First night at the lab!

Onto the real reason I'm here (ok, not really... the real reason I'm here is because there's a pool on campus a 3 minute walk from my lab). I'm now officially employed by San Jose State University Research Foundation. It's like I'm a scientist, but not because I'm a student with not a whole lot of science/math background. We'll get there. 

I'll post more pics of campus when things are actually open. School is on winter break right now, so it's pretty empty and these pics were taken in the late afternoon when everything was closed.

Here's the building my lab is in.

Hall of Science. Sounds scientific. That's because it is. So, otherwise known as Duncan Hall. The Meteorology Department (and the grad room where my desk resides) is on the 6th floor.

Yes, I do believe that is a cheeseburger in paradise.

This is my desk. 

Haven't really moved much of my stuff into it yet, but I figure that will happen as I sit there and study and suddenly realize I wish I had _________ and kick myself for not thinking of it sooner. You'll notice that I do already have a coffee cup there, because at least I have my priorities straight. Not only is it ceramic and therefore microwavable, but it also has a lid. Winning.

I guess I study here, and live here. Maybe sleep under my desk when it gets too late to drive home. I'll fancy it up more once classes get started (next Thursday!). Maybe put a plant in there that thrives off artificial lighting. Couple of pictures. Bottle of wine. Snacks. Clean underwear. I don't know, the options are endless.

Our little forecasting room for the department. I suppose I could've turned on a light.

 The view from the 6th floor.

My lab is located on the 8th floor in what used to be a storage room. I'll get better pics of all that at a later time. We've also got a rooftop lab (where I will do a lot of my studying while soaking up the rays) that I'll get pics of as well. Our lab's website can be found HERE.

The reason I was at the lab the other night was because a group of local 6th grade students were presenting their project to us and getting a tour of the lab. By the time they got there it was too dark to take them out to the roof, but they got to see a little bit of what we do. I'll try to get a link to the kid's project and will update it here.

First of all, let me just say, I do not remember being this smart in 6th grade. These kids were given a project to research a natural disaster, come up with a solution (using legos and robotics and stuff) and present it to relevant groups in the communities in order to get feedback on their project, and improve it. 

This group chose wildfires and decided to enhance early detection methods by putting a blimp in the sky equipped with an infrared camera. When a new start is detected, they will transmit the coordinates via satellite to the nearest fire station. They are also toying with the idea of some sort of retardant capabilities in the event that suppression resources are delayed.

The whole set-up. A community complete with fire station, the blimp and it's satellite.

Demonstrating the use of the infrared camera. 

This was pretty funny as it led to a discussion on the best settings to use for the IR camera. This kid and my professor started discussing the range, in microns of the wavelengths of these things. I got the gist of it but I mean, who really knows what a micron is? It's small is all that I understand. Anyway, so my professor said we generally have it at 3.9 microns, or well, 4. And this kid came back with- actually, I did some calculations and yadda, yadda, averaged out these measurements and came up with 4.3 microns. He handed my professor his notebook that displayed his calculations. Goodness! This kid is smarter than I am! I bet I can do more pull-ups though.

Upstairs in the lab, my professor demonstrates a small unmanned aircraft the lab used to do an IR flight around a prescribed burn.

And my professor and I posing with the kids.

We had a big question and answer time where we provided feedback and suggestions for their project. They asked us questions about fire and fire weather, and we bounced some ideas back and forth about retardant, detection issues and typical fire behavior. It was super cool, and I was definitely impressed with how well these kids did the research, visited fire stations for feedback, adjusted according to suggestions and were still striving to make improvements. Mostly, I left there thinking I had gotten myself into a pretty cool new life situation.