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

Benjamin Xia (10) savors his ice cream with his friends after watching the classs hydrogen rockets. The ice cream lab reinforced concepts of thermodynamics and energy transfer.

Chemistry students conclude school year with a blast

by Ashley Mo and Kairui Sun May 22, 2024

Students from Honors and AP Chemistry classes closed out the year with a hands-on hydrogen rocket lab on Davis Field on Monday and Tuesday. Some classes also conducted an instant ice cream experiment,...

As the Bay Area has largely returned to in-person pre-pandemic norms, corporations now grapple with the employment of more workers than they can provide for. Reductions in the tech workforce pose a significant challenge for both current engineers and recent college graduates looking to enter the field.

Tech industry layoffs incite uncertainty in post-pandemic world

by Tiffany Zhu, Co-Sports Editor May 3, 2024

Since the start of the year, tech companies across the globe have extinguished approximately 75,000 jobs according to layoffs tracker layoffs.fyi. Engineers in the computing world prepare for the new wave...

Student presenter Oliver Chen (10) talks about his project using his poster as a visual aid. Harker students from grades eight to 12 shared their research findings in the Auxiliary Gym.

Research Symposium reaches record-high attendance, unites STEM enthusiasts

by Ashley Mo and Mendy Mao April 25, 2024

Over 800 students and parents attended the 18th annual Harker Research Symposium, themed “The Artificial Intelligence Revolution,” organized by the Women in STEM club on April 13 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m....

A Tetris block falls down the grid, inching closer to the collection of blocks at the bottom. There were seven tetrads in total, each one with a different color and shape.

AP Computer Science students stack up skills in Tetris lab

by Ashley Mo, Co-STEM Editor April 21, 2024

AP Computer Science A and Data Structures students used Java to build the popular game Tetris on the BlueJ app and finished the project on April 11. The lab began with students constructing “tetrads,”...

Figure 01 stands at the forefront of innovation, showcasing a level of sophistication unseen in previous humanoids. Leveraging stored information, Figure 01 makes inferences rapidly, similar to OpenAI’s GPT-3 and GPT-4, and can also express its thoughts through a text-to-speech model.

Figure 01 revolutionizes humanoid technology through robotics and AI

by Ashley Mo, Co-STEM Editor April 17, 2024

“Hey Figure 01, what do you see right now?” “I see a red apple on a plate in the center of the table, a drying rack with cups and a plate and you standing nearby with your hand on the table.” Visual...

Students and staff witness the partial solar eclipse with special solar viewers. These glasses prevent eye damage by filtering out harmful radiation from the Sun.

Upper school community marvels at partial solar eclipse

by Victor Gong and Jessica Wang April 12, 2024

Students and staff across the upper school campus gathered outdoors during lunch on Monday, with eyes, through lenses and filters, affixed to the sun. The partial solar eclipse seized the spotlight on...

An NVIDIA RTX GeForce 4070 Super sits on a wooden table, donning two fans, 12 GB of memory, and a bandwidth of 504 GB/s. NVIDIAs recent success largely lies within its state-of-the-art graphics processing units.

(Provided by Ivan Chen)

Dominating the digital landscape: Core innovations drive NVIDIA to new heights

by Victor Gong and Mihir Kotbagi April 3, 2024

Every year, hundreds of eager buyers flock to Best Buys or constantly refresh online shopping websites, all for one purpose – to get the latest graphics processing unit on launch day. While most casual...

This year alone, California has seen 39 power outages. The world consumed 176 quadrillion watt-hours of general energy in 2021, and the generation of electricity from coal emitted a whopping 868 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022. Sourced from World Population Review and U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Global Reset: Energy use sparks climate concern

by Ashley Mo and Claire Zhao March 28, 2024

The hum of electricity halts. Lights flicker and extinguish. We’re plunged into a world of disorientation, our hands grasping for flashlights and candles in the eerie darkness. With nothing but our makeshift...

Upper school English teacher Beth Wahl stands in front of her bougainvillea plant, a type of tropical shrub that grows up to 30 feet tall. Before we renovated our house and we added a second story, I dreamed of having bougainvillea that goes up two stories, Wahl said. Now, it blooms throughout the year and creates this incredibly vibrant magenta color. (Provided by Beth Wahl)

In full bloom

by Lily Shi and Ashley Mo March 21, 2024

Returning home to fresh greenery after a long day, whether thriving vegetation or potted succulents, can lighten anyone’s mood. The act of nurturing plants holds a special place in many households.  The...

High school coders collaborate on the novice problem set during HPCs Harker Programming Invitation in Nichols Atrium on Mar. 9. Groups of up to three students worked together to solve ten questions in two hours in the novice division.

Coders compete in Programming Club’s annual Harker Programming Invitational

by Tiffany Zhu and Emma Gao March 15, 2024

Around 150 middle and high school students from the Bay Area participated in the annual Harker Programming Invitational (HPI), a team-based competition organized by Harker Programming Club (HPC) and held...

Upper school chemistry teacher Andrew Irvine assists Arturo Vilalta (10) with the paper chromatography lab. Students determined which M&M flavors contained yellow #5 using chromatography.

Honors Chemistry students sweeten science with M&M chromatography

by Ashley Mo, Assistant STEM Editor March 8, 2024

Honors Chemistry students conducted a paper chromatography lab using colored dye from M&Ms to determine which flavors contained the synthetic food dye Tartrazine, also known as “Yellow #5,” over...

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