Been Busy? Days 15 and 16

Day 15:

Yesterday was a non-university day. I had stomach issues that morning so I stayed at the hostel. I did however work on some research and lesson planning. I drew up another brainstorming chart that I will get Nathan to review when he gets back from Hobart College, the high school he is touring.

My main focus on my brainstorming chart consisted of an approach of fluid mechanics. While the in-depth subject is too advanced for such a young crowd I will be teaching, there are many aspects of the subject that can be topical. I would like to link my research with the study of fluids with geometric based watershed studies involving flow rates over specific surfaces as well as general hydrology.

While this consumed most of my day, I also took a moment to catch up with family and friends back home. This was important for me to do during the trip as it has been over two weeks since I have seen most of my family and friends.

Day 16:

Today, was a research oriented day at the university. While most of the team I have been working with is out on conference, I have been able to catalog a great deal of literature review for discussion with my adviser when I get back to the states. Around 2pm today, I had a great meeting with Arko. We were able to discuss my thesis project in great detail. While I did not bother him with lesson plan creation, he did not mind that over the past week Nathan and I have been working with Phillippa on that aspect of the grant.

My meeting with Arko confronted me with a vast amount of knowledge that I do not know about my project. Because of his strong background in remote sensing and geo-spatial technologies, he broke down my research unlike anyone has done before. I was able to see facets of my work that I did not know existed. Band allocation, augmenting bad imagery by color correction, and reviewing both the corrected 8 bit imagery and the original 10 bit imagery, Arko opened my mind to a data mining possibility. While he encouraged me not to get too heavily involved with all of the above referenced subjects, he did express the importance of actually at least exploring them. This really allowed me to better understand all facets of this field.

We had a great last meal with Phillippa due to her being at conference. It has been wonderful to establish such great connections between myself and UTAS.