July 22, 2002 - July 26, 2002
This is the last week of the REU program. Some of the members of the lab will be leaving after Thursday, such as Brendan and Owen. On Thursday all of the REU Students have to prepare to give presentations on what we have worked on so far. So a lot of work has been done on the abstracts, reports and the presentations that we will have to give. My abstract can be viewed here.
On Tuesday, July 23, 2002, the REU group went on a trip to the Brookaven National Laboratory. During the previous school year I had visited the Phenix accelerator because my physics professor, Prof. Thomas Hemmick was a part of the project there. It was interesting this time to see the other sections of the laboratory however. We saw the National Synchotron Light Source, Tandem Van de Graaf, Realitivistic Heavy Ion Collider and Phenix.
On Wednesday I took some photos of the trajectory of the light ray through the tank at different heights.
Work on the presentation that was to be given on Thursday, July 25, 2002 was the concentration of the week. They will be presented to all of the REU students and involved professors. I plan to give a web presentation. The presentation can be viewed at this site here.
Giving the presentations to all the REU students and professors participating in our research program was a great experience. It gave me a chance to speak out to a crowd about all the work that I have been doing and also explain some of my future plans.
Some of my future plans include, when I was taking digital photos of the tank and plotting out the paths of the curve, to try to come up with a mathematical equation of the nature of the path of the light ray. I had already discussed before how the ray is a catinary.