Sunday, July 20, 2014
By:
This weekend was a blast. Saturday was a day spent by the Georgetown waterfront. For most of the day we rented kayaks and went around the Potomac River. We explored a little 'island' we found, and I got sufficiently sun-burnt (even though I put on sunscreen). That evening we went back down to Georgetown and the waterfront for dinner and a beautiful view of the river at night. Sunday was equally as fun. Ashley, Kearns, and I went to explore the Eastern Market of DC. It consisted of flea shops, arts booths, and food. It was fun to explore and find hidden gems for purchase.
This week at NIST was a bit of a whirlwind. I picked up work on the anthrax protein analysis as my primary goal. I spent a day attempting to juggle AFM analysis of the exfoliated sample and protein analysis-which was completely crazy. This project is still pretty new to me, but really fascinating and I'm having fun learning a new side of physics.
This week was a whirlwind of fun things. Fred Dylla, Executive Director of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and his wife Linda Dylla were kind enough to host a dinner for the SPS Interns, mentors, and other honored guests. It was fantastic food, a great tour, and good conversation at the College Park Aviation Museum. It was a lot of fun, and the museum had a lot of fantastic firsts there that I never would have expected.
It was really fun to tour NASA Goddard on Thursday during their Science Jamboree. It was fantastic to be there and tour the facilities. We got a great chance to not only see various labs and offices in NASA, but we got to talk to many of the scientists at the Jamboree who staffed tables highlighting their work on countless projects throughout the facilities. It was fascinating to see the behind the scenes things at NASA that I'd never really thought about before: the animation team, the news crew, the computing labs, etc. It was a great experience. I absolutely loved NASA.
Kelby Peterson