NASA LARSS 2008: Poster Session

Originally written on August 5, 2008

Yesterday was the poster session for the student projects. I made a poster for my project about 2 weeks ago, and I brought that and put it up so a lot of scientists could look at it and ask me questions. There were people from the branch I'm working in, and some people I know and work with in the building. There were also people from NIA, and some NASA civil servants I didn't know. No one asked me any ridiculously hard questions (thank goodness) but it was basically just a repetition of different forms of the question "what exactly did you do with your project?" So I ended up explaining the relationship between polarizability increases and noncovalent interactions in carbon nanotubes and polymers. Over and over again. I also looked around to see all of the other project posters. They were interesting - some were directly connected with the Constellation project and Ares and Orion, and others dealt with the Space Shuttle project, materials design, vehicles, financing, journalism, and even art!

Today, I spent most of the day trying to finish the final technical paper for my project, due tomorrow between 11 am and 1 pm. I eventually did finish it (about an hour ago) and I'm currently waiting for my mentor to check it. I'm REALLY hoping it's not a nightmare to read - it's 10 pages long, including the cover pages! (Now, I HAVE written lab reports for OChem and PChem that were much, much, MUCH longer than this, but still... the minimum page limit they're asking for is only 3 pages... with a maximum of 10 pages without the covers. Oh, are they in for a treat...)

By this point, I'm absolutely mentally exhausted. Try talking to me in this kind of state, and I'm pretty sure every third word out of my mouth will be either carbon, nanotube, polymer, matrix, space shuttle, polarizability, tensor, space shuttle, noncovalent, bonding, aromaticity, space shuttle, dipole, raman, upshift, downshift...

And yes, SPACE SHUTTLES!!!