USA Trip 2024
Twenty-three Rosmini students spent their July term break as participants on the 2024 USA Science-One Foot in the Clouds adventure. This year's trip was based around the Seattle region, in the Pacific Northwest. The trip had a focus on aviation, engineering and earth and space sciences.
During the trip the students had an opportunity to interact with university students and scientists-engineers to learn first-hand of the career pathways and some of the world-class work these people are doing. Experts included an engineer with over 100 patents, the lead scientist on a $2.0 billion+ science project, an engineer who leads Google’s artificial intelligence program, a rocket programme entrepreneur, and bioengineers.
The 40°C temperatures were a significant change from the cooler weather in Auckland. We spent our first two nights at Crystal Mountain, a ski resort next to towering Mt. Rainier. This allowed the boys to unwind after their flight and start acclimatising to facing 40°C plus temperatures in Eastern Washington.
Detecting gravitational waves is no simple task, even after investing over a billion US dollars. However, the explanation of the process involved in the detection of gravitational waves was expertly simplified. During the 2024 trip, the Rosmini boys had the opportunity to visit the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) for three hours, where they gained first-hand knowledge of the process from Dr. Frederick Raab, the former Associate Project Director and LIGO Build Coordinator, now retired.
LIGO is located in the Eastern Washington desert, within the Hanford nuclear reservation. Here, the boys heard from Dr Raab how gravitational waves are generated by black hole mergers billions of kilometres away. We learnt later that Dr Raab has never offered personal tours of the facilities. LIGO is part of a giant global collaboration involving over 1,500 scientists at a cost of around $160 million per year. We then visited the control room to witness the final recalibration of the observatory and went outside into that 40C heat to see what the detectors looked like. This tour was rare and a real privilege for our Rosmini boys.
The group next headed west. Stops along the way enabled the students to observe the effects of massive ice-age glacial melt floods that ripped huge channels across the landscape. Imagine the force of a 200-metre wall of water ripping basalt columns apart.
The remainder of our stay was at the University of Washington – great facilities but no air conditioning. The nights were uncomfortably hot., The boys really enjoyed the all-you-can-eat dining, which resulted in many students reporting weight gain upon their return.
Our itinerary in Seattle was diverse. The boys got their aerospace fix by visiting the Boeing factory to witness the assembly of the 777 and 787 aircraft along with tours of the Museum of Flight, a visit from the President of Space Northwest, meeting with the UW rocketry group and an active seaplane base and engine maintenance facility.
Any visit to Seattle includes going up the iconic Seattle Space Needle. To the boys' surprise they had courtside tickets to a WNBA game between the Seattle Storm and the Las Vegas Aces.
The following day we toured the UW campus with a knowledgeable student guide before heading 40 minutes north to partake in STEM-related activities at the UW-Bothell Branch campus. One of these activities included a talk by the head of AI at Google, who presented the dilemma for AI and emphasised the challenge of replicating human emotion, which is currently a significant hurdle for AI expansion.
And of course there was shopping.
One student reported on his post-trip reflection that “...the trip opened my eyes to how big the science world really is – it showed me how interesting it all is and how important and valued it is to the world – the trip really does make me want to pursue a field in science/engineering.”
