Kaden Gammon, 2024 NIST Research Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: William Jewell College

My name is Kaden Gammon and I have just completed my third year at William Jewell College. Following the summer, I will finish my undergraduate studies at Washington University in St. Louis through their Dual Degree Engineering Program. In this program, I’m pursuing a B.A. in Physics from William Jewell College and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis. Once completed, I aim to follow my interests inapplied physics and engineering physics in graduate school.

Aside from my studies and involvement on campus, I love spending time with my friends, cycling, and especially traveling. I’m excited about this opportunity to intern at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and can’t wait to meet everyone this summer!

Internship

Host: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Internship Blog

Week 1: Finally Here!

Hello everyone! My name is Kaden, and I am a research intern at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). I just completed my third year at William Jewell College and in the fall will be attending Washington University in St. Louis to complete a dual degree program in physics and mechanical engineering.

Following a long two days of traveling, I arrived here last Sunday for an exciting first week. Before arriving, I had to return from a weeklong trip in Mexico City and repack to travel once again to spend my summer here. After two hours of sleep between all the traveling, I was welcomed to George Washington College’s campus with an hour-long line to gain access to my room. With that being said, I had some of the best sleep that night.

Once settled in, I was able to meet the other interns by playing different card games with them on Monday night. It was great getting to meet everyone and learn more about them. The next day was filled with orientation at the American Center for Physics, to prepare us for the summer and become more acquainted with everyone. Our orientation was filled with great opportunities to become more comfortable with everyone, like some rooftop bocce ball and making towers of spaghetti and marshmallows.

On Wednesday, came my first day at NIST. The day was filled with long commutes, meetings, and learning about the project I will be working on. It was exciting to learn about the projects that researchers within my department, which is the Nanoscale Device Characterization Division, are completing. Additionally, I’ve now gained a better understanding of my own project, which will involve working with organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and magnetic fields. After the long commute back from NIST, I was then able to go with some other interns to listen to three astronomy talks for free! As a college student, it’s hard to pass on something free.

The rest of my workdays at NIST were spent completing many training so I can have access to the labs and internet. However, once completing them, my mentor took me to the labs that I would be working in and allowed me to complete some tests on old OLED samples she had made. It was fun getting to work in such a high-quality lab (see the pictures of the yellow lit room, some of their samples are sensitive to blue light so the labs use yellow light instead) and an experience working on the samples in a glovebox.

Throughout the week, whenever I wasn’t working, I got to get to know the other interns better. Whether this be through a 3 am fire alarm or a couple of nights playing spike ball or football at the National Mall. I’m excited to continue getting to know everyone here and see where the next 9 weeks take us.

Week 2: Free Food!

It’s been a busy week, but it’s been more memorable and enjoyable than I could have hoped. Now that I’ve completed much of the required training necessary before working at NIST, I was able to begin learning how to take measurements on the devices I will be working on over the summer. This meant that I spent a lot of time in the lab! It was exciting to learn how everything worked and start collecting data on some older OLEDs for comparison with when they were new. However, this also meant that I now had a lot of data to work with, so I spent a lot of time at my desk working on plotting our data. Overall, it was a great week at NIST and has me even more excited for this summer.

Other than working, there was a lot to look forward to in the week. Wednesday, I was fortunate to hear John Mather and Mark Clampin speaking at a Trimble Lecture with the fellow interns at the AIP office. The next day, Thursday, the interns attended a dinner cruise with the AIP Executive Board. It was a great opportunity to meet the people who give students the opportunity of interning through the Society of Physics Students. Both of these nights were also a great opportunity to eat free food, something that I personally appreciate greatly! This joy was furthered by getting to eat a free $50 dinner on Friday night, thanks to soft opening of 60 Vines. Once hearing from another intern that a restaurant was offering free food, I knew I had to be there. I rushed to the restaurant and was handed a menu with everything on it for free. Obviously I had to make the most of this meal, so I enjoyed a great steak dinner with a fried zuchinni appetizer. To the say the least, I am loving all the free food and events in D.C. right now.

Through all of this excitement, I’ve gotten to spend more time with the other interns and know them even better. Often this is through card games and board games, but it’s also through exploring D.C. together. Today for example, a group of this explored the giant zoo that D.C. has to offer, which even after four hours of walking we failed to see everything. Then tonight, Jaden grilled out on the mini-George Forman grill to make hotdogs for whoever wanted one and we played some intense Uno.

I’ve managed to cram a lot into this week, and with it a lot of good memories. I hope to keep up this pace throughout the summer since there’s only eight more weeks in D.C. for me. It’s going fast, so I guess that means it’s a good time at least.

Week 3: Are you sure LEDs should light up?

With each day in D.C., I learn even more about what the city offers. This week was packed with adventures throughout the city and made me even more eager to keep exploring. Fortunately, Jaden goes to George Washington University, so he shares a lot of things to do in the city in our group chat. Which gives us a lot of options, and quite a few messages to sort through, but it’s incredible to see how much there is to do here and how easy the city makes it for people to experience what it has to offer.

One of these events that Jaden shared was free nights on Tuesdays at a comedy club. Since it was free, we had to check it out. Overall, it was a super fun time getting to just sit and laugh for a bit. On top of that, we visited the National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden for their Friday night jazz concerts. It may have been packed and hard to hear the band, although it was an experience hearing Santeria by Sublime played by a jazz band, but it was a great time to sit and talk with the other interns on the painfully wet grass.

Now Saturday, we ventured out to explore a street festival in the area. However, once we walked up and were greeted by a fence, our hopes that the festival would be free were hurting. Then we were crushed at the gate when asked to buy tickets. Being conveniently next to the National Gallery of Art (which is free), we changed course and explored the museum. Following which was thrifting and shopping, regretfully I had no luck thrifting but it’s always fun to go out and see what you can find.

Finally, for what is one of my favorite parts of this internship, my work at NIST. This past week, I spent a lot of time learning the process for making our OLED devices. Turns out this is a very involved, two-day process that involves a lot of careful handling and cleaning. However, it is such a cool thing to make. Learning to use all the different equipment involved alone was awesome, and then learning how to stack layers of materials on the nanoscale was incredible. With all the excitement though I think I may have been a little too rough on them, since my first batch failed to light up ever. However, I’ve learned from my mistakes (hopefully), and have new batch nearly done and they seem to be in better shape than the previous ones. As in better shape, I mean one out of two that I’ve tested work, so at this point I feel like LEDs shouldn’t have to light up to actually be called functional but physics seems to disagree with me on that one.

Week 4: Dumplings, Cake, and BBQ

The weeks here are going by so fast and are packed with making the most of the summer here. With Juneteenth off, a group of us enjoyed some morning brunch and then checked out the National Portrait Museum. I honestly didn’t think this museum would be as interesting as it turned out to be (I don’t typically care for portraits and I imagine I a lot of people would agree with me on this), but it was super cool seeing the portraits of various historical figures and reading about them. Yes, I am one of those people that likes to stand there and read about everything in a museum, it’s more enjoyable that way in my opinion.

To finish our day off, we held a potluck. I love food so potlucks are a favorite of mine, not to mention I can’t even count how many of these I’ve been to while growing up. Once showing up, I even learned how to prepare dumplings, which I was pretty bad at doing so I was thankful to have other people helping and Maia teaching us. They all turned out really good though and there was so much great food there. Best of all, we were able to surprise Charles for his birthday with an incredible cake made by Kai.

Friday night, a group of us went to the French Embassy for their World Music Day celebration. It was a great night to just hang around on the grass and listen to music. They had so many different performers and covered most genres of music, making for a great concert. Can’t forget that this was at the French Embassy, which alone makes it a memorable experience. The next morning, we went to the National BBQ Competition. As an avid food lover and Midwesterner, I am a big fan of BBQ food, so this was something I found very exciting. They gave out so many free samples and groceries for this event! I came out of it eating over a full meal and a bunch of fruit, rice, and snacks.

The rest of Saturday night was well spent showing physics and astronomy demons to kids at the Astronomy on the Mall event. I was running a demo on gravity wells (kids could throw marbles or other round objects into a fabric that had a weight in the center), which made for a lot of chasing marbles, tennis balls, and golf balls. Interestingly, at the same time and right next to us was one of the Smithsonian after hour parties that was going on that night, so it was a fun time teaching kids over the party music that was 10 feet away from us. It’s been an exciting week, and I can’t wait to see how my experience in D.C. will continue to grow.

Week 5: Cramped Cars & Millennial Trivia Nights

I know that I did a LOT this past week and made some great memories, but I honestly can’t even remember everything I did. I’m going to do my best to recall everything, but I’m pretty certain I’ve forgotten some highlights of the week. To start, we kicked off the week with some spike ball on the National Mall. I’d like to say that Jaden and Johnny might like to brag about their nearly perfect win streak, but I’ve got them beat with my perfect lost streak. I may be really bad at spike ball or maybe I just don’t want to give people the advantage of knowing how good I really am. Moving on past my spike ball skills, a group of us went to Arlington to take our chances at a trivia night. Unfortunately, none of us knew it was Shrek themed and were told there were free chips and salsa. The chips and salsa were not free, a fact I learned after ordering them and despite just watching Shrek 1 and 2 as a group recently, we did not win trivia night. However, it’s always a good time getting to hang with the other interns, so it was a great night regardless.

Here’s where my memory goes out, I’m not sure if I did or didn’t do anything Wednesday and Thursday nights. I’m thinking I may have just taken some time to relax and stayed in, other than going on a 3-mile run one night. I’m finding that D.C. is one of the best places to run through because it’s hard to feel like giving up on the run when you have a giant statue of Lincoln staring down at you. I at least remember that Friday night was spent watching Ratatouille at the Kennedy Center. Turns out they do free movie showings on the lawn there, so we crammed into the tight space and enjoyed a slightly obstructed view of the movie.

The weekend was very memorable, especially with starting Saturday morning off running with Charles and Charlotte to Theodore Roosevelt Island. Once rested from the run, we went to the Natural History Smithsonian Museum and then the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Sunday was spent at Cunningham State Park, which had a nice waterfall and lake. The ride there was super cramped though, and I had to switch between sitting on Charle’s and Jaden’s laps for the drive. It was worth the discomfort though and made for a great weekend to mark the halfway point in this internship.

Week 6: 4th in the Capital

With the 4^th of July and a Friday off, not a lot of work was done this week. However, it was an incredible, extended weekend. Before enjoying the time off, on Tuesday I got to listen to a historical talk on science during lunch with the other interns. The evening was then spent trying to make a great comeback trivia night, as Spy Kids II. Unfortunately, the millennials beat us out once again with their aggressive trivia knowledge.

The next day came with the start of a visit from my girlfriend, Jamie. With Jamie visiting, I got to show off what little I’ve learned about D.C. this summer and do my best as a tour guide over the past few days. We both have a love for food, so we tried a lot of nice restaurants out this past week. This began with lobster rolls in Georgetown, which easily became the best lobster rolls I’ve had (not that I’ve had many though).

The 4^th was well spent enjoying hotdogs and seeing the 4^th of July Parade along the National Mall. Before rushing to the National Mall for fireworks, we enjoyed some amazing pasta at Il Canale. Then came the fireworks, which I can say was one of the most impressive shows I have seen and was for sure an experience I’ll always remember. The next day, we took some time to explore the Smithsonian American History Museum and had a great dinner at Le Diplomate. Saturday was another day of exploring D.C. while enjoying a great brunch.

Today has been one of the most tiring though. Since this is Jamie’s last day in town, we made sure to see as much as we could in the city. We began the day with bagels from Call Your Mother (some of the best bagels I could find) and then the National Archives to see the country’s founding documents. Next, was the Holocaust Museum, which is a must see in D.C. but is also a pretty depressing museum. Unfortunately, the next museum planned was the Air and Space Museum, but I didn’t realize you need timed entry tickets to enter. Fortunately, the White House wasn’t too far so we decided to stop by to see it. Finally, to end the night, the interns surprised Collins with pizza to welcome him, after a long-awaited arrival.

Week 7: The 3 B’s (Bachelorette, Beach, and Buffalo Chicken Dip)

I’m going to begin by saying that in all honesty I probably should have enjoyed my time in D.C. this past week than I did. Most of the week, I admittedly spent very tired and filled with doing random chores like going to the store. Despite this, as every week here has been, it was still filled with memorable experiences that I am grateful to have gained.

Workwise, I’ve realized that there are barely any days left that I am in the office working even though I have 3 more weeks left. As a result, I spent a lot of time working hard on my project hoping to make as much progress as possible. However, I continue to face challenges to make the progress I’d like because my devices hardly work, and I’ve made countless samples. With these challenges though, I have learned something better than whatever progress I hoped to make this summer. I’ve learned a lot more about what it means to work in research and science, and that it takes a persistent mind that isn’t deterred by failure. I realized this in talking with my mentor and seeing how impressive it is that despite each set of failed devices we make, instead of frustration she sits down and thinks of how we can reapproach this to make it work. This has given me a better perspective on these challenges and shown me that the real joy in research comes from the hard work to obtain the results you hope for. Not to mention that there’s nothing wrong with getting results you don’t hope for either, because then there’s still something to understand and learn from. Anyway, that’s my rant on work. Otherwise, I got to meet with a representative from a grant funding company that was really interested in our project, so that was pretty cool too.

As for activities outside work, there were a few highlights from the week. We started the week off with the new season of The Bachelorette, which I don’t really recommend watching but it was fun to watch it with a group of interns. Thankfully, we had some good movies lined up for the rest of the week with Cars 2 and Forest Gump. Thursday night, we ended up meeting Jaden’s brother while he was visiting and enjoyed a game night with him. Then Saturday night was spent as another game night, I was forced against my will to play Just Dance and had to expose my terrible dancing. The only consolation to having to play Just Dance was that there was buffalo chicken dip.

Sunday was spent at the beach, which automatically made it one of my favorite days here. I am a major beach advocate, so it was a great time going there with the other interns. Even better was watching Jaden attempt to eat a sandwich made on a full loaf of French bread, it was honestly impressive he even made it halfway on the sandwich. Otherwise, the day was spent playing classics in the water like monkey in the middle and jackpot, and then spike ball. It all made for a great end to the week and has me shocked that this internship is nearly over, I’m struggling to believe I’ve actually been here for 7 weeks.

Week 8: A longing for something greater (chili dog > hot dog)

It’s unbelievable how fast this summer has gone. It was just a few weeks ago that I was struggling to figure out how to write my first blog to describe my first week here. Now, I’m stuck thinking about the fact that I only have five more actual days of work at NIST and one full weekend here before I leave. This past week was fortunately well spent though.

To start the week off, we returned to The Bachelorette, but with a celebration beforehand. This celebration was named a “Dewormabration” by the other interns and came with a cake too! You might be wondering what a Dewormabration is, and I am unfortunately the best person to explain it. The start of summer regretfully began with some long-lasting stomach troubles after my trip to Mexico City right before the internship started. Thanks to the persistent symptoms, which may or may not have matched those of someone carrying worms or a parasite, the interns became convinced I had worms. After a long month and plenty of stomach medicine, I finally am dewormified and free from the constant demanding that “I see a doctor to stop neglecting my health.” With that, I just want to say thank you to all the interns who planned the celebration and made a great cake to go with it (Maia, Jenna, Charlotte, and Kai).

Now, healthier than I’ve ever felt this summer, we took a tour of NIST. The tour had great talks included to help us better prepare for our futures and even learn about how cool Titan is, also that we’re sending drones called Dragonflies to explore the surface of Titan. Additionally, we were shown the million-pound weight at NIST, along with their ballistics lab to learn about gun forensics. It was nice getting to see more of the place I’ve been working at all summer, because I honestly never realized how big the NIST campus is and everything they have.

The next day, Friday, was spent trying one of my favorite foods. The chili dog. I would be criminal to not admit that I’ve been wanting to try a Ben’s Chili Bowl chili dog all summer, and it was truly worth it. Even though it was incredibly inconvenient to get there and out of the way, it is likely that I will come back for more. Now, I faced two battles the next morning though. I had to fight against the chili dog and successfully complete a 6 mile run with Charles and Charlotte. Thankfully, the battles were won and followed by brunch. After some needed napping thanks to the run, we headed to the Washington Nationals game and somehow missed nearly every run that happened in the game by showing up in the top of the second inning. I still love the sport, but it’s impressive how long a game can go without any runs.

Today, I was a little lazy to start off with, but finally got myself to explore and take a nearly two-hour walk-through Georgetown. Then, for dinner, Jenna demonstrated her Italian cooking on some pasta and a group of us got to try it, which turned for a nice meal. To finish the week, we ended with the traditional spikeball on the mall and added in a sunset viewing.

Week 9: Bringing Home the Gold

With just a week left, this past week made for one of the best in the summer. To begin, on Tuesday we visited the Niels Bohr Library Archives, which was pretty cool to see some cool historical documents or just fun, random things like Richard Feynman’s calculus notes. Although, following the tour was trivia, and I’m afraid that my knowledge on libraries and document preservation was very weak.

Moving onto Thursday, we had our Intern Appreciation Lunch at the main office with all the other interns. Huge thanks to the staff at SPS for getting the interns together for a day to relax and work together. It was a fun time getting to see everyone and work in the office together for once, although minimal work was done in between intense debates over Star Wars, Batman, and other great movies. Afterwards, I returned to Ben’s Chili Bowl for yet another chili dog and then played some basketball with Johnny and Muji.

Friday was awesome to say the least. Thanks to Charles, we had a tour of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The tour consisted of Hubble Control Center, the beginning of the LISA telescope and Roman telescope, and of a lab for analyzing asteroid samples. This was definitely one of the coolest things we got to see this summer. Afterwards, I enjoyed a dinner with a group of interns and hung out at the apartments for the rest of the night.

Following a morning run on Saturday, a bunch of us got brunch and then checked out the Air and Space Smithsonian (also a very cool place that I recommend and would like to see again). Then on Sunday, the Olympics began. You may be thinking that the Olympics started before then and you’re right, however, I am talking about the SPS Intern Olympics. Interns were pitted against each other in their respective nations (teams of 3 or 4) and faced fierce competitive events (a lot of spikeball, frisbee throwing, soccer, hallway hurdles, guno, and more). The competition was fierce, but fortunately my nation and fellow citizens, Brynn and Maia, brought home gold. Thanks to Charlotte and Jenna for planning/hosting this, it was a great way to spend the final full weekend in DC for the summer.

Week 10: Freedom from the Airport

Well, I’ve returned to my midwestern state of Missouri, it’s nice but it isn’t DC. Don’t get me wrong though; I’m happy to be home. I’ve missed my family and just home in general, but this summer in DC was a special experience.This final week passed incredibly fast; I just wish the flights home passed as fast as the week did (more on this later).

With the presence of a big presentation coming at the end of the week, I spent a lot of time hyperfixating on it and trying to make it the best I could. This was what largely consumed the start of my week. As a change of pace though, Wednesday was truly appreciated. As my final day at NIST, it was beginning to weigh on me that I would be leaving DC in just a few days. I made sure to appreciate my final donuts and coffee provided to the interns at NIST thanks to Joe and his “coffee shop,"anemployee that kindly provided interns with donuts and coffee every Wednesday at NIST. After work, I joined Brynn and some of the researchers in her group for unlimited wings at Buffalo Wild Wings. I was disappointed in the number of wings I put up, but Icouldn’t have asked for a better way to end the summer at NIST.

Thursday consisted of practice presentations and then a final potluck with the interns. First, it was super exciting to get a glimpse of what the interns had been working on this summer. Everyone had such cool projects and worked so hard to make the most of them. Second, Charlotte’s math when it comes to hot dogs is horrible, but thankfully there can never be enough chili dogs in the world so it’s okay. As usual, the interns pulled together to make an incredible dinner, with a main feature being the numerouspickles brought by Charles. I personally enjoy the occasional pickle, but just one and never two. Unfortunately, the other interns did not allow me the satisfaction of just one pickle, so I was pressured into a second one which was not appreciated.

Now, we finally arrive on Friday, the final day of our program. We gathered to share our hard work from throughout the summer and say goodbyes to the SPS staff that supported us throughout this program (specifically shoutout to Mikayla and Kayla). Everybody did an incredible job presenting and we ended the day signing books (like yearbooks) given to us by Mikayla and Kayla. Moving past the symposium, a group of us went to play some final spikeball on the National Mall and ate out together. Before heading to bed, I stayed up for quite a while to just talk and hangout with a few others before finally saying goodbye to the friends I’ve made this summer.

Saturday seemed like it would be a normal travel day for me, however, I was incredibly wrong. The morning was spent packing and saying goodbyes throughout the day, and I was set to arrive at the airport around 2:00 pm. After some trouble with an Uber driver, I made it to the airport with Johnny and Piper at my planned time. This is where everything didn’t go as planned, I spent the next two hours in line to drop my baggage off and then only made it onto my plane thanks to half my flight being in line with me, so they had to delay take off. However, this then was followed by sitting in the plane for 2 and a half hours, hoping to gain clearance to take off while a storm was approaching. Eventually this led to the deboarding of my flight and another 2-hour line so that I could rebook my connecting flight to get home. After everything, I left DC at 12:30 am and landed in Atlanta around 2 am, where I found comfort in sleeping in the airport. I was able to finally get home around 11 am on Sunday. My sadness in leaving was replaced by immense joy as I stepped out of the airport to return home.

With all of this said, I am incredibly grateful to SPS for allowing me this opportunity and choosing me. Thank you to the staff at SPS that makes this internship possible every year and thank you to my fellow interns for making this a summer for a lifetime.