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Summer Visit - 2013 - They Might Be Giants

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 "They Might Be Giants" team came to visit in August 2013. The core team educators attended, plus 6 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] The best thing about the trip was being able to learn from and work along side real astronomers.
  • [student:] The importance of using significant digits in calculations was finally explained to me in a way that made it seem relevant and important.
  • [student:] This trip got me even more excited about astronomy, and made me realize that the approaches to solve a problem/analyze data are similar everywhere.
  • [student:] I also observed that [our astronomers] did not always know the answers..sometimes they were as lost in what the data was saying and where our research was going as the rest of us. Scientists don't always know the answers...I think the most impactful thing that I heard was "When scientists know what they're doing, they need to stop. When engineers don't know what they're doing, they need to stop."
  • [student:] The most surprising thing was that I gained a renewed interest in space-stuff!

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2013 - They Might Be Giants