Friday, July 27, 2018
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Want a sneak peak of all the variety you get as an intern here? Let me take you on my week 8 journey.
Kristen and I took a trip to the Atlantic Ocean. Not only did I eat the best watermelon gazpacho of my life at Rehoboth Beach, but we reaped the value of early Sunday mornings by getting the wild horses all to ourselves on our tandem kayaks at Assateague National Shore.
With the NASA and NIST tours, the interns got to see some real science getting done. I like how many flavors of physicists there are, with not only different interests, but assortments of different humor and styles of talking to us about their research. Daniel’s mentor Ed even gave us all a manila envelope with goodies with information about things like the microwave anisotropy probe.
At NASA, we spent some time at the Science Jamboree, where I learned more about several (like, a lot) of scientific entities doing really groundbreaking, outside of the box science. With this, comes exploration of talking to scientists and their varied stories, and I love hearing how many different paths you can take to get into this stuff. I talked to a grad student at GW who is working at a summer internship with SWIFT, with someone from the Heliospheric Science group who started there with just her bachelor’s and is currently getting her PhD so she can continue work there, with interns from the NASA DEVELOP group, and a full time scientist who works at the Goddard facility on LISA. It was a delightful overload.
At NIST, we got a tour of their museum, with things like the neon tubes and a replica of the casing that the Declaration of Independence is around (thanks National Treasure).
On Thursday, Sarah took a few of us on the Library of Congress Scavenger Hunt! During the hunt, only House staffers + their invites were allowed in. It was the highlight of the week. Shout out to the librarians Kathy and Signe for going above and beyond in helping us out. And our team name “Physics Pham” won some Kahoot.
On the work front, things are happening, fast! The AAPT Summer Meeting is in DC this year! I’ve never been to one, so I’m excited to pop into some talks and to lead a workshop on Tuesday with SPS about best practices in conducting outreach. Shout out to Michael and his willingness to help and take time to talk about the cool outreach HPU has been doing.
Also, last week we officially have all the gear to make this year’s SOCK! There was something extra sweet about that moment when you have a working product and then all the materials to make 100 of them, and to have the write up and video for this demo pretty much done. It’s been a journey with these, and I think they are a working product that chapters will use and hopefully enjoy.
Also, the outreach page is really coming along. It’s been a lot of fun to dip my hand into so many platforms and take a wide survey of the land on ways of communicating this science, from the write up to the video. Attached are some behind the stage looks of video prepping.
One last thing: sorry fellow interns for photobombing this intern group photo of us at NASA. I really thought everyone was making goofy faces too. ;)
Amanda Williams