USD Magazine, Winter 2001

ALCALA ~ ALMANAC

N ot being above "borrowing" a good idea (especially when we really, really like it), your vaunted staff at USD Magazine, along with the Alumni Board, is taking a page out of Stanford Magazine, which recently polled its alumni to develop a list of the "101 Things You Must Do Before Graduating." Since we're not as large as that university to the north, we've decided to pare the list down a bit, to say, "50 Things You Must Do Before Graduating USD." Already, your hardwork– ing alumni board members have contributed some of their own suggestions, including: Be on the Orientation Team. Renda Quinn '86 Take a class from Father O'Leary. Kevin Dooley '93, Kristin Skow '94 Go to the top of Maher Hall to watch a sunset. Ann Maulhardt '95 See the nearly naked "Thong Man" rollerblade along Mission Beach. No one admitted to this one, but we really, really like it.

To aid us in this completely unscientific poll (let's get this out front - there will be no recounts of the ballots), please send us your must-dos before graduating, be they serious, academic, generic or just plain silly. We would like you to include your name, class year, and if you'd like, an accompanying personal story about your USD must-dos. The highly trained USD Magazine ballot counting staff will sort through your entries and print the best ones (remember, your name and story will be printed if we choose it, so watch the language) in the Spring issue of the magazine. So send your entry ASAP to: classnoces@acusd.edu, with "50 Things" in the header. Or mail it to: Editor, USD Magazine, 5998 Alcala Park, San Diego, CA 92110. We gotta run. Time to catch the Thong Man.

Q I often hear the age of a given item can be deter– mined by a process called "car– bon dating." What exactly is carbon dating, and is it accu– rate? A Carbon-14 is a radioactive iso– tope that reacts with oxygen to form carbon dioxide.The carbon dioxide is used by plants during photosynthesis. Animals eat the plants, and thus, all living things have trace amounts of carbon-14 in them. While we're alive, the amount of carbon- 14 we ingest breaks down at a very spe– cific rate.After an organism dies the dis– integrations continue. Thus, the amount of carbon-14 slowly decreases during the time following the death of a living thing. For items made of plant fibers, such as the Shroud of Turin, carbon dating indi– cates how long it has been since the plant was harvested. It takes 5,730 years for one-half of the carbon-14 isotope to disintegrate (the half-life), another 5,730 years for half of that to disintegrate, and so forth .Thus, by measuring the number of disintegrations, the age of a formerly living object can be estimated. The accuracy of the informa– tion can vary from a few decades to a few centuries. After about six half-lives - around 35,000 years - the amount of carbon remaining is too small to measure accurately, so other dating methods must be used for older objects.

USO by the Numbers

Freshman Class Profile 68,000 Inquiries made by prospective students 6,780 Applications received for freshman admission

40 Percentage increase of applications received from four years ago 4 9 .6 Percentage of applicants offered a place in freshman class 3.52 Average high school GPA of a freshman in 1997 3.73 Average high school GPA of a freshman today 26 Percentage of this year's freshman class with high school GPA of 4.0 higher 4 Percentqe of this yearj~h~ class with nigh Jthool itt.l

Thomas Herrinton - chemistry department chairman

If you have a question you'd like posed to our faculty, please e-mail timothym@acusd.edu or send it to USD Magazine, 5998 Alcala Park, San Diego, CA, 921 I0. Questions and answers are for informational purposes only and may be edited.

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WINTER 2001