I am not worthy ...

Imposter Syndrome:  a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist even in face of information that indicates that the opposite is true.  Some common feelings and thoughts that might characterize the imposter syndrome are: “My colleagues are going to find out I don’t really belong here,” “Admissions made a mistake” , “I am often afraid that others will discover how much knowledge I really lack”.

Lots of people have "imposter syndrome", and admittedly the feeling washes over me from time to time.   it comes and it goes, but it never comes on stronger than after  judging at a high school scholarship award or science fair.  it is then that I wonder "What heck was I doing in high school", and "How on earth did I ever manage to get a PhD in nuclear physics ?". because,man, these kids are good, and I, well, was more concerned with soccer, parties, and the like...

This past week the Canada-Wide Science Fair was held on the UBC campus in Vancouver.  The CWSF brought together the very top science fair projects from students aged 13-18 from all across Canada.  TRIUMF and the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) offered special cash prizes for the best junior (~7th grade), intermediate (~9th grade) , and senior (Grade 11,12)  projects.

Well:

• the junior prize went to a boy who built a wind tunnel that aimed laminar smoke lines onto different nose cones, to determine which has the least resistance and caused the least turbulence, then used the data to predict which of his rockets would fly the highest, and compared that to actual rocket flights. Grade 7. imagine.
• the intermediate prize went to a boy who designed an electrical circuit that controlled the current coming out of a large capacitor bank, making it act like a battery than could charge in 5 minutes but last for hours.  He is now in the process of trying to patent the idea.
• the senior prize went to a boy who solved Thompson's problem of calculating the arrangement of charges on a sphere minimizing the overall potential energy. the runner-up calculated the distribution of dark matter in  some spiral galaxies from the light  curves obtained from the web.

Several of the students had projects good enough to be invited to professional conferences, and several were seeking patents for their projects.  Amazing.

One of my good friends was a gold medal winner at a CWSF several (won't say how many !) years ago, and now she does double-duty as medical doctor and a professor in neuroscience at UBC. Plus, she kicks butt as a race-walker and a skier.    No doubt the current crop of alpha++ CWSF winners will achieve similarly lofty intellectual heights.  Those are pretty special people.

Me ?  trying to stay focussed, but,  really, I am  so not worthy...