Humanizing

Hello and welcome to my first blog post of the summer!  

This week was full of introductions. It wonderful to get see my fellow interns, mentors, and program leaders. I was initially worried that the online nature of the program would make it impersonal, but I have not found that to be the case. Though nothing can replace the ability to shake hands and be immersed in a new place filled with new people, I have felt welcomed into a new community. The team at the Niels Bohr Library and Archives (NBLA) organized video calls to meet me and Abigail (we are both working at NBLA on different projects). I have learned that completing my work around rows books brings a bit of a library feel.  

The interns spent some time together during a virtual game night. I am now acquainted with Jackbox games. We have also established that as a group of interns, we cover the entire continental US when it comes to time zones. This means that through video calls, I have been able to enjoy several sunsets in the same evening! On top of that, I have been able to see many adorable animals. 

This week I brainstormed how I want to contribute to the History of Physics Center’s teaching guides, which highlight the stories and contributions of women and minorities in physics. I am very interested in pre-modern Arabic astronomy and hope to showcase it in a meaningful, relevant manner. I also want to incorporate the stories of immigrant Nobel Prize winners into new lesson plans.  

Before I completely jumped in, I did some background reading on the relevance of history to physics, and I found it enthralling. To put it succinctly, history reveals the personal aspects of physics, and that can be extraordinarily powerful. The misconceptions that history is all about memorizing dates and the misconception that physics is done in isolation are both prevalent and need to be debunked. My goal is to make the teaching guides I work on easily implementable and engaging on the human level. Human stories are impactful, and are perhaps even more relevant now given everything that is going on.