…But now we’re stressed out! That’s right, today we were able to play with really cool smart devices that allowed us to track certain responses of the body including stress levels! We actually met our mentor for today, Robert, yesterday when he came in to hook us up to a smartwatch when we were experimenting with the virtual reality “Oculus Rift” technology. This was his first experiment recording the body’s response to a person being submerged into virtual reality, and the data that was collected was very surprising and cool!

Me using the “Oculus Rift” virtual reality headset with my body’s response to being in the virtual reality state:

In the graph above, the blue line indicates my stress level, which is shown to be steadily and constantly increasing. This stress level had the same increasing tendency for all three of us interns, which shows that virtual reality may not be healthy for the body if it constantly increases our stress levels the longer that we are in it. This experiment is prompting Robert to continue analyzing stress levels for people who are submerged into virtual reality, and he considers this new knowledge to be revolutionary! Can you believe that we were the guinea pigs for revolutionary knowledge?! After learning about stress in the human body, we were suited up with complimentary fitbit zips that we got to keep! With the fitbit zip we tracked the accuracy of number of steps taken using the fitbit, apple watch, and “Moves” app. We walked on a treadmill for 5 minutes while all of the devices were counting and while someone else counted the actual number of steps we took. We found that the fitbit was the most reliable source because the number pf steps that it counted were closest to the number of actual steps.

Jonathan on the treadmill with his devices counting the number of steps he took:

Then, just for fun (and for science :)), we decided we should try to cheat the fitbit and rack up as many steps as we could. For our first experiment we taped the fitbit onto a drill bit, and turned the drill on. Surprisingly, all of the quick rotations that the fitbit made did not contribute to a large number of steps taken. Then, for our second experiment, we duct taped the fitbit to the wheel of Robert’s car and we observed how many steps were recorded as Robert drove around. The fitbit racked up some steps, but not as much as expected. I guess if you want steps you have to actually exercise!

The fitbit duct taped to the wheel of Robert’s car:

Today was a really fun day since we got to come up with our own experiments and execute them! We also learned that we may have revolutionized virtual reality, so that was cool! Overall it was a really great way to end our internship at RTI, although it was also sad to say goodbye to the Work Experience Program. For me this program has been a huge success, and I hope it continues being implemented and offered to Cary Academy students in future years! – Kiran W.

Today we were able to experience virtual reality! Caroline, a student from Cardinal Gibbons, also joined us today for our internship.We started off by learning about the history of virtual reality and seeing the project that John, our mentor today, was working on. He was trying to build a simulation for forensic scientists to be able to learn how to use a certain machine that would separate strands of DNA by length. We then sat in on a meeting with some very prolific people in the field of forensics from Texas where John showcased his project.

Us in the conference room for the meeting (Caroline is in the middle):

Jonathan observing the meeting with the project project behind him:

Then, we got to go experiment with the “Oculus Rift” Virtual Reality technology which was really cool. We were able to actually build a virtual world by creating blocks and moving them. It was awesome technology that we learned will soon be implemented into normal life and homes everywhere. Types of virtual reality devices are already available to the public such as “Google Cardboard”.

Jonathan with the “Oculus Rift” headset on his head, and him creating blocks in the virtual world:

A video of me using the “Oculus Rift” headset:

Being able to use the virtual reality technology was a great experience, and I hope it becomes popularized enough that we start to see more of it out in the real world soon! – Kiran W.

 

Today was disgusting… all we did was transfer human urine from gallon milk jugs to graduated cylinders to giant containers so that the urine could be filtered and sterilized. Eventually we had transferred and poured 112 liters of pee from place to place. It was utterly gross. Personally, I thought the pee smelled like wet dog food; however, some of the donor’s pee smelled way worse than that. At least we could pass the time and get our minds off of the scent with jokes made by the lab workers. It was reassuring to know that the lab workers weren’t super serious about human urine and could be quite humorous about the subject. It was also very humorous when the lab manager spilled pee all over Jonathan’s lab coat on accident, which down his leg and into his shoe a bit. It was very funny how comfortable they all were dealing with human urine

Me pouring urine from a gallon jug to a 4 L graduated cylinder:

Jonathan pouring urine from the graduated cylinder into the big jug (it is evident from his face that he is not enjoying it):

A total of 112 L of human urine:

I wouldn’t consider today really fun or informative, but I guess it was cool to witness how the dirty work gets done, and how essential it actually is to forensics. I will definitely not take this kind of stuff for granted again! – Kiran W.

Today we our first day at RTI working with the forensic science department. We started the day with a brief presentation on “Mass Spectrometry”, which is using a machine to identify drugs by separating them out of a substance by analyzing the unknown drug compound using its known molecular mass. We then got a tour of the labs and were able to actually use a mass spectrometer to identify certain drugs. We were able to identify drugs such as cocaine and codeine.

Jonathan pipetting a solution containing an unknown drug onto a transfer sheet to place into the mass spectrometer:

Then, we were able to go and use a very powerful microscope that was able to zoom in on individual molecules so that we could analyze their crystal lattice structures.

Me using the microscope to examine grains of salt (NaCl):

The enlarged grains of salt on a computer screen:

Overall today was a pretty interesting day and I got to learn some neat things about chemistry that I didn’t even learn in my ADV Chemistry class this year! – Kiran W.