Knox Astro Blog – Day 31
My day started at 9am as I woke up to the same alarm blaring in my ear as have the past 30 days. I quickly went through my morning routine of getting dressed, brushing my teeth, and waking up my roommate Don. I then went downstairs to breakfast, getting my morning cup of joe. After drinking the entire cup, I walked to the science building for the first day of student lectures!!
Dr. Rocky organized an event for the students and TA’s to give a short 5-15 minute presentation on anything that we were interested in. Today consisted of the “serious” lectures while tomorrow will be the “brainrot” lectures. The topics ranged from quantum mechanics to free will to supercell games. Each lecture was a special insight into the unique lives of every member. Here are a few of the lectures that I enjoyed.
Frank talking about the human perception of time with a very interesting-looking presentation:
Lucas talking about his research and work in environmental science:
Anastasiia giving a talk about her home country Ukraine: (everyone was sobbing)
At 12:40 we all took a break for lunch. The food here at Knox was amazing as usual and today I had chicken and rice. After having a delicious meal together with my friends, we headed back at 1:30.
Rhea showing how she made her own cotton candy machine:
Cynthia describing her journey through the sport of rifle shooting:
Sean talking about the prevalence of Supercell games:
The final lecture of the day ended at 4:30, and my team began processing the data from the images of our asteroids. For 12 of our asteroid images, we did astrometry and photometry to measure the right ascension, declination, and magnitude of our asteroid.
At 5:40 we went back to the dorms to get dressed and ready for dinner. After a nice meal and discussion at my table, Shaurya and I played a single game of pool (which he lost of course) before heading back to the science building to continue working on code to find the uncertainty of our asteroid measurements. After a few hours of writing and debugging, I was finally able to finish my code and calculate and create graphs of uncertainty in our measurements. At 11:45, me and my team were able to format the data to send to the IAU Minor Planet Center, earning us a new sticker on the sticker chart. At 12:30, we went back to our dorms and called it a day.
blog author
Sam
SSP Participant
Hey team! My name is Sam and I am from Henrico, Virginia. I am interested in all things programming and math. I have developed a love for playing pool during my free time. SSP has been a great experience and I have had so much fun!