Monday, June 10, 2013
By:
My second week as an SPS intern was just as much fun as my first! On Sunday we had an outreach event at Howard County Community College, where I helped out with a demonstration that played music using a laser. I had never seen that particular demonstration before, and I had a great time learning about it and showing it to other people. I also got to be on a panel about science and why I want to pursue physics as a career, which was a special honor and allowed me to meet lots of people who have succeeded in the sciences.
This week at work I learned more about MOSFETs and transistors and got to work with the data that I will be analyzing during my project. If anyone is looking for a great book on the subject, I highly recommend Fundamentals of Modern VLSI Devices, which is an enlightening 700 pages and a surprisingly easy read.
I also got my first exposure to MATLAB and learned how to run an existing program to graph individual subsets of data. Along the way I ran into a few stumbling blocks and had to troubleshoot, but luckily I persevered and I finished my week with access to data and a fully functioning MATLAB program.
This week I also found out that I would be living downtown with the other interns for the rest of the summer! I’m so excited to live at GW and to spend time with everyone on a regular basis. An extra special thanks to Toni for helping me out with this. I’m looking forward to another great week at NIST learning about MOSFETs and whatever else comes my way!
Alexandra Day