Sunday, June 12, 2022
By:
My second week has come to a close and I am surprised by how many things I got to do this week. To begin with my work at NIST, I spent much of my week doing safety training before I begin in the lab. This includes general safety training, compressed gas safety training, personal protective equipment training, COVID-19 protocol training, and (the most important one for the lab I am in) laser safety training. I also have learned more about the organic crystal we are investigating (tetracene) and about excitons that happen in these materials. I will start next week by imaging tetracene crystals using a HyperSpectral Microscope new to NIST – once I’ve collected more information, I’m sure I will explain during a future week. I am very excited that my training is complete, and I will be able to be in the lab for the coming weeks of the internship. In addition, I got to meet the third NIST intern, Div, so now there are three of us!
Outside of this, on Thursday the intern group had an organized lunch with John Mather who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the Cosic Background Explorer Satellite. Interns asked him questions about his time in college, his advice for new scientists, has path in his career, and the projects he’s worked on. On Friday we also went to a baseball game. It was my first baseball game! The atmosphere was fun and I had a good time with other interns. Later that might a group of us went to a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show with a shadow cast. It was my third Rocky Horror Picture Show showing, but a lot of other interns hadn’t seen the movie or been to a showing before, so it was fun to watch them experience it.
Over the weekend, I finished a project I’ve been working on for a while. I crochet a lot and started but never finished a floral backpack a year or so ago. Over the weekend I finally completed the item and have started a new one. I also started working on a piece of music with Taylor C. and Nicole who play clarinet and piano, respectively (I play flute). Today, Sunday, a group of us also went to the Spy Museum. I was a young man from Istanbul with a career in writing, sent to Guatemala to find a missing agent. Mostly I liked reading the historical exhibits, but the interactive components were interesting. I’m excited for the coming week, especially the orchestra concert and Dungeons and Dragons campaign some of the interns are trying to start.
Valeria Viteri-Pflucker