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FIELD TRIP
Where? Patriot Jet Team Foundation
When? March 2023
During this field trip I learned about flight dynamics. Since this was a full-day trip, the participants not only got an in-depth presentation on how flight works, from the basic thrust, drag, lift, and weight, to an in-depth analysis of how propellers and different types of wings and 'noses' of the plane both distinguished their flight capabilities and their purposes. We found out that some of these planes had been used in the film Top Gun!
After learning about flight, we got to see the inside of some of the planes, seeing the things we learned about shown in real life. For example, we got to see how the different shapes of the wings and propellers looked on actual planes, and how the planes used in the movie look very different to produce the maneuvers capable in the film.
Once we had lunch, we were split into groups to actually use a flight simulator. Using the online interface, a group of 5 other students and I truly experience how difficult it was to learn the controls and maneuver the plane, especially when trying to attack other targets and escape those targets yourself
FIELD TRIP
Where? Pixar
When? May 2023
I had the great honor and privilege to go on a field trip with my mentor Mr. Matthew LaRocca, and my father. We got an amazing tour, not only of the facilities in Pixar but also the ability to look into other animators' offices. The tours began with an exclusive look at the concept art for the upcoming film Elemental. Pixar has a rotating showcase of the concept work, color script, and daily reels for their upcoming films so I had an exclusive peek into the great minds and work that made Elemental and also Lightyear.
After looking at that gallery, Mr. LaRocca took us to the sound recording room which had signatures of all the great voice actors that have been a part of these films, and then got to see all the offices. The animators can design the offices the way they like so I was able to see some truly outrageous designs like the inside of a plane hangar, a taco shop, and even a jungle, complete with vines and a tree.
Pixar is two buildings, one with the animators' workspaces and one with multiple soundstages. One of the soundstages has an entrance hall with a lamp motif that runs across the doorframe. there is also the awards room for all the awards that Pixar has won as an animation studio and a memorial for the original baseball club it used to be, ironically, named A113.
One of my key takeaways from this trip was the use of Renderman. My mentor is a member of the Tools division. Pixar has developed its own extensive rendering software that has an entire building dedicated to it. The tools division runs to fix the bugs in the software that creates the finished look in these movies. Understanding how there's an entire division dedicated to such a complicated, unlicensed software gave me a whole new appreciation for these creations.
FIELD TRIP
Where? Stanford and the Computer History Museum
When? November 2023
This was such an informative trip. We first went to the computer history museum, tracing the complex development from simple arithmetic to the more mechanical models that did simple computation to the development of the first computer, and its other implementations on devices such as rockets, satellites, tracking devices, to the smartphone, a computer held in your hand. And it didn't stop there. From the compacting of such devices, computers have been used to do so many things.
Due to my interest in computer graphics and game design, I spent most of my time in the Computers and Art exhibit. I learned how a group of students at a university in Utah created the mesh method, that allowed others to create 3D objects in the digital space. But even before that, people were trying to automate painting. In fact, we got to see models of some machines that had canvases with a robot hand that would hold a brush and make randomized motions. There was also a short film detailing the development of animation, my particular field of interest. Tracing the development from 2D hand-drawn animation to the rudimentary animation developed by John Lasseter to the current state of animation was truly fascinating.
Apart from that, I also saw how computers were used in games such as Pacman, and even got to play an automated ping pong game that reminded me of a rudimentary Python Turtle game that I'd programmed years ago, with two rectangles and a ball.
After the museum, we went to the Stanford campus. Stanford was a beautiful campus and I could see why the logo is a pine tree. We met with 2 Stanford students who took us on our tour, and we walked around the amphitheater where freshmen were inducted and made our way to a set of science buildings. We found out that the reason the chemistry building was farther than the main campus was to prevent a fire hazard. We then made our way to the main pavilion which has all the language arts and humanities classes with the physics and astronomy classes leading our way there. We heard of the story of how physicists on the first floor won a Nobel prize and consequently, as the years went by, the second and third floors also had physicists who won Nobel prizes but that tradition hasn't followed through anymore. For being in Palo Alto, a town that I used to cross in my childhood, it really was a beautiful campus.
FIELD TRIP
Where? SHE Summit at CSAA Insurance Company in Walnut Creek
When? March 2024
This was a very inspiring field trip where we attended a female stem leadership conference. We began the event with a panel of diverse women spesaking of their expeirences from school to their STEM fields and how they got into these fields of accounting, or software, and how they got to leadership positions. Some of the advice given to us from this panel was the importance of not being a one trick pony. Two of the speakers spoke of how they took improv classes which helped them with communication when they worked with clients to think on their feet.
Similarly, skills like selling, speech, and even programming are invaluable. They also touched on work-life balance where they emphasized the need to learn your habits and be able to map when you are the most productive and schedule your day to maximize the times when you are most effective.
We then broke into two workshops, one with a UCSB alum speaking about how her economics degree helped her appreciate the work done by insurance companies and she took us through a series of example problems to analyze data coming from information collected by the company. We learned about the difference between and actuarial analyst, a data scientist, and an insurance product analyst. My favorite however was the second workshop. We met with an XR developer who works with VR, AR, and MR. She was a programmer named Josette Seitz and she walked us through how simple it was to use Unity a gaming and modeling software to create simulations. We saw how the roles of artist, programmer, designer, and project manager play a role in what mixed reality can accomplish. She then gave us demos and we got to see an example of one of her interactive augmented reality projects called Alice Through the Looking Glass which was an interactive gallery of quotes with animated features reminiscent of the Alice in Wonderland films. I got her number nad we have begun corresponding as this is one of the potential fields I wish to get into.
After the workshops, we met with mentors, and other women in STEM fields and they gave us advice about a variety of things from the importance of certain soft skills to work-life balance, and how to manage one's productivity. Overall, I enjoyed this event!
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