Hey there everyone! First of all, let me start off with an apology for not taking many pictures. I did not know I would blog about my campus experience until after I had completed the camp. Otherwise, I would have taken many more pictures… Sorry about that.
I took part in an Astronomy and Astrophysics course at Columbia University in New York during the last two weeks of July and beginning of August in the summer of 2016. I'll be perfectly honest, I procrastinated till the last second to complete the application for doing the summer program. Many people had told me that it wasn't necessary to do these types of camps. I also felt that I wasn’t necessarily qualified enough to even make it into the program.
If you are ever deciding whether it is something you may or may not want to do, DO IT. It's worth it. In school you can find a teacher with a poster in his/her room with a quote that says something along the lines of, “You miss 100% of the opportunities you don’t take.” It applies here (I know, what a surprise! We use school in our daily lives? That’s a crazy notion).
Even if you find it to be quite expensive, the experience is worth the money.
Why did I choose Astronomy and Astrophysics? Well I'll be honest, (as of this writing) I have very little idea of what I want to potentially pursue when I'm off to college. All I know is that STEM is super interesting and often I like to read about many topics and issues within that subject. So if you feel like you don't really have a solid idea of what you want to do, it doesn't matter. Go for it anyway. You never know, you might discover what greatly intrigues you.
I picked Astronomy and Astrophysics because it seemed like it would be an interesting course (additionally, I have read many books on that subject, the most recent one being Death by Black Hole by Neil DeGrasse Tyson). I figured this course could be a useful way for me to narrow down my interests, and, even if it doesn’t, I would be learning an interesting subject so my time would not be wasted.
First thing I do is wake up at 6:30 am. First class begins 10 am, but I was commuting so I had to wake up terribly early. My father would drive me to the train station, and we would both commute on NJ Transit. I fell asleep on the Transit so many times, so I was lucky I always got to my stop and didn't get sent to the trainyard (they don't check to make sure everyone gets off at the last stop). I would navigate my way through Penn Station, occasionally rushing through the crowd to catch a train. I learned simple tips and tricks to choose the faster train, such as if the train’s number begins with 39, it is an express train (take that train to get home quicker). I would get on the subway and reach Columbia around 9:00 am. At this time, I would enter Butler Library and get some work or reading done while I waited for class to begin.
By around 10 am, I head over to Pupin Physics Laboratories and scale 13 floors (I actually climbed the stairs a few times… Wow was that tiring) to head into class. In case you are curious, Pupin is the location of the early research for the Manhattan Project, the first splitting of the Uranium atom by Enrico Fermi, and the discovery of deuterium, to name a few.
The first day was quite awkward amongst our classmates, but that was to be expected. Our professor, Dr. Applegate, was so excited for class that as soon as he walked in, he began a 2 hour lecture without bothering to take attendance. The level of material is something much higher than what you might expect at the highschool level, so it provided a really nice challenge.
Our schedule was very basic:
10 am - Noon: 1st Lecture
Noon - 2 pm: Lunch/Community Service/Extra Activities
2 pm - 4 pm: 2nd Lecture
THEN WE’RE DONE!
Residential students had the privilege of participating in a great variety of activities on weekend, whereas commuter students like me were excluded like outcasts. I’m still a bit salty about that.
Our morning sessions were filled with our professor’s monotonous lectures, his awkwardly funny jokes, our hands feverishly scribbling down notes, and various students losing the battle with drowsiness. As lunch came around, students ventured out onto Amsterdam Ave and Broadway, exploring the various types of restaurants, enjoying the city bustle, and dying of heat.
Each day I would have a different type of food from a different culture. I tried Hawaiian, Korean, traditional Chinese, Japanese-Thai blend, Greek, Italian, stereotypically American, Middle Eastern, (affluent) French, Mexican, and Chipotle. My family is not too big on travel, or trying new cultural foods, so my experience at Columbia gave me an opportunity to finally explore, and boy was it great.
If you do happen to drop by Columbia and need a quick bite, I recommend Milano Market Deli (between 112th and 113th on Broadway). I did not realize the importance of delis until I had to eat quickly in order to attend a lecture (more on that later). Now, my brother would say I “love Delis too much.”
Milano Market offers an awesome Chicken Parm: it has TWO huge pieces of meat… So so beautiful…
After chilling with my commuter student group and exploring Columbia University and the nearby areas, we would return to class where our professor would, again, forget to take attendance in his excitement. After an hour of lecturing, he would give us various types of astrophysics problems. I felt a bit bad because it took me a long time to complete whereas there were others who were completing it immediately. It turned out that these Orbit Problems were assigned in AP Physics C. The others had taken AP Physics C before and thus were used to these kinds of problems, unlike me. Our professor decided to challenge us by assigning Orbit Problems that he would normally assign to undergraduate Juniors or Seniors. The problems were actually really fun because we would have problems like:
You are minding your time when out of nowhere, the Sun loses three-quarters of its mass! What orbit does Earth go into? Provide all the parameters of the new orbit (orbital period, major axis, rA, rP, vA, vP, eccentricity, angular momentum, energy).
Compute the number of deuterons in a brown dwarf and determine the relationship between the energy released from 2H fusion, gravitational energy, and the total energy. (Given quantities: Luminosity, Mass, Radius where Deuterium begins to burn).
If an object 1.5% the mass of Earth traveling at 45 km/s collides with Earth at its perihelion, how does the orbit of the Earth change? Provide all the parameters of the new orbit (orbital period, major axis, rA, rP, vA, vP, eccentricity, angular momentum, energy).
My favorite problem of the program was when we had to mathematically determine a Earth-Mars trip. We determined how long the trip would take, how much we would have to accelerate to get out of/into orbit, the Earth-Mars configuration that was needed in order to launch, where to launch on the Earth for maximum efficiency, etc.
That was a really cool problem that took what we learned and applied it to a real-life application (which I never thought I would do until I actually did it; I was pretty hyped).
Towards the last week of the camp, our professor gave our class the opportunity to use a telescope and go sightseeing from campus grounds. We didn’t get to see much because, well, how much do you really expect to see from the Upper West Side with all of that light pollution? We did get to see a little though, like Mars, Venus, and Saturn (I was able to make out a faint outline of its rings!). There is an observatory at the top of Pupin Hall; however, due to the construction of various buildings and abundance of light pollution, its utility has been severely reduced, and now only a few will use it. Most Columbia Astronomy graduate students will instead perform their research at the McGraw-Hill and Hiltner telescopes in Tucson, Arizona.
During my time at Columbia, there were also multiple possibilities for community service, like volunteering at soup kitchens, planting trees somewhere, and helping donate clothes to the needy. Unfortunately, those options occurred after class, and since I was a commuter student, I was unable to participate in them.
My cousin was partaking in summer research at Columbia, studying Particle physics. His parents pay an insane amount of money every year so he can study literally nothing…
Jokes aside, it was quite interesting visiting him and watching what he does. Through performing multiple simulations over the course of the summer, he determined that multi-event collisions could be successfully modeled by single-event collisions and thus determined something rather intriguing about the nature of particles.
The whole story of how he convinced the Columbia science department that he was correct was very similar to how other scientists in history claimed some radical explanation (that was, in hindsight, completely correct), but no one believed them. It’s a rather interesting story, but not mine to tell. Luckily my cousin was not forced under house arrest like Galileo was. Society is a lot more willing today to learn than it has ever been before.
I had the opportunity to stay overnight with him a few times, get lost in NYC a few times (even he gets confused by it occasionally), and eat out with some relatives at expensive restaurants in the middle of Times Square. Staying overnight is really interesting, as a lot of college life occurs late night. I went up to the penthouse of his dorm (which was converted into a study room), and there were a decent amount of people who were up late, studying and doing work together. And it’s the SUMMER. More people are there during the school year, so imagine how many students stay up late here and there studying. I worked till about 2 or 3 am, then joined my cousin and his friends on a Pokemon GO fest in Central Park till around 4 am. There are a surprising amount of people in Central Park at 4 am playing Pokemon GO... Then I proceeded to wake up at noon the next day (no class that day) and went straight home.
My STEM experiences in this course made me super interested in Astrophysics, and I know I will be looking into that as a potential career choice as well. Aside from my STEM experiences, a little taste of college life was also very interesting. I have to say that I already miss the camp… It was one of those rare places where I could be a true nerd and no one would give me a weird look (because they were just as nerdy as I was). It felt great to be amongst peers who were like-minded, and I made a couple of really good friends. I’m extremely excited to attend college so I can experience this feeling of being surrounded by people who truly share my passion about the sciences.
If an opportunity comes up, I strongly recommend that you take it. Too many times do we miss out on things we don’t try. I felt very shy about trying the summer program at Columbia: I didn’t feel quite worthy enough of it. Now I realize that the summer program was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in my life! I am really thankful that my parents were on my back to get the application done, because the program helped me to grow as a person, and I can’t imagine why I would want to miss out on such an experience.
If an opportunity comes up for you, TAKE IT. You never know, it could be one of the best things that happen to you.
Hope you enjoyed my blog!
Shri Deshmukh ‘18