Undergrad Research Symposium (Fri 8/8)

Spent the day at the Undergrad Research Symposium at the RIT Inn and Conference Center. Spent the morning going around to different sessions. Got to learn about such diverse topics as Augmented Reality for use in Museums, Serious Gaming for Disaster Risk Reduction, and then went to look at the presentations by the REU students. After that, we had our presentation of the Science Sphere Suitcase, which I thought went pretty well. Finally, we went back to CIS to watch Star Wars IV, and had some free pizza.

PowerPoints part 2 (Thu 8/7)

In place of our normal 10:30 meeting, everyone came down to view a test run of Zach and Chase's PowerPoint for the undergrad research symposium. While they had most of it fairly well off, Bethany and Dr. Messenger were able to give us a handful of suggestions which kept us busy for the rest of the day.

PowerPoints (Wed 8/6)

Spent most of the day working on and helping with PowerPoints, both for the Undergrad research symposium, as well as for our own symposium a week from now. I helped Chase and Zach go over their outline for their presentation, as well as begin to create some slides. I also helped Jimmy with our intern slideshow, which is pretty close to completion.

Some New Ideas (Tue 8/5)

This morning, after our normal intern and Insight Lab meetings, we met with Professor Mike Richmond, one of the astronomy professors, to discuss some ideas for lesson plans and other future projects with the Science Sphere. He had some really good ideas, including demonstrating the difference between the rotation of solid celestial objects and gaseous ones, as well as showing eclipses, with a possible link to the way that the Ancient Greeks discovered that the Earth is round. The only problem is, I'm not sure we'll have much time to implement these ideas this summer, especially with the fact that we have to clean out the Insight Lab so that it can be remade into offices for grad students. Either way, it gave me a lot to think about as I took off early to go to the Blue Jays game in Toronto.

Taking Apart and Putting Together (Mon 8/4)

Spent the morning putting some more finishing touches on the offline version of the STN. After lunch, we moved on to packing up Space Adventure, so that the classroom we are in could be painted once we leave, and then used during the upcoming school year. It came down pretty easily, despite some trouble with one of the joints, as well as figuring out the best way to store the screens. After that, we got some pool noodles from Walmart to use for the stand for the Science Sphere. The noodles bend out, allowing the sphere to balance more easily, and actually gives the sphere some give before falling. The one kind of sad note from this is that the noodles now take up almost half of the suitcase. There should still be plenty of room, but it feels strange that among all of the hundreds of dollars of equipment, cheap foam noodles now take up by far the most space.