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The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

Derek Yen, Winged Post Opinion Editor

Derek Yen is a senior and the Opinion Editor of Winged Post. Derek served as the STEM Editor of Aquila and Winged Post during his junior year and as a STEM columnist his sophomore year. He enjoys journalism as a means of exploring new subjects in depth, and has had pieces recognized by the National Federation of Press Women. In his free time, he enjoys learning about linguistics and brewing tea with gongfu.

All content by Derek Yen
"[In high school,] my new group of friends was very different from anything previously. In middle school, all we did was do math competitions and play cards," Swapnil Garg (12) said. "But in ninth grade, nobody did that—during lunch, you had to sit at a table and have discussions. I had to learn to be able to be more intellectual, and to provide more substance in my thinking abilities relating to things that were not just math. I was very scared of, for example, English class."

Humans of Harker: Swapnil Garg branches beyond math

by Derek Yen, Winged Post Opinion Editor
May 2, 2018
Sen Dai Sushi: Sushi with a modern flair

Sen Dai Sushi: Sushi with a modern flair

by Derek Yen, Winged Post Opinion Editor
May 1, 2018
Sunday at the Museum: Modern approach on Asian cuisine

Sunday at the Museum: Modern approach on Asian cuisine

by Derek Yen, Winged Post Opinion Editor
April 24, 2018
Lauren Russell (12) engages in the draw with a player from Stevenson. The draw begins play in lacrosse as a means of determining the first ball possession, and is performed both to begin the game and after each point.

Varsity girls lacrosse defeats Stevenson School 15-4

by Derek Yen, Winged Post Opinion Editor
March 17, 2018
Near-Mitra scholars Nirban Bhatia (12), Jacqueline He (12), Amy Jin (12), Serena Lu (12), Emily Chen (12), Andrew Semenza (12) and Derek Yen (12) pose for a photo outside the Stanford Humanities Center. These seven students met with Stanford's Hume fellows over lunch today.

Near-Mitra scholars visit Stanford Humanities Center

by Derek Yen, Winged Post Opinion Editor
January 19, 2018
Silicon Valley has become a symbol both of the fruitful employ of science and the fruitless pursuit of pseudoscience. The symbolism of silicon itself exemplifies this duality: the semiconductors that lent the Valley its name, and the quartz crystals that some impute mystical powers to.

Silicon Valley’s pseudoscientific guilty pleasures

by Derek Yen, Winged Post Opinion Editor
January 12, 2018
“When I think about my high school as a unit, I find it's defined by a lot of events and a lot of trends, it's just that some of those trends, like especially me starting to sing—they're not connected at all to any goal I had when I stepped onto the campus,” Praveen Batra (12) said. “I remember at the first club fair I heard Guys’ Gig, they were touring, and I thought, ‘Wow, that's one club I'm never going to join.’ So if you look, there's a big disconnect between what my vision of what my high school would be like and where it actually turned out being.”

Humans of Harker: Praveen Batra masters both types of keyboard

by Derek Yen, Winged Post Opinion Editor
October 31, 2017
Review: The best boba buys

Review: The best boba buys

by Derek Yen and Aditya Roy
October 12, 2017
Chopsticks

Bamboo-zled: Breaking apart the chopsticks’ significance

by Kaitlin Hsu, Winged Post Editor-in-Chief
October 12, 2017
The March for Science, scheduled for April 22, aims to sound a call for the support of science in a time of skepticism of science and dismissal of climate change evidence. The original march will be taking place in Washington, DC, but the movement has inspired over 360 satellite marches elsewhere around the world.

March, scientists, march

by Derek Yen, STEM Editor
March 6, 2017
A shot of Santana Row's main street and plaza, highlighting its walkable spaces and open storefronts and restaurants. Santana Row's design was inspired by the street La Rambla in Barcelona, Spain, a shopping area dominated by pedestrians.

Santana Row inspires mixed-use development

by Derek Yen, Winged Post STEM Editor
February 22, 2017
The team poses outside the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. From left to right: Venkat Sankar (12), Rajiv Movva (11), Shaya Zarkesh (11), coach Gary Blickenstaff, Derek Yen (11), and Swapnil Garg (11).

Science Bowl team wins 2017 regionals

by Derek Yen, STEM Editor
February 12, 2017

We stand on the shoulders of miniatures

by Derek Yen, STEM Editor
January 31, 2017
The quest for quantum computing

The quest for quantum computing

by Derek Yen, STEM Editor
November 18, 2016

The contrarian’s constraint

by Derek Yen, STEM Editor
November 10, 2016
A photo of the HI-SEAS biosphere in Hawaii. Astronauts spent eight months in the biosphere in order to prepare for NASA's upcoming mission to Mars.

A year in the HI SEAS

by Derek Yen, STEM Editor
September 5, 2016
Acetone peroxide is actually created as a mixture of monomer, dimer, trimer, and tetramer forms. TATP, the trimer form of acetone peroxide, can form an explosive less detectable than and almost as dangerous as TNT, a powerful explosive used in artillery, construction and fracking.

Brussels attacks highlight necessity for quotas on chemicals

by Derek Yen, Reporter and Aquila Columnist
March 27, 2016
Spread by mosquitoes, the  Zika virus can cause severe fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis. With the virus outbreak reaching epidemic levels in February, understanding Oxitec, a gene-based pesticide which has the potential to eradicate mosquitoes completely, is more important than ever.

Eradicating mosquitoes could come back to bite us

by Derek Yen, Aquila Columnist
February 18, 2016
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