Beginning of Week 2!- Tuesday, July 19, 2016

After two days of amazing field trips, the second academic week began. The courses being offered this week are: Solving Big Problems; Math Team Strategies; Voting Theory; Number Theory; Symmetries, Mosaics, and ¿Dancing?; and Programming.

Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, gave the students a beginning-of-the-week commencement speech, during which he talked about the importance of academics and of programs like BEAM. Additionally, he invited the BEAMers to attend the dress rehearsal for the opera "Iris", which he will be conducting, on Wednesday evening. 

The good news just keeps rolling in: the fourth challenge problem has been solved by one of our BEAMers: Kenneth. The prize is yet to be announced. 

What a BEAMing start to the second week! 

Making Memories!

The End of the First Academic Week- Saturday, July 16, 2016

It was a BEAMing Saturday at Bard, and this meant a lot of things for the BEAMers:

1) The first academic week was over, and the students got to choose new classes for the upcoming week.

2) The solutions to the challenge problems were formally presented in front of the entire BEAM group by the students who solved them. Jacob, one of the BEAMers, solved the third challenge problem (meaning the BEAMers get a pizza party as a prize), and presented the solution to it alongside the other students who solved the other two: Milani, Deja, and Miriam.

3) BEAM was visited by a guest speaker: the founder of BEAM, Daniel Zaharopol. 

4) It was relay day! Students competed in teams to complete competition-style math problems. 

5) After solving challenge problems one and two, the students got to reap their prize in the evening: movie night with popcorn! 

What a way to end the first week of class. The field trips awaited!  

Challenge Problem #2: SOLVED!

"I felt happy and excited that I was able to solve it. I learned that things can be easier if you take it slowly and look at all the possibilities instead of limiting the possibilities that you're going to choose from," Mariam revealed, having solved the second challenge problem alongside Milani, who solved the first challenge problem as well. 

Since the BEAMers solved the second challenge problem before Friday evening, as a prize, they will get popcorn with their movie night. The movie to be screened is "Ride Along 2". 

The second challenge problem was: Take the product of ninety-four 9's and ninety-four 4's, and find out the sum of the digits of this number. 

Challenge Problem #1 Is Solved!- Wednesday, July 13, 2016

"Afterwards, when we actually solved it [the first challenge problem], it was a good feeling, because we worked really hard on this and we had to do a really difficult explanation that most 7th graders going on to 8th grade can't do," explained Milani excitedly, having solved the first challenge problem alongside Deja the night before. 

"I felt really happy solving the problem, because we finally got Malcolm to stop asking 'why?' and 'how?' and 'what'd you do to get there?', and it felt really nice. It was a happy feeling to get it off of our chest," Deja agreed, ecstatic at the thought of finally having pleased Malcolm, the Site Director at Bard, with their explanation for the first challenge problem. 

The prize for solving the first challenge problem is a movie night for all of the BEAMers. If the students solve the second challenge problem by this Friday, they get popcorn on the movie night, which is to take place this upcoming Saturday.

The first challenge problem was: What number divides evenly into every 4-digit palindrome? Prove it.