Happy New Year!

I can't believe how long it's been since I've last blogged - I've had so many ideas of stories to post, but I've also had some life issues that have kept me away.  Not to worry!  My most important resolution for 2013 is to write blog posts a few weeks ahead of time so that I can still post weekly even when life gets in the way.  I will be back in full force in 2013!  Expect posts on Thursdays, unless there is something timely I want to share before then.  I will make sure to post on Twitter when I a new post is available so if you don't follow me already, please follow @livingligo.

This is a smiley face the deicing crew at the Pittsburgh International Airport made in the snow.  As seen through the deicing fluid on the window of my plane on the evening of 29 December 2012.

2012

This year has been a year of many changes for me.  My days as a postdoc have come to an end and I now hold a dual position with Caltech as a scientist at the LIGO Livingston Observatory and as a physics instructor at LSU.  It is great being back in the classroom but that is also something that has kept me from posting as much as I would like.  It takes a lot of time to create interesting lectures for a class of 150 students and handle all of the class administration myself (office hours, grading, etc.).  This semester I am teaching the second semester of physical science (astronomy, chemistry, earth science) and will only have a 30 students.  I am very excited about the more personal instruction I will be able to do!

There have also been many changes at LIGO.  When I first started working at the Livingston observatory in 2007, there were about 25-30 people who worked there on a daily basis.  Starting with the Advanced LIGO preparations in 2010, we nearly doubled the number of daily staff.  Since the installation is well underway, we no longer need to have so many people on site (having too many people on site while we are looking for gravitational waves will cause ground vibrations that will decrease our sensitivity).  The parking lots are noticeably less full and it is starting to feel a little lonely even though we still have more people working on site than when I started.

As far as my personal life is concerned, I'm glad that 2012 is over.  It has been full of drama and uncertainty and it is one of the things that have been getting in the way of keeping up with this blog and my career in general.  But I wouldn't change a moment of it since I have so many great people around me, at home and at work, who care for me. 


2013

This coming year will prove to be exciting!  The installation of Advanced LIGO should be completed and the first commissioning (use of the detector to fine tune it to its best sensitivity) started.  This is always an interesting time when you get to use the detector for the first time and solve novel problems.  I will be sure to tell you all about them here! 

I will also continue teaching at LSU.  As I mentioned above, I will be teaching the second semester of physical science with about 30 students.  I also expect to teach a masters degree class on inquiry learning for in-service teachers this summer (I've done this class twice before with LSU).  

Of course, the most exciting events are usually the unexpected.  I look forward to sharing the professional and personal excitement with you here.

Thank you to all of my readers, followers on Twitter, and those who found me through a search engine!  Keep coming back for more!

What are you looking forward to this year?

My New Jobs and Working in Academia

THE NEW JOBS

I've talked before about my current position as a postdoc (short for postdoctoral scholar/researcher/fellow/etc.).  This is a temporary position very much like a medical doctor's residency.  I've held this position for the past 5 years and I've loved it, so much so that I managed to land myself a more permanent position, or I should say positions since I now have 2 jobs.

My first job that will be replacing my postdoc (which is up at the end of the month) is "Data Analysis and EPO Scientist" for Caltech but working at the LIGO Livingston Observatory (EPO stands for Education and Public Outreach).  This is a half-time position that will allow me to continue my LIGO research and continue to perform outreach.  Basically, this new scientist job at LIGO will let me to keep doing what I've been doing for the last 5 years.

My second job is an instructor position in the LSU physics department.  This semester I am teaching conceptual physics (PHSC 1001: Physical Science) which is sometimes referred to as "physics for poets".  I am especially excited about teaching the class at LSU because many of the students are future teachers themselves.  I've taught the equivalent course to this while I was at Penn State (PHYS 001: The Science of Physics).  This was the one course I had complete control over while I was at Penn State: including text book selection, lecture & exam creation, etc.  I picked this class because it is hard to teach.  Through my previous teaching experience, I discovered that the less math you use in a physics class, the harder it is to teach.  Calculus-based physics is MUCH easier to teach than algebra-based; not because the students in the calculus-based physics class are smarter (which isn't true), but because a teacher can use math as a crutch and not have to truly articulate concepts.


THE GOOD AND THE BAD

I am really thrilled about my jobs.  Not only do I have a job (with benefits) in this economic climate, but it is in my field and doing what I love to do.  I am also back in the classroom which I missed (but loved the work in outreach I've been doing).  I get to continue doing to LIGO research.

In a sense, I have a very non-traditional "professorship" since I get to teach and do research.  The reason this isn't really a professorship is that I do not have the ability to earn tenure.  In academia, after a certain amount of time (usually 7 years) you are eligible for a promotion that makes you a permanent member of the faculty at the school.  In higher education, the evaluation criteria usually include the quality of your research (usually measured on the amount of grants you obtained and papers that you published), your teaching, and your service to the school and the profession.  At very big research schools, much more weight is placed on research; in smaller liberal arts colleges, teaching is often more important.  The fact that I am in a non-tenure track position is good in that I don't have to worry about obtaining my own research funds or publish stacks of papers and it is bad in that I am never going to have the security that tenure could bring me.  Of course, I have the option of leaving my current positions in the future and finding a tenure-track job (which isn't easy to do these days).

Another good aspect about my split position is that it think it is pretty hard to get laid off from two different jobs at the same time.  I guess that's a kind of job security...  I may not have tenure but it will be hard for me to be completely unemployed.

Ultimately, I am thrilled that two different universities are willing to claim me and I still get to do what I love...  It doesn't get much better than that!

Louisiana Science Teachers' Association Meeting & X-Rays

I've been away on travel to the Louisiana Science Teachers' Association (LSTA) Meeting last week in Monroe, LA.  LIGO goes to present workshops and to advertise the Science Education Center (SEC) though a booth in the exhibit hall. 

Our booth in the exhibit hall featured a projection of the LIGO documentary "Einstein's Messengers", the Visible Vibrations exhibit from our exhibit hall, 'snacks' (inexpensive, miniature versions of exhibits that teachers can build and use in their classrooms - the Exploratorium has a nice catalog of 'snacks' here), brochures, and posters.  While it was tiring being on your feet all day interacting with the teachers, it was also extremely rewarding!  One of the most inspiring people I interacted with wasn't even a teacher.  One of the security staff was so fascinated by the Visible Vibrations exhibit, that he kept coming back and interacting with it for most of the day!  To see someone who isn't even our target audience (at least that day) exploring the physics involved was extraordinary.  On top of that, he made some of the most spectacular vibration patterns I've ever seen!

LIGO also presented two one-hour workshops.  The SEC director presented one on motors and I presented another one on the LaserFest kits that I based the LaserFest Teachers' Day on a few weeks ago (you can read more about it here).  I had enough kits for 30 attendees, but my workshop was at the end of the day on Friday and only had about 10 teachers attend.  While I was a little disappointed (my ego had me convinced that EVERYONE would want to come to MY workshop), it was also a blessing in two ways.  The first way is that I got to have a lot more one-on-one time with the teachers and they had much more time to ask deeper questions than they would have normally.  The second way is that there were extra kits to be had.  The teachers seemed quite happy when I told them they got to keep their kits and, when I asked if they would like to take another kit with them to share with other teachers at their school, their faces lit up.  Each and every one of those kits has now found a good home in a Louisiana classroom.

Today in History...

Today is the 115th anniversary of the X-ray (if you hadn't noticed from Google's Doodle for today)!  I can't count how many of these I've had in my life and how many times they have saved me from some medical trouble, everything from dental cavities to finding my kidney stone.

Speaking of which, the X-ray below is after I had a ureteral stent placed between my kidney and my bladder to bypass my kidney stone and allow my kidney to drain.  The stent is clearly visible and the kidney stone is the little shrapnel looking thing about a third of the way down the stent.  The top curl is in my kidney and the bottom is in my bladder.  I am so happy that both the stone and the stent are gone!

Busy Last Week: SESAPS Meeting and LaserFest Teachers' Day

Sorry for the lack of posts but I have been completely knackered after the events of last week:


SESAPS Meeting @ LSU

The American Physical Society (APS) has regional section meetings across the country and the end of last week saw the Southeast Section Meeting of the APS Meeting at LSU.  Since Initial LIGO was decommissioned a few days before, LIGO opened up a few of its vacuum chambers to the SESAPS attendees to show off the optics that were contained within.  This was indeed a rare opportunity as the chambers are only opened in between science runs AND only when there was crucial work to be done on specific components.  I work on site and I have only ever gotten to see inside a few of the chambers before.

Over 100 (and I believe I am being conservative) guests visited LIGO on Thursday afternoon and toured the Science Education Center, control room and LVEA (Laser Vacuum Equipment Area, otherwise known as the corner of the LIGO detector where all the neat stuff is).

Above is the inside of HAM6 (Horizontal Access Module - it has a table inside in instead of hanging the equipment from the top of the chamber) which is the output of the LIGO detector.  The taller piece of equipment on the table is the Output Mode Cleaner (OMC) which will help insure that the laser light has optimal intensity and phase to be used to detect gravitational waves (you can read a more detailed description of this kind of mode cleaner here).

This is what is inside of BSC1 (Beam Splitter Chamber - the kind of chamber where the equipment is hung from the top of the chamber).  This mirror (which looks like glass, but the front surface has a transparent light purple coating to make it reflective to infrared light which is what our laser is) is called ITMY (Intermediate Test Mass on the Y [south] arm).  (Test mass is our complicated way of saying mirror.)  This mirror sits just after the corner beam splitter of LIGO to intercept the light returning from the end mirror to bounce it back to the end mirror - this bouncing happens about 100 times before the light gets past the ITM to recombine with the light coming from the X arm and go to the output (which you just saw in the previous picture).

This is a picture of me and my husband, Derek (who is an engineer at LIGO).  The bright light you see shining from the left is the spot light that is illuminating ITMY.  This isn't the best picture, but I just had to have a picture of us in front of this mirror before they closed the chamber up - which is exactly what they did just after this picture was taken!


LaserFest Teachers' Day
 

I've been talking lately about the workshop I've been planning for middle/high school teachers of physical science and physics.  Since 2010 is the 50th anniversary of the invention of the laser, this year is also LaserFest.  To that end, the professional societies whose research have benefited from lasers all got together to sponsor LaserFest and to promote the educational outreach of lasers.  Since the SESAPS Meeting was taking place at LSU with physicists from all over the region, I decided it would be great to organize a LaserFest Teachers' Day to focus on the classroom kits the APS is distributing for free to teachers and to invite the meeting physicists to have lunch with the teachers and chat about what they do.

Organizing this event was quite the journey.  The first thing that needed to be done was to find the funding for the event (even if the kits are free from the APS, there are costs for food, recruiting and other miscellaneous supplies) which was supplied by the APS Forum on Education, the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and the Optical Society of America (OSA).  Then I needed to recruit teachers from the surrounding areas.  I was lucky here since I work with the LIGO Science Education Center and was able to advertise this event through their contact who also helped to spread the word.  Then there is making sure that the supplies arrive in time, contracting catering for the event, making sure that the teachers know when and where to be and insuring that you have all the incidental supplies that are needed (e.g. the kits contain everything a teacher would need except things they should already have like scissors and tape - but I needed to make sure that we had those for the workshop).  I know that none of these things sound like a lot, but this reminded me a lot of the last days before my wedding when all the details needed to fall into place at the same time.

The day started at 9 am with breakfast followed by a wonderful talk by Dr. Ken Schafer who introduced us to the basic concepts that make a laser work, their history and their applications.  We then proceeded to the first of the 4 activities in the 2009 PhysicsQuest kit (which included a laser pointer, and LED light, polarizers, glow-in-the-dark vinyl and colored light filters).  At noon, we broke for lunch and chatting with some of the physicists visiting for the SESAPS Meeting.  The rest of the afternoon saw us working through the remaining 3 activities and the day concluded at about 3 pm.

The picture above is some of the teachers hard at work doing the laser activity where we measured the width of our hair by measuring the diffraction pattern made by shining the laser on the hair.  That explains why the teacher on the left is giving herself a hair cut!

The APS has put together a useful page on arranging a Teachers' Day of your own - see it here.

I know that there are many people out there with poor opinions of our education system and the teachers within it, but I was truly inspired by these teachers who attended this workshop on their own time and without pay so that they can learn how to do these activities and take them back into their classrooms.  These teachers definitely went above and beyond to better themselves and their students!