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Still cocky from their high-school triumphs, Supple. Andelin and 178 fellow freshmen arrived in Pasadena a week before the term began, were immediately whisked off to Caltech's camp in the San Bernardino Mountains. There, for three days, Nobelmen, freshmen and a few upperclassmen played games, made speeches and put on skits. But each skit or speech turned out to be a veiled warning that tough days lay ahead. Supple and Andelin soon caught on. Says Supple: "I had suddenly run into a bunch of people who were a lot brighter than I was." Adds Andelin: "I was terribly intimidated.
Here were my classmates, and they were already running around talking to the profs about the fourth dimension."
Mud & Noses. During the first term, there were plenty of diversions: the rushing by the four houses, the subsequent indignities after getting in (coolie hats, false noses, etc.), adjustment to the fact that class attendance is optional and that exams are run by the honor system. But there were also other matters—e.g., calculus, molecular physics, basic graphics, inorganic chemistry, as well as a big dose of English literature and European history. Though careful not to appear to be "snakes" (grinds). Supple and Andelin found themselves working a straight 80-hour week. Says Supple: "That first term you don't know where you are. You've got a few physics problems to work out, about 50 pages of history to answer quizzes on each day, and you've got math problems and chemistry experiments. One conclusion you've come to is that high school was never like this." Caltech does its best to cushion the blow when the first blue slips (academic warnings) go out. For a student who has always been accustomed to getting As, the almost inevitable Cs can seem a crushing failure. They are also pretty hard on the proud parents, and it is one of Dean of Freshmen Foster Strong's most ticklish tasks to reassure the older generation that a C at Caltech is the equivalent of an A or a B almost anywhere else. In spite of all the cushioning, however, some students fall by the wayside; by graduation only about two out of three have survived.
Analytical v. Descriptive. After the first year, Supple began to take more engineering, and Andelin more physics and chemistry. But they were both getting the same kind of education—one that does not tell a future engineer how to make a better thermostat, but gives him, instead, all the principles he will need to know in thermodynamics. No matter what their courses, Supple and Andelin learned by solving problems, and the steps they took in their solutions were far more important than their answers. Theoretically, a Caltech student may ar rive at all the wrong answers on exams, and still get passing marks if his professor believes that his thinking is sound. The whole idea, says Biologist George Beadle, is to avoid "the descriptive tech nique, which is just learning things by rote. In the analytical approach, you learn the why of things, the premise being that if you understand the principles, you can apply them to any problem."
In sophomore physics, Andelin was asked to prove "that a central force field is conservative." "Show," asked junior physics, "that curl grad V = 0." In senior physics: "Expand the wave function