Clara

Walnut Creek, California

Clara Lee (she/her) is a junior in Timothy Dwight majoring in Economics and East Asian Studies. Growing up in California, Clara got to experience the East Coast for the first time after coming to Yale. At Yale, Clara is involved with Yale Initiative for Sustainable Finance (YISF) and Yale Policy Institute in the energy and environment center. On campus, you can find Clara lounging around the TD courtyard or milling around with her friends looking for a fun study spot. In her free time, Clara goes on walks with her friends, lingers around Yale’s art facility spaces, and participates in bookclub with her sisters. To join Clara in her adventures at Yale, you can check out her Instagram.

Valentine’s Delight: Combining Love, Science, and Fun

by Clara in #At Home, At Yale, #Campus Life, #Student Groups on 03.30.2024

Being on campus might feel lonely, but you’re never really alone. A day like Valentine’s Day is filled with everyone posting about their relationships and flowers selling everywhere on campus and random acapella groups interrupting your classes to perform serenades and the dining hall dressing up in pink with heart-shaped treats. It inspires you to hide until the day is over if you’re single, but it’s actually better to jump into the festivities and parse through the millions of mailing lists in your inbox because there are definitely gems lurking around. I happened to dig up a good one through the Yale Center for Engineering Innovation and Design (CEID) mailing list and it was for tempering chocolates. It’s such a random activity to do in an engineering lab on a Wednesday night but I convinced my friends to sign up so we went. Chocolate is always yummy and now we can learn to temper it.

We showed up to CEID and found the classroom portion of it set up with portable stoves, and most of the tables were already partially filled. My group of three had to split up. I was forced out because I was the one that suggested the event so I ended up with two strangers. The event started with a lecture on the physics of crystal formation, priming us on the reasoning behind our activity later. We were initially supposed to use CAD modeling and this press machine to make our own plastic molds for our chocolate shapes, but it broke the morning of so we had to make do with existing molds. The world did not want us to have fun but we pushed through. I couldn’t figure out the portable stove (and am still convinced it was a little broken) so controlling the temperature was such a challenge that my group went from strangers to friends as we tried to melt the chocolate. We were probably the slowest group but it didn’t matter because we ended up with amazing results and it shows the importance of trusting the process and making friends along the way. I was super glad I convinced my friends to come with me to this and everyone had a blast and a yummy snack to take home. This is the importance of reading newsletters!

science behind cocoa butter crystals
Crash course on chocolate