Worlds Beyond Physics: A Conversation with a U.S. Physics Olympiad Team Member

Every year, the U.S. sends a team of its brightest physics students to an international competition. Kenan Diab, a junior at the Hawken School in Gates Mills, Ohio, has just been selected as a member of the U.S. Physics Team at the 37th International Physics Olympiad. He and his 25 team members -- all high-schoolers -- will train for ten days with coaches and physicists at the University of Maryland, and then 5 students will travel to represent the U.S. at the competition, held this year in Singapore. Inside Science News Service interviewed Kenan about his hometown and interests.

What do you like best about the town, you live in?

I live in Westlake, a rather small suburb of Cleveland. Thus, I'll give two answers to this question: my favorite place in Westlake, and my favorite place in Cleveland.

Definitely the nicest thing about Westlake is Crocker Park. It's a new open-air mall complex that opened last year; it is not totally complete yet, but it will eventually have space for offices and apartments. A small suburb like Westlake definitely needed it -- many buildings and stores have been renovated just because Crocker Park came along, and many more have opened because of the new space. It's really beautifully planned and landscaped, so it's quickly become a popular hangout in the community. I can't count the number of times I've bought a book from the new Barnes and Noble and then sat outside to enjoy the fresh air.

In the actual Cleveland area, however, Public Square is probably the best place in town. Besides being a three-minute walk from the Cleveland Public Library's Main Branch, which houses literally millions of texts from the last 150 years, it's right next to Tower City, the shopping complex that the old Terminal Tower was converted into. While Tower City itself isn't that amazing or wonderful, it's directly connected to Jacobs' Field, the Cleveland Indians' stadium, and "The Q" (The Quicken Loans Arena, formerly Gund Arena) where the Cavaliers play. From there, it's a short bus ride to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (and a panoply of other local museums) and the lakefront. As you can see, it's basically next to everything nice in downtown Cleveland -- from Public Square, you can access not only much of the entertainment that Cleveland has to offer, but also some of the best cultural and educational resources in Northeast Ohio.

If you had to live somewhere else, anywhere your heart desires -- but it had to be outside the U.S. -- where would you choose to live and why?

Probably Tokyo or somewhere near there. While I don't know Japanese, I'm a big fan of big-city life. It doesn't get much bigger than Tokyo. In particular, however, I'm drawn to Japan's technology-centric culture -- a lot of progress in computing and electronics is made in Japan, and I would love to be close to that. Moreover, Japan is really close to the Philippines, my mother's home country. (My father is from Syria, so Japan isn't really closer to Syria than the States are, but one out of two isn't bad, I suppose.)

If you could not do physics -- or had to pick something other than physics to learn right now -- what would that be?

Philosophy. I do Lincoln-Douglas debate during the school year, which emphasizes the application of philosophical theory in exploring propositions of value. I already read a lot of philosophical literature in my spare time, especially works by 20th century authors, so this seems like a natural fit. What attracts me most to philosophy are the fresh ideas and new perspectives about the world that it offers. Theories originating outside the classical Enlightenment-Liberalism project challenge the fundamental assumptions we make about the world and force us to reconsider our beliefs and opinions through a different lens. In this way, philosophy aids us in understanding how and why things are the way they are, and, in doing so, it often opens our eyes to humanity's shortcomings and failures. Philosophy, in that regard, is the analog of physics in the social sciences. Just as physics attempts to give a complete and comprehensive explanation for natural phenomena, philosophy attempts to give a complete and comprehensive description of thought, action, and reality.

In your online bio, you write "In my spare time, I overclock computers. On one hand, I have been able to make a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 run at 4.0GHz using only air cooling. On the other hand, I once short-circuited and destroyed a motherboard, power supply, and processor simultaneously." What is overclocking, and why is it so fascinating to you?

Overclocking is the process of forcing computers to run faster than they were designed to. In order to do this, overclockers must take actions that could be dangerous to the computer, such as using more electricity than the computer was designed to tolerate or generating more heat than the computer was designed to withstand. Thus, it often takes a lot of time and energy to overclock a computer without destroying it. Overclockers will routinely make modifications to their computers, often complicated and difficult, to achieve this goal. Such modifications, however, can be dangerous in and of themselves. To be realistic, for a variety of reasons, overclocking usually results in a relatively small performance advantage, even when done correctly. So why do overclockers do what they do? Because they can -- because it's difficult to overclock computers correctly, and because it's a test of skill and know-how. Overclockers love to tinker with their computers, and even if things get destroyed, it's worth it to the overclocker. Overclockers are in a continual struggle to push the envelope farther than ever before. It is the process of doing so, and not the end result, that matters. That's what overclockers are like.

On the Web:

Official site of the 37th International Physics Olympiad
Official site of the U.S. Physics Team
Kenan Diab's profile

Contact:

Martha Heil
American Institute of Physics
Tel: 301-209-3088
mheil@aip.org