Utah State University

Week 3: Science in the Dark

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Kelby Peterson

One of the expected aspects of research is long hours in the lab crossing your fingers hoping your experiment will work; then of course cursing your stupid mistakes when it doesn't. One aspect of research I didn't expect was to be doing all that in the dark.

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I'm a certified scuba diver, and I like extreme sports. I am SPS.

Kelby Peterson

Kelby Peterson

Utah State University

SPS Research Intern

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Meeting physics students from across the nation has been an awesome experience, and I now understand the foresight and thought that goes into SPS initiatives. Being on the council has also helped me figure out what I want my role to be in the greater physics community as I further my academic pursuits.

Kelby Peterson

Utah State University

Former Associate Zone Councilor, Zone 15

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Week 10: Farewell DC

Friday, August 9, 2013

Darren McKinnon

The final week was busy; it was packed to the brim with events. This meant that there wouldn’t be a lot of time to go off and do whatever we wanted, so our final weekend was spent wrapping up all of the museums and sightseeing that we wanted to do.

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Week 9: Becoming the Expert

Friday, August 2, 2013

Darren McKinnon

This week was all about finishing up the poster for my presentation. My mentor has been in Canada, and so he was hard to reach. Fortunately the rest of the group, namely Tom and Mike, were able to help me along the way. By Tuesday I had finished the first draft of the poster.

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Week 8: Time Waits for No Man

Friday, July 26, 2013

Darren McKinnon

The work that I have done this summer has been a bit erratic. I have worked with a number of different approaches to studying Eta Carinae, including principal component analysis, three-dimensional hydrodynamic modeling, and observational analysis. I have thoroughly enjoyed each one.

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Week 7: Abstract Thinking

Friday, July 19, 2013

Darren McKinnon

The beginning of this week was set to be a sad one of sorts. My mentor was departing for Canada, and he would not return before my time at Goddard had ended. However, once I had checked my email Monday morning, I found that there was no time to waste.

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Week 6: Tour de Goddard

Friday, July 12, 2013

Darren McKinnon

Following the fun of the 4th, it was back to work on Monday. Most of the week was taken up with familiarizing myself with writing scripts in Linux and working my way through the modeling code that we would be utilizing.

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Week 5: It's All Rainbows and Sunshine

Friday, July 5, 2013

Darren McKinnon

This last week was a fantastic week to be in our nation’s capitol. I started out the week working with Tom, one of the Ph.D. group members. Our collaborator from the Netherlands, Nicola, had been working on a program to help us model a few different portions of the system that we’re studying.

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Week 4: The Other Side of Science

Friday, June 28, 2013

Darren McKinnon

Science. Last week I got a taste of the excitement. This week, however, it seemed I was destined to round out my scientific experience. I found myself trudging through a large bundle of data. I had run a number of datacubes through the program that we’ve been using.

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