SSEAT Energy and Motion Academy

Alright, so I know I am very much behind on updating this thing, and
that I have a ton of pictures and stories that were going to be so fun
to write about. However, now that I am so behind, this task is
becoming less fun and more daunting. So, I figured I better start now,
or it would never happen. I think I left off right before the first
SSEAT Academy last week, on Energy and Motion. So, Sunday night, all
the teachers arrive, and we have a nice reception for them in the
hotel, with wine and such, and some good food, which we promptly ran
out of. My boss was not happy, and hotel manager heard about it
quickly. We ended up with more food, but it was so random, like
chicken fingers random, instead of crab cakes and something wrapped in
bacon, as we had started the evening with. Anyway, so then Monday we
started the conference. Now, while I am not going to go into too many
details about all the stuff we did, I will include the highlights.
Really, the main highlight was that several of the teachers were
basically acting like high school students, and blatantly flirting
with each other, as well as with the photographer (big moron who like
philosophy…some of you might know I don't do well with this kind of
person, since they tend to be full of themselves…he didn't
disappoint). Anyway, so we spent the week trying to keep up on the
drama, and I, of course, positioned myself nicely at meals to get the
updates on who went out with who to what bar each night. It made for
some entertaining conversations with coworkers during the BORING
presentations. So, we did content sessions in the morning (boring) and
then went to different places around DC in the afternoon. Monday we
went over the American History Museum, which I am now a local at.
Steve and I did some work with the Ben Franklin stuff, including the
'ring of fire' (everyone holds hands and send the electricity around.
It is as fun, if not more fun, to shock teachers as it used to be to
shock students. Oh, and for any Astrocamp staff out there, the
Smithsonian has decided it is ok to make a chain and shock people, so
maybe we could have continued with that…oh well. Tuesday we went out
to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. We saw this cool globe thing in
the morning, where the world was projected onto a 3D spehere and you
could look at it from any angle as it hung in the middle of the room.
I took no pictures, but I imagine even if I had, they would not have
done it justice. Then we heard a presentation from this woman who has
her PhD in Aerospace Engineering (first Howard woman to get her PhD in
that field, ever, apparently). She was cool, very down to earth, and
get this: She ALSO failed Calculus 1B twice before passing it the
third time…;-)




In the afternoon we took a tour of some of the
facilities. We got to see (I am going to not remember all the names of
things, but here is the general idea) the big room where they test the
ability of things to stand up to sound waves by blasting these huge
speakers, the place where they test G-force by spinning things like
SUVs around in a huge room, and the big clean room (note the cute
little workers in their clean outfits). Our tourguide, DJ, was insane,
as can be illustrated in this candid picture I took of him. He was
really energetic though, and knew a ton about what he was talking
about, so it was fun.














Um, let's see, Oh, Wednesday we went out to
Udvar Hazy, which is an extension of the Air and Space Museum, and
might actually be my favorite museum this far.



It was filled with all
these old airplanes, and some really cool more recent stuff, like:














The
Concord









The space shuttle Enterprise















and the fastest airplane ever flown


Also, the thing I found the coolest was the actual plane that dropped the first A bomb in Japan. Just sitting there, on its bright yellow platform, for all to see.



Our tourguide, Captain NIck, was hilarious, he told us all sorts of funny and interesting stories about the planes and wartime.



We were supposed to see an IMAX movie, but as it was starting and
I was settling in for a nice nap, the power went out due to a really
nasty storm in the area. We then ended up standing outside, under some
useless cover, waiting for it to stop raining and for our dumb bus to
arrive. The bus was 45 minutes late, and alas, we were stuck in rush
hour traffic until 6:30. I then hung out at the hotel for a while with
one of the teachers (in the hotel bar no less), listened to her tell
me about New Orleans and buy me a beer until it stopped raining. When
it didn't stop raining, one of the other teachers gave me this really
old purple umbrella he stole from a student, and I braved the storm to
catch the bus. Made it home in time to pass out from exhaustion.
Thursday we spent the morning at the Air and Space Museum getting some
tours of plane wings and watching a Physics workshop they put on for
kids. It was interesting, but at this point in the week, I was just
tired. We then had some down time, so I went over to the Natural
History Museum and did the necessary touristy stuff, like seeing the
Hope Diamond and the insect zoo. 45 minutes later, I was done with
that, and headed back to the Air and Space Museum to redeem my free
Imax ticket to see a 3D movie about the moon landings, which was
actually really fun and interesting. Did you know one of the
Astronauts left a picture of his family on the moon? I thought that
was interesting. The afternoon was spent listening to Dane (think Mr.
Decker for those of you from way back when) drone on and on about fan
cars and solar panels. I am not his biggest fan, so by Thursday, I
wanted to hurl him through a window. Luckily, we were in an enclosed
room with no windows, so he was safe.




So, at 4 o'clock, we broke for a few hours, and
I helped move stuff to the National Academy of Sciences for our fancy
dinner (moving in heels is always exciting). The hall was beautiful,
with so much detail, and a lot of history. There was a picture of JFK
getting an award where we were eating. The artwork was amazing, and
the ceiling had all these science symbols and artwork made out of
tiles. It was like a small wedding reception, with the wine flowing
and at least three forks. I started out the evening sitting with some
teachers and such, and then Sally, our director, asked me to take her
seat, so that I could between David Evans, who is the undersecretary
of science for the Smithsonian and David Lopez, the director of the
Air and Space Museum. Yea, fancy. So, David didn't show up, but Donald
did, and he was hilarious. He was our speaker, so it was interesting
to hear him talk about his life (he is 87, I think). He was a pilot
and flew all these really cool old planes, and so he would just tell
us all these stories about getting himself in trouble when he was
younger and flying. That was a cool experience. And then, Friday,
there was a lot of whining to get out of a bed, and some advil to help
with the headache (which obviously had nothing to do with the
bottomless glass of wine from the evening before). We just did some
content sessions, ate lunch, and then kicked out the teachers. I did
meet some cool people though, and so one of the teachers, Katy, and
Steve and I went to get some drinks at this cool Mexican restaurant in
the Dupont Circle area. We have decided to make this a weekly
tradition this summer, and explore the best happy hours DC has to
offer. I will keep you updated.