Today was the Penn Summer Discovery’s trip to Washington D.C.
where we visited the Smithsonian Museums and Georgetown University. It was an amazing day, by far my favorite day
of the entire program. We got to go
to the Air and Space Museum as well as the Museum of American History before
visiting Georgetown University. Unfortunately
we only had a few hours to visit the Smithsonian, which is nowhere near enough time
to see everything that the Smithsonian has to offer. I could have spent the entire day in just the
Air and Space Museum alone. Instead of
staying near the museums for the majority of the day, we went to Georgetown
where there wasn't too much to do other than go shopping. I would have liked it much more if we could
have gone to Georgetown first and then went to the Smithsonian for the rest of
the day instead.
My absolute favorite part of the day was the Air and Space Museum. It was full of jets, planes, rockets, and
telescopes that dated from the 1950’s to today.
During our time there we went to an astronomy exhibit, a navigational
exhibit and an entire room dedicated to the space shuttle Discovery. It was the best moment in the world to be
surrounded with all the knowledge and more importantly the aircraft. I love flying and aircraft technology with a
passion and made sure to investigate some of the jets planes more carefully
than everyone else. Being a pilot is my
number two dream career next to physics; fortunately physics and aeronautics
are closely related, so the skills from physics can transfer over to being a pilot.
I can say that I truly love flying because when we walked
into the museum I was instantly mesmerized and filled with joy at the sight of
all the planes and rockets. If I could
have, I would have spent the entire day in that one museum and still wouldn't want
to go at the end of the day. If I ever
go back to Washington, I will make sure to visit the Space museum again. The museum was a really good reminder of why I
love science and why I came on this trip in the first place. There could not be a better way to get me
back into the game of science than a trip to a space museum. Now I feel like I can’t wait to get back in
the lab on Monday to return to the science that I love. 
The other museum that we visited was the Museum of American
History. This was still a very
interesting museum with an endless amount of fascinating things like cannons, important
documents, and artifacts. I especially
liked the World War II exhibit and the cold war exhibit. Both of them had an infinite amount of period
artifacts and materials. It was a fun
experience going through an American history museum after taking AP U. S.
History in school and being able to instantly recognize almost everything in
the exhibit. With that said, there were
still plenty of cool new things that I have never seen before like Abraham
Lincolns hat that he was wearing when he was assassinated. I’ll have to plan on going back to this
museum when I get a chance as well.
There isn't much that I can say about Georgetown University
other than the fact that it looked similar to most other schools that we have
seen so far. I found out that the
university is a great school for studying history and archaeology but other than
that, I don’t really know what Georgetown has to offer. After walking around campus for a while we
went into town to eat lunch and experience the Washington culture. I found out that there really isn't much
difference between people in Philadelphia and people in Washington. When we were all done for the day, we headed
back to Philadelphia; however it ended up being a three hour bus ride due to
intense traffic. It’s good to be back in
Philadelphia and hopefully tomorrow will be just as good as today. 
No comments:
Post a Comment