Sunday, June 23, 2019
By:
This week was amazing. It started in sunny and hot Phoenix at the STEM+C Workshop that AAPT was helping to put on. I was going to not only learn about the new coding language and how the program can be used in the classroom, but I was also serving as a representative for AAPT. I really enjoyed my time in Phoenix. It was my first time there, and I could get over the fact that there were no clouds. I also really found the coding language interesting. I’ve been playing around with the program ever since I got back, trying to see what I can get it to do. My favorite part had to be watching all of these seasoned teachers being taken out of their element and taught completely new concepts. Watching how some of them struggled and stumbled learning the language brought me back to the internship I did last summer at a STEM camp with middle schoolers, because despite the significant age and knowledge difference between the two groups, both of them had the same look of wonder and excitement when they were finally able to get their code to work.
After I got back, I slept most of the day. I had taken my first red-eye flight, and I learned that they aren’t super fun, especially when you have to deal with a three-hour time difference. Friday was a little bit more eventful. For a while I had been working on data to help us find out what schools are seeing a large growth in their number of physics students, so that we can eventually find out what they’re doing differently. Because of the bit of chaos of everyone preparing for different events and workshops, my mentor and I hadn’t really had a chance to talk about some of my findings, but we were finally able to sit down and figure out the next steps on what I should look into.
Saturday was by far my favorite day. The interns were all able to participate in Astronomy on the Mall. It was really a special experience getting to see all of these people, ranging from young to old, that were so interested in science and wanting to learn more about astronomy. Joseph and I were in charge of the demonstration that was illustrating that space-time isn’t flat, but it’s curved. Everybody really enjoyed getting to roll marbles around and into our gravity well. The look of excitement on the younger children as they were exploring space-time and comparing the motion to things that they were already familiar with (i.e. the Earth orbiting around the Sun) was incredible. Some of the kids that were out there were so smart, that we decided to add things that they discovered to the demonstrations and explanations, like how a smaller ball will follow a larger one as they both circle the gigantic mass at the center. After we closed up shop at Astronomy on the Mall, several of us went to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs, since all of the Smithsonian museums were open until midnight that night. Even though nothing came to life like in Night at the Museum, it was still fascinating getting to literally walk back in time and see how drastically things can change over a couple hundred million years.
Amber Sammons