A “hack day” might sound like an event for computer nerds up to no good. But Edward Kim says his after-hours pursuit – one of several interests for this fourth-year nanoscience and physics student – is intended for good, not evil.
He expects about 30 people to attend Science Hack Day in Guelph this weekend, including university and high school students. The event will bring designers, developers and scientists to work on “hacking together” and sharing technological invention ideas, building prototypes and pitching the results.
The event will take place Oct. 19 and 20 at Ed Video, downtown at 40 Baker St.
Organizers will have computer hardware and software available. Attendees should bring a laptop, a well-rested brain and any other scientific tools. Maybe the most important thing to bring, says Kim, is a passion for science.
That’s what has taken him to various scientific projects and gatherings near and far. For Kim, it began with award-winning science fair entries while growing up in Kitchener, Ont., and continues with international hack events abroad.
Today he’s sitting in a MacNaughton Building lab run by physics professor De-Tong Jiang. Since arriving at Guelph as a Lincoln Alexander Chancellor’s Scholar, Kim has worked with Jiang on a project using X-ray spectroscopy to study arsenic-bearing compounds. The project is intended to help uranium-mining companies find new ways of storing arsenic.
“When you dig up uranium, you usually dig up arsenic, too,” says Kim. Companies store the poisonous element in tailings ponds, but that method may threaten groundwater.
The U of G researchers are working with partners at McGill University and in industry to learn more about the nanoscale structure of arsenic compounds. The ultimate goal is to come up with new plant processes and storage options for the element.
Kim’s main interest lies in energy applications for nanoscience, or studying and manipulating materials at atomic and molecular levels. Materials, cells and chemical reactions behave differently there than at ordinary scales. That offers possible uses in several fields, notably computing.
He spent this past summer at Queen’s University working on battery materials at the nano and micrometre scales. He says that work might find use in disposable medical devices.
This fall he’s already attended two “hackathons.” One was the Next 36 hackathon, an entrepreneurial leadership program that challenges undergrads to develop a new business venture. Held this year in Toronto and Waterloo, the event drew more than 100 applicants from across Canada. Their challenge was to develop new software on wearable computing devices.
In late September, Kim was one of six “international ambassadors” from around the world who took part in a science hack day at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. He helped build a web app providing a clickable map of all of the synchrotron facilities around the world.
Those massive, ring-shaped particle accelerators generate high-powered radiation for studying materials. Kim has visited Canada’s version, the Canadian Light Source in Saskatchewan, several times for his work with Jiang.
Other projects at the California event involved a 3D imaging system, digestive enzymes and radioactive decay.
“Hacking in this context means to build something very quickly to prototype rather than something elegant. It’s something hacked together. You hack it apart and back together.”
Those experiences led him to organize this weekend’s Guelph event. He says it’s intended to be fun. “If you have no idea what you’re doing, that’s perfectly cool.” He will provide a prompter list of ideas for entrants to work with.
Kim has also helped out with Science Expo, an outreach program for youngsters run by high school and university students. He’s also a science fair judge, having spent five years entering contests himself during middle and high school.
He reached national finals three times; he and his partner won a gold medal in Grade 11 for their science fair project on genetic algorithms. Always curious about science, he had magnets, gyroscopes and geometric toys as a youngster. “I was pretty nerdy when I think about it.”
In high school, he ran math and computer enrichment sessions for younger students.
His reading? “I find that biographies of scientists or geeks are interesting.” One favourite was a book by American physicist Richard Feynman called What Do You Care What Other People Think?
What would Kim call a biography-so-far of his own? “Ask All the Stupid Questions,” he says. “The stupid questions are either obvious or completely non-obvious and not trivial.”
Take his first winning project at a regional science fair, which looked at whether plastic sleeves on trading cards changed shuffling mechanics in a particular game. He ended up exploring probability theory. “It turned out not to be a stupid question.”
For more information about Science Hack Day, contact ekim01@uguelph.ca.