Friday, July 19, 2013
By:
This week has been crazy. It was fun spending the weekend with my cousins, but the trip back to DC was a bit of a mess. My flight from Atlanta was delayed. Because of the delay, we arrived late, and I had less than twenty minutes between when I stepped off the plane and when my connection was to push back from the gate. I was told the wrong gate, so I headed to another terminal. Luckily, I checked the boards and found my gate was back where I was originally. I walked straight onto my plane.
My flight headed to the runway, and then we stopped. The captain came on and explained that he had been told by the tower that they couldn’t take off for 35 minutes, which was annoying. My friend Amy, who was there to pick me up, had just been told by a police officer to move and had to circle the airport about two minutes before I was ready. It took her about half an hour to make it through the traffic and back to where she was originally waiting for me. I arrived home at about midnight and hurriedly went to bed.
Monday started the NIST Summer Institute for Middle School Teachers, which I was helping with. Most of my adventures can be found here. I really enjoy working with the teachers, and I am learning so much about NIST and techniques for teaching science. I really enjoyed the Ballistics Lab Tour. They let us try on the bulletproof vests and they let us take a test shot at one of the vests they were testing. It was a really cool tour.
On Wednesday, we got to take a tour of NASA. It was really cool. The first thing we saw was a giant sphere that had different images projected on it. We looked at earth pictures showing flights around the world, pollution and other things. We also toured a facility that had very large equipment, including a four story clean room and a giant centrifuge, which were being used for the new James Webb Telescope. We also talked with Darren’s adviser, which was really interesting. He has had an amazing career.
I also had a really fun time with my friend, Candice. She was in town for a few days, so we went out to have dinner together for and then grabbed ice cream on Monday night. Tuesday we went and saw Despicable Me in the park, which was fun. All the fun tired me out, because I ended up staying up pretty late every night and waking up pretty early.
I can’t believe how quickly this summer is flying by. I am having such a great time and I am learning a lot.
Nicole Quist