My thinking was if you had gotten in touch 10 minutes after the interview and you could laugh about having been nervous, they might have opened up the conversat

My thinking was if you had gotten in touch 10 minutes after the interview and you could laugh about having been nervous, they might have opened up the conversation again. Of course they might think you googled it, but you didn't. If you simply got past the nervous phase because the interview was "over", and you could suddenly talk at a much higher level about the problem you were working on, it would be clear you weren't just spouting 10 minutes of googling. If you're in competition with a number of other well-qualified people for the job, this probably won't help. But if they don't have any strong candidates, they might be happy to see that you've gotten past the nervous phase, and give you a second chance. I think you'd get a better response 10 minutes after the interview than 8 hours later. Most of my interviewing experience centers around teaching positions, on both sides of the interview table. As an interviewer in these situations, I'd have welcomed a followup conversation.