Posted: 4/9/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Nick Escobar Greg Schechter, 20-year-old sophomore in Engineering, won the Yahoo! University Hack Day challenge with a slide rule widget. "I started it just because it was really nerdy," he said. As of press time 9,817 had downloaded the widget. For more on the competition and a video of Schechter's winning presentation go to http://developer.yahoo.com/.

On a warm day a student may see Greg Schechter riding his unicycle to class. Once inside the classroom you might also catch Schechter, sophomore in Engineering, using a slide rule on one of his computer science tests.

"(A slide rule) is something my mom used," said Suraj Samaranayake, junior in Engineering.

The slide rule is a device that was invented in the 17th century and even used up through the 1950s and 60s before the invention of the calculator.

Recently, Schechter adapted the slide rule to the computer screen, and won first place with his invention of a slide rule widget at the first Yahoo! University Hack Day. A widget is another name for a computer desktop application. The competition was held at Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., on March 30.

"I think ... Yahoo! liked (Greg's project) because it's really unique," Samaranayake said. "(It takes) this old technology and (applies) it to a Yahoo! widget. Greg's project had a sense of humor to it."

When Schechter's instructors don't let students use calculators on a test, Schechter said he asks permission to use an alternate method.

"He's very addicted to his slide rule," said Viraj Kumar, one of Schechter's instructors last fall and currently a computer science TA.

A regular slide rule looks like a ruler but is shorter in length and has six columns of numbers. One can slide a moving piece in the middle and a clear sliding piece covering the width of the slide rule to different numbers to do a variety of calculations.

Having already won the Hack Day competition on Nov. 1 when Yahoo! hosted the qualifier at the University, Schechter went on to compete against students from Stanford University, University of California at Berkley, and Carnegie Mellon University.

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