Author: Sophia S.
Note: title idea credited to Emma C.
We started off our SSP day with show and tell during our social block. Our breakout room consisted of Joaquin, Lucy, Emma, Kristen, Umran, TA Michael, and myself. Lucy introduced us to her twelve chickens, whose favorite foods are peanuts, sunflower seeds, and raisins. (Two of them pictured below.) In addition to meeting Lucy’s chickens, we became some of the first SSPers to see past Joaquin’s virtual background, while being introduced to his dog cookie. On the subject of pets, Michael told us a story where his cat, Artemis, was begging for some of his chocolate milk shake.
After the social block, we visited ONL’s Zoom to listen to guest speaker Tracy Drain, a flight systems engineer at NASA’ JPL. She spoke with us about her work on the Juno and Europa Clipper orbiters. As an aspiring mechanical/aerospace engineer, Ms. Drain’s talk gave me a look into the exciting work a flight systems engineer does on the day to day. In addition, her tips and advice on what paths to follow to become a successful flight systems engineer were very helpful and insightful.
After our guest speaker, I rushed to my kitchen to quickly make myself a tomato, cucumber, and feta cheese salad. Returning to my desk, I joined our learning block with Dr. Katherine Kretke and Dr. Raphael Marschall to work on our Asteroid Orbital Integration. Initially struggling to get our files in the right format, after some help from Michael, we were well on our way, writing up our input files.
While on our three hour break, I procrastinated about writing this blog post. Instead of doing so, I took a quick nap and then ate some cookies.
During the Work/Play block, my team 11 and team 7 worked together on the astrometry and photometry for our asteroids. Excitingly, we were also able to find our asteroid in two of our most recent observations (see below). We now have all three observations of our asteroid! While we were hard at work, we realized that Emma, Justin and Hyun were all wearing their MATHCOUNTS shirts (see below).
While taking a well deserved break from our astrometry and photometry, we said “hi” to Aaron’s dog, Happy, who made an appearance on Zoom tonight.
After the Work/Play block ended, Emma, Justin, and I got on Zoom to continue working on our data reduction. We took a quick break so that I could make myself dinner: hot dog, simultaneously showing Emma and Justin the art of hot dog making (see below).
Aaron later joined the Zoom and shared some quality hot dog content from his camera roll (see below), including a person twirling a hot dog between his figures, which unfortunately I was unable to upload.
We ended the night at 3am playing cards while playing Cards Against Humanity (and writing the blog post). Sadly, we lost Aaron to the temptations of a good night’s rest.
Hey guys! My name is Sophia and I am a rising senior at Rye Country Day School. My favorite classes are math, science, and computer science (big surprise). In college, I hope to study mechanical and aerospace engineering and astrophysics. When I am not in school or studying, I spend most of my time playing squash. I started when I was six. I also enjoy hanging out with my friends or dogs and sister, reading, listening to music, watching tv and surfing in the summers. I am also a big foodie and love cooking and eating all types of food.
