The Scholars on the roof of the Teramo Observatory in Teramo, Italy
A street in L’Aquila, Italy
vSCIENCE continued from page 13
Ciao, Baby!
The scholars then jetted to Italy for the final 10 days of their program. For Schild, it marked her
first overseas trip.
“I’ve been to Canada for three hours, and that’s it,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to travel to
Europe. It’s been my lifelong dream. Now that I’ve traveled to Italy, I want to go back.”
Once again, Schild went dark for a tour of neutrino and dark matter research. At Gran Sasso, an
Italian researcher explained the work at the lab.
But this time, she didn’t go deep underground.
“Gran Sasso is the largest Lab in Italy and might be the largest one in the world,” she said. “Gran
Sasso lab is actually built into the mountain. Instead of going down under the earth, you just drive
in. It’s actually really a large tunnel built for experiments. The Sanford and Gran Sasso labs take
part in collaborations.”
The South Dakota group also visited the Teramo observatory, where they learned about research
on how stars are formed and the processes they
can go through.
The Italian tour wasn’t all about science. The
group toured the Vatican, St. Peter’s Basilica,
the Pantheon and a castle, among other sites.
“I was in Italy for 10 days, and a lot of the
history was just amazing,” Schild said. ”The
most rewarding thing was seeing all of the
cultural differences. We had a van driver
who didn’t speak any English. We struggled
to communicate with him, so we tried to
use Google translator. Sometimes it worked,
The Scholars visited the Pantheon in Rome, Italy
sometimes it didn’t.”
The Italians also received a dose of “South
Dakota nice,” Schild said. “People, especially
The Scholars hiked Corno Grande in Gran Sasso
in the cities, weren’t used to us always saying
National Park
‘please’ and ‘thank you,’” she said.
The entire experience has rejuvenated Schild and made her eager for travel and learning.
All the researchers said they welcomed any ideas or observations by the young students,
Schild said. They see the young students as the future source of scientific breakthroughs.
“This makes me more excited for the future, just all the new research that will come out,”
she said.
“It’ll change the ways we do things. One little detail can change the entire belief system we
have.” n
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The Scholars toured the Colosseum in Rome, Italy
For more information, visit the Facebook page for the Davis-Bahcall Scholars.
HERVOICEvSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018v29