{"id":24054,"date":"2017-04-03T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2017-04-03T17:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=24054"},"modified":"2017-04-03T15:23:45","modified_gmt":"2017-04-03T20:23:45","slug":"austin-peay-state-university-physics-student-jonathan-bunton-earns-highly-coveted-internship-with-tesla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2017\/04\/03\/austin-peay-state-university-physics-student-jonathan-bunton-earns-highly-coveted-internship-with-tesla\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Peay State University physics student Jonathan Bunton earns highly coveted internship with Tesla"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – Faced with a rare opportunity to impress recruiters from one of the most sought-after internships in America, automotive manufacturer Tesla, Inc., Austin Peay State University junior physics major Jonathan Bunton said he felt he needed to combat a common misconception in the tech sector.<\/p>\n

\"APSU<\/a>

APSU physics student Jonathan Bunton. (Hunter Abrams, APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of times, some industries get hung up on finding interns from big names like M.I.T. or Cal Berkley, but I knew that I just needed a chance to show that students who are just as skilled, or more skilled than any other candidates don\u2019t have to come from those massive, well-known schools,\u201d Bunton said.<\/p>\n

With a focus on engineering electric cars, battery energy storage and solar energy, Tesla is one company that is admittedly looking to change the world.<\/p>\n

It stands to reason then, that it could change the way it finds new talent, accepting Bunton over students from major universities for a summer internship with the Palo Alto-based company.<\/p>\n

Bunton will be spending the summer interning with Tesla\u2019s quality engineering department. His focus, Bunton said, will be on the charging units Tesla employs to provide electricity to its gasoline-free automobiles. Bunton will spend three months in Fremont, California, as a full-time intern, learning the ins and outs of the product line and troubleshooting defective products as they present themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ll be doing is working directly with the manufacturers, so if something comes off the line funky or abnormal, we\u2019re figuring out the problem, finding the problem\u2019s cause and figuring out how to fix the problem,\u201d Bunton said. \u201cThere\u2019s actually a lot more that is going on with a charging unit than you\u2019d think; it\u2019s a lot more than just a charging port on a wall and the actual car itself. There\u2019s a lot of voltage you\u2019re shoving through a circuit, and there\u2019s a lot of detectors and monitoring going on to tell the car if its full of energy or not.<\/p>\n

Bunton was able to sell himself to Tesla during the interview process, he said due to his body of undergraduate research experience. Working alongside Austin Peay classmates and professors as a member of the Department of Physics and Astronomy\u2019s Materials Group, Bunton has over a year of hands-on experience applying glass thin films for use in applications such as optical computing and memory devices.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe interview process was stressful, but they asked questions about my (undergraduate) research work and I was able to go into detail about what I\u2019ve done over the past year with (Dr. Andriy Kovalskiy, Austin Peay physics professor) and my research teammates on the glass team,\u201d Bunton said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the scientific method prepares someone for that kind of environment. Say there’s some problem or some effect that we’re observing, we need to try and figure out exactly how to fix it or how it’s working, so that we are better prepared for the future. After we get the results, we analyze them and try to draw conclusions,\u201d Bunton stated.<\/p>\n

[320left]A Northeast High School graduate and an alumnus of APSU\u2019s Governor\u2019s School for Computational Physics, a summer school for high-achieving high school students with an interest in engineering, math and science, Bunton said his time at Austin Peay has prepared him for his opportunity with Tesla.<\/p>\n

While other universities may have a famous pedigree, he praised his education and experience at Austin Peay as making him competitive with his soon-to-be peers in Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve come to appreciate that, after just my freshman year, I already knew all of the physics faculty at Austin Peay,\u201d Bunton said. \u201cThe biggest class I\u2019ve been in has maybe been 25 students, and when you\u2019re talking about classes like advanced quantum mechanics, that\u2019s a really big deal to get that face-to-face attention from faculty\u2026I haven\u2019t limited myself at all (by staying in Middle Tennessee.)\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information on APSU\u2019s Department of Physics and Astronomy, visit www.apsu.edu\/physics<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – Faced with a rare opportunity to impress recruiters from one of the most sought-after internships in America, automotive manufacturer Tesla, Inc., Austin Peay State University junior physics major Jonathan Bunton said he felt he needed to combat a common misconception in the tech sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[29528,23,26537,13778,30008,262,30006,825,30007,14286,22298,13609,1197,29527,30005,30004],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-6fY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24054"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24055,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24054\/revisions\/24055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}