I started off the day by going to a SWRI lecture bright and early at 9 o clock. Michelle and Raluca two scientists at SWRI, gave us instructions on how to do data analysis and to make a start on our Orbit Integration Presentations. We only had three hours to come up with a presentation , so it was a very stressful start to my morning.
After lunch, it was time to present the long term fates of our asteroids. It was very intriguing to see the fate of all our asteroids over the span of 50 million years. I don’t think any of the participants asteroids collide with Earth, so I guess we’re safe for now.
The presentations went by fast and we all headed to the lecture hall where Michelle and Raluca showed us a documentary about the Chelyabinsk meteor. The Chelyabinsk meteor was unpredicted , this made me realise how important astrophysics is in order to predict these meteor strikes. The first step in predicting asteroids or meteor impacts is to determine their orbits, and I thought to myself, isn’t that what we were doing for the past five weeks? So I guess we could say that this summer we all contributed to science!
Finally it was time to go to the Talent Show! It had been a long day, but I was more exhilarated rather than exhausted. We were all anxiously practicing our parts for the show before we all took our seats and our MC’s, Siyona and Nikhilesh commenced the night. The show started off with the musical talents, with pianos, violins and guitars. There was some dancing as well. I was a part of the line dancing group. The night started fairly relaxing with the classical piano and the harmonious flute pieces but soon it got chaotic when Lucien and Staś started the tortilla slap challenge, suddenly the scene changed from peaceful, melodious music to tortilla’s flying around the room.
Other highlights of the night were Dr. Rengstorf’s speech on the importance of teachers and Dr. Lê sang a meaningful song by a Vietnamese singer, Trịnh Công Sơn.
The Talent Show ended and I rushed to the computer lab to download all the lecture materials and programming projects, as the reality hit me that we only have one more day left in this program. We all hung out at Domenici for a while, and soon headed back to our dorms.
My name is Hardev and I’m a rising senior at St Caimins Community School in Shannon, Ireland. I love physics, engineering and anything else STEM – related. In my spare time I like to play basketball with my friends and go for walks or runs in the morning.
