The National Society of Physics Students organization is broken up into zones across the U.S. Florida falls into Zone 6, which has its own annual meeting at a host university. This year the host university was the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, and we were able to get funding from Student Activities for five of us to go! We listened to presentations on different research taking place in our zone, both from professors and students. Several group activities allowed us to meet people from all over our region (Zone 6 covers Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Puerto Rico). The highlight of the trip, however, was visiting the Arecibo Observatory, the largest radio telescope in the world! Here’s a photo tour of our adventure:
Chris braves the Puerto Rican roads. No offense to the people of Puerto Rico, but wow do they need to learn what lanes are! The road was so congested it took us nearly four hours to get to our hotel; granted, we had to drive all the way across the country to get there, but still, it was only about a fifty or sixty mile drive . . .
The view was spectacular! The climate is very similar to Florida’s, except with mountains. Chris and Ari didn’t have much experience with elevation, so their reactions made it even more entertaining.
We reached the Arecibo Observatory after traversing some extremely narrow and winding streets, which also happened to be on a very steep incline. Those made us all very nervous! But we made it, and a giant telescope with a 1000-foot diameter is not a sight any of us will easily forget.
The entrance to the telescope!
The giant platform hanging about 500 feet from the dish is where the signals from the telescope are received. People are transported to it in a little metal cage, as we were lucky enough to see below. We all really, really wanted to go up on the platform, but only people working with the telescope are allowed up there.
Telescope selfie!
The dish itself is made of thousands of aluminum plates. At first we thought the hole in the middle allowed rain water to drain out, but each aluminum plate has a bunch of little holes in it, so no water can collect in the dish. Instead, the hole in the middle is how workers get up onto the dish so they can clear off debris.
These are the special shoes that workers are required to wear. Cool, huh?
We all had a fantastic time, and are very grateful for the opportunity to travel to Puerto Rico. It was a great learning experience, both for the science-nerd part of us and for the culturally-curious part as well!
(Featured Photo: Florida Tech students attending the SPS Zone 6 meeting 2014 in Puerto Rico. Left to Right: Ari Fainstain, Pranav Mohanty, Kim Walton, Brooke Adams, Chris Bahr)
*All photos in this post were either taken by Kim Walton or Pranav Mohanty.
