Sunday, June 26, 2022
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The weeks are going by WAY too fast for my liking. I have been absolutely loving the work, environment, and company of this internship, and am shocked that we are already almost halfway done. This week I am writing the blog post from my lovely apartment, after I have just gotten back from the farmers market on Sunday and added some new plants to our ever-growing collection. It has been a lovely weekly tradition to go to the Sunday morning Dupont farmers market for empanadas... though I am exempt from this tradition as I don't eat meat.
In regard to work this week, I have continued my schedule of being in person from Tuesday through Thursday. I love being in the office, enjoying the huge windows in the library, and have been taking as much advantage as I can of ACP's free gym (I love to explore on runs every day, but the heat of DC makes it particularly challenging). Early this week I finished up my draft of the Katherine Clerk Maxwell teaching guide, wrapping it up and sending it to my mentors for review. Then, on Tuesday, Jack Hehn stopped by my cubicle for a chat and ended up giving me the inspiration for the topic of my next teaching guide! I have started research on my next female physicist, Émilie du Châtelet. Jack had told me a bit about her incredible life, and connected me with a great resource for the project and the director of a play about Émilie that Jack himself actually helped to write! Thank you so much to Jack for the teaching guide inspiration and connections—I have loved learning about du Châtelet's life, and am equally excited for kids to learn about it as well!
I am going to make du Châtelet's teaching guide for younger audiences (likely for first and second graders), teaching them about gravity using modified experiments of what she used. Émilie contributed to Newtons famous work by demonstrating that energy was equal to 'mv2', as opposed to the previously thought 'mv.' She did this in an experiment using heavy lead balls, dropping them into clay, and observing the depth of marks that they made depending on their mass and height. I will have kids do a similar activity, dropping balls or classroom objects of different sizes and weights into clay, and stepping into Émilie's shoes to see what she did... though their classroom experiment will certainly involve less calculations.
Based on my research thus far, Gabrielle Émilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil was a truly amazing woman. She was nothing short of revolutionary, contributing massive advancements to physics, mathematics, and philosophy. Although she passed away at the age of 42 in childbirth, du Châtelet was an intellectual and a free-thinker of her time, continuing to stand up for her own individuality, right to education, and contributions to the sciences while also running both a family and her own experiments in 1700s French aristocracy. Some of her most notable work surrounded the physics of heat transfer (published in a paper without a woman's name), philosophy of different ways of thinking about physics (in her very well received manuscript titled "Foundations of Physics"), reflections and expansions of Newtons ideas, and translation of Newtons entire "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" work (including her own annotations and explanations of his theory, published after she passed away).
However, it is an absolute shame that she has been reduced by history to the title of Voltaire's witness. While her husband was away for long periods of time in the army, Émilie had a longstanding affair with Voltaire. Though the two worked together on many science and philosophy projects, history seems to have taken her position as a woman and neglects her intellectual pursuits to hilight her sexual affairs. Even though she may have been a well-respected and inspiring woman of her time, this historical discrimination is something that happens all too often with minorities in positions of power, intellect, or those possessing any coveted traits.
I could write endlessly about Émilie du Châtelet, and I would highly recommend looking her up if anyone is interested to learn more! I will be editing her Wikipedia page for any misconceptions and expanding on it as part of my project, which I will link to when I am finished, for further reading.
Outside of work, the week was BUSY. Last Sunday night after posting my week 3 blog, a few of us accidentally ended up at a piercer while my friend from home was still here. Janessa and Ben both followed through with getting nose studs, while I added to my growing collection of ear piercings. It was simply going to happen at some point, and now a few more interns have been inspired to get something done themselves... we also were able to catch a beautiful sunset.
Monday was Juneteenth, and most of the interns had work off in honor of the day. We used our time wisely, with four of us going to the beach at a nearby state park; if a future intern is reading this, I would highly recommend Sandy Point beach! It had grills, concessions, and clean water/sand; we will definitely be bringing the other interns there on some weekend if we have time. After the beach, nine of us also used our coupons to go bowling in Alexandria. Many of us hadn't gone bowling since we were kids, so, naturally, it devolved quickly into a game of seeing which of us could score the least amount of points. Ben and I tied, Saksham is an absolute pro, and Matangi absolutely destroyed us going for the least points.
Tuesday brought even more fun, where Janessa and I went to a Wallows concert after work. We were absolutely exhausted, and neither of us listen to their music on our own, but it is always fun to go to live music! We have also both still consistently tested negative, so it has been incredibly fulfilling to be able to go back out into the world and take part in things like this.
On Wednesday, we went straight from work to do an intern picnic! Mikayla was kind enough to host all of the interns, mentors, and leadership in her apartment building. We had some great food and games there, and I want to say a huge thank you to Mikayla for having us! After the picnic, Anthony, Taytay, and Ben came over our apartment to watch the second Dr. Strange movie (following the first one last week). Even though we were definitely tired from the week, we ended up staying up until nearly 2am chatting, as per usual...
On Thursday, many of us started our first night of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Taylor Colaizzi (who we call Taytay) is our fearless leader, starting the campaign despite the vast majority of us being completely new to the game. We just built characters on Thursday, I have no idea what I'm doing, and the game is surely going to be a bit of a mess at first with everyone starting out, but it will most certainly be fun!
On Friday, as soon as I was done with work for the day I went directly to the supreme court to join a piece of history. Then, we did as we usually do, and caught up together with a Quigleys happy hour $5 tater tots special. We all came back to Janessa and I's room afterwards to hang out, meet Lucy's friend that was here for the past few days, and play some games (we discovered how to connect Janessa's switch to my projector this week, which has been very valuable).
Saturday finally brought the Astronomy on the Mall event! Janessa has been hard at work over the past few weeks, building different physics-related demos for us to show the kids and participants at the mall. The event was a huge success, and it was super fun to teach kids some cool things about physics. I ran a station with two small telescopes and some star maps, and Bill Nye even showed up to take photos with many of the interns!
As I am writing this on Sunday, we went to our weekly tradition farmers market, and are going out to a comedy show in a few hours. The fantastic week is coming to a close, and I am equally as excited for another great week to come as I am terrified that next week is already at the halfway point in the internship.
See you next week!
Emma Goulet