Discoveries

10 Discoveries

Coding

Math and writing classes are mandatory in schools worldwide as it is accepted that students will need to know how to write and do math in their profesional or personal lives. In a world where computers and technology are becoming increasingly vital to society, should coding and computer classes join math and English as mandatory parts of a curriculum?

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In brief

AMC MATH EXAM The Math Department will offer the American Mathematics Competition (AMC) 10B test Feb. 10 to about 80 students who chose to take it last fall. There will not be an option for students to take the test remotely, but they can come to campus. The Math Department will only allow students to take one of the tests, so those who wish to take both the A and B tests can do so at another location.

STEM FESTIVAL Instead of a meeting with guests, the STEM Conference will take place over multiple podcasts beginning March 5. The first podcast covers climate change and includes Dr. Molly Brown from the University of Maryland, Dr. Jonathan Ajo-Franklin from Rice University and Dr. Timothy Herbert from Brown University. The second podcast will focus on space exploration and tech advances and will include Nasa Human Spaceflight program lead Kathryn Lueders, Joalda Morancy, an intern at Nasa’s JPL and Rubik Sheth, Nasa Director of Thermal Systems. In the third podcast, the co-chairs will discuss the difficulties of the past year with a more casual focus.

Environment Where’s the water?

Texas is currently experiencing a major drought. With the majority of the state under some level of drought conditions, and large swaths of the state under severe drought watch, how will this effect our state’s wildlife? How will this drought effect our campus?

Why is everything so dry? Why does it rain so infrequently? With conditions changing from moderate to severe or extreme drought across the state, its effects are starting to become more and more visible.

Nearly 100 percent of the state is seeing some kind of drought, and it’s only getting worse.

David Gimnich ‘04 works with the Wildlife Conservation Division of the City of Austin’s Water Division. Specifically, he helps coordinate the building of infrastructure in the habitats of endangered wildlife and the maintenance of the Edwards aquifer, which supplies clean water to over 2 million Texans and served as the main agricultural source of water in the region.

“The greater drought conditions that we are in and the less water that is getting into our aquifer affect our overall ecosystem,” Gimnich said. “A lot of native species can die off.”

However, the effects of the drought are not just limited to wildlife.

“You can get a lot of soil runoff and soil that dries out,” Gimnich said. “So when you do get those really big rain events — which can occur after extended periods of drought — native grasses die and no longer help with flood mitigation, so massive droughts can lead to massive floods. These droughts can also lead to massive tree mortality, which is just making fuels for wildfires.”

Despite these possible effects, the ecosystems in Gimnich’s region have seen relatively little impact.

“In terms of impacts to the aquifer and impacts to endangered species, we don’t see a lot of that right now,” Gimnich said. “We manage these ecosystems in such a way that they’re not just healthy, but also resilient. Even though we’re seeing a transition from abnormally dry conditions to moderate or even severe drought, the ecosystems are able to take a lot of heat.”

Though conditions are drier than usual, they are not the worst that Texas has seen. In 2011 and 2012, the state endured one of the most severe droughts in recorded history, with more than 80 percent of the region experiencing “exceptional” drought conditions at its peak.

“The 2011-2012 era for Texas was this incredibly impactful severe drought that we experienced,” Gimnich said. “That’s when we saw these massive problems that occurred on a large level. That’s when the environment is so dry that someone could flick a cigarette out of their car and a fire starts raging where it lands.”

Though droughts occur in Texas somewhat regularly, Gimnich maintains that climate change and other humancaused phenomena contribute to these droughts.

“There’s a lot of science that shows that humans have caused a very direct and negative impact on the climate,” Gimnich said. “What we’re seeing is that these natural cycles — for example, drought — are slowly getting more and more extreme. We’re seeing more hurricanes on average every year, stronger wildfires, stronger winds, all that stuff.”

Even though the current drought is not nearly as severe as the one recorded in 2012, the recent pattern of droughts is concerning.

“It’s less about the micro view of this year,” Gimnich said. “It’s more about being aware of what this could indicate for long term impacts both to the natural environment and the human-built environment.”

Gimnich stresses that everyone should contribute to the sustainability of our local environment.

“Everyone needs to be doing their part. On a very personal level, I am very OCD and go way overboard in terms of recycling and things like that,” Gimnich said.

However, Gimnich recognizes that a majority of environmental harm comes not from individuals, but organizations on a much larger scale.

“The impact that individuals can have is very small compared to the actual causes of global climate change.” Gimnich said. “The actual causes are on an industrial level. It’s power plants. It’s mining. It’s the airline industry. Sure, individuals can choose not to fly or they can drive a hybrid car, but that still doesn’t change the overall industry. Until we actually address the real issue we’re only going to be making single percentages of change.”

Director of Environmental Studies Dan Northcut stresses that St. Mark’s is working towards more sustainable water use. “Especially in the bathrooms, things like waterless urinals and automatic faucets help to reduce the amount of water we use.” Northcut said. “When we did those in Centennial, we saw about a 40 percent reduction in water usage.”

Most buildings on campus, especially those built more recently, have undergone LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, a process that ensures buildings operate in a sustainable way.

“We got silver LEED certification for the Winn Science Center a couple months ago, so we’re going in the right direction,” Northcut said.

However, Northcut recognizes that there is still progress to be made.

“There are definitely more things that we can do.” Northcut said, “I think we should definitely try and look into some rainwater harvesting and stuff like that. We should definitely look into every possible way to conserve and save water that we get here.”

STORY Cooper Ribman ARTWORK Jonathan Yin

DRIED UP

Most of the state is experiencing at least abnormally dry conditions