There was a last minute request for us to present our project early, so we rushed to bake three loaves of bread, photograph all our breads and ingredients, prepare our slide deck, and design our poster over the weekend. I was responsible for photographing and editing all the bread pictures, and adding them and laying out the Venn diagram on our poster. I was also in charge of carrying three loaves of bread to class.

On Tuesday, we headed to South Campus to visit the meteorite gallery and planetarium. On the way to the meteorite gallery, we ran into a fourth year PhD at the UCLA Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences. She had been setting up an augmented reality sandbox that uses depth-sensing technology to label the topography of a landscape as the sand is pushed around the surface.

This week, I finally got to taste my kombucha, and it was delicious! The apple cinnamon kombucha ended up tasting like apple cider that you would drink on Thanksgiving, and the mixed berry flavor tasted like Fanta. The only complaint I have is that the tea taste was not very strong, and I think this is because I used green tea instead of black tea when brewing it. The kombucha was definitely missing that nice sense of bitterness that I would have preferred.

This week was unique due to the fact that I came down with a cold and was unable to attend class on Tuesday. Nevertheless, I was able to make progress with my kombucha brew and make plans over Zoom with my teammates for our bread project.

On Tuesday, artist Maryam Razi visited our class to present her board game prototype based on the Hox Zodiac. I enjoyed getting a glimpse into her typography process. It was very inspiring for me, as someone who wants to develop my own typeface but has always been too intimidated to try. The premise of Maryam’s game is also very intriguing- it encourages players to generate their own zodiac-influenced recipes by rolling a dice.

On Tuesday, Dr. Walter Gekelman gave us a very in-depth lecture on magnetism, which is the motion of electric charge between two magnets when they attract or repel one another. He began speaking about Maxwell’s equations, which is basically a set of four equations that explains the nature of electricity and magnetism.

Zodiac artwork Professor Vesna brought to class.

This week, we were asked to bring bread to class, whether it be store-bought or baked from scratch. I brought a loaf of Trader Joe’s Cracked Wheat Sourdough Bread, a fan-favorite among my five roommates and I. While listening to Professor Vesna’s lecture on bread and its four main ingredients- flour, water, salt, and yeast- I grew curious about what exactly makes sourdough bread in particular taste the way it does.