Nolan Roth, 2019 NASA Goddard Space Center Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: High Point University

I’m a double major in physics and computer science at High Point University outside of Greensboro North Carolina. I grew up surrounded by science, with my mother as my high school Physical Science, Chemistry, and Physics teacher and my older brother studying high energy particle physics. I eventually found my passion for physics as well. When I started my freshman year at HPU, I immediately got involved with physics research, and, by extension, SPS. Over the last three years, I’ve had the honor to see our SPS chapter grow stronger and stronger, and I hope to help continue that growth next year as we make a big transition into a new science building. I have taken on more responsibility within our chapter, currently as Treasurer, and within SPS nationally, serving as AZC for Zone 5 during the 2018-2019 term.

I have had so many wonderful opportunities from our small physics department to take part in research both in and out of the classroom. As part of our rocketry team, I’ve helped build high power sounding rockets and take them to compete in New Mexico. I have also studied the biophysical properties of fibrin networks and clots, inspiring me to pursue a continuing program in biophysics. My interests also extend outside of physics! I love to read and write fiction, I’ve found myself involved in comedy improv, and I play trumpet for a small professional brass group.

Internship

Host: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Project

Abstract

The Mini Electron Probe Micro Analyzer (MiniEPMA) project aims to create an instrument capable of mapping the elemental composition of a mineral target on an airless body (e.g. a comet, asteroid, or moon). The instrument will use cold-cathode field emission between a 10 by 10 addressable array of carbon nanotube (CNT) forests on a silicon microchip and a grounded grid to generate electrons. Those electrons will then be further accelerated onto the surface of the sample, exciting X-rays characteristic of the elemental composition of that surface. The X-rays can be measured using a silicon drift detector to give the surface composition of the region illuminated by the electron beam from each CNT forest. From this, we will be able to produce a fine-scale map of the elemental composition. Still in early testing phases, the project’s current goal is to examine the effect of new CNT forest patterning on emission properties. In this talk, I walk through the life-cycle of a microchip from synthesis to testing to data analysis.

Final Presentation

Internship Blog

Yay!

Intern’s Log

Stardate 72883.9

“Breaking news: scientists have discovered how to shove an entire month into seven days,” something I wouldn’t be surprised to hear after this last week in D.C. In a blinding flash of faster-than-light travel, I’ve driven from Greensboro, North Carolina, to George Washington University in D.C, watched two of my college friends get married, gotten an official NASA access badge for my work at Goddard Space Flight Center, and been thrown into the relentless 200 mile-per-hour whirlwind of research, and, in the midst of it all, I found some time to get out on the river and kayak with the other interns. Let’s hit the rewind button:

This week marked my first week of research off the campus of High Point University. Within an hour of my arrival at Goddard Space Flight Center this Tuesday, I was introduced to my advisers—Adrian Southard and Larry Hess—as well as the other scientists and engineers working to administer and design the project that will joyfully consume the next 10 weeks of my summer. That project: the MiniEPMA, or mini- electron probe micro analyzer. With both ‘mini’ and ‘micro’ in the name, you can understand that it’s quite small. The MiniEPMA device is essentially an x-ray spectrometer that uses carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in cold cathode field emission to bombard a sample with high-energy electrons. The apparatus would be perfect for high-resolution spectrometry on the moon, comets, asteroids, or generally any airless body.

Suggestion to any future interns working on the MiniEPMA project: do any and all readings before you arrive! Coming in with an understanding of the project and the science behind it was unbelievably helpful and is what allowed me to get a running start.

The rest of that week saw me busy with my first assignment, and, thankfully, ended with my first reward: the Detector Development Laboratory (DDL). Larry surprised me on Friday with a trip into the clean room to get a jump-start on microscopy for the CNTs: I had to put on a full bunny suit, with two pairs of isolating boots, face masks, and a double-layer of gloves. The DDL seemed like one of those movies where they show scientists wading around in big white suits operating massive ambiguous devices, except it was real life: the scientists knew what they were doing, the devices had names, and the science was serious. I was floored, almost literally a few times (it’s weird to walk in those suits; I’ll get pictures for next week’s blog). After spending a little over five hours in the DDL and missing my usual bus to get home, I walked away with the first measurements of my summer.

Ah, but what is a good week without good people? Possibly rivaling my excitement to dive into my research at Goddard is my excitement to get to know all of the other AIP interns. It seems like we’ve already spent so much time together touring the city and hanging out! Bubble Tea at the National Mall? Check. Milkshakes at Captain Cookie? Check. Kayaking the Potomac? Double Check. Jackbox and card games? Double-Double Check. What’s next? Who knows.

Signing off,

Getting into the Groove

Intern’s Log

Stardate 72903.3

I love public libraries. You get free wifi. You’re surrounded by the diverse People of Washington D.C, just living their lives. It’s one of the only places that I’ve been were a stranger has sat next to me and then fallen asleep. This, I think, is what life in D.C. is all about.

This week at Goddard found me deeply at the mercy of the schedules of others. The unfortunate thing about doing very specific work with high-tech machines is that if the machine stops working, there’s not too many people that can fix it—and chances are, those people are very very busy. So, as I was met with a slight dead end on one avenue of work, I picked up another and started on writing and optimizing a data analysis program in Python (the world’s greatest language, try to convince me otherwise). The most exciting thing about my work this week, I think, is that it will lead to progress next week!

I’d say that most of the hooplah in the last seven days happened outside the high fences of Goddard. I found a positive aspect to my hour-and-a-half long commutes into and out of work: I get to read a lot. I finished two books this week, and am already chomping at the bit to start a few more! On Saturday, I got to experience something unlike anything else: D.C’s Pride Parade. It was an amazing scene of colors and noise, with people cramming the streets and leaning from balconies. I attended the Pride parade with a long-time friend of mine who was in D.C. just for the parade. I loved it! It is one of the only times I’ve seen so many people come together to show that they are proud to be who they are, and that’s beautiful. Besides that, I also started something new: running! A few of the other interns and I took to the streets and went for a run—something that I’ve wanted to get into, but never had the motivation. I guess all I needed was to be surrounded by motivated people.

Speaking of the people: never have I felt such community and friendship grow within a group so quickly. We’ve known each other for barely two weeks, but I already know that they’ll be some of my closest friends throughout the summer. There are few things that I value more than meeting people working towards their dreams, and I am glad to say that I am living among 16 of such people.

By the way, attached is the image of the bunny suit I promised last week.

Boats, Beats, Battlestar Galactica

Intern’s Log

Stardate 72923

I think I could live on a boat—I might even choose it, if such a choice were to arise. There’s something about being on the water that’s unlike anything else—like floating on silver. Or mercury. Or Chris Columbus’ imagining of J.K. Rowling’s imagining of unicorn blood from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Water is inexplicable; beautiful or terrible or calm or cold, it goes where it goes like a kite or a dumb bear. The rules that describe its motion are incredible, but there’s a draw to its unpredictability. A boat is drawn by the currents and the winds, and I think that’s a pretty good life. Once again this week I found myself on the water, as I think I might every week from here on out. SPS / AIP gifted all the interns (and a number of the SPS National staff) with a night out on the Anacosta River, complete with a lobster-creme soup appetizer, a picturesque sunset, and a kick-line reminiscent of the far-outdated Rockettes. Added treat, I got to sit near the All-Father Brad Conrad and contemplate scenarios involving possible murder clowns. Who’s to say that we were being ridiculous at a fancy venue? It was fun! It was a time unlike any other—and I think there’s a certain jazz to keeping a certain amount of ridiculous hanging around.

Speaking of ridiculous, let’s talk about the piano virtuoso Kevin Cole, who performed in Gerschwin’s Concerto in F at the National Orchestral Institute + Festival event at the University of Maryland which SPS / AIP generously invited us to. Of all the songs played by the orchestra that night, none could match the bouncing, flaming energy that Kevin Cole channeled through the piano in the finale. The music was inspiring! My fingers itched for my trumpet, for ‘50s Big Band bananzas and the high-rising orchestral lines of Dvorak’s New World Symphony. I couldn’t keep a smile off my face the entire performance—and my disbelief was only grown after looking up a little history on Kevin Cole: within the last few years, he had a golf-ball sized brain tumor removed and was back on the piano before he had two months of recovery under his belt. Take a break from what you love doing? Never. That’s grit, and it’s pretty incredible. It reminds me to never stop working at what I want to do or accomplish. To choose to be diligent and persevere.

A little hard work payed off for me too—week three (“Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.”) at NASA was tossed forward at leaps and bounds and bounces! The test fixture that wasn’t working? Works now. The software I didn’t have access to? Accessed. The data analysis program I was writing? It’s beautiful. Round two of clean room training? Under way. My work at Goddard has only gotten more exciting. The days fly by as I’m fully engaged and excited by the work I’m doing. I learn so much each and every day, meet new people, and push myself to the reach a little higher. Talk more. Ask more questions, challenge myself. Find new solutions to old problems.

And never turn down the opportunity for a new memory! Shout your heart out at a karaoke bar, then when you go home, bring the karaoke with you. Go for a 1 a.m. jog to the Lincoln Memorial. Crash an HBO TV shoot. Smile big smiles! Be like a boat—go where the water goes.

Battlestar Galactica? Battlestar Galactica is a second-rate re-imagining of Star Trek.

Shooting for the 4th Octave

Intern’s Log

Stardate 72942.3

Ya know, there aren’t too many things better than teaching. The other interns and I had the opportunity to join many other scientists on the National Mall for Astronomy on the Mall night to teach kids about science and the universe outside of the confines of our world. Throughout the night I had the opportunity to see hundreds of people gather for the common purpose of learning. Children, adults, and grandparents alike participated in my and others’ demonstrations, and it got me thinking: teaching builds a relationship quite unlike anything else—just about everyone’s had a teacher sometime in their life that’s influenced them, given them something they could take away, or at least made them think a little bit deeper. For me? I was lucky enough to know a teacher from Day 1—and not just any teacher, a science teacher. I grew up in a house where after school I got to look forward to test-running the next day’s lab on the kitchen table with my mom. Peel the m’s off of the M&M’s before bed. Turn a penny gold on the stovetop. Make a mini flame-thrower. Predict the future whirling in the soapy crystal-ball of water vapor condensed by dry ice. The best part about teaching is that you don’t have to be paid to teach to be a teacher. Anyone can take the time to sit down and make someone else a little bit more knowledgeable, more talented, more worldly, more thoughtful.

Teach by example. Be the person you would want to emulate. Teach with enthusiasm and emotion, with a story and a smile. Make sure that whatever you do, it is in an effort to help others, to give other people a memory they can take with them and build upon. This is what I strive to do with my pursuit of science. Science is service. I write this frequently because I truly believe it. Making a kid smile with a science demonstration, even one as simple as swinging a tube in circles, is one of the most rewarding things in my mind. I want to encourage kids to pursue the sciences, to be curious, to shoot for the stars, just like my parents did for me.

Astronomy on the Mall? Definitely one of my summer highlights.

Ice is Nice and Children are Bad at Painting

Intern’s Log

Stardate 72968.9

“Here, take some ice.” I glanced up from my notebook. I was leaning on a short metal pole under a bus stop overhang, the heat and humidity surpassing “oppressive” on a one-way street to “miserable.” There was a man in front of me, shorter, older. His balding head was glistening where he had dumped some ice to cool down. He was gesturing to the clear plastic bag he held in his other hand, half filled with ice and water. “It is hot, this will help!” His voice was heavily accented, somewhere Mediterranean, I figured. He had a few other dusty bags and an oil painting of a birch forest with him. I thanked him for the ice, put away my notebook, and dumped some of the freezing water over my hair. He was right—it was hot, and ice is amazing.

As I waited for my ride, I talked more to this man. “No no no... A child painted this. I am going to fix it. Don’t you see that it is bad? I am an artist. Well, I am retired now, but I have been an artist all of my life,” said the heavily-accented man. “I sell them at flea markets,” continued the (soon to be) self-proclaimed King of Flea Markets. “I get there first. Then I can get the good stuff, and sell it early with my paintings. That is the trick! Nobody buys after eleven, so then I go home. The Fairfax flea market is best. The people there want to buy things, not just look.”

My friend pulled up, and I climbed into his old blue pickup as I said goodbye to the man, whom I learned was from Morocco and spoke at least six languages (“We had to learn all of them just to get by!”). We drove west, out to a town that was a strange mix of country (we saw a few kids in muddy clothes toting fishing poles and tackle boxes) and yuppie (the common-area grasses were all finely mowed, and the outlet stores weren’t even on Google Maps yet) to watch a multi-group improv competition. For three hours, we watched thirty people make fools of themselves on stage. There’s nothing quite like unscripted comedy, when the performers can’t help from laughing along with the audience, when the next scene could be about “wombat windows” or “donkey pants”. There’s also a huge difference between performing and observing. Three years in my college improv group has left me embarrassed in front of hundreds of people, seen me rolling around on stage with laughter, caught me in a dress pretending to be a newswoman. But many of the times I’m on stage, I’m not thinking about what the audience is seeing—I’m engrossed in what’s going on right in front of me. Who I am right then and there, and what I need to do next. Watching improv, all I need to do is laugh. Laugh more, and louder, even if no one else does, because I know how discouraging it can be when you’re on stage, staring into silence.

It’s okay if people glance your way, curious as to why you’re laughing so loud. Step outside of your comfort zone. Stop to talk to the Moroccan man at the bus stop. Have a trumpet-guitar-recorder-harmonica jam sesh in the grass. Get on stage and embarrass yourself in front of everyone you care about. Wear a bright-orange bucket hat, because you should never take yourself too seriously. Life’s a lot more fun that way.

“Wow! But what did you actually do this week?” Alright. I get it. Here ya go: I finished up a multi-week cycle of microchip characterization tests at work (woo!), suited back up into my bunny suit to load another set of microchips into the testing fixture, made an incredible amount of plots and graphs, played multiple games of trivia but didn’t quite take the win in any of them, watched a bunch of congresspeople throw baseballs at each other, and flipped a staggering number of crepes.

Enjoy the snow (if it’s snowing when you’re reading this),

Error 006: Blog Post Not Found

Intern’s Blog

Stardate 72987.8

Sometimes, there are little eccentricities in daily work, tiny unforeseeable, ungovernable, unstoppable happenings that manifest less than blips on a radar. Sometimes these blips are fraction-of-a-second power hiccups. Sometimes these power hiccups damage circuitry in vacuum pump controller boxes, and sometimes those controller boxes are vital to your research. Basically, I reference Eric Roth’s screenplay of Forrest Gump, Scene 114, line 7.

Yet the world spins on, deadlines are tyrants of time blind to the stumbles of the workers upon whose backs they stamp. So, what option do you have except to figure it out? Research the problem. “What does Error 006 mean? What do the symptoms of the pump tell about the problem and its solutions?” Try your own solutions, and if they don’t work, ask for help. Find someone who has encountered these problems before, and if they can’t help, see if you can get a replacement. It turns out there’s a spare pump with one of the members of the team, but the pump connections are different from the old, sadly broken, pump.

So, what option do you have except to make it work? Dig through cabinets of vacuum hardware, salvage old projects, re-work the system so that the system works for you. In the end, after a few days of failed pump-downs, a number of face-palm-worthy mistakes, tens of gaskets wasted, and hundreds of bolts bolted then unbolted then bolted again, it might just work, and that’s the way of things. Get your hands dirty, you can always wash them later. When it’s all said and done, you might come out of it knowing a hell of a lot more about high vacuum hardware.

Then, much like the time-tyrant deadlines, you dust your self off and keep moving. There’s tests to run—and fun to be had! Almost as a requiem and recompense for the frustrations of the vacuum-pump snaffoo, the universe mercifully laid the work week to rest on that Wednesday; Independence Day Eve. That night, I made a trip down to good ol’ Ronny Reagan National Airopuerto to meet up with my girlfriend, fresh off a flight from Colorado.

The next five days made a super-sonic whoosh as they cracked by, leaving only flash-blind images of a Fourth of July cookout, a John Stamos-Lindsey Stirling-Carole King-Vanessa Carlson concert viewed from high on the capitol steps, the story-filled power-duo of the American History Museum and Museum of Natural Science, amazing make-your-own pizza, adventures in Chinatown and with college-town friends, kayak flourishes, running through a monsoon, music, and a little bit of writing.

“The Classic Unsolved Problem of the Student”

Intern’s Blog

Stardate 73012.1

It’s hard to know what you want to do for the rest of your life if you don’t really know what’s out there to be done. “Oh, the classic unsolved problem of the student! However can it be approached?” You may ask. Ah, but I offer an effort towards a solution: One of the great things about this internship is that it works towards a remedy to that problem. Throughout the program, the interns at each location (NIST, NASA, OSA, ACP, etc) have to organize a tour of the respective locations—it could include labs the interns work in, their office space, project showrooms, libraries or display cases; really anything in the location! These tours help show the variety of physics; the sides that tend to sleuth away from the spotlight. Physics is not just research—it’s writing, communication, education, outreach, design, humanitarian, historical, and social. There are many people that could benefit from seeing these different outlets of physics, or from diversifying their network of research opportunities. I definitely have.

On Tuesday we tromped around the nation’s (in some ways ailing) brain, the Capitol. Gia showed us the congressional offices, the congressional hallways, the congressional statues, the congressional bathrooms, the congressional food court, and we even got to meet with a congressional congressman! The highlight of the day was definitely the (45 turned 60 minute) meeting with Illinois rep Bill Foster, the only congressperson to have a Ph.D. in Physics. The meeting with him was riveting! He spoke on his past, the moral issues of the present, and how to make a difference in the future. He gave book recommendations (one of which, Sapeins, by Yuval Noah Harari, may be my new favorite non-fiction book of all time) and asked each of us a little about our summer work. It was a wonderful opportunity, and I believe each of us walked out with a little extra knowledge on the direction of science and science policy.

Much like a back-to-back gunslinger duet of networking, Thursday featured the NASA tour (which in turn featured the annual NASA Summer Jamboree.) Our feet zigzagged across the campus of Goddard, popping into buildings, walking through research labs, visiting giftshops, and notably the Summer Jamboree.

Each summer, NASA hosts a large event open to the public (-ish, you still need badges to get on campus) during which many of the large projects set up booths and bring demonstrations or models to teach other people about what they do. It was a hotbed of science research, and I loved it. I wended my way through the crowds of curious people gathering the many pounds of free stickers, bags, posters, and fliers. A few projects caught my eye; I chatted with the presenters and bounced around until I found project leads. I introduced myself, talked some more, exchanged cards and learned about some amazing science being done that I would love to get in on, two of which are the TEMPO space communications network project and the DISCOVER supercomputer in the NASA Center for Climate Simulation.

It’s still hard to know what I want to do for the rest of my life, but now I know a little bit more of what’s out there. The “classic unsolved problem of the student” may not be completely solved, but at least it has been chipped away at.

Keep chipping,