ESP Biography

Ever wondered how speakers of foreign languages and actors that play aliens in sci-fi movies make such bizarre sounds? Want to expand your sound inventory and make some of those sounds yourself? Are you interested in learning how to decipher the flowing Elvish letters from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy? Join us for a tour of the basics of phonetics and you can learn a new alphabet on the side! The class begins with a look at Tolkien’s Tengwar, a writing system that is closely tied to the science of speech. Once you know the basic rules of the script, you can learn it in only a few hours of practice. We will then explore the full diversity of the sounds of human language, from the simple places and manners of articulation to clicks, ejectives, and more.

Video games are probably the most fun and creative projects in the world of computer programming. It is not hard to get into computer programming with very little math background--lots of people pick up programming as a hobby before taking high school math--and many games (Tetris, chess, even Mario or Pokémon) can be programmed with only basic math skills. However, a lot of the most successful games take place in three-dimensional worlds. If you want to make a game like Halo, World of Warcraft, or Skyrim (to name a few), there's one bit of math that can incredibly useful to know: vectors. This is a topic that is frequently glossed over in high school math, but shows up in a suprising variety of subjects. I plan to talk in depth about the intuitions and applications of vectors for video games, and along the way discuss the video game industry and computer science in general. Due to equipment and time constraints, we won't be able to do individual, "hands-on" programming during class, but I promise to show bits of realistic code and give some cool demos. I'll put any code I write online so students can look at it after the class is over.

Ever wondered how speakers of foreign languages and actors that play aliens in sci-fi movies make such bizarre sounds? Want to expand your sound inventory and make some of those sounds yourself? Are you interested in learning how to decipher the flowing Elvish letters from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy? Join us for a tour of the basics of phonetics and you can learn a new alphabet on the side! The class begins with a look at Tolkien’s Tengwar, a writing system that is closely tied to the science of speech. Once you know the basic rules of the script, you can learn it in only a few hours of practice. We will then explore the full diversity of the sounds of human language, from the simple places and manners of articulation to clicks, ejectives, and more.

High school math introduces two of the most useful ideas in mathematics: matrices and vectors. But why, exactly, are these concepts useful? It's hard to tell, because most teachers treat these topics the same way: they give you some definitions, make you do a few calculations, then promptly ignore them for the rest of the year. If I don't need to use these ideas again, then they aren't important, right? Of course, nothing could be more wrong. Vectors and matrices are incredibly useful in science, economics, engineering, and tons of other real-world subjects. Plus, these ideas are elegant, interesting, and...well...cool! In this class, we'll go over what makes vectors work, see how vectors and matrices are related, and see how the two can be used in such awesome endeavors as building an airplane, making a video game, and even imagining space with more than three dimensions.

Ever wondered how speakers of foreign languages and actors that play aliens in sci-fi movies make such bizarre sounds? Want to expand your sound inventory and make some of those sounds yourself? Are you interested in learning how to decipher the flowing Elvish letters from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy? Join us for a tour of the basics of phonetics and you can learn a new alphabet on the side! The class begins with a look at Tolkien’s Tengwar, a writing system that is closely tied to the science of speech. Once you know the basic rules of the script, you can learn it in only a few hours of practice. We will then explore the full diversity of the sounds of human language, from the simple places and manners of articulation to clicks, ejectives, and more.

Ever wondered how speakers of foreign languages and actors that play aliens in sci-fi movies make such bizarre sounds? Want to expand your sound inventory and make some of those sounds yourself? Are you interested in learning how to decipher the flowing Elvish letters from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy? Join us for a tour of the basics of phonetics and you can learn a new alphabet on the side! The class begins with a look at Tolkien's Tengwar, a writing system that is closely tied to the science of speech. Once you know the basic rules of the script, you can learn it in only a few hours of practice. We will then explore the full diversity of the sounds of human language, from the simple places and manners of articulation to clicks, ejectives, and more.

Ever wondered how speakers of foreign languages and actors that play aliens in sci-fi movies make such bizarre sounds? Do you want to expand your sound inventory and make some of those sounds yourself? Are you interested in learning how to decipher Korean or the flowing Elvish letters from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy? Join us for a tour of the basics of phonetics and you can learn a few new alphabets on the side! The class begins with a look at Tolkien's Tengwar and the Korean Hangeul, two writing systems that are closely tied to the science of speech. Once you know the basic rules of these scripts, both can be learned in only a few hours of practice. We will then explore the full diversity of the sounds of human language, from the simple places and manners of articulation to clicks, ejectives, and more.