Hector's House

Hector's House was a children's TV programme about  a dog called Hector, if I remember correctly it always ended with Hector saying something like "I'm a silly old Hector" or "I'm a tired old Hector". Well, this post has nothing to do with Hector's House but it is about someone called Hector, one of my old students in fact. clever old Hector.

Hector came to the Red Cross Nordic united world college from Haiti having been awarded a very competitive scholarship. My first impression of him were that he was an exceptionally motivated student with a rather basic knowledge of physics. It took me a lot of time to convince him that a transformer didn't create energy and even then he still had that, common amongst IB students, "I'll prove you wrong look" about him. He hasn't proved me wrong yet but that's because after studying physics for 2 years he knows I am right so he spends his time trying to make energy conversions more efficient but not more than 100%.

So why am I writing his university testimonial here? Because he is an excellent example of how the IB can influence the direction that a students life takes. OK, I'll get to the point. Hector did his extended essay on the relationship between the number of blades in a wind turbine and the rotational velocity. (Here is a copy of it.) Now he is at MIT doing research into wind turbines. Yes, he got a 7 in physics and won a scholarship to MIT. I will let Hector take over from here. This is the poster from his project.

And his paper