Saksham Prajapati, 2022 APS Public Engagement Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: University of Missouri-Saint Louis

Hi! I am Saksham Prajapati and I the APS Public Engagement intern for this summer. I am an international student from Nepal currently majoring in Astrophysics with Computer Science minor at University of Missouri – St. Louis (UMSL). I have been working at UMSL as a Student Teaching Assistant for sophomore level Physics classes. Also, at UMSL, I got the opportunity to do astronomy research on chemical compositions of different comets. Similarly, I am currently the PR representative of UMSL’s Physics and Astronomy Club. Coming from a small nation and working in a huge organization like APS during this summer has always been a dream for me. My future aim is to do research on cosmology or probably in quantum computing and to do out-reach activities around Nepal to boost up more children’s dreams.

Personally, I can describe myself as a creative guy. I love doing sketch/paintings and playing guitar.

Internship

Host: American Physical Society

Project

Abstract

How cool it would be if we could listen to the same science topics from a different perspective. A perspective of a career experienced physicist. That’s what APS’s Physicists to Go(PTG) program is for. This program helps to match teachers from different schools with various physicists and conduct a small class session with them. Previously, PTG’s matching process was done manually looking into different criteria like topics, meeting preference, location and so on. However, this time I used python to write a program which will make this matching process much easier. As our matching will be done in a few minutes, we will be able to host this program more often and help connect more schools and physicists.

Final Presentation

Internship Blog

Week 1: Welcome to DC!

Week 1: Welcome to DC

This week marked the start of a new chapter in my life. My very first internship while staying at the capital of the United States. Everyday has been something new over here in DC. I landed on Sunday from St. Louis and the very next day was the memorials day. Most of us met each other on our first day itself at ‘Schrodinger’s consignment’ (room 907), where there were left items from previous interns and I ended up getting a lot of stuff from them. Then the next day, we all gathered for the memorial day’s parade event. It was fun to see all those marching bands and this was also my first time watching them here in the US.

Next day was the orientation day at ACP (American Center for Physics) and we met with all other board members from the SPS. They had a spaghetti tower challenge and we (I, Justin and Taylor) won it. Actually, it was a tie between us and Valeria’s team and my boy Justin was lucky to win that rock-paper-scissors clash. Brad got us a gift reward from the captain cookies as our winners gift. We then decided to share all those cookies with other interns when we had a movie night the next day. Similarly, I got a chance to meet Dr. Jack Hehn, the AAPT Senior Fellow. He was a sweet person, he tried to explain to us how important these internships are. And he is also a great guy to meet outside the program. I really liked all those talks from his experience from his life. Overall, the orientation day was wonderful with some nice group photos of all our interns at the end. After that, I met with Milton, our IT guy from APS. He got me and Lucy a laptop for our work. Then we all interns were supposed to meet with our mentors but my supervisor was not available until June 2 so I had a meeting with Lucy’s mentor, Christine. But the following day, I met with my mentor, Allie (Alexandra) and Claudia.

For the first week, we only discussed the onboarding process. Got the emails, calendar and other applications like Slack, Interaction, set up. Allie made sure to explain to me the scope of their project ‘Physicists to Go’. I got mostly everything that they are looking for from me during this summer. For this week, everything was about setting all things up and getting ready for the real work, which will be starting from the new week. I still looked into their website and feedback as a head start. On Friday, we had a small event from the APS (Meet & Greet with Interns). The APS team was so nice to offer us lunch even though our meetings were online. They gave us both a Grubhub gift for our lunch.

Overall, the first week was all about setting everything and hanging out with all the interns.

And yes, I was negative this week :D

PS: I love when you guys call me by my name ;)

Week 2: NATS!!

From this week, my work started as well as my 6 weeks summer classes, anthropology and psychology. I still need to fulfil some general education requirement, so I decided to take those this summer online.

Till now, my work at APS has been really light. They are going nice and slow with me so that I can get used to with their project. They were so worried that they might overwhelm me with all the works but in fact, it has barely affected me. I am enjoying this work. This summer is going to be fun.

On Thursday, Dr. John Mather joined us for a small talk and lunch at ACP. Unfortunately, I had to miss his talk because I had a weekly check-in with my supervisor. And my meeting went for a long time that day. Despite that, I still got chance to have a small talk with him in person after our photoshoot. I loved his small batch, which represented the James Webb Telescope, on his coat. It was a cool one. I wish to get one someday.

The baseball game was the most awaited thing for me. It was Washington Nationals vs the Michigans. I have very little knowledge about baseball and yet I was excited and hyped as much as the Washington’s people were. I did somewhat learn how it is played. The game was fun. I was expecting a lot more crowd, but it was still nice environment with all those fans. Thank you SPS for doing this. You guys are amazing

The logo of NATS was surprisingly common. It was so much like the logo of Walgreens. The color, the font! I could find Walgreens everywhere on that day. lol! Just joking, I hope nobody gets offended with this.

GO NATS!!

After the game we went to Spin Pride night somewhere at DC (I don’t remember the place). We thought it was 18+ but it wasn’t. Div and Gizem had to wait outside while we went inside and had a quick look. It was fun place to hang out. We took some pictures and headed back out.

To sum it up, mostly everything was new for me this week. I am glad to be alive and experiencing this new culture of the US.

And yea, there was an earthquake back at home in Nepal. They said that there was quite a bit shaking in the middle of night on Friday. It was 4.7 rector scaled and the epicenter was right at my hometown. Glad everyone’s fine! Please don’t shake in the middle of night GOD!

Caught on camera from this week :)

Week 3: Filled with Music

This week, at my work, we discussed our project idea with the web development team, and they picked up some issue so we might not be able to finish our automated project for this fall. But we are still listing out ideas and going through the issues to find solutions. So, for this fall we will once again be doing our project manually and I have been trying to model this into a programming to figure out some way to minimize our manual effort. Some issues with programming are still bugging me but looking forward to next week to finish this as soon as possible. On the other hand, my summer classes are racing along with me. So far, I have been able to take these two sides of my life together.

On Friday night, we went to club, Decades. Enjoyed dancing and screaming! It was fun until next day, my body was aching. Lol. Woke up late on Saturday and I had to finish my 2 tests of Psychology. Did one on Saturday before orchestra and the other one just today.

The orchestra was the best thing that happened this week. Thank you SPS for organizing this. It was AMAZING!! They were so good, and they were syncing so perfectly. Even those little sound from harp, piano and flute were filling into the music so nicely. I didn’t expect this to be so great and now I feel like I can listen to them all day. Recently, I have updated my playlist with some orchestra music which I have been listening to while I go to bed.

That’s all for this week! Keep your Music close ;)

Week 4: Play and Learn

Even though Monday was Juneteenth, I still had a meeting with my professor for my directed-reading. We both chose an article to read about which will be helping me with the project I am doing for this internship.

For this week, I continued my coding while trying to add some more parameters to make the matching process much better. I will still be working on it this week as well. I met with our new team member for the project, Nicole and Phoebe, who was a previous intern for this project and she has been working on this since then. Project ideas are still in progress and hopefully we will be working on surveys from this week.

On Monday night, we went to the Bowlero. Honestly, I am not a bowling person and this was my second time playing this game. But to my surprise, I was leading from our group. I guess we all are bad with this game. One round we even changed the rule, during this round we had to get the lowest score with lane bumpers. It was funny, we were getting more pins down this time.

Then on Wednesday, Mikayla organized a picnic for all of us. Thank you for having us at your place Mikayla! It was fun having everyone and chilling around. We were supposed to hang out on the roof but the weather had a different plan for us. We gathered inside and we played pool as well.

On Thursday, my roommate - Taylor, organized a D&D game session with all the interested players. I have never played D&D and it was fun making our own characters with different powers and weaknesses. We will be continuing our D&D session this week as well.

This week has been filled with games. Friday night was a drink and game night. We had drinks and we drove, not cars but Mario kart.

On Saturday, we had an astronomy outreach event at the national mall. I thought we were doing this at a mall, a closed one, but it was an open place. This was organized by one of our interns, Janessa. She was really strong on that day to do everything and make this possible. I was assigned with the fabric of Space-time and making a cloud in a bottle. It was wonderful seeing all those curious kids and to our surprise, they really knew a lot of stuff which I didn’t expect. I also roamed around other stalls and got a chance to fill up a postal card, which will be flying to space on Blue Origin. I also got a chance to see Bill Nye - from far away. There was a huge line of people trying to get a picture with him. It was too long. To sum it up, the event was amazing! I also got a thermal pencil which changes color according to the temperature it is exposed to.

Also, this week I learned some Spanish with our SOCK intern Janessa. And I am teaching her Nepali in return. We got a gold star for ourselves (but a small one for me).

Me-yamo Saksham. Signing off!!

(Well, she did not teach me how to spell them - maybe something for this week.)

Week 5: Food&Drink-Crawling

This week started with a beautiful potluck evening on Tuesday. I made chicken chili (sweet-chili). There were different foods from each room. I am never used to trying new foods but this time it felt right. All the foods were delicious. Enjoyed every single food.

At work, my small program finally worked with sample parameters. We will be trying this out soon with some more data. Also, I am working on making surveys for the teachers before we start this project for the fall.

On Wednesday, Lucy and I had a small meeting with some members of the SPS. They shared their experiences with their school life and career with physics. It was really interesting. I have always felt insecure about my future but after listening to their struggle and experiences I think I now know what I will be doing after my undergraduate. Some of their thoughts were: “Do not take it (old career, which you didn’t enjoy) as a regret, take them as your experience” & “If you can take a gap year, do take it.” I enjoyed every single minute of that meeting and it was really helpful.

On Thursday, we started our D&D journey. I watched a YouTube video from Vox before my first D&D. It felt different when we started playing. I find this game so creative. Everyone had the same scenario but with different thoughts in their mind. It was entertaining. We will probably be continuing our journey in the upcoming week.

Then came the Happy Hour Friday night. Most of us went to Mr. Smith for this week. Andrew joined us that night. After that, some of us went to the Georgetown cupcake. It is one of the most famous places in DC. There was a long line even that late.

On Saturday afternoon, we went bar-crawling. We went from one bar to another with the same ticket. We were joined by Janeesa’s friend Meghan. Nicole was spot on that evening with all those moves. It was unbelievable. All tired, we went back home and hung out just relaxing on a chair.

PS: Last week I wrote those Spanish words wrong. This is how it was supposed to be.

Me-llamo Saksham!

Adios ;)

Week 6: Filled with Colors

This week started with a bang of colors. Monday was the 4th of July, America’s Independence Day. In the morning we went around Washington monument to watch the parade. Then we went for a quick lunch at Duke’s. Later around 6-6:30 we left GWU for the Washington monument one more time. This time for the fireworks. We sat there and played some games to fill the rest of our time. Then at 9 our sky was filled with beautiful colors, shining colors all over our surroundings. What a time to be in DC. Fireworks were amazing, some even made smiley faces. They were stunning.

Then back to work from Tuesday. I finished one more algorithm for sending emails and worked on the survey forms for the teachers. Will be working on this for this week as well. Later I found out that we will be collaborating with SPS’s Adopt a Physicists program and will be working together. Hoping this will benefit both the programs. Let’s see what we get to see next week. Later on in the evening, we continued our DnD session.

On Wednesday, we watched the Avengers: Endgame to prepare ourself for the Thor: Love and Thunder movie. Next day, we went to see the movie. The movie was great: love, humor, action and a nice plot at the end credit scene. 8/10 from me.

On Friday, we start our weekend with happy hour as always. This time we went to quigleys and went on to play some games after we got home. We were joined by Nicole’s cousin and his friend. They were amazing people to hang out with.

Saturday was a rainy day, I just stayed in my bed and played some mobile games with friends from school. But in the evening, we watched the Avatar movie and realized I forgot most of the storyline from the movie. On Sunday, we organized our Potluck v2.0. This time I made some vegetarian food: Potato curry (looked more like a smashed potato dish). All the food was amazing. Room was filled with the aroma of all those wonderful foods.

I guess yeah, that’s all I have for this week. :D

Week 7: Deck on the Desk

This week I tested my program with our last year’s physicists and teachers data. I had to edit/add some columns to match our newly designed signup form. The program was working nicely. will be meeting with my supervisor next and see if I need to add something more for the final program. Since the program was working, I decided to make it more easier/readable for other users as well. I started my documentation for the program and will continue to work on it.

Finally I am done with my Psychology class!! Today I finished my last 2 tests and I am done with this class. I still have 2 more weeks with Anthropology but it is nice that I will have a lot more time to work on it.

On Thursday, we had a beautiful lunch time with the AIP Foundation Team. It was great listening to their life journey and experience. Then on Friday, most of us went to Jazz at the park around the Smithsonian. We could barely listen to the music. It seemed like there was a mass picnic going around. All were busy with their own stuff and we could barely hear the sound of jazz music. The best thing was the Sangria drink, it was wonderful. Then, we just went home and watched a movie together. On the same day, Janessa had her first publication and we all shared a shot to celebrate it.

Yesterday we went to an Asian Street Festival near the Capitol. There was a Nepali food truck as well and I was very excited to try them. We got some momos (it is a Tibetan word). But it was not as good as it was supposed to be. I am glad everybody else loved it. Then we roamed around for a while until raindrops fell on me. We then rushed towards the nearest metro and got home.

I had never had root beer float until yesterday. Anthony wanted me to try this drink and he brought beer later in the evening to make root beer float for all of us. It was simple to make; only vanilla ice cream mixed with the root beer. It was delicious.

Later I showed a card trick to Janessa. She made me do it 5-6 times, even twice with blind-folded. At the end, she finally got me. Justin showed us a poker style UNO game. It was fun to play. It is like poker but all the rules of poker don’t apply to it. Similarly, we played slap-jack as well.

We then decided to do some karaoke. Eventually, we decided to sing our international songs. I tried to sing my Nepali song while Justin sang his Filipino songs. Then Janessa joined with her spanish song and Nicole with her chinese song. Taylor was shining that night with his amazing German Song. We had an amazing night.

Week 8: Danger Aborted

So, there was some change of plans with our matching project. I had to update my coding to match this new idea and that’s all I did for this week’s work. After that, I have been working on the documentation of those programs and will continue working for the upcoming week. Monday was the taco potluck. We all brought different ingredients for the tacos and made tacos for the evening. I made some margaritas as well, Ben brought tequila and I had the mixer. The evening was Spanish themed. There were Spanish songs on the playlist by Janessa. She also showed us some Mexican dance. I am surprised how much they spin while dancing. Tequila and spin dance!?

On Thursday, we all interns went to NIST. We got a chance to see where our friends were working this summer. The Anechoic chamber was amazing. I watched this in a youtube video from Veritasium, but it was just virtually. Being there in person was so surreal. It felt like I was wearing noise canceling headphones. We had some lunch after that and continued our NIST tour. Most of the NIST’s buildings were underground. Almost upto 6 floors. Serious research was going on for sure. We got a chance to see and learn about research on graphene and neutrons. I didn’t quite understand most of the things they were talking about but looking at those works seems pretty cool. Thanks to Dr. Joe Kopanski, the man behind this tour.

On Friday, we had an amazing talk with Brad regarding jobs and grad studies related to Physics. This was much needed for me. Now, it is becoming more clear what I will be looking for after my graduation. Also, I had no idea that a resume and CV were 2 different things. Totally got it now. Resume is only one page but CV can have multiple pages Then, Dr. Alexander from GWU showed us the table where the man behind the Big Bang theory worked, George Gamov. After that, we all got together at Quigley’s for happy hour.

Saturday, we packed our towels and snacks for the beach. I was trying to learn how to swim but jellyfish had some other plans for us. Just after 5 mins when we got into the water, some of our friends (Lucy, Taylor C and Taylor O.) got stung by jellyfish. We then, from the shore standing, just watched the jellyfish chilling in the cold water during this hot summer. We played some games: badminton, frisbee and UNO over there. We went back home and I took a nap. Later on at night, some of us went to Mad Hatter.

PS: I shared a Nepali song with other interns. Here is the name: Straight Outta Kathmandu by Bluess Ft. Unique Poet & MC Dave.

See ya next week!

Week 9: Fruitful Week

Almost end of our internship. My work at my internship was almost done as well. All I had left was some documentation. While I was writing all of those down, I realized I could make the program even easier for other people and therefore I updated my script. Beside this, I was working on my presentation and had a small practice talk with my mentors (Allie, Claudia and Nicole). I got some feedback to improve my slides which I have been working on since then. Also, I showed my mentors how to work on those scripts for their upcoming public engagement program (Physicists To Go) this fall. I still need to present this script with Phoebe who was busy this week. Will be doing it this week.

I am not a morning person but I woke up at 7 on Monday to get a ticket of Holocaust Museum for the same day. I was lucky to get one for the evening. Then obviously, I went back to bed. On the same day we, interns, met Dr. Reene Horton from NASA. She was absolutely amazing. Energetic! Her talk was motivational and inspiring.

Later in the evening, I went to Holocaust Museum. Once the elevator went up and opened the door, I could feel the sadness roaming around those rooms. I don’t know what to say. I guess, my experience was horrifyingly beautiful. Also, there were some new exhibits showing the genocides at Burma. This happened in 2016 (just recently) and I had never heard about this.

This was one of the pictures at the Burma’s Genocide Exihibit at the Holocaust museum. I was thinking how traumatized those children were. This is so sad. The disturbance in those innocent arts.

Tuesday we had a breakfast themed potluck. We are enjoying doing this. We even had one today (on Sunday).

Apparently, I was not able to post my last week’s blog. I talked with Mikayla and she had to contact Tom Connell. I believe he is the IT person at SPS. Finally on Wednesday, my blog was posted, which I did not do myself either. I had to send my blog to him and he posted it for me. I am not sure I will be able to post for this week. I will try using VPN this time because my IP was blocked last week.

On the same day, we continued our DnD session. This week will be our last DnD session. Excited for the finale.

Thursday, we all met with Midhat from APS. She showed us how to write a resume and some major differences between a resume and a CV. Later, some of us went to the Wharf. That place was amazing. After sunset, it looked more beautiful. We went to Shake Shack. Loved their chicken sandwich. It was so fresh. But I didn’t like my Hibiscus lemonade. After lunch, we went to an event where they were showing ‘the Goonies’. After around half an hour, rain almost soaked all of us. Shelter underneath the tent was not enough to hold the storm. Once the rain was over, we all came back home.

Saturday in the morning, I went to see the National Cathedral. I took a bus and it went through the beautiful town of Georgetown. That place looked so pretty, I would wanna try roaming over there sometime this week. The National Cathedral was stunning. It was huge and beautiful.

Next, I met up with Emma, Janessa and Taylor to visit around the Smithsonian. We went to the Asian Art Museum and the Modern Art Museum. Both places were amazing.

Next stop was the Korean BBQ. I regrouped with other interns who were going to Iron Age for the Korean BBQ. We had 90 mins and we could order as much as we wanted. But if we had left some, we would have to pay extra. Justin was spot on with ordering. It did not even take him a second to order for the group. The food was incredible. I did my best to use those chopsticks.

Then we once again grouped with Emma and other people and went to a bar around Georgetown. We just wanted to explore as much as we could.

Today, we had brunch at the Crepeaway and continued our tour of the Smithsonian. We are running out of time and it feels like we have a lot of things left to do. Not sure about being excited, for the final presentation, or sad, because this will be our last week.

It is past 2 am now, gotta brush my teeth. See you all one more time next week.

Week 10 : .............

Well, this is week 10. Our last blog for this internship. Can’t believe it is over now. What a summer it was! This was the best summer I have had since I came to the US. Talking about this week, it was all about preparing ourself for the final presentation. I had a practice presentation with the APS team and with our fellow interns. I also presented it to my university professor Dr. Sonya Bahar. I don’t think I have mentioned this before but I have always been meeting with her every week during this internship period. She is an amazing person.

Monday I showed Phoebe how to work with the program. As we discussed we needed some change with my program so I worked on that for the week. On Monday night, we had our final DnD session. We did this at the Lincoln Memorial watching the sunset. As the sun went down, we ended our DnD session.

And then on Friday was our final day. We all presented our 10 weeks of work in less than 10 mins. I was nervous as I had never given a presentation in front of a big audience. Also, my turn was almost at the end and my heartbeat was exponentially increasing as the time passed. After the presentation was over, we all went for one last Quigley’s happy hour and Brad joined us on that day.

The last day felt like the big bang. The big bang where we were the particles moving apart from a point in space, DC. All scattering towards different directions. We all went our own way with a final goodbye. We had all those shared memories packed with us along with our baggage.

On Saturday my flight was delayed until 5pm. I was supposed to fly at 2 pm from DC to NY and then NY to STL. But somehow they decided to change my flight and this time it was a straight flight to Saint Louis but at 5 pm. Emma and Lucy were with me at the airport. Lucy flew at around 2 while Emma’s flight was delayed until 5 as well. Then it was 4:30 and we had to say goodbye to each other. Even though I boarded my flight at 5, it didn’t fly until the next hour. Felt like DC didn’t want me to leave. All those memories we made together will forever be with me.

As I end this final blog, I would like to thank my awesome APS Public Engagement team: Allie, Claudia, Nicole and Phoebe. Thank you all for having so much patience with me during this project. At first I was scared that I would not be able to finish what I planned for. Wasn’t even sure if this would work or not. Thank you for trusting me. Hope the program will work for our upcoming PTG session. Also, thanks to the team of SPS for this amazing opportunity. This was my first internship and I enjoyed every second of it. Having a community around while working was the best thing. This has helped me at a professional level a lot. I got to know more about American culture more closely which I had been missing for the last 3 years because of COVID. It was a wonderful experience.

And to all my amazing friends I made this summer, I will be remembering you all for the rest of my life. All those nights we hung out, movies we watched together, potlucks we had, jokes we made with each other and many more. Had the bestest time with the bestest friends I made this summer. Can’t wait to see you all once again! :)

PS: Talked with Dr. Bahar (also our club advisor at UMSL) about our involvement with SPS and hopefully we will be involving more in the future.