Monday, July 6, 2015
By:
This week was wonderful! On Saturday Brean had to go home to Philadelphia to find some paperwork and Connor, Max, and I tagged along for an impromptu day trip. I hadn’t been since the 8th grade so I was very excited! We saw Drexel University, Brean’s school and had brunch at Sabrina's Cafe, cute atmosphere and delicious food! We visited the Chemical Heritage Foundation museum, the special exhibit was on alchemy and there were quite a few old alchemy texts on display. We also toured Carpenters' Hall (where the first Continental Congress met), Independence Hall (Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were both drafted and signed), and the Liberty Bell, unfortunately it started raining pretty bad and the line to go into the Liberty Bell building was outside but we did get a group picture from the side window. Of course since we were in Philly, we had to get real cheesesteaks; I am no cheesesteak expert but they were pretty tasty!
The week started bright and early Monday morning with everyone meeting for the ACP tour. After breakfast there was a presentation of the SOCK by Hannah and Shauna, I experienced some of the demos at the Tuckahoe outreach event but it was neat to see the rest and how they are interconnected to demonstrate the physics of sound waves. Next we headed up to the Niels Bohr library and archives that take up the front part of the second and third floors. Connor and Brean set up an exhibit to showcase some of the materials that applied to their work in women in physics, which they pulled from the archives. It was pretty cool to see Feynman's calculus notebook! We had lunch with most, if not all the ACP directors, including the AIP CEO. 
Everyone went around introducing themselves; we got a chance to mingle and talk to people outside of the organizations we work for. Afterwards, Pat and his mentor led a hearty discussion on how college physics departments can be improved upon as a part of the AAPT tour, we also saw what Pat is working on up there. Lastly, James, my mentor, and I got to show off APS. I talked about my project and James brought fun comics for the interns to flip through while he set up a really cool laser/speaker demo. After we all headed down to the APS floor so everyone could grab a few comics from themselves. Funny enough, the tour was useful to my work because someone asked what was the title of my app and I realized that I do not have one yet! Overall, it was a nice day at ACP and we got to leave early, which means we missed the after-work metro rush!
Missing the rush worked out great since we had plans to go see Connor's dad's jazz performance at the Tabard Inn in Dupont Circle that evening. Connor and her dad invited me along for dinner the next night so Connor wouldn't be traveling alone, which was fine by me! We went to Clyde's Tower Oaks Lodge, the same restaurant that the SPS Executive Council dinner was at but this Clyde's was in Rockville. The food was just as great!
Rest of the week went by fairly fast, I worked on my app, alternating between formatting and content, since doing one for too long results in more brain blocks than productivity. On Wednesday, Connor, Brean, and I ended up taking an extra long lunch at IKEA, I misread the bus schedule so we had to wait longer than expected on the way back. IKEA food was just as delicious as I remember it being :) and we got to run around the marketplace with our extra time. Friday we got off for the 4th! Some of us went to brunch and hung out all day. There was much Netflix watched. It was a great to get a day free before what I am sure will be a busy 4th!
Amandeep Gill