Terance Schuh, 2019 NASA Goddard Space Center Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: The College of New Jersey

I am a graduating senior at The College of New Jersey earning a B.S. in physics as well as a B.S. in mathematics. After graduating I plan on pursuing a PhD in some area of astrophysics; my overall goal is to work towards a career in research. During my time as an undergraduate I have been fortunate enough to have worked with some great faculty mentors in the realm of astrophysics. I am excited to work at NASA this summer not only because of the organization’s prestigious reputation, but because I’ll get the opportunity to do research in an area that is relatively new to me. If I were to go back in time 10 years and tell my former self that I would one day have this incredible opportunity there is no way I would have ever believed it.

Beyond research, I am heavily involved in and enthusiastic about physics and astronomy outreach. I really enjoy educating people of all ages and backgrounds in the fundamentals of the subjects. I have served as the president and treasurer of my college’s SPS chapter and I have also served as treasurer of our astronomy club. Outside of physics and science altogether I enjoy baseball, music, and comic books. I have performed several leading roles in musicals and plays growing up, and I am probably the biggest Cleveland Indians fan you’ll ever meet. I can’t wait to meet all the other interns and make so many memories.

Internship

Host: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Project

Abstract

We have developed a model of Rayleigh-Lamb waves propagating through a thin, elastic plate that allows us to evaluate the bi-orthogonality relation between the waves’ different eigenmodes. Our numerical results match the theory, which states that, every pair of eigenmodes is bi-orthogonal with respect to each other. Our findings now enable us to make progress toward better understanding electron-phonon coupling within a multi-layered plate comprised of a thin metallic layer and a thick Silicon-based membrane layer. Furthermore, this work is crucial toward reaching our ultimate goal of improving the current generation of fabrication methods used to make Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) detectors.

Final Presentation

Internship Blog

Week 1: Buses, Trains & Rocketships

Houston...uh, I mean DC...we have lift off! This summer I am thrilled to be the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center research intern! Working at NASA was obviously something I always thought would be awesome, but I never thought I would actually have the opportunity. The past few months my family and friends kept asking me if I was excited for everything to start up and I just kept thinking that there must be a mistake, that none of this is real. Why would someone ever select me, a random kid from lil ol’ New Jersey to come intern at NASA? Well, cat’s out of the bag, it’s real, I’m here, and I’m ready for what lies ahead.

Due to Memorial Day on Monday and orientation on Tuesday, my first real day at Goddard wasn’t until Wednesday. I met my two advisors, Ed and Karwan, and I started learning about what their research team does. With my current understanding of the overall research, I am joining a group that does a mixture of observational cosmology and solid-state physics. In other words, they study how different materials interact with extremely cold temperatures (space temperatures) so they can build microwave and infrared detectors that get put on actual satellites. These satellites then tell us all sorts of things about the history of the universe. It’s pretty cool! Near the end of the week we picked out a project for me to work on, but we are still in the early stages, so I have just been doing a lot of background reading up to this point (tune in next week to find out more details).

Even though I’ve barely started my actual project, I’ve been so excited just learning about everything because the research has so much depth and variety to it. The material I have seen so far combines so many physics and math topics that I learned not so long ago in school in ways I never thought of. For example, partial differential equations and linear algebra are popping up in studies of electromagnetic waves and superconductivity. My physics and math degrees are tying together nicely and it’s just very rewarding to see the immediate pay-off of my college education.

After one week the only downside to everything is that Goddard is FAR from where I am living at George Washington University! Each morning I start by walking a few blocks to the metro station where I take the blue line train to the green line transfer station. On the green line, I ride north to the last stop in Greenbelt, MD. Lastly, I take a metrobus from the Greenbelt station to the Goddard Visitor Center. From there I am just a short walk to my building, but coming in at about 1 hour and 20 minutes each way, the commute is rough. It’s definitely something that will take time adjusting to, but it’s a good real-world experience. I also can’t complain too much because I do it all each day so I can work at NASA. Knowing that makes it all worth it.

In summary, the stage has been set and the experience has officially begun. It’s all going better than I could have ever imagined and I’m excited to see how everything plays out. From the incredible people around me to the work I’ll be doing every day, I know this summer is going to be a good one. Each day I look forward to the next and my only hope is that it all doesn’t go by too fast. Until next week, Terry Schuh signing off.

Week 2: Oh, Magic Gourd

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been in DC for 2 whole weeks already. It’s even harder to believe how so much has happened during that time. In just 14 days I’ve already mastered the Metro, made lifelong friendships with some of the other interns, and learned a whole bunch of new physics. It’s crazy how things are so different from 2 weeks ago, yet it feels like we all just got here yesterday!

Whereas most of my fellow interns already talked a lot about our early-blossoming, incredible group dynamic in their week 1 blogs, I purposely decided to wait it out and do an analysis at the 2-week marker. I’ll start by saying that in all my experiences involving social interactions between physicists, I have always found it extremely interesting how not only does everyone get along so well, but how everyone gets along so quick. To put things into perspective, consider 17 arbitrary football players put together in a camp for 10 weeks. Now there are a lot of types of football players out there. You have your quarterbacks, running backs, linemen, kickers, etc. You’re telling me that by 2 weeks, the 300-pound lineman is going to be best buddies with the scrawny kicker? That doesn’t seem likely in my opinion. Well, realizing that there are so many different types of physicists out there, you might expect the same exact thing to happen with our group, but you’d be wrong. It’s a lot like Quantum Mechanics in that sense. *queue laugh track* Anyway, at t = 24 hours of meeting each other, the 17 of us interns, all with different backgrounds and specific interests within physics, had no problem hitting it off. At t = 2 weeks, a stationary observer watching us eat together at The Magic Gourd Chinese Restaurant would have no clue that we all met each other not so long ago. If you’re not getting it, I’m surrounded by some wonderful people here, and we’ve become so close so fast. These people are amazing, and I already know that I will be friends with them for the rest of my life.

On top of the people here, last week I promised my devoted, supportive fans that I would give them more details pertaining to my specific research project at NASA, so I’ll do my best to deliver on that front. In my experience doing research, it’s been good practice to be able to explain to non-physicists what you are doing and why it matters before you can even think about actually working on the project. However, this particular project is a tough cookie to crack and so much of this past week was spent trying to reach the point where I feel comfortable explaining it. As a test for myself, I’ve decided to make you guys my guinea pigs and attempt to it explain everything to you.

My goal in the next 8 weeks is to make steps toward answering a long-standing question in solid-states physics. The purpose of answering the question is to of course better understand the physics going on, but also improve our methods of fabricating detectors and other various microscopic devices for satellites. We’ll start by imagining we have an arbitrary detector that is composed of a metallic film (conductor) residing on a Silicon-based membrane (insulator). The two materials are both of microscopic size, but they actually have very different thicknesses with the membrane being much thicker compared to the metallic component. Now, when we apply a voltage to the system which generates a current through the metal, this will produce electromagnetic waves that ripple through the detector. Because the membrane is much thicker than the metal, as the waves propagate, they will oscillate at exactly the same rate in both materials and as if the metal is no different compared to the membrane. Now if we increase the thickness of the metal, we will eventually reach a cutoff point where the metal becomes distinct from the membrane and the waves begin to propagate at different rates through each material. The question we are trying to answer is what is that cutoff thickness? I will for sure not be able to answer the question on my own in the time that I have, but my goal is to help my colleagues make progress toward finding an answer.

Hopefully at least some of that made sense, but if not it’s okay. It was definitely good for me to write everything out and at least try to explain it all, but I know there is room for improvement. Either way I have 8 more weeks to really hone in on the project and I have no doubts that I will gain a better understanding of it all. Maybe I’ll try explaining it again in a future blog post and look back to see how far I’ve come. Anyway, if you couldn’t tell, after 2 weeks things are going really well here in Foggy Bottom. I’m learning so much and I’m making so many memories I soon won’t forget. I hope you enjoyed reading and be sure to tune in next week. For now, Terry Schuh signing off.

Week 3: α β γ, easy as 1 2 3

Help, I have a problem!

Physics has consumed me.

This past week, as I’m sure you’ve heard from the other blogs, our group had a little more fun than usual i.e. we went on a dinner cruise, attended a breathtaking orchestra concert, went to some museums, had a mac-and-cheese cook-off, etc. All these events were a blast, but together they made me realize that I have let physics take over my life to the point where it’s pretty much all I think about. I’m not sure if it’s a bad problem to have, but it’s definitely not one that is relatable to most. Allow me to elaborate so you can understand.

I have always enjoyed music. I have sung most of my life and have had the honor to perform at Lincoln Center in New York City. I taught myself to play piano at age 16. Heck, I have way too many Spotify playlists to count.

I have always enjoyed history. I recently took an American culture course and it was so much fun learning about things in history that they never teach you growing up. I think understanding the past plays a significant role in shaping the future. It’s 100% true that the best way to learn is from others and there are for sure a lot of “others” in the subject of history.

I have always enjoyed cooking. When I was little, I used to love helping out in the kitchen. Learning new recipes and mixing together different ingredients, cooking was like kid-friendly chemistry. The best part, if you messed up, you just ate it and tried again.

The point is I have had many interests in my life and have always been able to find a way to appreciate just about any area of study (you should’ve seen how hard it was for me to pick a college major). The problem is though, that ever since I decided to pursue physics further, I have fallen behind in my studies of other subjects. Participating in all the different events this week made me realize that. During the orchestra I kept telling myself that I should learn more about classical music. During the cook-off I was disappointed that I didn’t have a recipe to add to the competition. While touring the museums, I kept thinking how cool it would be to have a more artistic mindset when interpreting different pieces. I started wondering why can’t I just simply pick up some books, talk to some people, and learn about these things? It seems like a simple fix! I used to do it all the time. Well, physics is the reason why.

You see, whenever I have the opportunity to learn about something other than physics these days, physics comes out of nowhere and draws me back in! I literally cannot stop thinking about the subject! It’s like I eat, sleep, and breathe it. Is that unhealthy?

Let me give you some examples. This past week I finished a book I was reading about particle physics and that’s all I could think about the next few days. I must’ve spent like 30 minutes afterwards trying to find a laptop wallpaper of The Standard Model, but let me tell you, I found one and it’s sick. The other night whilst lying in bed I was deriving kinematic equations in my head...for fun?!?! What a loser, amirite? In school, from working with Greek letters so often, I unknowingly learned the whole Greek alphabet (nerd alert). I’m not sure how I got there, but you could show me a Greek letter right now and not only would I know instantly what it was, but also what physics concepts it is related to. When I graduated in May, I decorated my cap by drawing spacetime fabric on it... I had three calendars in my room last semester, and they were all physics-themed. I could go on, but you get the point. What’s wrong with me? I just don’t get it! Someone could shove Shakespeare in my face, and I’d think it was so exciting for about 10 minutes before I got distracted by physics again.

I guess I’ve just let physics take over me the past 4-5 years. It’s such a huge field with so many different subareas to learn about within it that I’ve just become obsessed with it. My mind doesn’t think it needs the other subjects anymore because it has so much to play with in just this one spot!

Don’t get me wrong, I still love physics and you should too, but I’m just confused how I got to this point. This past week made me see just how “bad” it is, but I guess that’s the first step to fixing the problem. Going forward I’ll try to be more aware and hopefully I can one day get back to seeking knowledge of other subjects. Until then, physics is love, physics is life. Terry Schuh signing off.

Week 4: The Rat in the Hat

With 4 weeks now in the book,

I hope this opening line is a good hook.

To start my little tale,

I’ll tell you that I recently acquired some mail.

Sent by my mother, named Kay,

As I opened her gifts, I shouted “No way!”

She sent cookies to my delight.

It made the start of the week pretty alright.

From there, things only got better

The only downside was all the rain made everything quite a bit wetter.

“Preposterous!” our group exclaimed, “No matter the weather,

We’ll have loads of fun, as long as we’re all together.”

With that in mind, Joseph and Bells whipped up some food.

From pizza to banana bread, it sure did put us in a good mood.

Silly me, have I not yet mentioned my job?

By the end of these 10 weeks I know I’m going to sob.

Ignoring that fact, things at NASA are going really well.

Much progress was made this week, I have loads to tell!

I finally understand my project to a tee.

I could sit here forever and talk about it with much glee.

Because of my success, I now have lots on my plate.

Plenty to do this coming week, it’s going to be great.

My research has a lot to do with the study of waves.

We’re sending signals through thin plates to see how everything behaves.

Rather than do it by hand, we employ the use of computer codes.

This allows us to precisely examine all the wave eigenmodes.

Now now, enough of the work that I do

If I keep going on, you’ll think that I’m coocoo!

Instead, let’s move to the fun that was the weekend

Where staying up past midnight seems to be the trend.

On Saturday, our group went to the Mall

So we could teach the wonders of astronomy to all.

Later that night, we walked the streets of Georgetown

And got ice cream, which I gobbled right down.

On Sunday, I spent time with intern Sammi

When the two of us are together we sure are quite the double whammy.

If you didn’t already know, she’s my girlfriend of almost two years

When she heads off to Penn State in the Fall, there’ll be lots of tears.

Anyway, we went to Alexandria and had a nice meal

Where we then sat by the water and watched the sky turn bright teal.

On our way back home, we came across a new sight!

Did you know Foggy Bottom has rats? The news gave me a fright.

Just like the others, this week sure did go fast

I just wish there was a way to make everything last.

I hope you enjoyed my poem that was

I’m sure by tomorrow it’ll be the latest buzz.

To thank my audience for reading, I’ll leave one more line,

Terry Schuh signing off, try not to whine!

Week 5: We Are The Crossword Champions

This one is for my dad.

I’m sure he is proud of me for lots of reasons (graduating college, working at NASA, not doing drugs, yadda yadda yadda), but I have a feeling after he reads this, I’ll have reached a new level with him.

The train/bus ride to work is boring; it’s long, bumpy, and crowded. During the journey it’s natural to want to find a way to pass the time. Looking around you see lots of people read, listen to music, catch some zzz’s, etc. and I must admit I’ve tried them all myself. Recently though, I’ve acquired a new train hobby, one that officially says I am a hardworking American. I have started doing the daily crossword.

Other NASA intern Nolan and I ride to work together every day and at the start of our journey each day we always see the same man at the metro station handing out The Express newspaper. For the first few weeks we assumed you had to pay for it, so we didn’t bother, but one day he just sort of handed a copy to us. I like to think it was fate.

I’m pretty sure since it’s free, The Express is a mediocre newspaper. I wouldn’t really know though because I’ve never actually read any of the articles. I always just go straight to the puzzles and games section. However, it probably also means the crossword is mediocre, but again, it’s free and I’m still a rookie so I don’t really care.

Anyway, once Nolan and I get on the train we get cracking. I know you usually do the crosswords alone, but like I said, we’re rookies so we still need each other. Between the two of us we have pretty much most areas of pop culture covered so it makes getting that 100% completion over the course of the morning and afternoon commutes a likely possibility. Now I’ll admit, I wasn’t addicted the moment I got a few clues right. Like most things, it took a little bit for me to become a fan. I would say I probably got hooked right around when we got 56 across in our 2^nd or 3^rd puzzle. You see, a couple of the answers that day were puns on musical titles where one word was replaced by a meaty food. 56 across was the final clue that tied everything together. “A place to dine while enjoying all the aforementioned meaty performances”. The answer: Avenue Bar-B-Q. That’s where I got the bug. That’s where I turned from an all-is-right-in-the-world young adult to a get-out-of-my-way-on-the-metro-escalator working-class American. I’ve been doing the crossword puzzle every day since.

Now you’re probably wondering how this all connects to my dad. Well, let me tell you, my father is a crossword guru. A Will Shortz disciple, if you will. A true man of the cross. I’m pretty sure he’s been doing newspaper crossword puzzles since well before any of his children were even zygotes. The man craves the literary brainteasers. Whenever we go on family vacations, during the weeks leading up to the trip he stockpiles crosswords from various papers, so he has enough to keep him occupied throughout the week. His ideal vacation is minimal social interactions and lots of newspapers stains. With that in mind, me becoming a fellow crossworder means reaching maximum affinity with my father. I have officially passed his final test. Are you happy now dad?

In summary, somehow or other I’m now hooked on crossword puzzles. I shouldn’t be too surprised that it happened though since I watched my father do them my whole life, so it was bound to happen. Either way, they’re pretty fun and also good mental exercises. They pass the time on the train and it’s a nice way to bond with Nolan. The Express is nowhere near The New York Times, but think of it like physics research. All the great physicists in the world were lil’ interns like me at some point and they probably never would’ve gotten to where they ended up without those experiences. We all gotta start somewhere. Slowly but surely, we’ll reach our dreams, it just takes time. I’m sure one day I’ll be a crossword puzzle champion, but for now I’ll stick with physics. Terry Schuh signing off.

P.S. If you thought this blog post was a lot like Jeremiah’s Week 4 post, you’re right, it was! We discussed it and I had this idea before I read his post, so he was cool with it. Looks like we both got the crossword fever!

Week 6: National Mall’s Vacation

This past week felt like an intermission to a play or musical. Just like in most shows, it came at a point that was just beyond the technical halfway point; it split our 10-week journey into Act I and Act II with the former representing the first 6 weeks and the latter representing the last 4 weeks. Allow me to elaborate.

The United States of America turned two thousand and nineteen years old this past Thursday! Can you believe that? As a result of the holiday, we were given a nice 4-day weekend, and let me tell you, it was much needed. It was a chance to cool off from work for more than just a regular weekend. I got to catch up on some sleep, do some extra exploring in the city, watch some tv (wooo Stranger Things 3), write some letters, etc. The intermission felt like a vacation!

Before we could get to the intermission though, we had to work a short 3-day work week and I was determined to wrap up a lot in that time span. Knowing I had a nice break right in front of me, I set my sights on tying up many loose ends that I didn’t want to have to worry about by the time I came back on Monday. For the past 2 weeks I have been coding my butt off trying to come up with simple yet sophisticated ways to extract specific data from my computational model of Rayleigh-Lamb waves in a thin plate. More specifically I’ve been trying to come up with a method to extract eigenvalues and eigenvectors from a dispersion curve given an arbitrary wave frequency. If you’re confused and wondering how the heck would anyone figure out how to do that, let alone why we’d want to do that, well those are all perfectly reasonable questions I’ve been trying to answer for the past 5 weeks. You see, I’ve known since the beginning that I would eventually have to do all this, but it was going to take a lot of understanding of the underlying physics and math before I could tackle the problem. That’s why for much of the first few weeks I was reading and asking tons of questions to my advisors, rather than just jumping into something that was so daunting. I had to set the stage and develop the plot before I could conclude Act I and achieve that thunderous applause as the curtain closed.

With that being said, I did it! On Wednesday afternoon, at 4:30, right near the end of the day, my code spit out everything I had been after for so long. Given a user-defined wave frequency in a plate, my code can tell you the corresponding eigenvalues and their 9-dimensional eigenvectors (3 displacement components and 6 stress components). Doesn’t sound too impressive yet? It computes this information for over 15,000 coordinate points inside and along the plate! Remember, this is a wave we are sending into the plate so at different points in the plate, it is going to cause varying displacements and stresses to our material. Lastly, the code does this not just for one user-defined frequency, but for as many as you want. These eigenvalues and eigenvectors change as our frequency changes, so if you want to know all this information for every integer frequency between 0 Hz and 5000 Hz, my code can do that too! To top it all off, it computes all this data and outputs it nicely organized in just over 1 minute. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty good. I’m sure you’re all so proud of me.

Now if that still all sounded confusing and I sort of lost you along the way, that’s okay. The point is that I accomplished everything I wanted to going into our mini-vacation. I, of course, have plenty more to do in the remaining weeks, but this week was a huge breakthrough and a great way to conclude Act I of the SPS internship. Here’s to hoping Act II is just as much of a success! Terry Schuh, signing off.

Week 7: Star Tours

Now before you ask, yes, I’m very much aware that my title is also the name of a ride at Disney World. I decided to go with it anyway though because this week, among other exciting adventures, Nolan and I gave our tour of NASA to the rest of the SPS group.

The tour was on Thursday and it went exactly as we planned. We were able to get everyone onto the campus by 10:15am allowing us enough time to explore the Science Jamboree, NASA’s annual showcase of all the research going on at the center. Afterwards we ate lunch on-site and saw the official NASA Goddard library. From there we bussed over to the world’s largest clean room aka the place where the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was built (unfortunately it’s not there anymore). We also met up with my mentor, Ed Wollack, who explained in detail some of Goddard’s other current missions such as WFIRST, HIRMES, and Dragonfly. Lastly, we headed over to the building that Nolan and I work in. We got to see and hear about both of our labs as well as honorary SPS intern, Chad Poz’s. I work in the observational cosmology lab, Nolan works in the planetary environments lab, and Chad works in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) lab. We ended the tour by stopping at the Visitor Center and gift shop where almost everyone purchased some goodies. Although we saw a lot of cool things during the day, the most noteworthy was the rain, or should I say lack of rain. All week leading up to the tour, forecasts were predicting heavy rain for the whole day, but the physics gods must’ve known our tour was going on because it didn’t start raining until we stepped on the return bus at 4pm. Like I said, and I can’t emphasize this enough, the tour was a success.

After the tour we headed over to the American Center for Physics (ACP) for the official SPS intern picnic. Unfortunately, the physics gods must not have liked us too much because the aforementioned rain came in buckets forcing our picnic inside. Nevertheless, it was a still a great way to bring all the interns and mentors together for some awesome food and drink. There were tons of activities and pockets of mingling going on, but I found myself stuck in the longest game of Settlers of Catan ever (over 2 hours)! It was still a good time, but part of me regrets agreeing to play. As you can probably imagine, the tour + picnic made our Thursday very tiring, but it was definitely a nice change of pace from the usual workday.

Now, not only did we give our tour this week, but we also had the privilege of touring intern Gia’s place of employment at Capitol Hill. Without going into too much detail, not only did we see all the major touristy Capitol building stuff, we also went inside The Library of Congress, the congressional house office buildings, and The Capitol Hill underground tunnel system! Then, to top it all off, we got to meet with Rep. Bill Foster, the only physics PhD in congress! It was a pleasure talking with him; you could tell he really enjoyed being in the company of some young physicists. He had some great advice for our SPS cohort and was just, in general, a very insightful man. It was truly the icing on the cake for Gia’s tour. She crushed it!

If you couldn’t already tell, this work week was unique compared to most others, but the weekend on the other hand was full of the same ol shenanigans. The two major highlights this go round were National Mall exploring...at night and physicists vs. Escape Room! On Saturday, a group of us decided to explore the Mall at night around 11pm. Going against my original belief, it was actually a lot of fun. Surprisingly, it was more crowded than I thought, but the cooler temperatures made walking around for a couple hours very doable. We said we might go again this coming weekend. The next day, Sunday, 8 of us went to Alexandria, VA, to test our hands, or should I say brains, at an Escape Room. It was my first ever Escape Room, so I didn’t really know what to expect, but it was honestly a blast. I highly recommend! We escaped the Mad Doctor’s evil chamber in 34 minutes putting us in contention for the fastest time for that room which I’m sure helped in my overall liking of the experience. Like the late-night Mall festivities, we might also do another Escape Room next weekend, we shall see.

In summary, week 7 was a solid week with a lot of perks attached to it. I didn’t get to talk about it, but research is still going very well. I’ve made a lot of progress since my last post so be sure to tune in next week where you’ll find out if I was able to calculate 0. What’s that? Not sure what that even means? Well tune in anyway. For now, Terry Schuh signing off.

Week 8: The Hunt for Red Zero

Ah zero, such a unique number. The perfect balance between positive and negative. What exactly is it though? What does it mean to have zero of something? Does it exist in nature? If we could divide by zero, then we could prove 1 = 2 (an exercise left to the reader). Philosophically, its only rival is infinity...

Enough already, you’re giving me a headache!

I’ve been battling with zero in a different sense. Not so much as to what is it, but more of why can’t I calculate it? Excuse my ignorance, let me get you up to speed.

***Warning! You are about to learn some physics and math! Those of you with weaker constitutions may want to the leave the blog post.***

Welcome to Concepts That Sound Hard, But Are Actually Pretty Simple. I’m professor Schuh and today we’ll be learning about orthogonality!

First thing’s first. Orthogonal is a fancy way of saying perpendicular. It is how mathematicians say things are at right angles with respect to one another. For example, the x-axis and the y-axis that form the well-known x-y coordinate plane are orthogonal to one another because the angle between them is 90°.

Next, we must define something called a vector. Don’t let the term scare you! It’s just a quantity that also has a direction attached to it. What do I mean by that? Well if I say I’m driving my car at 40 MPH and that’s all, then that is just my speed. Speed is not a vector. Now if I say I’m driving 40 MPH northeast, then that is my velocity. Velocity is a vector. As a bonus you now know the difference between speed and velocity.

We’ve now reached what is called the dot product. In short, the dot product is useful when measuring how perpendicular (aka orthogonal) or parallel two vectors are. If the vectors are indeed perpendicular, their dot product will equal 0. For all those physics heads out there, the dot product is important when computing the work done by a force on an object.

Finally, we can define the inner product. Something I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about. The inner product is a more generalized version of the dot product. This time though, we can use it to measure orthogonality between two arbitrary functions as opposed to vectors. Like the dot product, two functions are orthogonal if their inner product equals 0.

Congratulations, you passed! Give yourself a nice pat on the back! To make yourself feel even prouder, I’ll tell you a secret. You just understood some actual concepts you would learn in a general physics class and/or a linear algebra class. Also, if you felt especially confident about the inner product portion, then you technically just learned some calculus. Yeah really! You did! The subject with such a difficult connotation behind it. If it wasn’t for going widely off-track, I would go on my rant about how the concepts of calculus are actually easier to understand than those of algebra, but we’ll save that for another time.

Anyway, you’re now caught up and ready to understand my recent research struggles. In simplest terms I have been trying to prove that two functions are orthogonal. Really, I’m trying to show they are what is called bi-orthogonal, but for simplicity we’ll stick with orthogonal. Either way, based on what I just taught you, it means I’ve been trying to prove that the inner product between two functions equals 0. The problem though is that I am not getting 0! A logical question you might now ask is, “Well, what if the functions are not actually orthogonal?” and I understand why you would ask that, but we know for many physical and mathematical reasons that I can’t get into now that they are in fact orthogonal. Therefore, I should be getting 0! So why am I not? Why am I having nightmares about the number zero?

Welcome to my life! These are some of the questions I’ve been asking myself since last week.

Part of the answer to my problem I already know. I’m working in an area of math known as numerical analysis. Our group’s research problem is mathematically so complicated that we require a computer to solve it and even then, the computer must make some approximations along the way. This causes some error in our final result meaning that although we should get 0 in theory, in reality we are expecting a number that is very small and can be considered 0. With that in mind, what we are actually getting is a complex number (a number with a real part and an imaginary part) that greatly fluctuates around 0. When we change the method the computer uses to solve the problem, it sometimes gets us really close to what we want even when we aren’t expecting it to, and other times it makes things worse when we thought it would improve the result. There really isn’t much of a pattern to it and it’s driving me bonkers.

The good news is that if I can figure out how to fix everything and finally get what we want, then I will have reached a pretty good milestone considering the amount of time I’ve spent on the project. My goal by Friday was to have the issue solved, but unfortunately, I didn’t quite get there. That’s okay though. Life goes on. I’m sure I’ll figure it out. This week I made considerable progress toward a solution and am now hot on its tail. Either way, I wouldn’t be learning as much as I currently am if everything just worked the way it was meant to. I’ll be sure to let you know of any updates by the time next week’s post rolls around.

Well folks, now you’ve heard about my recent research struggles, but hopefully you learned something in the process. If not and I instead just brought back horrible memories for you, then I sincerely apologize. I did give you a warning. Tune in next week for my penultimate post. I promise not to bore you with my day job again. Terry Schuh, signing off.

Week 9: It’s the End of the SPS Internship as We Know It

(And I feel fine!) Sure this summer has been great and all, but I think I’m ready to head home.

In this penultimate post I want to take the time to acknowledge some of the awesome things that came out of this internship!

I made a lot of friendships and connections that I won’t soon forget.

Unfortunately not everyone in the physics community is going to be your friend, but if you are one of those sad souls like me who loves the subject, I promise you you’ll have no trouble finding a group of people you end up calling your physics phamily. That trend continued for me this summer. From the other awesome interns in the program and those at SPS who selected us, to my incredible mentors at NASA who taught me so much and my fellow NASA intern lunch buddies, I was once again reminded that I am exactly where I want to be. These are my people, this is my field.

I learned a ton more physics.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when you tell someone you studied physics and they suddenly assume you know everything about the universe and how it works. Wrong! Physics is a massive area of study. I would argue it is one of the largest, most broad subjects out there. You could spend your whole life studying it and you would still never know it all. With that being said, I got a little bit closer this summer to achieving that feat.

Even though I took many physics courses in undergrad, some things are impossible to learn unless you’re forced to literally deal with them every day. My research fell into that category. Greatly centered around a subfield called continuum mechanics, one of the first things my mentors told me when I arrived was, “The physics you’re going to learn here, you won’t learn in school.” That’s the truth about much of physics in the 21^st century and I’m glad I got a taste of that.

I gained more research skills.

I am very confident that come next Fall I will be attending grad school for physics. While there, research will obviously be one of my biggest concerns so having the necessary tools before even starting is a big deal. I’m grateful my mentors allowed me to work on a project that had a lot of room to develop all-around useful research skills. One of the most significant skills I learned was how to develop my own individual research ideas. Even though I have had past research experiences I still have always been curious about how someone transforms from a researcher that carries out someone else’s ideas to a researcher who generates their own unique ideas for future projects. I think a lot of people, mainly naïve grad students, struggle to make this transition. It is incredibly difficult; however, it is vital if you want to be a successful researcher! Now, I’m not saying I’ve made the transition already, but this internship allowed me to clearly see how one would do it!

I got to live in the heart of a large city.

To be honest I’m not going to miss living in D.C. Sure, it’s exciting and full of things to do, but it’s just not my cup of tea. I was never and still am not keen on the city life, especially doing it out of a college dorm. I will say though that I’m glad I got to experience it. I know it’s not what I want going forward. Again, in terms of grad school, I know for sure now that I do not want to go to school in a big city. It might not seem like much, but that really is something that matters when considering where to apply.

That was, by far, not everything that came out of my SPS internship experience, but those were the highlights. Only one week to go now. This week we have our final presentations and on top of that I have my NASA poster presentation. It’s going to be a busy one putting all that material together, but it’ll be good for me. Although everything will be over by the time I upload it, be sure to check back next week for my final post. It’ll probably be pretty lengthy, but it will have a lot of my final thoughts in it. Until then, Terry Schuh signing off.

P.S. For those of you who consider yourself dedicated fans, I’m here to inform you that this past week, after many hours of frustration, I finally was able to calculate zero. It’s still not exactly what I was hoping for, but it’s as good as it’s going to get, and my mentors are satisfied. Hopefully no one, except me, lost sleep over it, but I thought you all should know.

Week 10: SPS: Endgame

The term “week 10" is misleading. It’s taken me just about 2 weeks to put this last blog post together and it’s not even really about my last week.

Instead, this post is more of a reflection on my time as an undergraduate and how SPS has played a significant role in helping me grow not just as a physicist, but as a human being. As some of you are aware, I graduated from The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) almost 3 months ago, but knowing I had one weekend at home before I transitioned into the SPS internship, I grouped the experience in with my time as an undergrad. Before even arriving in DC, I viewed the internship that awaited me as a sort of epilogue to my last 4 years.

And an epilogue it was!

I’m sad that the 10 weeks is up and I had to say goodbye to yet another tight-knit group of young physicists, but it was time to move on. It’s true that we, as humans, enjoy the comfort of what we know, what we are familiar with, but there come moments in life when we must delve into the depths of the unknown; everyone hates change, but we’ll never get anywhere in life if we just stay where we’re content. Think of that guy in your hometown who peaked in high school and continues to milk those days even though they’re long gone. You need to cut those people out. They are holding you back. You can’t get anywhere in this world if you surround yourself with people like that. The carousel never stops turning and you better make sure you’re always on it.

All of this applies to my time at TCNJ. During the past couple years, I became very content with my surroundings. From my professors and fellow classmates to my weekly routines, I was comfortable at college. I could’ve stayed there forever and prolonged my life in the real world like some college students try to do, but simply being able to say exactly that was a clear sign that my time was up.

I’m not saying it’s easy to move on. I completely understand why some people never do. It’s scary, there’s no hiding that fact, but if you have something to motivate you, give you reassurance that you can do it, that sure does help. SPS was my reassurance!

From the very beginning of my undergraduate physics career, SPS was there for me. I still remember going to TCNJ’s first SPS chapter meeting of the year as a naïve freshman. I had only done okay in high school physics, but majored in the subject nonetheless because something about it was alluring. Humble beginnings one might say. Anyway, I was surprised to see a bunch of students in the department across all 4 years in attendance. It was completely unexpected, and I left the meeting immediately feeling like I was in the right place and everything was going to be perfectly fine. As the year went on and I continued to go to weekly meetings, I started to get to know more and more people. The connections I was making were crucial in my early development as a physics student. I started to feel like I could find success through a career in physics (something I believe everyone should be able to say regardless of their field).

By the time my sophomore year ended I felt mature enough to get involved in my SPS chapter as more than just an ordinary member. From confidence in my scientific abilities to lifelong friendships, SPS had done so much for me in such a short time, and I wanted to provide those with less experience than me with the same things that I was given. Using that exact line, I was elected treasurer of our club going into my junior year.

Being treasurer was a nice stepping stone for me. I didn’t have the most responsibilities, but I was in a position where I could still impact underclassmen majors through more direct methods. I had enough power to inspire students the same way that I was inspired. With an executive role under my belt I was in a good spot, but I still felt like I could do more. It was a tough decision due to the inevitable time commitment, but it was the right decision. I ran for president of TCNJ’s SPS chapter going into my senior year and was elected. In the smallest big-headed way, I knew I was right for the job. Like I just described, I had climbed through the ranks and had been a loyal SPS member for my entire college career thus far. I had the experience and skillset to run the very organization that fostered me not so long ago. It was time to give back in the biggest way possible.

Now this is my opinion, but as TCNJ’s SPS president, I believe I did a pretty gosh darn good job! I probably put more time into planning events and looking for better ways to unify our department than I did into some of my schoolwork. Our meetings were just about every Wednesday and I viewed them as a nice escape from work and stress. They were a way to remind, not just myself, but the many attendees, of the bigger picture going on. They were a way to reinforce the idea that we are young problem solvers working together to advance society through science, whether it be through outreach, research, policy, etc. I feel as if I did exactly that. I brought passion for physics, leadership and communication skills, and creativity all to the table and the results don’t lie. In my 4 years at TCNJ, my time as president saw the greatest number of active members in the club and the greatest number of events!

You may be thinking I’m tooting my own horn, but why don’t you just ask SPS national? After all, I have many reasons to believe that I was selected for the SPS internship largely because of my success as a scientific leader in my community. Sure, I was a good physics student, but there are loads of those out there. Rather, it was my SPS involvement and dedication that set me apart from others. Looking at it through a different lens, I see it as SPS provided me with resources at the beginning of my physics journey, I then gave back to SPS and my community only to be rewarded with one final resource via SPS, this very internship.

Hopefully that story provided you with a nice road map to how I got to where I am today, but more importantly I hope it showed you why I’m so grateful for SPS. However, it does not quite wrap up the part about how SPS and this internship gave me the reassurance I needed to know that I’m going to be okay going forward.

If you read my week 9 post, you might remember me mentioning my plan to go to graduate school for physics in the near future. With that being said, I want to discuss all that further and explain how SPS saved the day yet again.

During my time at TCNJ, from the moment I decided I wanted to attend grad school (that was a tough decision and another story in itself) all everyone ever told me was that I had to go into it right after I graduated. I was told that if I didn’t, I would just keep pushing it off until I gave up on the idea completely. Some would even tell me that life would catch up to you and before you knew it, you’d be married with children and it would be totally impossible to do. While those things can and do happen, I am here to tell you that YOU DO NOT HAVE TO GO TO GRAD SCHOOL RIGHT AWAY! IN MANY WAYS IT’S ACTUALLY BETTER TO TAKE A YEAR OR TWO OFF! I didn’t have the luxury of someone yelling that at me like I just did to you, instead I had to learn it the hard way.

Almost a year ago, feeling like I had to apply to grad programs as a senior, I was writing personal statements, taking entrance exams (curse you physics GRE), and gathering up letters of recommendation. Little did I know that I would spend $1000+ just to get rejected from all 10 schools that I applied to. (Oh, did I not mention? Applying to grad school is incredibly expensive and I had to learn that one the hard way too!) Now, you might be thinking that I probably applied to too many prestigious schools and set the bar too high for myself and that’s why it didn’t work out, but you’d be wrong. I applied to a great mix of schools and the same people that told me to apply while in undergrad also told me that I would definitely get into at least 2 or 3 places. Well, just like you were wrong, they were also wrong. (If I seem bitter and sarcastic about everything, I promise I’m not. I wouldn’t be telling this story if I still felt those ways, I just hate spending a lot of money to learn a life lesson.)

No grad school acceptances, having to convey the bad news to my supporters, not much of a plan going forward, things were not looking so good for me at this point. So, where did I decide to turn? SPS of course! Just like they were there for me at the start, they were there for me at the end. While all this was going on, I applied for the SPS internship with little hope of getting accepting. Having just applied to 10 grad schools, I didn’t see the harm in applying for one more thing. A few weeks later I found out I was going to be working at NASA on a research project for 10 weeks! It gave me something to be excited about, and I could only hope that it would help me transition into post-undergrad life while also boosting my chances of getting into grad school the next time around. Well, hot dog, I was right! As you’ve heard through my past 9 blog posts, I had an awesome experience with the SPS internship and would recommend it to any physics student. The people I met and learned from were amazing, the skills I developed were incredibly significant, and the doors that weren’t open before, but are open now have some great looking paths behind them.

Sure, this past year didn’t go at all like I expected, but sometimes that’s a good thing. I cannot tell you how happy I am that I’m NOT attending grad school this fall. I need the time off, I need to rethink exactly what area of physics I want to apply for, and I need to live in the real world for a year. There are so many things this forced gap year can do for me. I almost feel bad for the people going right out of undergrad because they won’t get to have the experiences that I’m going to have, yet I know I will one day soon have the experiences they’re going to have. Coincidentally, since my change of plans, tons of people who I didn’t even really know while I was applying have told me that they took gap years and would’ve encouraged the same for me from the start. Just about all of them said they wouldn’t be where they are and as happy as they are today if they went right in without a break.

And who I do have to thank for all this newfound wisdom? You guessed it, SPS! With that in mind, I cannot thank you enough Society of Physics Students for being my reassurance the past 4 years. Thank you for providing me with the family I never knew I needed, thank you for all that you taught me, and thank you for letting me know that everything will be okay as I step into the unknown this coming year. I would not be where I am today without you. For the last time, Terry Schuh signing off.

P.S. In this final post I also wanted to highlight the titles of all my posts because they all have something in common. Maybe you’ve recognized that some of them are parodies of more well-known media such as songs and movies. Well, it turns out that they are all parodies! About a week before the internship started, I decided I was going to attempt this feat and I’ve had a lot of fun doing so. With that being said, check out to see how many you knew. I bet no one got all 10!

Week 1: Buses, Trains & Rocketships --> Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987 movie title)

Week 2: Oh, Magic Gourd --> Oh, Magic Conch Shell (quote from 2002 SpongeBob SquarePants episode)

Week 3: α β γ, easy as 1 2 3 --> a b c, easy as 1 2 3 (lyric from 1970 Jackson 5 song)

Week 4: The Rat in the Hat --> The Cat in the Hat (1957 Dr. Seuss book title)

Week 5: We Are The Crossword Champions --> We Are The Champions (1977 Queen song title)

Week 6: National Mall’s Vacation --> National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983 movie title)

Week 7: Star Tours --> Star Wars (original 1977 movie title)

Week 8: The Hunt for Red Zero --> The Hunt for Red October (1984 Tom Clancy book title/1990 movie title)

Week 9: It’s the End of the SPS Internship as We Know It --> It’s the End of the World as We Know It (1987 R.E.M. song title)

Week 10: SPS: Endgame --> Avengers: Endgame (2019 movie title)