In one week’s time Nerd Nite Baltimore welcomes you to join us for our 9th episode where music meets space…meets plasma mass spectometry. Don’t miss it!

History lesson: Nerd Nite Baltimore (NNB) is part of an international community of Nerd Nites in over 90 cities around the world! This event combines imbibing and learning. Anyone with a passion can be a Nerd Nite speaker!

Join us for a night of educational drinking! Nerd Nite Baltimore is a bi-monthly event held at a local bar where information combines with fun. Talks at Nerd Nite are typically 20 minutes with a rollicking Q&A afterward.

The barkeeps at De Kleine Duivel will keep your glasses full of delightful Belgian beer and spirits. (This is a 21 and over venue.) Doors open at 6:30ish…event starts at 7:00pm

We have a great line up for June! Not necessarily in this order…

Topic #1:
“Tuned In for What?!”
Eijah Wirth

A discussion of Peabody’s Tuned-in program and Classical Composers of the African descent. Tuned-in is Peabody’s scholarship program for muscially talented Baltimore city youth.

Bio:
Elijah Wirth is the director of the Peabody Preparatory Wind Orchestra at Johns Hopkins University, which he helped to establish in 2008. He currently heads the Music Theory and Wind, Brass, and Percussion departments in the Preparatory division as well as the Wind, Brass and Percussion Academy. He is the assistant director of the Tuned-In program. Tuned-In participants have the opportunity to work with accompanists and to attend concerts and other cultural events around Baltimore.

Topic #2:
“From Brains to Bombs”
Richard Ash
University of Maryland, College Park

Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectometry (ICP-MS) is not just a fun and sciencey thing to say, it is also a powerful method for the analysis of much of the periodic table. It is with great sensitivity (solutions to the parts per quadrillion level), and isotope ratios to extraordinary precision (5 ppm precision). At the University of Marland, Geology Department Plasma Laboratory we have two such instruments that are used for a wide range of projects: from the analysis of rocket fuel to bee vomit, from cold fusion to pipe bombs, with a few rocks thrown in for good measure. I plan to meander through some project highlights and end with a tragid CSI-like thallium poisoning case that we have been investigating to try to solve an attempted murder.

Topic #3
“Astronomy in the News”
Joel Green

Fresh from Austin, intrepid astronomer Joel Green reports on the latest in the universe. Then stay tuned as he showcases the mind-blowing Hubble panorama of our nearest neighbor galaxy Andromeda- a mirror of our own Milky Way.

Joel Green is one of our very own Nerd Nite bosses of Baltimore, by night (every other month). By day, he is the Project Scientist in the Office of Public Outreach at the Space Telescope Science Institute–the Home of the Hubble and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescopes, working closely with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Previously, Joel was a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. A New Yorker who spent twelve years in upstate NY, six years in Austin, and now a resident of scenic Baltimore, he has acquired a fondness for crab and barbecue, cowboy boots and hats, sunshinee and Civil War battlefields.