Catherine Ryan, 2019 AIP Niels Bohr Library and Archives

Biography

SPS Chapter: Pennsylvania State University

I am a rising Senior at Penn State majoring in Physics with a minor in Education Policy Studies. I am passionate about equitable science education and making other confident in their STEM skills. At Penn State, I am involved in Homecoming, TEDxPSU, and am an RA. As an RA, I have the opportunity to oversee a fantastic floor of young women who are mostly STEM majors. I love living in this community and seeing them grow throughout the year into confident successful young scientists and engineers.

Internship

Host: American Institute of Physics

Project

Abstract

With the end of the summer comes a new exhibit outside of the Niels Bohr Library and Archives, The History of Black Holes: Or to Physicist, The History of Our Knowledge of Black Holes. This exhibit is a collection of archival materials, Physics Today articles, oral histories, and the result of weeks of research. Black holes are now a common object in sci-fi television and movies. While just 40 years ago they were still an inconceivable part of the anatomy of space. This presentation high lights the human element of physics research. Research of black holes has been affected by not just the limitations of physics and math infrastructure but by small mindedness and war. The purpose of this presentation is to shed light on the events that did not occur in a lab or a lecture but often were a small collection of scientists discussing a topic that puzzled them for decades.

Final Presentation

Internship Blog

Week One Done!

Hi friends! Welcome to my blog!

We are one week into the SPS intern program, and I love it so much already.

Moving in on Sunday was only a little stressful. I have never been in a car in the middle of DC before last Sunday, and that was crazy. Most stressful 3 mile drive I’ve ever experienced. Since moving in the other interns and I have been hanging out a lot and we all get along really well. Memorial day was our first day all together, and we walked around the mall and saw all the sights. I still haven’t gotten used to how close we live to all the amazing attractions in DC. Since Tuesday, we have been mostly at work so, I haven’t gotten much more exploring done, but yesterday most of us went kayaking. You can see pictures of us doing that on Samantha’s blog. She’s my roommate, and we get along super well and have been doing most things together. We’ve been talking about how we both already love DC and want to move here someday. I’ll update you if our opinions change in July when it get even hotter.

The work I have been doing has also been fun and rewarding. While I am the Niels Bohr Library intern, I have also been tasked with helping with the teaching guides that AIP has put together, and I will be focusing on those for June. In July, I will be focusing on the display cases. So, I spent this week familiarizing myself with the teaching guides. I found two that I would like to improve and I did some research and have decided on writing another teaching guide on Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. He’s Chandra of Chandrasekhar’s mass limit of white dwarfs. From the little bit of research I’ve already done, he is a pretty interesting guy.
I’ve loved exploring the library. It is filled with all sorts of cool old books. I mean like really old, like all the way back to some of Galileo’s first books.
I’m really excited about working at the library, and I can’t wait to have more fun exploring the stacks all summer long.

Looking around the Library

I can not believe week two is already over. I hope the whole summer doesn’t go by this fast.
This week I finished my edits on one teaching guide and am now about halfway done my research on my new teaching guide. One day, when I just needed a break from researching, I snuck away for a bit and explored the library. I found a number of books from the late 19th century that were in amazing condition. I found one textbook from 1884 titled “Modern Physics,” which is now slightly humorous. There was another textbook titled, “Forms of Water,” I read a bit of the chapter on lake ice. There is another textbook I found interesting about electron tubes. I did not previously know what they were used for so I read a bit of it. Turns out electron tubes were important in the development of radios. One of the librarians told me that these books hold up so well because in the 19th century they still used mostly cloth-based paper, so it does not deteriorate like modern paper.

On Friday, we had to visitors from the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City come to visit the library. I asked how often they got visitors from other libraries and apparently it only happens about two or three times a year. It was a special treat to get to be included in their visit. After the tour of the library for our visitors, I turned my attention to a new source on Chandrasekhar. I found casset tapes from an APS forum on astrophysics and the history of physics where Chandra was one of the main speakers. I listened to about 10 minutes of the recording before I realized that these tapes might just be a primary source of the book. I checked the sources of the book and sure enough the tapes were listed. Funny thing that can happen when you work at the American Institute of Physics.

Outside of work has been fun too. Last Sunday, after I had already posted my blog we had a movie night. We watched the Ted Bundy movie, with Zac Efron, on Netflix. On Tuesday we had Taco Tuesday hosted by Joseph. His cooking is very good. Sadly I won’t be around this weekend to have fun with the other interns during DC Pride. I’m going home for my younger sister’s high school graduation party.
Update from after I have returned to DC:
The party was fun! I got to see lots of family and friends! I didn’t get sunburned. Still shocked I have not gotten sunburned yet this summer!

Week 3: 2 AM Bus ride and Boat Cruise

This was an odd week for me. I had to travel home Tuesday night for my younger sister’s high school graduation. Then after graduation, I took a 2 AM bus back to DC, from my home in Philadelphia. I got back just before 5 am on Thursday, which means I got back before the metro started running. I do not recommend being awake before public transit is awake.
With the traveling over the weekend and then traveling midweek, it just kind of had me in a weird mood all week. I think after this weekend, I will be back to regular tomorrow morning (Monday). I did have a lovely time with my family this week and I feel extremely privileged to have a summer job that let me take a day off to attend this great moment in my sister’s life. I am also very happy to be working close enough to home to be able to attend.
I also got to see my high school physics teacher at graduation. I told him about this amazing position because even though I graduated high school three years ago, I still seek his approval of the cool physics related stuff I do. He was excited for me, which made me excited.
Work was pretty much the same as last week. I’m still working on the Chandrasekhar teaching guide. I’m trying to edit down the biographical information to just what teachers really need but also trying to make everything understandable. Amber has been a great help with these teaching guides. It is so helpful to have a future teacher in our group of interns. Check out her blog she’s been doing great work and is off to speak at a conference this week!
Outside of work, we did a lot of fun extra stuff. We went on a boat cruise on Thursday night. We went to the orchestra on Saturday. It was all so beautiful and I am so grateful to be at this internship, where we got such wonderful extra activities. These two events where both great opportunities to meet important people from SPS and get to learn from their experiences in AIP and just the world of physics in general.
Overall, week three has been a trip. There still has not been a week of this internship that has not impressed me. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the summer has in store for me!
Sunburn update: Still, have not gotten sunburned! But I have acquired weird sandal tan lines.
PS. Yes, I did do the 2 am bus ride back to DC on the same day as the boat cruise. No, I do not understand how I was able to stay awake for the whole time.

Week 4: Casual Adventure

The funk I was feeling at the end of last week is gone. It just took some weekend R&R. I think it also helps that I’ve learned a lot about what makes me most productive in the office at this point. I like having the extra light on in my cubicle. I have my CUWiP ball to fidget with. I have earbuds that I plug into my computer even if I’m not listening to anything. The mild hum of the computer is just enough to drown out the noises that might be distracting me. Sammi and I get the occasional hot chocolate at 3 pm. Finally, I’ve hung pictures of my friends and family and cute cards.
On Monday, I was finally able to see that the Chandrasekhar background information was almost complete and that gave me a lot more energy and focus.
Tuesday, I got the background information done! My focus then turned to the lesson plan. I really needed to find the right material to focus on. I ended up writing two lesson options. One about the history of black holes and one about the Chandra X-Ray Telescope.

Tuesday morning, I woke up early to buy PSU season football tickets and make food for lunch. This was risky since these tickets usually sell out in a matter of minutes, but I’m a senior I thougt I had it. Short story extra short, I tried to make ravioli for lunch while buying tickets and I succeed at lunch, failed at acquiring tickets. I feel somewhere between a real adult and pure college student. But I’m not sure there is really a stage where I won’t feel like this.
Wednesday night we had our weekly family dinner. We had homemade pizza!
By Thursday, I had the background information cleaned up and I started writing out the lesson plans in the teaching guide template. My goal is to be done the teaching guide completely on Monday.
The exciting thing I discovered while doing my final bit of research about Chandra was that he was the graduate advisor of a physics professor at Penn State so I think I’m going to send the teaching guide to him on Monday. From my research, I’ve learned that Chandra was a man of very high standards so I want to make sure the teaching guide represents him well. It’s really cool to find a connection between Chandra and me.

Outside of work, this was another really great week. Honestly, writing just to you my intern successor, I am sorry if I am hyping you up for this too much. I’m having too good of a summer. How can any summer get better than this one? Well maybe if I met AOC and/or Elizabeth Warren that would make this the best summer ever. If I met them I would cry.

This weekend was just like the past weekends. Amazing. On Friday night, Sammi and I went out with some friends and went to a rooftop bar! The bar had Frose, frozen rose, totally recommend! Saturday was a busy day. I went to the Natural History Museum with a friend from school. The new dinosaur exhibit is great! There were a lot of people but it was still great fun! Once we got back from that it was time for Astronomy on the Mall! I love doing outreach, it can be exhausting, especially when you are standing in the sun for hours but it is so worth it. To see kids and adults all equally interested in learning made me happy. After Astronomy on the Mall, we rewarded ourselves with ice cream! We walked down to George Town and got ice cream then ate it at the waterfront.

Sunday, I layed around and did partically nothing. I really needed it. It was a nice conclusion to the week.

Week 5: This week I read

Early in the week, I handed off my teaching guide to Greg for final edits! So I’ve started on to my next project, the exhibit cases! I’ve decided on doing the cases here on the third floor about the history of our knowledge of black holes. I’m really excited about it. The third exhibit case is going to be, “The Physics of the Metro”. That case is on the ground floor, so I want to make sure it is accessible to everyone who comes to ACP. With the metro case, I also get to do some basic mechanics work so I’ll actually do physics this summer!

In this past week, I read a lot. I’m not usually a big reader so this is a bit of a change. It’s a welcome change. I’ve gotten the opportunity to read the coolest books this summer. On Wednesday, I read the Royal Society’s publication from 1784 which contains the first published thought about black holes. I’d like to emphasize, thought. Not theory, not a proof. The first publication of the thought that gravity could possibly be able to overpower light. That’s crazy it’s from John Michelle in 1783! This guy is relatively unknown because the things we see as profound discoveries now, he tended to put in the footnotes of his papers. So always check the footnotes, they might contain amazing ideas!
While reading John Michelle’s work I also learned about long Ss. They were common prior to the 17th century and come in two varieties. There’s the fancy long S you might be familiar with it looks like this “ʃ ".
Those appear mostly in titles.
The other long Ss appear mostly in the text. They can make reading older materials difficult. I’ve attatched a close up of some of the text from Michelle’s paper. I highly recommend pausing here to read some of it.

The long “S"s look like “f"s don’t they! I was so confused why there were some, what we think of as regular, short “S"s but then words like sun look like fun. Makes reading this material particularly funny.
Up until this learning moment I was trying to think about how I could talk about this research experience in future job interviews and such. In the age of the internet, there are so many research tools it seemed to me that research experience and Microsoft Word experience were on the same bar. Now that I’ve done real archival research I see things differently. I can now put on my resume under special skills, can read documents with long “S"s.
Between reading John Michelle’s paper and reading the entirety of a book about the history of our knowledge of black holes I’ve felt like a real researcher/historian lately. It has been a real eye-opening experience to study how physics concepts become common knowledge in the academic physics world.

Outside of work, we went to science trivia on Tuesday, Wednesday night was the congressional baseball game, and Thursday was breakfast for dinner family dinner night and watching the second democratic debate. We keep ourselves very busy around here and I like it. When we don’t have anything to do it feels weird. I’ve got lots of things going on in July so I don’t think I’ll have many more free days this summer.
And that’s exactly how I like it.

Week 6: A Looonnnggg Weekend

It was a productive three days of work this past week. I got my list of important black hole related events complete and I have most of the blurbs done. I’ve also collected all the images I think I will need for the exhibit cases here on the third floor. While looking through images of stars and galaxies I also happened upon the cutest picture I’ve seen in a while.

https://images.nasa.gov/details-201311070054HQ.html

We love baby scientists.

I felt pretty accomplished by the end of Wednesday. For such a short week I got all my to-do done! Now on Monday, I’ll get to go shopping for the art supplies I need to make my exhibit cases. I’m really excited to get to do arts and crafts! I’m living the life people. By day I research black holes and soon will be doing arts and crafts and by night I spend time in my apartment with a woman who has started to call herself Paddington Bear (see Sammi’s week 6 blog).

Outside of work, I was really excited for this week because my friends came to visit! I have been blessed to have a wonderful gaggle of hometown friends who are also awesome STEM ladies. I could make this whole blog post about how amazing they are but alas I should be talking about the fun things we did.
So my friends, Hannah and Raiddy, got to DC on the 4th and they came along to see fireworks on the capitol steps. The steps tend to get very crowded, so we planned to picnic and socialize from 3ish to 8 pm when the concert started. Unfortunately, the weather did not feel like compiling with this plan, and by 5 we were wet and cold and headed back to Shenkman hall. We dried off, ate our Wawa hoagies, and waited out the lighting.
My friends and I ended up staying in the rest of the night. We found a good viewing spot up on the 10th floor to watch the flyover and fireworks. My friend Hannah is in the Air Force ROTC program at her college, so watching the flyover was a must as was going to the Air and Space Museum the next day. On the 5th my sister also came to visit, so the four of us made the long sweaty trek to the Air and Space Museum. In the evening Hannah and Raiddy got on their bus home to Philadelphia and I took Annie out for a belated birthday dinner. We went to a restaurant called The Unconventional Diner. Highly recommend! After dinner, we went back so I could introduce Annie to the rest of the interns. It was, as usual, a very fun evening full of laughter and jokes. The next morning Annie and I had a few extra hours to explore DC before she got on a bus back to Philly. We went to a small art museum close to Foggy Bottom called the Art Museum of the Americas, a very cute little museum, highly recommend you check it out.
After all the commotion of the week, I ended up getting Sammi’s cold and spent most of Sunday in bed drinking tea. Hoping for a relaxing week of work and fun before I head back to Happy Valley for State College’s annual Arts Fest next weekend. While I love my friends here and all the fun we have I’m missing Penn State and my buds.

Week 7: Guess I’m a library geek now

Welp, it’s Friday of week 8 and I still haven’t posted about week 7. Not that I didn’t try it was just a very big week. We visited Capitol Hill and NASA last week. What more could a science policy nerd like myself love more? I have also realized because of this internship, I get excited about libraries. This internship has allowed me to explore and learn about the interesting and odd materials you can find on the shelves in a library. My excitement comes from the thrill of what I can learn in the library. And that thrill to learn is what also powers my love for physics, so it all comes back to me being a big nerd. On Tuesday, during our Capitol Hill tour, we took a little detour and visited the Library of Congress. I got my readers card and was able to explore the library from a few minutes. I found an interesting book about colonial public education/schools. The reading room at the Library of Congress is beautiful and I highly encourage you to visit. On Thursday, we visited NASA, luckily for us, a jamboree was the same day. Lots of the research groups had tables set up and were giving little talks. The library and archives even had a table. I stopped by to ask their archivist about some materials I’m looking to put in my final presentation. They were very kind and were interested in my research.

At work, it was kind of difficult to get very far in my projects since we only have three days of work again. I did get all the blurbs done for the black hole exhibit. The blurbs just needed a read through by someone else. I collected all the images I need for the black hole exhibits.

This weekend I took a break from my current city life and went back to Happy Valley for the annual art festival. I drove up with my friend Chad, who by coincidence is Nolan’s office buddy at NASA. Crazy how small the world gets when you go to one of the largest universities on the east coast. We got almost too excited to see all the trees and mountains. Life out in central PA moves slower than DC and it was a nice little break from the busy, hot, and humid city.

Week 8: I’m sweating

The blurbs are edited, formatted, and under edits again! Because editing is important! The photos are all collected! They are emailed off to Melonnie! I get really excited and then I remember I still have the third case to research and design! Wow, there is not a lot of time left and I still have lots of stuff to get done. But I’ll get it done. It will be fine, at least that’s what I keep telling myself. I had trouble coming up with physics questions for the metro case. So I asked the actual handful of people who follow me on twitter, what physics questions do you have related to the subway/metro/trains in general. I got a really good question back from someone I went to high school with, about why the subway is so loud. Being from Philadelphia, the subway stations there are way older than the metro and the walls are tiled. It is a great simple tactile physics question! Thanks, Sam! If I ever became a college professor, I would want to teach a course in tactile physics. There aren’t enough fun elective physics and math classes.
Aside from the exhibit cases, I did have some other awesome work moments. I uploaded both the teaching guides I worked on this week! I’m officially published!
Here is the link to my teaching guides: (Alan Turing: I made edits to the biographical material and discussion questions. Chandrasekhar: I wrote completely.)

Alan Turing

https://www.aip.org/history-programs/physics-history/teaching-guides-women-minorities/alan-turing

Chandrasekhar:

https://www.aip.org/history-programs/physics-history/teaching-guides-women-minorities/black-holes-and-telescopes

This weekend was packed with lots of fun as well. My parents came to visit! I missed them and they were troopers putting up with it being so stinking hot. Like this might of been the hottest weekend of the summer. Like the whole east coast was just baking, or here in DC boiling it’s too humid to bake here. Before they got here on Saturday, I was able to squeeze in a short visit to the Library of Congress because I can go to the Library of Congress easily I’m gonna go while I have the chance. Then my parents got to their hotel and we had lunch and hung out. They weren’t too interested in doing super touristy things they just wanted to hang out with me. Which is so nice and sweet. I’m really blessed to have such loving parents.
We did do some museums because you’ve got to while in DC. My mom told me beforehand that she wanted to check out the Newseum. So I bought the tickets and we went after lunch. It was so worth it! A seriously cool museum! That sadly is moving at the start of the new year, but it’s just moving so hopefully it gets a cool new location because it is amazing. The tickets were also good for two days. So, I gave the tickets to some of the other interns so they could go check it out. After the Newseum, my parents and I went to the National Archives because it was really close. We saw the Bill of Rights, Constitution, and Declaration of Independence. My dad thought it was so cool. Growing up in Philadelphia you are close to the historical sights where all these documents were drafted and published but you don’t get to see the actual documents because they are here in DC.
It was a really nice weekend. I’m really happy and sad at the same time. I’m happy and gracious to have this opportunity and job and wonderful new friends and because of how extraordinary this summer is I’m sad now that this is our last two weeks.
Because of these emotions, I bought a DC shot glass at Target. I will cherish it and this summer forever.