Research
Experience
As an undergraduate and now a freshly minted graduate, I've had the
opportunity to have had two very different research experiences.
My current work is on the Math Images
Project along with Professor Ann Renninger. My
primary project is studying the experience of undergraduates who have
worked on the project, though my role has also included being a math
helper and directly creating math content on the page. Coming out of
that work, I have been working on a paper describing the process of
evaluating open-ended mathematics writing.
I am also
helping with a project studying how students interact with math content
on web pages.
During the summer of 2009, I worked directly with the students
producing content on the site. I served as a general math helper since
I have a very broad math background, and I worked with students to
improve the quality of their writing. I've really enjoyed the
opportunity to use two of my main
areas of study on one project.
In the summer of 2007, after my first year at Swarthmore, I worked on
the Swarthmore
Spheromak Experiment run by Professor Michael Brown. A
summer of making really, really tiny sensors out of wire thinner than a
human hair ended with the following conclusions:
- There was probably interesting magnetic structure on the
millimeter scale inside the experiment
- The sensors to measure that were a serious pain to
make.
Pretty much, the gain was not worth the pain of that wire. I also
learned some valuable lessons, such as the fact that some commands that
work in the PC version of MatLab completely fail in the Mac version,
with no explanation or error messages.
Documents I produced about the process of making probes have been used
by subsequent students working on the project, and it did feel
rewarding to know that even if the physical probes I made were not the
most useful things in the world, my dedication to documenting my work
paid off. I also appreciated the experience to really work on a medium
scale scientific experiment. By far the days I enjoyed most were when I
was in the main lab helping to run the overall experiment. I learned a
lot about experimental processes, and I was pretty good at seeing
problems in the data as it came out. After that summer, I also
pitched in a couple of other times, including helping to completely
take apart and reassemble the main apparatus. Taking machines apart and
putting them back together is a guarantee of a good time in my book.