Monday, July 18, 2016
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This was an extremely exciting week at work as we officially launched Physics Central’s Snapchat account! I spent the week drawing graphics for the introductory story, as well as for a couple more stories lined up for the rest of the month. I also had to figure out a way to film a laptop screen without too much glare, which thankfully was quickly resolved with a spare polarizing filter that was hanging around the office. The next stage of my project involves me learning how to do some quick animation, which hopefully shouldn't be too difficult to learn.
Out of the office, we all went to an intern barbeque with some of the mentors at the College Park Aviation Museum on Thursday. It was so fun being at the museum after closing, and getting to play around with the exhibits and activities on our own time. Meeting the other mentors and hearing about what they do was a great opportunity to learn about other jobs available related to outreach and physics. The food was also wonderful, as usual.
On Saturday we all helped out with an event at The Albert Einstein Memorial on the Mall with Dr. Mather. We showed interested passers-by the Fabric of the Cosmos demonstration, which explains gravity in different scenarios. We modeled both single body and two body systems, trying to get kids to understand the effects of objects with larger mass on objects with less mass. However, the activity quickly devolved to kids playing with marbles and attempting to get them to spin around our gravity wells. It kept kids engaged, though we definitely skimped out on a lot of the science by the end of the event.
Tomorrow the APS Outreach Team leaves for San Diego to set up for Comic Con! We’ve been preparing for the trip over the past week, figuring out logistics and schedules. I can’t wait for the week ahead, and am so excited to experience Comic Con for the first time. Be sure to keep up with us on the physicscentral Snapchat, as well as on the blog to see what we get up to in San Diego!
Isabel Binamira