Week 2: while True: eat, sleep, NASA

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Monday, June 8, 2015

By:

Max Torke

After the first week, a quiet weekend was welcome.  Still, on Saturday for dinner all the SPS interns walked to Adams Morgan, a small neighborhood in Northwest DC.  We stopped on 18th Street and had ramen at Sakuramen.  I ordered the spicy Tonkotsu Red ramen, the best ramen I have ever had.  Following the meal we made our way over to another restaurant where we were joined by several colleagues of the Capital Hill interns.  After hanging out for a bit and trying some deep fried Oreos, we made our way back home.  We also found some interesting restaurants I’m certain I’ll be referring to in later posts.  The rest of my weekend was spent relaxing and perusing several of the papers for my research at NASA.

This week I got settled into my lab at NASA.  After a short orientation on Monday, I found the coffee maker.  As I mentioned, I’ve been programming a simulator in MATLAB.  I have the first step near completion, but my results are different from my mentor’s.  I’ve been trying to determine possible errors in my code. This first simulator calculates the transmitted power through one uniform layer of dielectric foam.  I am also trying to determine a method of introducing multiple layers into the final simulation.  I work in a lab with two interns and a few NASA scientists, all working on different projects.  Working in the lab is a bunch of fun.  Some lab members are international and everyone else is from different regions in the US.

Outside of work, I have been going out to dinner with other interns: a burger at The Black Squirrel in Adams Morgan, Thai coconut soup from down the block, and Singapore noodles in DC's Chinatown. Every few blocks is a collection of restaurants. It's hard to eat at home knowing I'm missing a chance to try a new place. There is still so much to explore.

Max Torke