Day Twelve Summer 2010 - It's a small world afterall

My lab team - what are the odds that 33 people can number to eleven and team seven all have Js for the first name?

On the austere Amherst campus I enjoyed to very modern integrated science building with lots of glass and metal work and wood.
The hands on activities and the lectures that I could download online and follow along and make notes on the slides as they went was very cool. And matter of factly in his summer lecture shorts, Mark, showed a slide where he was testifying before Congress on the impact of Nanotechnology for the future and importance of supporting research.

Mark and Buzz, my new physics teacher buddy, from Uttica, NY, who GPS-ed us on his Garmin to our first gathering

And young PhD Jonathan lectured and got queried by me about a diagram with a QCM (Quartz Crystal Monitor) - it vibrates at a certain frequency when the vapors hit it and let the lab technicians know when enough mass is coated on the surface (by the way his doctorate is from MIT).

All of that was cool and being the lone person below Kentucky was fun. I am the token Southerner. The farthest south anyone was from beside me was Michael from Cincinnati, Ohio - who shared his analysis of why it was not a great city yet - too many provincial factions of very small neighborhoods that claimed their identity and did not cross over or collaborate much.

But the coolest thing was getting in the elevator after a long run and after a refreshing shower and donning my last clean shirt that had Velma Jackson on it (I went to Target and bought a few more so I would not have to do laundry). The young African American coed asked if Velma Jackson was in Mississippi. Yes. I asked her where she lived and she said Jackson which is where I live. How wild is that? She graduated from Lanier High School and Jackson State University. (I told her to give me some dap and how I was so tired of these d--- yankees (not really) and she affirmed, "tell me about it.") It gets more interesting. In texting with one of my young Jackson friends later, she inquired about what was her name. When I said Darla, she knew her right way and texted that is Darla K--- who is super smart.

It is a small world after all - how appropriate in a workshop where I am studying things very small at a billionth of a meter (a billionth of the diameter of the earth would be the diameter of a nickel).