latex - SSP International https://summerscience.org "The educational experience of a lifetime"...since 1959 Fri, 19 Jul 2024 23:27:49 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.5 Astro GCSU: Kaan’s Birthday Post https://summerscience.org/astro-gcsu-kaans-birthday-post/ Fri, 19 Jul 2024 23:27:48 +0000 https://summerscience.org/?p=22847 Hello everyone, the day that was supposed to start at 8:40 started at 7:30 thanks to one of my suitemates’ […]

The post Astro GCSU: Kaan’s Birthday Post first appeared on SSP International.

]]>
Hello everyone, the day that was supposed to start at 8:40 started at 7:30 thanks to one of my suitemates’ addiction to listening to loud pop music in the shower; this day also happened to be my birthday – so happy birthday to me! After lying half-awake on the bed for an hour, Andrew, my suitemate; Pranav, my roommate; and I went to get a well deserved breakfast. After delicately consuming our well deserved bananas, we headed back to Herty for a lecture. We didn’t know exactly what to expect as the schedule was a little different than usual since we had a guest speaker visiting us and a lot of work to do on the report. 

Nevertheless, there was no better way to start the day than Dr. M’s E&M lecture; we went through Biot Savart Law (Bee-oh Suh-var according to Pierre – the French guy) and magnetism in general. Learnt new great concepts. However, perhaps the funniest part of class was witnessing the confused dead-silence after Dr. M repeatedly said “I know most of you had already seen this before” when going over the differential forms of E&M equations when in fact the majority of the class, if not all, was seeing these equations for the first time in their lives. The lecture ended at approximately 11am and we had work time until lunch and after lunch to 3.30pm – this was when we went back to the dorm to dress up for our guest speaker Dr. Barrientos. And just before Michael C. attacked Andrew N. with a compressed water bottle, everyone seems to be fed up of Michael C.’s violent demeanor. (just joking Michael is probably the nicest and kindest person I ever knew)

Anyways, thanks to Dr. Barrientos’s beautiful presentation on the effects of surgery and high fat diets on rat’s declining cognitive abilities, I decided to avoid getting surgeries and eating burgers for a life-time. Not so sure on how to avoid surgeries but we’ll work on it hopefully. The group promptly headed to the dining hall when Dr. Barrientos finished answering questions; we sang Happy Birthday a multitude of times while having dinner as well. Thanks to all my fellow cohortmates! We of course went to work after dinner; this work session proved to be particularly fruitful to me because I learnt how to draw LaTeX diagrams – I wanted to learn this for over a year but never had the opportunity to do so. It is a little sad that the only visual I have from the day is a scientific diagram, but all sadness turns into the purest form of joy when you look at this diagram – look at this beauty!!!

-Kaan

The post Astro GCSU: Kaan’s Birthday Post first appeared on SSP International.

]]>
The Last 15 Hours or so https://summerscience.org/the-last-15-hours-or-so/ Wed, 07 Jul 2021 18:58:22 +0000 https://summerscience.org/?p=11080 By: Jeremy Y I legit don’t know what to talk about, but I guess I’ll just go through my day, […]

The post The Last 15 Hours or so first appeared on SSP International.

]]>

By: Jeremy Y

I legit don’t know what to talk about, but I guess I’ll just go through my day, which honestly flew by pretty fast. I went to sleep the previous night thinking there was no pset due, so I was ready to just chill for today. The first lecture of the day was an introduction to the actual orbit determination and went over angular momentum and direction to perihelion. I think the main motto from that lecture is that whenever numbers are ugly, astronomers just set them equal to 1 and mess with the units — which is actually pretty genius. Either way, the cross products had me tripping a little during the lecture but in  the end it made sense (sorta).

During the break, we played some skribbl. We started with the normal words and tried to do astrophysics words later, but that didn’t really work out. The game was a lot of fun, but I think the best part was Andrew L guessing “bans” on a 4-letter word when the hint was _ A _ _, the answer was NASA, and Sunny had drawn its logo (essentially perfectly). Anyway, here’s a cracked drawing on Elon Musk.

Goated drawing of Elon Musk by Andrew L

Next part of lecture was a LaTeX workshop of sorts, hosted by the great Dr. H. I was somewhat familiar with LaTeX before coming into the program, but there’s still a ton of stuff that I needed to brush up on. After going over a quick tutorial, we got into our observing groups and practiced working on a template doc and making a bibliography. Below you can see one of our versions of one page in the doc. Just as a disclaimer, the instructions for the activity said to “type silly things into it,” and the picture is of a famous guy from a well-known meme (if you don’t know, just ask me what’s DN)!

Snapshot from the LaTeX workshop (disclaimer: the instructions said to “type silly things into it”)

Between the second lecture block and the workplay block, I kinda just existed. I lowkey forgot what I did during that time. Anyway, it turned out that there was a typo and that there was actually some orbit determination code due, but it didn’t turn out to be that bad; I honestly feel that the hardest part was just reading the data in, but it was kinda fun. It also feels kinda cool to be compiling our code and prepping it for the actual OD. 

After finishing the OD pset during the first part of workplay (which consisted of a little bit of trolling, my apologies to Sarah, Hillary, and Andrew L), I ended up hopping on Minecraft with a few peeps to grind a little bit. It feels like we made progress, even though we spent like 30 minutes taking the photo shown below (it looks very cool though, pog).

Minecraft goats Vinny, Ian, Neil, Andrew L, Alex Y, and me (full diamond btw, thanks Vinny)

Shoutout to Vinny for legit mining a full set of diamond in like 5 minutes. Neil’s boat clutch also got unintentionally memed by Mason. Also, we need more people to join the server — it’s very friendly and collaborative.

Now, for some closing thoughts on the program as a whole, I feel like a lot of previous blogs have already said it but SSP is pretty awesome. Even though it’s kinda unfortunate that we are online and not in-person, the professors, TAs, Ms. M, and just everyone as a whole has done an amazing job of making the program a great experience, and I can’t believe how much I’ve learned in just these past few weeks. Finally, I don’t think it needs to be said again, but everyone here is actually so cool.

About Me

Hi, I’m Jeremy, a rising senior from Coppell, Texas. I have one older brother who is gonna be a senior in college and sadly no pets. My favorite subjects are math and CS, but SSP has started to warm me up to some astro stuff. I enjoy competing in tennis tournaments and math contests, and I’m a semi-avid anime watcher and chess player. Also, add me on league, but after the program is over.

The post The Last 15 Hours or so first appeared on SSP International.

]]>
The Beginning of a Journey https://summerscience.org/the-beginning-of-a-journey/ Tue, 22 Jun 2021 16:44:19 +0000 https://summerscience.org/?p=10463 By: Sunny W To be completely transparent, I had absolutely no idea that I volunteered myself to write this first […]

The post The Beginning of a Journey first appeared on SSP International.

]]>

By: Sunny W

To be completely transparent, I had absolutely no idea that I volunteered myself to write this first blog. Kimberly had offered a hand-drawn portrait of whoever volunteered first, so needless to say, I confidently took the offer without any knowledge of what it was. Pictured below is the fruit of my labor:

Now, onto my thoughts: 

 

The first day definitely took me by storm. From everything I’ve heard about SSP, I knew going in that it would be notoriously difficult. But it still managed to exceed my expectations. Class moved at a relatively fast pace, the first Pset looks pretty daunting (can’t wait to start it), and I’m surprised at how much we were able to cover in just one day. I’m one of many SSP students who came in with a decent amount of programming experience but no astrophysics experience whatsoever, and it felt like I was constantly bombarded with new terms and definitions.

Watching the North Star from a small French Village.

But in a sense, that difficulty was what made it so enjoyable for me. It reminded me of the first time I attempted to learn calculus or programming; the exhilaration of diving into a brand-new subject is simply unmatched. The open-ended nature of exploring the different asteroids and browsing through Stellarium was an experience that no school assignment could offer. Even though my hand hurts from clicking through JPL Horizons hundreds of times, I found that struggling through something is often the best way to learn it.

Some data from researching a couple of asteroids.

Aside from all the academics, the people were what made the program great for me. The emphasis on collaboration was apparent even on the first day, with frequent opportunities to work and discuss in groups. Instructors and TA’s were eager to help, and the overall environment was encouraging and collaborative. It was impressive how “social” the program was, despite not being able to meet in person.

The correct pronunciation of LaTeX, courtesy of ZP.

The soup theme has spawned the creation of “The Primordial Soups,” the observatory group consisting of myself, Amanda, and Sarah B. While working through the 5 hour break analyzing the twelve different asteroids and formatting our proposal in LaTeX, we were able to bond over a common theme: that SSP was kind of hard. If this would be considered the “easy” portion of the program, I can’t wait to see what’s left in store for us.

A tiktaalik reminiscing about the days in the primordial soup, contemplating whether evolution was truly worth it. Credit to Sarah B for the excellent photoshop.

Only SSP could make sitting at my computer for 11 hours enjoyable.

-Sunny W, SSP ‘21

About Me

Hi! My name is Sunny W and I am a rising senior at Camas High School in Camas, Washington. I live with my parents, my sister, and my cat, Mochi, who is very fluffy and almost one year old. My hobbies include programming, playing tennis, folding origami, playing piano, and now astrophysics. I’m an avid competitor in Science Olympiad as well as science fairs such as ISEF, and I plan to major in a STEM field such as computer science. I’m really enjoying SSP so far and I’m excited to see where it goes!

Mochi + Me!

The post The Beginning of a Journey first appeared on SSP International.

]]>