About the creator

My passion for materials science

My name is Eric, and I am currently a high school sophomore student in Rhode Island. I created this blog not only to discover and document my passion for materials science and engineering, but also to make these topics more accessible to other high schoolers. I found that it was rather difficult to find blogs and tutorials on materials science and engineering that were relatively easy-to-grasp, and wanted to help change that. Outside of school, I like to compete in FIRST robotics and play tennis and piano.

Since a young age, I became fascinated by the things around me and why certain materials behaved certain ways, like why plates and bowls shattered when dropped, but metal things didn't. Quarantining at home during the pandemic, I was introduced to online shopping and quickly discovered that I could order basically anything and have it arrive at my door within the next few days. With Amazon and my dad's credit card, I made my own black powder, started woodworking, experimented with rubber band vs. air-powered dart shooters, and much more.

Now, in my second year of high school, I look forward to expanding these passions through new opportunities. I am currently competeting on FTC team 636 Occam's Razor Clams as assistant captain and lead designer, and last season on team 252 Electric Quahogs we qualified for and went to the 2024 FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship in Houston, Texas. I am also engaged in various STEM-related extracurricular clubs such as Academic Decathlon (this year's science theme is electromagnetism), Science Olympiad, and math team. I also love self-teaching myself; for example I am currently self-studying AP Calculus BC in order to skip ahead a year, and I also taught myself basic HTML, Javascript, and CSS through FreeCodeCamp's online tutorials in order to build this blog from scratch.