Friday, July 21, 2017
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This week began with a tour of The Optical Society, where one of the SPS interns, Michael, works. The tour involved seeing parts of the new office building that have been remodeled, listening to guest speakers, and ending the day with snacks in the OSA lounge. The guest speakers were Liz Rogan, CEO, who spoke about the role of professional societies and OSA’s mission, Greg Quarles, Chief Science Advisor, who described possible career paths in physics and the necessary education for these different paths, and Alison Taylor, Executive Editor, who explained ways in which to get published in a science journal. The speakers were friendly and informative, which made the tour a worthwhile experience.
On Wednesday, I helped with an outreach event at NIST that another SPS intern, Zak, had put together. Zak has been working with a group of middle school teachers over the past week with various projects, and he needed assistance in running demos for the teachers. We set up six different physics demos and allowed the teachers to walk around and choose demos that they were interested in or which would be applicable to their students. The main point to this outreach event was to give the teachers ideas for physics demonstrations that they could easily incorporate into their classes, and show them the resources available to them through SPS. Overall, I really enjoyed this event because of the teachers’ enthusiasm for the demos and their interest in recreating them with their own students. Several teachers even took videos of the laser and water demonstration that I was running. I am hopeful that there will be an increase in middle school students’ interest in physics, after these demos have been incorporated into their curriculums!
The rest of the week was spent finalizing details on my webpages and working on my final presentation to showcase the work I have completed this summer. I am looking forward to the final review of my website so that I can officially publish it and then advertise it to others. Tori and I have also taken over the Niels Bohr Library & Archives’ social media, and are in the process of creating posts for Facebook and Twitter. Towards the end of this program, the social media component will be an excellent tool to advertise the videos and webpages that Tori and I have created.
In other news, D.C. has been unbearably hot this week, so weekend plans involve staying in air-conditioned buildings or cool, shady spots.
Lexxi Reddington