Sunday, June 9, 2019
By:
It’s hard to believe that we’ve been in DC for 2 whole weeks already. It’s even harder to believe how so much has happened during that time. In just 14 days I’ve already mastered the Metro, made lifelong friendships with some of the other interns, and learned a whole bunch of new physics. It’s crazy how things are so different from 2 weeks ago, yet it feels like we all just got here yesterday!
Whereas most of my fellow interns already talked a lot about our early-blossoming, incredible group dynamic in their week 1 blogs, I purposely decided to wait it out and do an analysis at the 2-week marker. I’ll start by saying that in all my experiences involving social interactions between physicists, I have always found it extremely interesting how not only does everyone get along so well, but how everyone gets along so quick. To put things into perspective, consider 17 arbitrary football players put together in a camp for 10 weeks. Now there are a lot of types of football players out there. You have your quarterbacks, running backs, linemen, kickers, etc. You’re telling me that by 2 weeks, the 300-pound lineman is going to be best buddies with the scrawny kicker? That doesn’t seem likely in my opinion. Well, realizing that there are so many different types of physicists out there, you might expect the same exact thing to happen with our group, but you’d be wrong. It’s a lot like Quantum Mechanics in that sense. *queue laugh track* Anyway, at t = 24 hours of meeting each other, the 17 of us interns, all with different backgrounds and specific interests within physics, had no problem hitting it off. At t = 2 weeks, a stationary observer watching us eat together at The Magic Gourd Chinese Restaurant would have no clue that we all met each other not so long ago. If you’re not getting it, I’m surrounded by some wonderful people here, and we’ve become so close so fast. These people are amazing, and I already know that I will be friends with them for the rest of my life.
On top of the people here, last week I promised my devoted, supportive fans that I would give them more details pertaining to my specific research project at NASA, so I’ll do my best to deliver on that front. In my experience doing research, it’s been good practice to be able to explain to non-physicists what you are doing and why it matters before you can even think about actually working on the project. However, this particular project is a tough cookie to crack and so much of this past week was spent trying to reach the point where I feel comfortable explaining it. As a test for myself, I’ve decided to make you guys my guinea pigs and attempt to it explain everything to you.
My goal in the next 8 weeks is to make steps toward answering a long-standing question in solid-states physics. The purpose of answering the question is to of course better understand the physics going on, but also improve our methods of fabricating detectors and other various microscopic devices for satellites. We’ll start by imagining we have an arbitrary detector that is composed of a metallic film (conductor) residing on a Silicon-based membrane (insulator). The two materials are both of microscopic size, but they actually have very different thicknesses with the membrane being much thicker compared to the metallic component. Now, when we apply a voltage to the system which generates a current through the metal, this will produce electromagnetic waves that ripple through the detector. Because the membrane is much thicker than the metal, as the waves propagate, they will oscillate at exactly the same rate in both materials and as if the metal is no different compared to the membrane. Now if we increase the thickness of the metal, we will eventually reach a cutoff point where the metal becomes distinct from the membrane and the waves begin to propagate at different rates through each material. The question we are trying to answer is what is that cutoff thickness? I will for sure not be able to answer the question on my own in the time that I have, but my goal is to help my colleagues make progress toward finding an answer.
Hopefully at least some of that made sense, but if not it’s okay. It was definitely good for me to write everything out and at least try to explain it all, but I know there is room for improvement. Either way I have 8 more weeks to really hone in on the project and I have no doubts that I will gain a better understanding of it all. Maybe I’ll try explaining it again in a future blog post and look back to see how far I’ve come. Anyway, if you couldn’t tell, after 2 weeks things are going really well here in Foggy Bottom. I’m learning so much and I’m making so many memories I soon won’t forget. I hope you enjoyed reading and be sure to tune in next week. For now, Terry Schuh signing off.
Terance Schuh