Sunday, June 26, 2022
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This Saturday we had the Astronomy on the Mall event open to all Washingtonians.
The event brought together a variety of astronomical institutions, research laboratories, and groups of physics students and graduates. Aside from NASA, the Naval Research Laboratory, and AAPT, we were there to represent SPS with many experimental demos Janessa put together. I volunteered for the fabric of space time and the helmholtz resonance demonstrations. I must say the fabric of space time acted as a click bait that attracted many passers to our tables. Rolling many marbles with a variety of sizes and weight we demonstrated the effects of gravitational pull massive objects have on any entity that gets caught in their orbit. Children were particularly interested in participating in this interactive demo. Although I can't say the same for the helmholtz resonance as it was much harder for people to know what they were supposed to listen for and for me to articulate what kind of a noise they should prepare to hear. Overall we all interacted with many interested Washingtonians who were kind enough stop by and learn cool magic tricks we call physics.
Later that night I went to the Natural History Museum for a late night at the museum for the summer solstice. A lot of peopel had rushed to several museums the same night to participate in the events and to see art, artifacts, fossils, and insects. I have never seen the mall as crowded at any night before.
At work I have submitted my third draft and I hope the new version is much easier to comprehend no matter what physics background the reader is coming from. I am also reading several books I am assigned to write book capsules for. Many of the topic include national security and defense technologies as I am most interested in those issues. Additionally, I got responses from several scientists I have reached out for an interview, which I am very excited about. Next couple of weeks are going to be interesting. I am stll working on the Physics Olympiad story, trying to reach out to coaches and the organizers about the recent cancellation of events in Belarus and stepping in of Switzerland. Hopefully I'll hear back from them soon.
I am loving my walks from Watergate to Georgetown Waterfront on sunny days. Even when I don't want to do much a movie after work at AMC on K Street or just a simple iced macha latte from Blue Bottle Cafe make my day!
More to come on next week's blog!
Gizem Dogan