Dr. Day spoke with our young men on Thursday.
By Veeshan Narinesingh, STEM program leader
Last Thursday, Dr. Jared Day, a postdoctoral scholar from the Laboratory for Nano and Micro Photonics at The City College of New York, paid our young men a special visit.
Dr. Day researches nanoscale materials. At this level (100 to 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair), we enter the realm of quantum mechanics, where very interesting things start to happen. Dr. Day spoke about his experiences growing up in Texas and what led him to great success in STEM. He emphasized the importance of working together, and the opportunities that will be available for our young men in high school, college and beyond.
Then Dr. Day, also an expert in the field of optics, guided our students in a demonstration of Pepper’s Ghost, in which an image is projected onto an angled, transparent surface to create the illusion of a hologram. The students formed teams, chose roles for the team members, and began the experiment. They made trapezoidal prisms out of plastic and placed them upside down on their smartphones, causing the images on their screens to appear to float above the phone (see below).
Our young men were excited and amazed by the experiment, and it was great to have a role model like Dr. Day to lead the class.
