APS March Meeting

Through a wonderful coincidence, the past week was both spring break for Rhodes and the annual American Physical Society (APS) March Meeting in Los Angeles. Now, Matthew and I both had received funds through SPS to attend a conference of our choice (me through my internship, him through a scholarship), so we thought a trip to LA was in order. In an even happier turn of events, most of my intern friends from this summer also decided to attend APS March, so we had a lovely little reunion!

Interns reunited!

The conference was a total blast. I attended talks about science policy, the history of physics in the Soviet Union, jobs for physics majors, robophysics, embiopteran silk, patent law, medical imaging techniques, and carbon nanotubes. About 12,000 physicists attended this year and there were around 60 presentation sessions going on at any given time from 8:00am to 5:30pm. I think my favorite part was just walking around and hearing snippets of conversation: "so we decided to go the annealing route and...", "basically, all we do is use phase-coupled oscillator models...", "have you ever considered an epitaxially-grown approach?"

It was all a flurry of activity interspersed with materials science, but there were definitely some highlights. In one talk, a researcher at MIT showed us a video of a fish swimming upstream-- not really groundbreaking, except for the fact that it was dead! She walked us through some of her work that models the structure of the fish in order to create highly efficient swimming robots. Another was given by an undergraduate who had combined his physics and music majors to create a company and develop an app that simulates quantum physics using a basic piano concept. I spoke with him later that day and we had a great little chat about philosophies for teaching physics.

I also attended a lecture by Barry Barish, who is one of the most famous names in physics right now, since his work at LIGO led to the very first detection of gravitational waves and his Nobel Prize last year. He gave a very good introduction to gravity waves and how they were measured at LIGO, but I was a little disappointed he didn't cover anything beyond what I (and most of his audience) already knew. But it was still amazing to see him in person!

Here's my favorite presenter of all!

 Of course, a lot of my time was spent running to and from my friends' (and Matthew's) presentations, and I also got a chance to present an overview of my work on Capitol Hill. I don't know whether it was a coincidence in the timing, or whether people actually wanted to attend my talk, but there was a huge influx into the session right before I gave my presentation so I actually had quite a decent audience. I was delighted to receive a follow-up email from one audience member who works at Los Alamos and we met up the next day for a great conversation on science policy.

Professor Vieira shared this excellent bingo sheet with me. I got almost all of them.

While the meeting was extremely busy, I also managed to find time for a bit of fun. The other interns and I went out for lunch a couple of times and drinks after the conference, and I also grabbed dinner with one of my professors and another Rhodes student (oh, and Matthew). On Thursday night we finally went out to see Black Panther! I also got lunch with Courtney Lemon (who formerly worked for SPS National) and Riley at In-n-Out (a West Coast staple) and went for a quick drive through Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Friday, Matthew and I spent the day seeing what we could of LA, but that's a story for another blog post!

Anyway, I'm back safe and sound and thoroughly exhausted. But I had an absolutely fantastic time hanging out with all my physics people and I can't wait to see them again!