In the fall semester, I had the
opportunity to start working with Dr. Art Poland on his research work of
monitoring activities of the sun. An
important tool I had to use was Interactive Data Language or in short IDL. Weekly tasks were assisting Dr. Poland either
in debugging programs, editing programs or test programs using data retrieved
from Hinode Satellite. While working
with Dr. Poland on his research, I recently discovered that the sun plays a
crucial part in our everyday lives. Besides
providing sun light to nurture lives, solar flares and solar storms also cause
problems like knocking out power grid.
There were some solar storms in the past but no catastrophic damage was
dealt. Luckily, everything about our
planet seems so perfect either by chances or by design, we’ll never know. With that perfection, there is earth magnetic
field that keeps us safe from solar storms.
Nonetheless, it is still important to study the sun’s activities to
predict its pattern and when the next solar storm will be.
As an engineering student, it
may not be directly related to my long-term goals but being able to see how
scientists work definitely give me a sense of communication in the future if I
ever need to work with them. Moreover,
the tool I used as a research assistant which is IDL is a powerful tool whether
working as scientist or engineer in the future.
One of its strength is its ability to work well with arrays or
matrices. As of now, I am not quite sure
where it would fit in my career path but I’ll never know how things turn
out. Therefore, it is always worthy to
have as many tools as possible in the backpack for the grab.
