Proposals and Science with Kids

I'm working on an EPA STAR proposal, which would give me at least 3 years worth of funding for a project of my choosing. They are notoriously difficult to get, so I'm not expecting much. But I've never really worked on proposals that this is great practice for...well...likely the rest of my life.

I've been working now for three weeks on this proposal, and it's changed at least three times. It started as a simple proposal to look at climate and chemistry differences in the northeastern US between 2010 and 2050. It was a very general idea, and I quickly learned that it had been asked and modeled before many times. So it then switched to a finer analysis: looking at the relative contributions to air quality in the northeastern US from different sources (transportation, industry, and biogenic emissions) both within the northeastern US and from other nations and continents. And once again, a little research showed that this had already been done, and the results were not that interesting.

At this point I had read, in varying levels of completeness, 10 - 20 papers on climate, chemistry, and the US. After showing the newest draft to Peter, he told me that he had purposely been giving me no direction. He wanted me to try and find something unique on my own. He then told me that it is a very difficult task. It takes years to get familiar with the literature, with what has been done and what has not been done, and what might possibly make a decent topic. But he wanted me to try and get it, to see how hard it is and the level of literature review and revisions that are necessary.

I was a little frustrated (so many squandered hours), but also very accepting; he had done this before several times with different topics. I had struggled for nearly 2 months to figure out how to change code within the climate model with nearly no guidance from Peter. At the end of the 2 months, I had learned and acquired a great deal of knowledge and understanding, and that's something that he could never have told or taught me directly.

We then talked about what he thought would be a good topic. There have been severe and deadly heat waves in Europe and Moscow in recent years, and there are no (or at least very few) studies that have tried and predict the likelihood and severity of heat waves and mortality here in the US, particularly in the northeastern US. He pointed me to a few papers and I've read another 10 papers or so, and now have a nice draft. It needs to be about 4,000 words before I'm done, and I'll post it here after it's submitted (I don't want anyone stealing my ideas (ha! the odds of that happening are slim to none) ). It needs to be done by November 5th.

In other news, last weekend I participated in a Science from the Slope booth down at Ithaca's Apple Festival. I played with dry ice and kids for 2 hours, and had a great time. I'll be volunteering at the Sciencenter next weekend, and hopefully that'll get the volunteer with kids and science ball really rolling. I'm looking forward to it. Here's a picture from the event last weekend: