August 24th

So since today was the last day of blogging, I thought I would do a video blog! We just finished our mock presentation this afternoon (after receiving free food!), and I think it went really well. I'm getting really excited for tomorrow!

So today is pretty bittersweet. I'm excited to move on and start school and get going on my senior year, but I'm going to really miss RIT and all the incredible people I have met this summer. This program has been so incredible and given me so many opportunities. Although the research and the paper were a challenge, all the hard work was worth it. Thank you Joe, Bob, and especially Dr. D. for everything! 

Halle, Space Cadet

August 23rd

Today we focused on practicing our presentation. We completed and made all updates by lunch, and in the afternoon Matt and I ran through our presentation. We presented in front of Maria, Ed, Alex, Kelsey and other people in Ed's lab. We got a lot of positive feedback, which was super helpful. Hopefully tomorrow's practice will be great!

Halle, SC

August 22nd

Today was awesome. Super awesome. I submitted the final copy of the research paper to Dr. D. YAY!!! It took all morning to figure formatting out and get it in perfect condition, but now it is beautiful. I also showed him the powerpoint, which he liked as well! So I'm feeling good!

Now all Matt and I have to do is rehearse our presentation, which will be our main task tomorrow. We still have to divide up the slides and figure out who's doing what, but I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Halle, SC

August 19th

We started out the day by sending Dr. D. our paper for him to look over. He had quite a few changes to make, but I think he semi approves. Maybe. Hopefully? But it is my first time ever writing a scientific research paper of any kind, so I'm just happy we completed it. It's also nice to say that I've done something like that before, and it's nice to see all my work assemble into a nice final project. Once he made some of the edits, the formatting on all the table and graphs got shifted around, so I will have to go through and fix that. Aside from that, we are in home stretch :]

Today was also our last cookout, which was very bittersweet. On one hand, it's kinda nice to see things wrap up and come together, but on the other hand, I'll miss RIT and the people here a lot after this next week. But, hey, there's still one week left!

Halle, SC

August 18th

YAY! We showed our powerpoint to Joe today! Luckily, it opened up successfully, and he seems to at least semi-approve of it for the time being. That's been the bulk of our work for about a week, so it's nice to get some positive feedback. Now all we have to do is send him some videos we want to show and work on some citations, and we'll be all set.

YAY! We are almost done with our paper. Aside from some formatting and some acknowledgements, it's completed. Of course, we still need Dr. D. to look it over and help us edit it, but the bulk of it is done. Everything is coming together so well, and it makes me very happy :]

Plus, tomorrow is Friday (our last Friday actually), so I'm just in a good mood.

Very successful day - hopefully tomorrow will be the same!
Halle, SC

August 17th

Today, we basically moved forward with all the work we have to do. Between the paper and the powerpoint, we've been pretty busy. The "crunch time" Bob talked about is really becoming a reality. Luckily, all of Matt's confusions about the formula were cleared up, so we seem good to go.

Today was also the last day of movies. We sat and watched a lovely movie about start-ups while eating our final free pizza and soda. Very bittersweet.

Hopefully, we can finish up the powerpoint tomorrow and show it to Joe, but we shall see.

Until then,
Halle, SC

August 16th

Today we worked more on the research paper. Dr. D. was out sick today, so we have to ask him some questions tomorrow. The paper itself is more challenging than I thought. Not only do we have to physically write it, but we have to compile all of our information from excel into a word document. Slowly but surely, we're getting it done!

In the afternoon, I helped Kelsey with a project. We had to glue mouse pads to the bottom of this contraption. This involved going outside and using spray adhesive! We kinda got it everywhere, including on ourselves. But it was a fun task and it was nice to be outside for a while.

Hopefully Dr. D. will feel better tomorrow so we can talk to him some more about our project.

Halle, SC

August 15th

It's just another manic Monday. Just kidding. It really wasn't. Things in space weather are really beginning to wrap up nicely and it's nice to see the final pieces begin to come together. The powerpoint is literally almost done, and we started the paper today. Well, we had already started some of it, but we put it in a word document today titled "Research Paper", which just felt really great to do.

Special thanks to Bethany for taking the interns out to lunch today with the potential student. I haven't actually eaten at Crossroads before, so that was kinda fun. And it was nice to eat with all the interns. The girl who we explained our project to seemed really nice, and I realized the complexity of our project as I tried to explain it to her. So I guess the actual presentation should be super fun...right?

Halle, SC

August 11th

Dr. D. wasn't here again today. Matt and I are almost done with our powerpoint! Yay! We have 15 solid slides, which is awesome. We're still kind of confused on this research paper. We brainstormed our introduction and are making our flowchart into paragraphs. We have some questions about how to put data into format, and the conclusion is confusing us too. Once we talk to Dr. D., I don't think it's going to be that bad to assemble. Plus we have two more weeks, so I'm feeling pretty good about our progress! Tomorrow we have a field trip and I won't be in on Friday, so this week is winding down!

Halle, SC

August 9th

Today was quite the rainy day! Matt and I went downstairs to our lab this morning only to discover that our lab was going to be cleaned all morning. Luckily I brought my laptop with me to work, so I was able to do some work while not in the lab. We went up to the freshman lab with Kelsey and got stuff done up there. After lunch, our lab was ready for us. But it was just kinda dark downstairs, so I found a nice table on the first floor so I could continue working on the powerpoint. Hopefully Dr. D. will be back tomorrow so he can help us get started on the paper we have to write.

Kelsey and Ed came and kept me company by the windows, as you can see below. (Photo credit to Ed)

Halle, SC

August 8th

Today we finished a flow chart for Dr. D. Basically what it can do is if given a CME, we can determine if it will hit Mars. We also continued on with our presentation. Dr. D. wasn't here today, so we did what we could without him. Things are beginning to slow down because the undergrads are all preparing for their presentations this week, so it's crunch time for them. To me, this was a weird day because I left from 10 to 1, so my timing is all a little off. Although I did stop at Tops on my way back to RIT and picked up some Oreos for the interns. Everyone needs a little pick me up on Monday :]

Halle, SC

August 5th

Today we got to go to Xerox in Webster! I love field trips, and not just because of the free food (although that is quite nice!). We went to Amiel's first and got some subs. After lunch we proceeded up to Webster. Our visit started out with a presentation by Xerox engineers on all the cool stuff they are developing. One man talked about how his team is developing a detector that can tell if someone is smoking at a gas station, and another lady talked about creating custom medical videos for patients. I think my favorite thing they discussed were the tickets Xerox can create that when scanned with UV light, one can determine their authenticity. I really enjoyed the presentation. It is cool to see how innovative Xerox is being.

Then we had a tour of their manufacturing center where we saw how they made these gigantic printers (also valued at about $600,000). Although it wasn't as interesting as hearing the engineers speak, it still was pretty cool.

The field trip basically took up the entire day, but it was definitely worth it. Matt and I will continue on with our work on Monday.

Halle, SC

August 4th

Matt finished all of his math today! Yay! We've only been working with excel for days and weeks and what seems like eternity. So this was very exciting news. What this means is that we will now be able to look at CMEs and determine whether or not it will hit Mars, which was basically our final goal.

I'm not sure sure if this means that all of our research is done, because it seems a little early for that. However, we still have plenty to do. We are going to work on assembling our paper, which will take plenty of time. We have a lot of research to organize and document. 

Today was also our cookout. We're going to Xerox tomorrow so we chose to have it today. With several interns missing, everyone had to step up their game. After we ate, we engaged in a lovely game of frisbee! Sadly, things got a little out of hand and we got a frisbee stuck in a tree. Go us.

Luckily, we have Matt (other Matt) to climb in the tree and get it.

Our cookouts are always fun, even for Bob, who expressed his hip side to us.

Oh what a fun day it was!

Halle, SC

August 3rd

Every other intern seems to be out for the week (well, not every other, but around 5 I believe), so we are running on low intern staff at the moment.

I continued working on the powerpoint today while Matt continued with his calculations. Everything is beginning to come together now, which is nice to see. We obviously still have a lot of work ahead of us, but it is nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Once Dr. D. clears the data, we will have to begin to further prepare for our presentation. We also will be assembling a paper of our research. He wants everything to be documented for anyone in the future who wants to use the data. The paper seems daunting, but I'm really excited to get everything in one final packet.

Halle, SC

August 2nd

Today we made quite a bit of progress. My favorite accomplishment of the day was the powerpoint. For our final presentation, we have to have a powerpoint with all our information. We hadn't started yet, and since it seems like a daunting task, we figured we should get started. Taking some tips from Presentation Zen, the movie we watched last week, I got started putting some slides together. After doing this for a bit, I realized that making powerpoints is my life calling (okay not really, but I will say that it does look quite nice). Although, I will admit, it's hard to make images of exploding energy off of the sun look zen. But regardless, it's coming along quite nicely.

Matt and I also found this really helpful website with solar wind speeds that should help make the data easier to collect, so we are progressing with that as well.

Halle, SC

August 1st

Well today Matt and I ran into a bit of a roadblock. The satellite we were going to use to create a third point is very close to earth, too close that it is too hard to make accurate measurements of the times when CMEs arrive. Dr. D. was out of town, so we started working on things for our presentations. He will be in tomorrow so hopefully we can begin to solve this issue.

Halle, SC

July 29th

Today Matt and I continued doing research on auroras. Since we know the travel time to the satellite outside of earth, knowing when auroras occur should tell us the actual travel time to earth, which will basically give us three points on a line, which will be extremely helpful. We are going to start going through all of our dates of CMEs and then look at the auroral spikes to figure out the travel time to earth. Should be quite the task.

Halle, SC