Radio Telescopes!

Today I woke up really energized and I didn’t feel tired even though I had woken up very early. I got up at the usual time, 8a.m. and went to eat breakfast with my dorm mates. I didn’t eat much since I wasn’t feeling very hungry. I walked to class with Johnny, Premal, and Perry. On our way to class we saw Crag and called out to him. He didn’t respond so I called out “C-Money!” and he looked right away! We all thought it was very funny even he cracked a smile. He was with his younger daughter and father Crag was very different from teacher Crag. We walked into a one teacher classroom which was a little weird since they are always together. Bill however wasted no time and we got a lecture on the history of the speed of light. He covered everything from Galileo who was the first to prove that light isn’t instantaneous by looking at Jupiter’s moon in June and January and the time difference. He got a 16 minute delay between them. He ended his lesson with James Bradley the first person to accurately measure the speed of light.

Measuring the Speed of Light Equipment

Bill then went into explaining the circuit we would be making to measure light. Today’s set up was very nice. I liked it very much because it had a lot of electronics and I like to play around with electronics as much as I can. We ended our long explanation and we headed upstairs to do our lab. We had a lot of fun. Perry, James and I dove right in and started putting our circuits together. We did many trials and error so Crag came in the rescue and I we finished and tested our circuits before everyone else. We had a bit of leisure time before the staff lecture so Perry and I bought a Muffin and ate it. Our staff lecture today was magnificent! It was quite awesome because it was on light and how we see it. Me being an artist I loved the whole lecture. He started off by making the illusion of yellow by using red and green light and mixing them.  He then went into a long but very interesting history on light and how a guy named Thomas Young was way ahead of his time (1802) when he theorized that we saw light with cells in our eyes that were sensitive to 3 different colors, Blue, Green, and Red.  At the end of the lecture I had to ask about how Blue, Yellow and Red were the three primary colors for artists. He said that those were the three main pigments and that paint in the subtraction of light and that Blue Green and Red was the light that we could see.

Walking Through The Science Building Halls

Equipment

Radio Telescope Group! 2015

We went to lunch a bit late so we had an unusually short lunch break. We came right back to working on our interest groups. Mary showed us around a maze like side of the physics building we hadn’t seen before. It was really cool because there were warning signs and such. It was really cool especially when I got to the room we were working in. The Astronomy Professor, James, who we are working with on our radio telescope group, is awesome! He started us off by giving us an explanation on how radio telescopes worked. He went from the basic concept of how the physics works to a more in depth analysis of the components that are in the hardware. He then showed us the materials we were working with for building our telescopes. He explained his ideas for us and how we would build three axes that would enable our telescopes to move around in all 3 dimensions. We then dove into work and we started from scratch so we had a lot work to do. We had a lot of trials and errors that helped us understand how research works. This is because in research you don’t have guides telling you what to do and how to go about it. It was a wonderful learning experience and the time flew. Before we knew it, it was already time to leave.

Shining lights Beautiful Night

Summer Nights (Park Filled With Lovey Doveys)

I left and played football with my friends listening to music on the quad. We all had a good time and I left to dinner with my RC. We had a lovely Italian dinner. We all had a good time and shared good food. We finished up and went for a very long walk that was filled with beautiful summer night scenery. It brought a whole new meaning to my summer nights. All the lights and the water with the breeze flowing created an environment that made me feel at home even though it was a completely new experience to me. We walked for what seemed like hours and we finally got back to the dorms. I was extremely tired by the end of the day so I went ahead and went to bed early.