A Summer at LIGO
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In addition to its direct pursuit of detecting gravitational waves, LIGO is keenly interested in promoting educational opportunities in science from the earliest school grades to post-graduate studies. The two observatories provide tours throughout the year, where the technology is demonstrated and details furnished of the interferometer's technique. And both sites serve as frequent centers for exhibitions and seminars relating to physics and astronomy. LIGO seeks to convey to minds of all ages the many long-range benefits of its mission and the true excitement of scientific discovery. Eager students with an interest in LIGO's themes are encouraged to turn their talents to the Laboratory and its goals.
"For this, LIGO has a good friend in Dr. Jack Blumenthal of Mayfield Senior High School," says Riccardo DeSalvo of the LIGO Lab. "Dr. Blumenthal has selected and guided to LIGO a stream of very bright and capable young ladies who volunteer their summer time to work at the Laboratory. Glenn Mary Carroll was with us last summer, and the previous year we had Nicky Virdone."
LIGO benefits from the involvement of students from other high schools as well. "Linden Blair worked with us last summer, and two years ago we had Allyson Feeney," adds DeSalvo. "All have been among the most cheerful and hardest working members of the seismic attenuation group, and each has made genuine contributions to our project."
For Mayfield Senior High School student Nicky Virdone, her work with DeSalvo's group was to last throughout the school year. Her assignment was to construct an oven to help measure the "creep property" of a metal alloy called maraging steel. This alloy is used in the spring that suspends the mirror inside the vacuum chamber, and "creep" refers to the alloy's tendency to deform under long-term strain.
"Nicky's work is of publication level," says DeSalvo. "She is working in her free time to write up her findings."
She has also written an account of her experiences working with DeSalvo's group for "Imagine" magazine, a bimonthly periodical from the John Hopkin's University Center for Talented Youth.
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Nicky's article, "A Summer at LIGO," is a fun, lively and informative retelling of her time spent working with Riccardo DeSalvo and the seismic attentuation group. And it's frequently a colorful depiction of a fresh intern's first immersion in the world of Big Science.
"Instead of telling me exactly how to approach [the] task," Nicky writes, "Dr. DeSalvo asked me how I thought it should be done. At first I absolutely hated this way of teaching..."
"But it turned out to be the reason that I learned so much," she concludes.
DeSalvo expresses similar gratification with the program.
"These high school students have made useful contributions to our mission," he says. "But more importantly in their collaboration with Dr. Blumenthal it helps to attract some of the most talented students toward science and engineering, and away from the wooing of business and law schools and other less fascinating enterprises..."
"Fields in which kids might waste their minds making only money," he adds with a mischievous twinkle.
"That's why I take in high school students," DeSalvo asserts. "And they have always provided me with great rewards."