Rockin' the SOCK - Week #9

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Monday, August 3, 2020

By:

Holly Fortener

 

We're not in Illinois anymore.

Greetings from Houston! My boyfriend and I arrived at our new place during the late afternoon. I have a picture of the view from our balcony down below! The move has gone well so far... the POD arrives on Wednesday, so for right now we are stealing utensils from restaurants where we get takeout.

I feel as though I worked harder on the SOCK this week than any other week of my internship. Many (almost all) of the SOCK demonstration writeups and diagrams are almost finalized. It's great to see the SOCK coming together - Brad and I agreed this year's SOCK is going to be very different and engaging, and I have learned so much about acoustics, the human ear, and speach than I ever thought I would! On Thursday Brad and I talked to Keeta, a linguist from the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), about our diagram on speech, sound waves, and spectrograms. Keeta tore the first draft of our digram apart and turned it into something amazing: beautiful spectrograms and voice exercises with comprehensive descriptions and explanations. I was very impressed and realized how much I have learned about new topics this summer that I didn't think would end up in the SOCK, but I'm so glad it did! SOCK participants will not only learn about hearing, but also speech and how we produce different sounds.

An update on oscilloscope orders: Brad has ordered almost 100 oscilloscopes as well as other SOCK supplies and this experience is starting to feel real! All of this hard work is really paying off, and I can only hope others will enjoy the SOCK as much as I do.

Until next week,

Holly Fortener