Tuesday, March 10: Today’s diversion from work was the ME 72 competition at the Millikan pond. Undergraduates built these tele-operated amphibious robots whose task is recovering ping-pong balls from the water.

The competition is not particularly exciting but, as usual, there are camera crews from the local TV stations; Caltech’s PR people are good at hyping this kind of events.

Joel Burdick was commenting the event — I’ve been told, multiple times, that he has a sexy voice.

Of course, some professors are so busy that they have to watch the competition and read a paper at the same time: