Sunday, July 2, 2023
By:
This is, perhaps, the most fittingly-titled blog post so far.
When I started using Dewey Decimal classes to title my blogs, I didn't expect them to fit what happened each week so well. In fact, I was almost apprehensive; my home Physics, Optics, and Astronomy Library at the University of Rochester uses the Library of Congress class system, and the Niels Bohr Library uses its own specialized system. There was a moment in which I debated using one of those two systems instead.
As you've seen by now, I decided to stick with the tried-and-true Dewey Decimal system. And this week certainly had the most science of all of them.
My mentor at NBLA, Corinne, was out for the week, leaving me largely to my own devices as I worked on the library blog's August Photos of the Month post. I spent the majority of my working hours delving into the lives and work of physicists and other scientists who passed through Washington, D.C. during their careers, tracking them through photos in our digital archives. People from Otto Stern, namesake of the Stern-Gerlach experiment (which demonstrated that angular momentum is quantized in quantum mechanics), to members of the Manhattan Project all passed through the U.S. capital, and many have been caught on film.
Largely, this work entailed recognizing names from classes I've taken, then frantic Googling until I remembered why I recognized the names, then trying to remember what I learned about them in class. (I'm looking at you, Stern.) In addition to playing Who's Who of Physics for my work for NBLA, I finished my research for an article proposal for Physics Today; here's hoping I hear from them soon!
The science-filled week capped off with a trip to the Air and Space Museum, where Jenna, Ruthie, and I nerded out about anything and everything from a cutaway of a Cray supercomputer (a precursor to a supercomputer I conduct research on) to the wheels of the Curiosity rover, which imprint "JPL" (the lab it was constructed at) in the surface of the dust as it rolls.
Though it's blog writing time already, the weekend has scarcely begun--we have Monday and Tuesday off for Fourth of July! Tune into next week's blog for our Independence Day festivities.
MJ Keller