Friday, August 21, 2015

Physics Department Tour and Data Recording


I woke up this morning the same as usual the only thing out of the ordinary was a feeling of slight sadness in the air. The cafeteria was quitter than usual. I ate breakfast with my RC room. We finished breakfast fast and walked over to class. We talked about how we would miss each other because we knew the day we part ways and got back to our regular lives was upon us. This was the case especially for Johnny he was leaving Friday night because his parents were picking him up early. We got to class and we went straight into our groups we were split into four groups.

I liked the people in my group and we had Peter as our chaperone for our tour of the engineering department so it was even more fun since he is indeed a funny guy. Before I knew it we had finished our tour. We learned about a prototype of an optical device that used low energy lasers to measure your blood flow. This would be used by doctors at UPenn to better their patients and will help save many lives. Then we went into a lab where they study non-Newtonian substances like shaving cream, jelly and sand. They used microscopes that can take videos over a long period of time to observe how the particles moved around and interacted with each other in the different substances. We saw an electromagnetic device that could measure absurdly small amounts of magnetism. Then we went into a chemistry lab where they grew sensors for nanoscopes. We saw a radio wave telescope that would be used to observe the gas clouds that would come to crate stars. They had to be cooled down to extremely low temperatures because the radio waves the gas clouds gave off were very low energy radio waves because of their low temperatures.

It was all very fun and exciting. We were dismissed at our usual time my group had to get back before the other groups because we had to go out to get our data. I had a wonderful lunch with my best friends from UPenn and went back right after. I was really excited to go out and observe the sun using our radio telescope and the famous big satellite we had heard so much about. When we got to the room where we had been building our radio telescope for the past three days we were ready to get our radio telescope and be on our way to the site where the big satellite was. We got held back because our professor had built an electrical circuit for us that would power our telescope instead of brining all the other equipment to power it. We had trouble with it and noticed one part was not connected so we fixed it and sutured a wire to them which I got to help with by suturing one side. We were all having fun but time was running and we had to finish quickly and so we did and were on our way to the big telescope. I was having the time of my life I really enjoy exploring and it was like going exploring to me since I had no idea where the satellite was. We got to the building where it was and it was really big. The building was old and looked really cool.

We got there and we were being filmed through the ride there and the whole time we were there. It was a little weird but I didn’t mind. We waited a while at the lobby before being led to the roof by a person that worked there. We got to the roof and the satellite was huge. We set up ours and pointed it about the direction of the sun. Meanwhile our professor turned on the computer and opened the application to take measurements of the sun. We finished quickly since we spent long on fixing our radio telescope and setting up. We packed up quickly and went back to UPenn it was really cool and I felt awesome. We went back to the quad and I spent time with my friends because there was only one day left. We hanged out laughed and just made the best memories. It felt great to know I had made friends that think like I do and I could talk to whenever I wanted. I finished my day by going to lip sync night where we laughed at one another since we picked the funniest songs to lip sync to and danced around. I couldn’t believe it was all almost over.

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