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Summer Visit - 2013 - C-CWEL

The summer visit to Caltech is 3-4 days long and is the only time during the year of work when all the participants on the team come together in person to work intensively on the data. Generally, each educator may bring up to two students to the summer visit that are paid for by NITARP, and they may raise funds to bring two more. The teams work at Caltech; the summer visit typically includes a half-day tour of JPL, which is a favorite site for group photos. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The "C-CWEL" team came to visit in August 2013. The core team educators attended, plus 11 students.

Quotes

  • [Three best things about this trip:] Learning a new skill and the great gains in understanding and knowledge about the subject. Watching the students from a wide variety of locations and background come together and form friendships, working relationships, and build support for the project and each other. Getting the opportunity to work on a project such as this with other educators from various disciplines and backgrounds come together to form friendships, working relationships, and build support for the project and each other.
  • [student: This experience] made me realize that the astronomy shows I love to watch are way, way, way simplified. Real astronomy requires a deeper understanding of math and many other sciences as well as a ton of persistence. It also made me realize that most astronomers don't spend all of their nights looking through a telescope. A lot of astronomers receive data from a telescope and then spend months analyzing that data.
  • [student: Advice for others: ] be ready to work! This was an amazing experience, but is not for the faint of heart or those looking for a “summer camp” experience. That being said; do not pass up on this. I had an amazing time, learned a lot, and had fun.
  • [student:] A lot of data analysis was something I expected coming into this trip. However, I don’t believe I expected so much of the data to be so quantitative. This stems from my preconceived notions of astronomy having more to do with the real time viewing of the sky. The other thing I don’t think I expected was using a tool so common as excel to process “real” data. This is because it is so commonplace. It is interesting to see a tool you have been familiar with from a young age used at such a high level, doing things with you didn’t know it was capable of.
  • [student:] I was surprised that there were no clean, concrete answers. A lot of the time we had to look at information and make decisions and assumptions based on the data and our previous knowledge. No one was going to tell us that a star we were looking at was definitely a YSO. Science in the real world is more subjective and that is a lot different from how we learn in a school science lab. Things are messy and unclear because we're still trying to figure things out. There are anomalies that we can't explain yet, but that's why we keep researching, examining, and inquiring.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2013 - C-CWEL