Our first day in LA

Today was our first day in LA. We first went to visit Caltech. Afterward we split in two groups: one went shopping and the other visited the mount Wilson and Hollywood.
During the whole day the sun was very bright and it was very hot. We also had to travel by car because LA is very big.
The most notable property of Caltech is that it is a fancy private university. The university is mainly sponsored by donations from rich ex students, many of which are or become very rich. It is also very selective in its application process, only 8% of the students applying for an undergraduate position got one. This large budged mainly results in small classes and large research budgets.
We visited two astronomical groups. First we visited a group that creates astronomical instruments. We saw some detectors used to search for changes in the sky. Here we learned more about the practical aspects of astronomical research. Afterward we went over to the second group, where we visited a (working) scale model of LIGO (the gravitational wave detector). This scale model was used to test potential changes to LIGO. This is done because the costs when accidentally damaging LIGO is very high.
At the mount Wilson the view was very nice, because the mountain was so high it looked like we viewed the city from an airplane. When we were at the top we met an old man who had walked there. Because he couldn't get an Uber back (there was no cell reception) he drove with us. There he told us the reason there are so meany homeless people in San Francisco: many homeless people from all over the US come to San Francisco. This is both because it doesn't freeze in the winter and because the city has good programs to support homeless people.

Marijn Man