Wow! Gabriel can cube!!

About 50 weeks ago, Gabriel (center, below) showed up at BEAM 7 Union College and met Yi Ling (right, below). Yi Ling loves to cube (solve a Rubik's cube) so she taught Gabriel (and others) on the first night.Last summer, Yi Ling actually performed in the Talent Show: solving two cubes as fast as she could! 

The picture above shows Gabriel and his first cubing accomplishment: solving one face of the cube. All summer, Gabriel practiced in spare moments, including almost every night during evening free time. He went back home and kept it up. Eventually, he got good enough that he signed up for the New York City Spring 2018 Cubing Competition through the World Cubing Association. His average cubing time was 18.91 seconds, and his single best time was 14.25 seconds!

Gabriel even posted a video of that record time. Check it out:

Amazing, Gabriel. We just think it's so cool that you picked this skill and did the work to become an expert!

AMC 8 Results

As you may recall, students took the AMC 8 contest back in November, and we wanted to report on how they did!

The AMC 8 is a 25 question contest, and it's quite challenging.  This year, 149,277 students nationwide took the contest.  The median (middle) student scored 8 -- less than a third of the questions answered correctly!  To score in the top 25% percentile, students had to score at least 11.  Only 90 students across the world got a perfect score. 

Of the 12 students who took the contest, 9 scored above 8 questions correct, putting them above the nationwide average.  Good work, everyone!  We are particularly impressed by Ahmed, whose score of 13 puts him the top quartile nationwide. BEAM is sure this a sign of future success yet to come.