Mehta 1!

Hemang Mehta
Ms. Martin
English 12 AP
October 1, 2014
The Battleship Problem
I discovered the world around me through the game Battleship.
Tears flowed from my eyes, as my eight year old arms struggled against their far superior
nine year old counterparts. My yells of injustice were reciprocated by the elder boy above me. In
a struggle for dominance, our legs flailed wildly, knocking over and shattering furniture. Both of
us armed with the knowledge that the other had cheated, lunged towards each others boards, to
corroborate our stories. Furiously whipping the concealed display to face me, I was taken aback.
I was wrong. In my single minded approach to the game, I had assumed my infallibility and
missed a key possibility. It was then that I felt the effects created by a world of blissful
ignorance.
As I grew older, this affliction remained my single greatest struggle. I could manage my
own ignorance, but the world around me kept inflicting this curse on others. As an attorney for
the Community Youth Courts program, I often worked with students that had their lives nearly
destroyed by their own lack of awareness regarding the world around them. The fact that, It was
just a little weed, or that his, punch didnt hurt that much, did not change the truth of the
matter at hand. However, for many in my community, it was the only truth they acknowledged. It
was my duty as a volunteer to help these kids, but the glazed eyes, and unaware expressions,
proved that simple lecturing or punishment wouldnt help anyone.

Mehta 2!
I knew that to generate awareness, the best method would be to foster an objective world
view. The most efficient way to spread this view would be through education. However, to infuse
this ideal into education would be difficult because linguistic and historic world views are
fraught with bias that would hinder the neutral awareness I hoped to create.
It took some time, but during the summer between my sophomore and junior year, I
discovered a solution. I had been awarded opportunity to intern at the CK-12 foundation, and
create physics modalities for their website. When I reported to my first day of work, the tremor
in my voice, and shake in my knee gave away more than I wanted. With a blank mind, I sat
hunched at my desk in a furious silence. My job was to help educate those who needed academic
guidance. Unfortunately I had no clue which physics concepts would be the most helpful. As I
began to suffocate under my various deleted drafts, I realized I could simply write about day to
day phenomena, which were explainable through physics. After a summer of intense typing, and
researching I strode out of the office and into the August breeze with a newfound confidence.
Framed by equations, and definitions the world was much clearer. Unfortunately, this
view was merely a prototype. To truly liberate members of my community from a unclear world,
I would need to affect change on a higher level, and help answer the questions that plague the
best and brightest minds. Though it may not immediately cause a change, I plan to leave my
mark, by expanding my worlds self understanding through my own scientific research.