Splash Spring 2025
Course Catalog

This course provides an introduction to genetic algorithms, an optimization technique that mirrors how natural selection and evolution occur in real life.

Genetic algorithms have been used in a variety of settings: routing autonomous vehicles, teaching computers how to speed run Mario, and breaking the TikTok algorithm.


Class Style
Lecture

From the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park to the magic of Avengers: Endgame, visual effects are what make Hollywood blockbusters come to life. This hands-on course gives students a behind-the-scenes look at how movie magic is made—with no prior experience needed.

We’ll explore the fundamentals of computer graphics, 3D modeling, and digital effects using free tools like Blender. Along the way, we’ll break down iconic scenes, learn how VFX artists build worlds, and even create our own short animations or digital props. If you’ve ever wondered how they did that, this is the place to find out.


Class Style
Activity

Prerequisites
Basic familiarity with digital 3D art tools / willingness to learn.

(This course is going through a whole revamp this year! New slides, new action!) Have you ever played a game and wondered how the developer(s) created it? From the smooth move-and-jump physics of Cuphead to the animated slam of a card onto a table in Hearthstone—this class aims to demystify the gaming process that players (like you and I) typically take for granted.

Throughout this course, we will explore the Unity Engine, which has played a part in many signature titles (in addition to those mentioned above!), like Among Us, Hollow Knight, Genshin Impact, Pokemon Go, Beat Saber, and many more. We will break down Unity’s seemingly complicated user interface and get a taste of scripting in the C# programming language to interact with objects in our game.

NOTE: Enrolled students MUST download the Unity Hub (https://unity.com/download) and install a version of the Unity Engine within the Hub *before class* if they would like to participate in programming!


Class Style
Lecture

Prerequisites
If a student wants to participate in Unity development/C# coding, they should have a computer that can download software (specifically, the Unity Hub and Unity Engine) with around 2GB of free storage to accommodate this. Previous background in any programming language (Scratch, Python, Lua, Java, C, etc.) is helpful but not required.

Learn the fundamentals of structural engineering and its importance in phenomena like earthquakes and wind! Students will then apply their knowledge by constructing and testing model structures to evaluate their stability and resilience.


Class Style
Activity

In this class, students will learn about the fundamentals of circuits and create their own works of art! We will discuss basics like how batteries and resistors work. Then, students will get the opportunity to use their knowledge to create their own paper circuits and light sabers that light up!


Class Style
Activity

How does your skin repair itself after a cut? How do immune cells crawl through your body to reach an infection? How does the increased stiffness of tumors contribute to cancer spreading?

These are just some of the questions that the growing field of mechanobiology tries to answer!

Come learn how cells push and pull on the soft and squishy tissues in our bodies, and how physical forces and material properties shape and influence our biology in important ways.


Class Style
Seminar

Prerequisites
No prerequisites, but previous classes in biology will be helpful

A 2019 study found that one of the most popular 'dream jobs' for children is 'YouTuber.'

Maybe you have also thought of getting started on your own TikTok or YouTube channel but aren't sure where to start.

This course gives a brief overview into how to get started with social media content creation, how to grow an audience, and the many doors that it opens.


Class Style
Lecture

Got a story in your head? A character you want to invent? A world you can imagine but haven't yet brought to life?

In this class, your imagination takes center stage.

You'll learn fun ways to sketch your ideas, build your own characters and creatures, create scenes from scratch, and add your personal, handmade touch to everything you draw — no tracing, no perfect lines needed. It's all about making your ideas real, your way.

Big dreams start with small sketches — it all starts here!


Class Style
Activity

Prerequisites
- Bring a drawing tablet with a stylus (e.g. iPad and Apple Pencil) - OR, bring a sketchbook or loose paper, and pencil or pen Any issues? Email the instructor.

Do you like joy? Do you like whimsy? Do you like world peace?

If so, this class is for you! This class is open to jugglers of all skill levels, from complete beginners looking to learn the basics, to confident performers looking to learn new tricks and props.

We'll learn
1. the basic 3-ball pattern
2. how to spice up the 3-ball pattern
3. basic partner juggling (how to juggle with friends!)

If time allows and curiosity beckons, we can talk about the math behind juggling, or look at some advanced tricks.


Class Style
Activity

Want to pick up a new hobby? Interested in refining your hand eye coordination? In this course, you will learn the basics of juggling three balls. If you've never tried juggling before, this is the perfect place to start!


Class Style
Activity

Have you ever been confused by the new slang used by Gen Alpha? Does it seem like they’re speaking a whole different language?

In this class, we explore how language and vernacular evolve, as well as how their evolution has been influenced by the digital age, including social media, video games, memes, and beyond.


Class Style
Lecture

Ever wonder what teachers do beyond explaining lessons and grading papers? This short, hands-on course gives you a behind-the-scenes look at teaching as a career. You’ll explore the basics of classroom management, with a special focus on how teachers set up routines to create smooth and successful learning environments. Whether you're seriously considering education or just curious, this is your chance to learn how teachers make classrooms run effectively every day.


Class Style
Activity

During the lecture we will talk about the Classical period in music, discuss its most prominent representatives (such as Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven) and, of course, understand the inconsistencies between the musical works of this era and its generally accepted name: why was the music of that time not so classical?


Class Style
Seminar

Join the Stanford Political Union to learn what politics means to you and practice discussing difficult issues with your peers. All viewpoints are welcome!


Class Style
Discussion

Video games offer a unique lens through which to tell stories by inviting the player into an active role in building its narratives.

In this class, we'll learn how video games tell stories.


Class Style
Lecture

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, this course invites students to explore what it truly means to be American—through the lens of visual storytelling. Using artwork, paintings, and photography, we’ll take a fast-paced journey through key turning points in U.S. history—from 1776 to 2025/26—and examine how images have shaped, reflected, and challenged the American spirit.

No prior experience in art or deep historical knowledge is required, though a basic understanding of U.S. history will be helpful as we move quickly across 250 years of ideas, conflicts, and culture.


Class Style
Lecture

This class will immerse students in the diverse world of writing, demonstrating the myriad forms it can take and the specific intricacies of one poetry form, the villanelle.

The class will be interactive. The first half will explore the diversity of writing, from informal notes to series of novels. The second half will be dedicated to a specific form of the villanelle, 19 lines, with a specific pattern of repetition and rhyme.


Class Style
Discussion

Learn about deliberative democracy and experience it!
Deliberative democracy is a new type of democratic practice that highlights citizen participation through conversations to avoid polarization and pursue considered public's will formation.
It has been used to make difficult decisions like constitutional changes in countries like Mongolia and Ireland.
Also, it's used to measure public opinion about policy proposals.
Are you interested in knowing more about how the newer type of citizen participation can enhance democratic values?
Come, learn, and experience deliberative democracy!


Class Style
Discussion

Language is soooooo cool. It's something we all use on a daily basis. It's what you're using to read this text right now.

This class will look at a variety of cool concepts in linguistics with the hope of getting you excited about all things language-related!


Class Style
Lecture

We'll be writing poetry in this class, with a specific emphasis on feedback and understanding how others respond to and interpret our work. Come with poetry you want to share, or write your own during our time together! All levels of experience are welcome, whether you've never tried creative writing or you write a poem every day.


Class Style
Seminar

This seminar taught by Asian & Asian American university organizers exposes students to the world of community action and political engagement. Students will have the opportunity to connect with activists around the Bay Area and learn how to bring revolutionary optimism to their own campuses.


Class Style
Seminar

Memes offer an interesting lens through which to view the current cultural zeitgeist. While often humorous nature, these memes cover a wide range of topics, from current events to popular culture.

This class will take an analytical approach to understanding memes and the purpose they serve in communicating ideas.


Class Style
Lecture

Enjoy a break for lunch with your friends! Please register for at least one lunch period on each day of the program.

Enjoy a break for lunch with your friends! Please register for at least one lunch period on each day of the program.

How do machine learning models produce images of dogs?

A large number of random building blocks, when put together, can produce patterns with a great deal of structure: individual blocks are unpredictable, but collective behavior is lawful. This is a theme underlying huge swathes of mathematics, physics, and machine learning. We'll drive this idea home by first studying "diffusion" --- the motion of an object that stumbles around randomly --- via an in-class collective experiment.

Then, we’ll switch gears to machine learning. You’ll see how diffusion models --- a cutting-edge technique often used in AI image generation --- rely on the same mathematical ideas. With hands-on visualizations, you’ll witness how an image of a dog is gradually destroyed with noise, and a new dog is reconstructed! From order to randomness, and back again.


Class Style
Lecture

Prerequisites
No experience in programming or higher math is needed --- just curiosity, common sense, and a willingness to follow where randomness leads.

Set theory provides a way to formalize all of mathematics using a single language, but different axiomatizations can result in different mathematical results. This fact, interesting in itself, may not be surprising to those who are familiar with the idea of set theory as foundations for mathematics, but in this class we present a graph which is surprisingly easy to define, and show that it behaves very differently when we make a simple adjustment to what we want to do with the axiom of choice.


Class Style
Lecture

Prerequisites
Familiarity with proofs and basic graph theory and set theory. Knowledge of the definition of countable/uncountable infinity. Familiarity with equivalence classes.

This class will introduce two modern approaches to formalizing the concept of infinity in mathematics. We will first explore ordinal numbers through the framework of axiomatic set theory, then move on to Conway’s surreal numbers. Along the way, we’ll explore the counterintuitive arithmetic of linear orders. Throughout the class, we will see how new and classic paradoxes of infinity reappear in these novel settings.


Class Style
Lecture

Prerequisites
An open mind to weird phenomena!

When is a coffee cup the same as a donut? Surprisingly, the answer is not "never"...

The mathematically curious student may have heard of this fact, or recognize the Möbius strip or Klein bottle. These are all examples of "manifolds," which are the foremost objects studied in topology — the study of geometric objects up to continuous deformation. That is to say, in topology, we say that objects are "equivalent" if we can stretch or bend one into the other. A major goal, then, is to develop tools called "invariants," which don't change under stretching and bending, which we can then use to classify manifolds.

This class is an interactive introduction to one of the most strikingly visual and conceptually rewarding fields of mathematics — I'll develop important invariants, formalizing the above notions in the process; discuss the Euler characteristic, the fundamental group, and more; and end with a proof of Brouwer's fixed point theorem. If none of this sounds familiar, don't worry — we'll explore and demystify everything together. By the end of the class, you'll be thinking like a topologist!


Class Style
Seminar

Prerequisites
No strict prerequisites — just be ready to volunteer ideas and think outside the box!

Ever wondered how animal populations change over time? How a hurricane moves through a region? Or why heat dissipates over time? At the heart of all of these questions is Euler's number, $$e$$.

The aim of this class is to understand why $$e$$ is important, why it appears everywhere, and why it is 2.718....

We will start with finding the value of $$e$$, look at how it is applied in math, and move our way up to proving "the most beautiful equation in math," $$e^{i\pi} + 1 = 0$$.


Class Style
Discussion

Prerequisites
No hard pre-reqs, but recommend you are at least enrolled in calculus This class is for students who want a challenge -- but it will be fun!

Have you ever observed a painting but felt confused where to begin?

Do you want to impress your friends with the stories behind our most influential art?

Do you want to see more beauty in the world around you?

In this class, you'll learn how to look at art and why. You'll develop your eye, make fascinating friends, and earn a well-deserved break from all your STEM classes.

Join now before we reach capacity!


Class Style
Seminar

In the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations (U.N.) declared that “Everyone has the right to education.” But nearly 80 years later, how far have we achieved? The dismantling of the Department of Education, the reverse result of racial segregation after Brown v. Board, and overall low achievement in math and sciences. Where is the problem? How can you bring a change?

Students will explore a philosophical lens towards what education means and should look like. We will dive deeper into the research behind education inequalities and help you answer the “why?” This class is student-centered as we believe active engagement gives rise to maximal learning. You will also have the opportunity to design a solution to meet the U.N. standard of education as a human right.


Class Style
Discussion

Legal communication is everywhere, but it might as well be nowhere for how often we notice it. How many of us take the time to pore over the 'terms and conditions' tab or ponder before accepting cookies on the Internet? Do we even know the strengths and weaknesses of the legal documents that built our nation?

In this course, we will examine the role language plays as the backbone of constitutional, contract, and intellectual property law, diving into opinions from landmark court cases and the letter of the law. The classroom will be an active forum for discussion, debate, and even disagreement -- embracing the uncertainty and ambiguity inherent to language and, in turn, the great power it can give to those who know how to wield it.


Class Style
Seminar

Prerequisites
Middle school level understanding of history

College admissions are getting increasingly competitive every year, with many schools’ acceptance rates falling into the single digits. In this class, students will learn about effective strategies for approaching college applications, based on real-life case studies.

A Q&A will follow a short lecture, so bring any and all questions you have!


Class Style
Lecture

Most organizations don’t make decisions rationally. They discover their preferences through action, often without fully understanding their own processes. In this class, we’ll examine case studies of unexpected change at universities and in the U.S. government, with the goal of understanding how major organizations are convinced, influenced, and transformed.


Class Style
Seminar

Prerequisites
A desire to be an agent of change!

How does the next photo, video, or ad get chosen in your social media feed? Is your phone really listening to you? Bring your phone* and be prepared to learn the secrets of social media! In this interactive course, we'll cover topics like the psychology and strategies driving advertising, how algorithms capture and keep your attention, and how to spot misinformation. Demystify how social media works and leave this course with the skills to critically evaluate the messages you see on these platforms every day. *If you do not have a phone and/or social media accounts, you can still participate and learn a lot in this class!


Class Style
Seminar

The world is in dire need of effective leaders. Oftentimes, “effective leadership” is portrayed as commanding, self-driven, and arrogant. However, this style of leadership overlooks the needs of others and is ill-suited for our increasingly diverse and interconnected world. In this class, we will explore how to become effective leaders in today’s world through the philosophy of Heartfulness. Heartfulness is a transformative, multi-cultural approach to mindfulness which combines compassion and responsibility to enhance well-being and connection. Equipped with this philosophy, leaders can face today’s global crises with empathy, groundedness, and collaboration. In this workshop, we will practice self-reflection and community-building strategies for creativity, deep listening, and self-awareness. From these exercises, you will learn how to become a more effective leader and gain skills that enhance not only your own well-being but the well-being of the people and communities you will serve in the future.


Class Style
Activity

From giant robots to slice of life stories, anime is an incredibly diverse medium. In this class, we will examine the expressive power of anime by looking at thematic and aesthetic elements present in many key examples. In particular, we'll also see how anime differs from conventional Western media.


Class Style
Lecture

Friendship is the fabric of our lives. Having healthy, meaningful friendships has been found to be essential for our happiness, health, and academic performance. In fact, research has found that lacking friendships and feeling lonely is as detrimental for one's health as smoking 15 cigarettes per day. Yet, we are never taught how to cultivate healthy friendships. In this workshop, we will integrate concepts from psychology, public health, and human-centered design to learn how we can realistically build better friendships in our own lives. You will learn specific strategies for making new friends, deepening your existing friendships, and advocating for more socially-connected communities.


Class Style
Activity

Come take a dance lesson from members of Swingtime, Stanford's swing dance performance group who is famous for their ridiculously fun performances with smooth swingouts and high flying aerials! No prior experience needed, and we'll rapidly rotate through partners as we teach a series of basic swing steps! Wear comfortable clothes, dance shoes if you have any (or just comfy socks!), and bring a waterbottle!


Class Style
Activity

Curious about opera? Want to impress your friends with cool facts? In this class, we’ll dive into the dramatic world of opera and explore how music, storytelling, and emotion come together on stage. We’ll listen to and analyze iconic works by composers like Verdi, Mozart, and Wagner, and discover what makes this art form so unforgettable. No prior knowledge of music or opera required—just bring your curiosity!


Class Style
Seminar

What can one city teach us about the intersection of health, education, and inequality in America? In this class, we’ll explore Detroit as a case study to examine how systemic factors—like housing, access to healthcare, and school funding—shape outcomes for communities. Through maps, data, and real-world stories, students will learn how public health and education are deeply connected and why zip code can be more predictive than genetic code. We’ll also discuss efforts to create change and imagine what a more just future might look like. No prior knowledge required—just curiosity and a passion for equity.


Class Style
Lecture

Have you ever wondered what you can do to activate change to make your community a healthier place for everyone? In this class, you will learn about citizen science and the community-level factors that impact health. You will also become a citizen scientist yourself using a cool app! Be part of a larger conversation of how technology can be used to make healthier, more engaged communities.


Class Style
Activity

Ever wonder what a real chemist does all day? This lecture-style course takes you behind the lab doors to explore the daily life of a synthetic organic chemist. Discover how chemists come up with wild ideas for new molecules, how they design clever routes to build them, and how they use cutting-edge instruments to test their creations. You will explore the real-life mysteries, mess-ups, and "Eureka!" moments that happen in modern research labs. Whether you're curious about careers in science or just love mixing things up, this course will show you that being a chemist is anything but boring.


Class Style
Lecture

Have you ever eaten Play-Doh? Did it taste salty? In this course, we make our own salty-doh to make a circuit.


Class Style
Activity

A fun presentation of chocolate history. Biology, biochemistry. industry, surprising acts, trivia. Chocolate sample during the talk. At the bitter end, we will have a free drawing for some chocolate items.


Class Style
Lecture

Prerequisites
None

How do snow crystals form in the atmosphere? To make sense of this phenomenon, we will apply fundamental materials science concepts ranging from heterogeneous nucleation to Fick's laws of diffusion. Using these concepts and their associated equations, we will derive the rate at which snow crystals nucleate and grow.


Class Style
Lecture

Prerequisites
Recommended (but not required): high school chemistry and calculus.

Stop by to learn about issues and disparities in Asian-Pacific Islander health ᕙ(`▿´)ᕗ

Presented by members of Stanford Pre-Med APAMSA (Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association).


Class Style
Seminar

Why did pirates wear eye patches? Is pink a real color? This seminar covers the physics of eyes and relates to modern topics such as phone displays, cameras, eye surgery, and color blindness. Come and join to see what vision is all about!


Class Style
Seminar

Most children's toys were once patented. This includes the SLINKY, FRISBEE, YOYO, Barbie Doll, Rubik's Cube, etc. This fun talk presents some of the amazing background stories about the inventors and their inventions.
At the end will be a free drawing for a familiar children's toy and a copy of its US Patent.


Class Style
Lecture

In this lecture-based course filled with engaging activities, take a deep dive into relevant modern sustainability topics with members of the Stanford club Students for Sustainable Stanford (SSS). Students will learn how to recognize and respond to greenwashing campaigns, as well as conceptualize the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence.


Class Style
Lecture

Photons are massless particles. Yet, if you manage to put $$1.48\times10^{40}$$ photons with frequency equal to 9,192,631,770 Hz on a weighing scale, you will get a reading of 1 kg. This is the new definition of a kilogram, which replaced the 90%-platinum/10%-iridium alloy sitting in Paris. In this class, we will discuss how the fundamental unit of mass is defined. In particular, we will answer the question: Do photons have mass?


Class Style
Lecture

Prerequisites
Familiar with Newton's Laws of Motion and concepts such as mass, momentum, and acceleration.

Why do some diseases affect only a handful of people worldwide? How do doctors diagnose conditions they’ve never seen before? And what happens when a cure doesn’t yet exist?

In this interdisciplinary course, students will explore the world of rare diseases—conditions that affect fewer than 200,000 people in the United States, yet collectively impact over 30 million Americans. Through case studies, guest speakers, short documentary clips, and hands-on activities, students will learn about the biology behind rare diseases, the diagnostic challenges patients face, and the ethical and social dimensions of rare disease research.

Topics may include (time permitting):

The genetics of rare diseases
Diagnostic odysseys and the role of medical detectives
The role of the NIH’s Undiagnosed Diseases Program
Patient perspectives and advocacy
Drug development and clinical trials for small populations
The global impact of rare diseases and health equity


Class Style
Seminar

Prerequisites
None

One of the greatest wonders of the natural world is the sheer diversity found in the forms and functions of life on planet earth. While much of this is easily seen by the naked eye, the vast majority is hidden in the microscopic world right under our noses, in the kingdom of bacteria. The goal of this class will be to introduce our students to the amazing diversity of bacteria living right under- and maybe in- our noses. We will explore different bacteria that can glow, conduct electricity and even sense the earth’s magnetic field.


Class Style
Lecture

Come learn chemical reactions by playing with molecules in our real-time interactive computer simulations using virtual reality headsets!


Class Style
Activity

Prerequisites
Have taken or enrolled in a high-school chemistry course. Basic understanding of atoms and bonds

Come learn about the path of dentistry and practice your manual dexterity skills with a soap carving activity!


Class Style
Activity

How does a gloopy flour mixture turn into a soft and delicious angel food cake? What prevents your delicious guacamole from turning into a brown, gooey mess by the next day? Have you ever wanted to transform cream and sugar into mouth-watering ice cream? In this class we’ll be able to answer all of these questions and more! Join us to learn about the chemistry behind some of your favorite foods (and get a snack out of it)! [Please be advised that those with allergies to fruit or dairy may not be able to participate in all class activities.]


Class Style
Activity

Prerequisites
Will discuss concepts generally covered in a high school chemistry class.

The Observable Universe is about 14 billion years old and 93 billion lightyears wide. But, how do we know this? In this course, we will be exploring the Distance Ladder, the method astronomers use to determine distances to virtually everything in space. Through this, we will explore how these distances were used to discover the origins of the Universe as well as the current Crisis in Cosmology.


Class Style
Lecture

Have you ever wanted to learn about the most extreme objects in the universe? Look no further than neutron stars, which are the incredibly dense remains of collapsed stars. These objects are about the mass of the sun, but are only about the size of a city. A teaspoon of their matter weighs as much as Mount Everest, and if you stood on their surface you would melt into a puddle from the sheer force of their gravity! In this class you will learn about neutron stars, including pulsars (rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation from their poles) and magnetars (neutron stars with incredibly strong magnetic fields and sometimes produce bursts of energy called "giant flares"). By the end of this course, you will be familiar with how different types of neutron stars form, theories describing their interiors, gravitational wave detection methods using pulsars, and how collisions between neutron stars are responsible for creating many of the chemical elements in the universe.


Class Style
Lecture

Learn how to recognize signs of opioid overdose, administer Narcan and manage airway, breathing, and circulation. We’ll also discuss how opioids affect the body and how Narcan works to reverse overdose. Win free Narcan from the quiz at the end!


Class Style
Lecture