By Zachary Zhu
We all remember the 2008 recession. The stock market crashed, unemployment skyrocketed, and murder rates went through the roof. But what really caused the financial crisis of 2008? Many people can cite the housing bubble and the subprime lending, but few know the root cause of the issue. To fully understand the causes of the most recent economic downturn, we need to go back a century. In 1929, the US experienced the worst economic contraction in its history: the Great Depression. The Great Depression was one of the most influential events in US history: one out of four people were left unemployed, capitalism itself had failed.
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By Aadil Rehan
So, you decided to take AP Chemistry. Infamous as one of the hardest AP courses offered, AP Chem is a tough monster to wrangle, but nothing that you can’t handle. I’ve broken the whole process down into 4 phases, not that it matters (like the phases of matter, get it? Fine, I’ll see myself out now) for ease of reading. Hope you enjoy! By Jeanne Zheng Ms. Adams is a graduate of Vanguard University, where she earned a Bachelor’s in biology; she later went on to UC Riverside, where she earned a Master’s in education and teaching credentials. She also completed the Administrative Service Credential program at CSU San Marcos in 2016. Ms. Adams currently teaches AP and CP Biology. In this interview, she spoke to The Primer about her experiences in high school and college, as well as the reason she chose a career in education. At the end of this article, we also reflect on what we have learned from this interview, and how such lessons could impact the lives of all students. THE INTERVIEW![]() Q: What did you want to do or be in high school? Did you wind up following that path later in life? Why or why not? A: I did not have any sincere career aspirations in high school. I felt like I didn't even know what all my options were, and choosing a path felt overwhelming to me. I knew I liked science, and I wanted to earn a degree in a field with many opportunities. I was also drawn to the sciences because it is such a rigorous field, and I would be proud of my degree. Many adults I knew had jobs in the medical field and worked at the local hospital (Hoag, in Newport Beach). I worked there throughout college and got to experience what is was like to work in the OR, ER and on a typical hospital floor. I interacted with caregivers and patients in multiple ways and I determined the medical field was not for me. I also spent my summers in college doing research with plants. Working in a lab setting felt isolating, repetitive and boring (for me!). Which leads me to the next question… By Maxine Sy Chu Are you interested in joining a program for the summer?
Well, good news, because applications are open (or will open soon) for some of the most prestigious STEM summer programs in the country! By Amy Cheng
Language is always present, as a sign of civilization, society, and class. It is fundamental to the way individuals interact, and entirely adjustable to different levels of formality. Bluntly speaking, no human can thrive without language. But babies emerge biologically unable to participate in conversation—throat and voice development happens six months after they’ve been pushed into a world of sound. And beyond needing the physiological structures, they still have to: pick up on the alphabetical sounds that make up a language: vibrate those observations into sounds: assign complex strings of syllables to things and actions and descriptions: discover grammar: respond to and have conversation with respect to situation and tone and mood: adjust to accents and dialects and slang, all in the timespan of a couple of years. Some even have to do this all for multiple languages. In the USA alone, there are hundreds of tongues spoken in addition to English! How do infants do it? By Natalia Zorrilla The moon landing actually took place in a secret Hollywood backlot. Paul McCartney has been dead since 1966, and the Beatles have been letting clues slip in their songs since. Area 51 holds the carefully hidden remains of alien spacecraft. Reptiles have infiltrated the upper echelons of American government. Lee Harvey Oswald was not alone in his assassination of John F. Kennedy.
If you’ve heard any of these statements, you’ve likely also heard them dismissed as conspiracy theories, or explanations for events that propose the existence of large-scale, hidden forces working towards diabolical ends. Most of these theories fly in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Yet a 2011 national survey by the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies indicates that roughly 55% of the American public believes in at least one conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theorists aren’t just paranoid recluses tucked away in their mothers’ basements. Odds are that, with or without realizing it, you actually know one yourself. By Jeanne Zheng The Primer is launching a new segment called Personal Perspective where students and STEM professionals will share their experiences with school and work in their respective fields. By doing this, we hope to provide our readers with greater insight into future careers they may be considering and help them learn more about what their peers are doing, academically or otherwise, to achieve their own goals. The graphic below contains images that belong to their respective creators (not to The Primer); others like the images featured in the graphic can be found on the credited accounts, so please go check them out! In addition, the graphic itself was made using tools on Piktochart. Finally, we'd like to thank Tiffanny from Indonesia (@peachesstudy) for letting us use one of her pictures as an example in this article. ![]() For the first article in this series, I interviewed 5 students across the globe in Asia, Australia, Canada and the UK to learn what their academic lives are like and the thoughts they have on their school systems. They were all part of the studygram community on Instagram, a contemporary of the recent studyblr trend on popular blogging platform tumblr. Most frequently, these students post pictures of their neat notes and journals on their accounts; these “studyspo” (a portmanteau of study and inspo, short for inspiration) posts have arguably become something of an art form, often featuring flowing calligraphy, dainty stickers, and typewriter-neat handwriting. Instead of using social media to communicate with friends or share vacation pictures, these studygram owners spend their time discussing their own academic goals and accomplishments with their followers, and encouraging each other to work smarter and harder. When conversing with them over social media, I noticed that many were welcoming, thoughtful people who offered fascinating insight into what school life was like for students in different countries. We asked them these questions:
By Jeanne Zheng
Cellular respiration is a major process occurring in heterotrophs that provide energy to power cell metabolism. It has three main steps: glycolysis, the Krebs cycle, and the Electron Transport Chain (oxidative phosphorylation and chemiosmosis). You should know the basics of what happens in each part for the AP exam; in this article, we will further discuss the first step, glycolysis, as well as its relevance to oncology (the study of cancer and tumors). |
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