Hello everyone, this is my first blog post detailing my internship with Andrei Ruckenstein, AKA Dr. Ruckenstein, a Professor and Chair of the Department of Physics at Boston University.
Last week I went up to Aspen, Colorado, to meet up with Dr. Ruckenstein, as before that we had only met on zoom. We met up to discuss what I would be doing with my internship, and how I would work on my skills to be able to model the Keeling curve. The formal definition of the Keeling Curve is, “A graph of the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere based on continuous measurements taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii from 1958 to the present day.” [Wikipedia] Essentially, it tracks humans carbon emissions and how much CO2 we’re putting into the atmosphere. However, to be able to work on understanding the science behind it all, specifically the physics, chemistry, and mathematics, I was given 2 incredible books to read. The first book, by David J.C Mackay, Sustainable Energy-without the hot air, was an incredible introduction to greenhouse gasses, sustainable energy, how to read complex charts, etc. The second book- which has turned out to be the study guide to my internship- is the Physics of Energy, by Robert L. Jaffe, a physics professor at MIT. This book takes a more comprehensive and scientific look at the science behind a lot of phenomena in our world, but the chapters I’m studying, (34 and 35) are a lot more focused on global climate change.
During my time in Aspen, I got to experience an incredible variety of things, but one of my favorites up there was attending a lecture of a physics problem with Dr. Ruckenstein, led by someone who studied at CalTech. Now, everyone who is a member of the Aspen Center for physics teaches at their respective universities, meaning that everyone if not close to everyone there, has a PhD in physics. I was in awe at this fact, and that I got to attend a lecture there. It truly was incredible. I left the lecture after 30 or so minutes, understanding that I wasn’t nearly advanced enough to learn any much more from it, (with Dr. Ruckenstein’s approval of course) went back to my room, and studied different physics and math problems to make sense of what I had heard.
After studying my chapters and reading tons online, I was going to be headed back home to Montrose, Colorado. I was incredibly grateful to meet with Dr. Ruckenstein, and even more grateful for the opportunity to work on a problem for humanity. That’s all this week,
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