans have dates to the party. But mathematicians have an ace in the hole: MATH. We'll cover how to supercharge your dating life with results from calculus, combinatorics, graph theory, and computer science. Class will be ENTIRELY THEORETICAL; results may only be applicable to spherical dates in a frictionless vacuum.


S6382: Neutrinos in Splash! 2012 (Nov. 17 - 18, 2012)
In the time it takes you to read this description, hundreds of trillions of neutrinos will have passed through your body. Come learn what neutrinos are, how they're produced, how we detect them, and why neutrino physics represents such an exciting frontier in physics.