Last day of science honors program

Yesterday was the last day of the semester for Columbia’s Science Honors Program. I arrived late to my class (nanoscience) because of traffic on the road, and by the time I got there, combating the frightfully cold winds that stung my nose and cheeks, I saw that no one was left in the classroom. I saw book bags and notebooks and even some pens, scattered around the tables and one almost threatening to fall onto the floor, but not a person in sight. A hastily scribbled note was taped onto the side of the door and read:

“If you are late, please go to Pupin 1207. It is on the 12th floor of Pupin.”

I smiled to myself–haha! Now I had to return to the cold outside and trudge up twelve flights of stairs. So I went outside again, hurrying but not running, until I reached Pupin. The entrance level was actually the 5th level, so I only had to walk up seven flights of stairs. I didn’t take the elevator because I thought that you had to punch in a special code in order to get the elevator to work (but I later remembered that was only for the elevator to arrive on the 5th floor–I learned that two years ago when I first entered the Science Honors Program).

So I ran, then walked, then pulled myself up the seven flights of stairs. I am out of shape! By the tenth level, I had to wait at the bottom of the stairs and catch my breath. Then I had to pull myself by the hand railing up the flights of stairs. When I finally reached the twelfth level, my legs felt like lead and I almost fell on the door.

When I did enter the twelfth level, first I walked to my right, but realized that I was going the wrong way. But to my left, the hall was a dead end (and it ended with two locked doors that was room 1201–a laboratory). But I went to my left anyway and found a closed and locked door that said “1207.” The room right next to it had a door open.

I knocked on the door, waited a few seconds, but no one came. I knocked again, waited again, and no one came. The third time I knocked, a lady from the room next to 1207 popped her head out of the doorway and said, “These two rooms are connected.”

“Wait–this is nanotechnology…right?”

“Yeah, are you early or late?”

“Late.”

“Oh, come in. You can wait for the next group to come.”

Apparently, the class was divided into groups and the different groups went to different laboratory stations to learn about how the nanoscience studies worked (we looked at how imaging worked, the scanning electron microscrope, etc.).

For fifteen minutes, I basically talked with the lady, who was a graduate student. It was interesting to learn that those liquid nitrogen tanks can be dangerous since if they tipped over, the sudden release of pressure would send them flying through walls (”like a rocket”). And it seems that the helium tanks used for blowing up balloons are also the same shape and also have the same dangerous aura. (I learned this because I asked the question, “What’s dangerous in this lab?”)

After the wait, a group came in and I listened to the lecture and followed them to the next lab, which was looking at scanning electron microscopes. Most of what was discussed about SEM I already knew from AP Biology, but one thing I didn’t know was that live things can be seen under the SEM. I’ve always learned that everything must be dead, since scientists had to coat the object being studied with a sort of silver paint in order for the electrons to be able to bounce off the surface and form a good picture. But, I learned that in this lab, the people had once taken a small cockroach which was still alive and coated it with silver. They glued it onto a disk (I guess that’s used to slide the specimen under/into the microscope). They saw the cockroach images on the computer and could focus in and out. When they took the cockroach out from the microscope, it was still alive and wiggling for its life. In the researcher’s words, “It looked like Godzilla. It’s good that there isn’t actually anything like this outside of the miscroscope.”

The last stop was at a laboratory conducting studies with this instrument that I’m not really sure what it did. I didn’t really understand what was being conducted, but I did learn that researchers had to write computer programs in order to collect and extract data from electronic instruments and then analyze this data (with another written computer program). I thought that was interesting because I never knew that researchers had to know computer languages, too. But that makes sense, since everything is so electronic these days, it’d be hard to research without knowledge of electronics.

So the semester ended with these laboratory visits. It was interesting. I wonder what I’m going to take next semester!