Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2011 - (Page 25)

ISTOCK by Morgan MacLeod of young stars in the constellation Cassiopeia. I measured the brightness of all the stars in my images, and ultimately I was able to identify two previously undiscovered variable stars! I presented my results at science fairs like the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium and the Siemens Westinghouse Competition, and was honored when my work won some top prizes. After high school, I studied physics and photography at Bowdoin College. But I missed working with telescopes and astronomical images, so in my junior year, I applied to and was selected for a 15-week NASA undergrad student research program at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California. The day after I arrived at JPL, I traveled with my research advisor to the Palomar Observatory, home of the formidable 200" Hale telescope. Walking around the dome, looking at cameras bigger than I was, and taking a terrifying elevator ride to the top of the dome where the prime focus cameras are housed, I couldn’t help but think that this was astronomy as I’d never experienced it. But once we started using the telescope, I realized that everything I had learned from my little backyard telescope and camera still held true. This was just a scaled-up version. From Observatory to Virtual Laboratory When I returned to Bowdoin, it was time to think about my senior thesis. I decided to apply a different set of tools to astronomy: computational physics, or programming computers to solve physics problems. I had learned about computational physics in a course I’d taken the semester before I went to JPL and remained intrigued by it. www.cty.jhu.edu/imagine imagine 25 http://www.cty.jhu.edu/imagine

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2011

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2011
Contents
Big Picture
In My Own Words
Physics Is…
Making the Team
Nuclear by Nature
Physics: The Next Generation
Telescopic Views
Exploring the Mysterious Lives of Stars
Around the Universe in Three Weeks
Selected Opportunities & Resources
Book Buddies
Meeting the (Economics) Challenge
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
One Step Ahead
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review
Creative Minds Imagine
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2011