Andy’s Los Alamos Blog

Well, I’ve made it home (don’t worry, it didn’t take me a week), and after a frenzy of packing and whatnot, I’m heading back to Lehigh tomorrow afternoon. Who takes breaks, anyway?

I was hoping to write a nice post summarizing my experience in New Mexico, but there really aren’t words to do it justice. The whole thing was ridiculously awesome. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and those parts alone are crazy. Working at a national lab as an undergraduate. Working on a project among the frontrunners in a race to solve one of the greatest mysteries in physics and cosmology. Climbing four 14,000 foot peaks in two days. Exploring northern New Mexico via biking and hiking. Just being in the same place as, and continuing the traditions of, some of the greatest scientists and innovators of the modern era. It seems like I was constantly in motion for the entire summer (at times not so good for the blog), but I wouldn’t change a thing. I have learned about a great deal, from rock climbing technique to nuclear and elementary particle physics to good experimental practice, and am excited to apply this to my life back at Lehigh. I’ll certainly be a better (and safer! Thank you entire week of training!) scientist… (and do a lot more extreme sports…?)

And yet, it gets better! I’ve been fortunate enough to arrange a continued relationship with the Lab. It’s not quite official yet, but it looks like I’ll be continuing this summer’s research, which I am of course very excited about. I couldn’t ask for a more interesting project, and I lucky to work for a team of wonderful and very dedicated individuals.

Unfortunately, once I’m back at school I’ll be balancing all of this plus a full courseload (including graduate-level mathematical physics. eek!), so I won’t have time to make regular blog posts as I did this summer. However, I’ll still be checking regularly to answer any questions anyone might have, and certainly if we get some involved ones I’d be happy to post a worthy reply. So, please, ask away. From tomorrow on, I’ll be back to campus and have my real computer back and be far more… here.

Ask anything. Technical physics questions, those about life as a researcher, New Mexico, “when am I ever going to use X topic,” whatever.

I hope everyone’s enjoyed my blog. And for those readers who happen to be undergraduates or younger and studying/interested in science, APPLY FOR AN REU PROGRAM as an undergrad. You won’t regret it. It’s probably the best summer job on the planet. You get money AND course credit most places, and it’s the greatest thing for resumes since paper. In most cases, you’ll be together with other like-minded students, providing an instant network and social life. A few words of warning: the application process has been described as a “highly chaotic stochastic process” (i.e. they just roll dice), so apply to lots. Also, some REU projects are just really lame, so make sure you find out what you’d actually be doing and get in touch with an advisor before agreeing to anything. If you play your cards right, you too will soon be telling everyone to apply for REU positions in capital letters.

As always, thank you for reading. Best wishes to all, and I hope to have some questions/comments to respond to when I get back to campus.

Cheers,
Andy

[EDIT: I'm not sure why, but comments were turned off. Fixed.]