reflection on 4-7-2011

Reflection on 4-7-2011


Sindy Yeung (4S), Aleena Wong (4T)

Today we arrived at Imperial collage. We were shown to our dormitories, which were larger than those at Queen Mary’s. We were very pleased with our rooms.

We met our mentors. Our academic mentor is Barnaby, who majors in Chemistry at the college. Our pastoral mentor is Giulia, who is very friendly.

We attended a lecture on Chemistry. It was very informative yet amusing at the same time, For example, we learnt about how a glass funnel can disappear in oil while talking about how to defeat the invisible girl.

Afterwards, we had Chemistry lessons. We dipped flowers into liquid nitrogen and the petals shattered on touch.

In the evening, we had a game where we had to look for clues. Then, we made models on the theme of a fair using K’nex.

Overall, today we learnt a lot and we have become more interested in Chemistry. We look forward to finding out more about Chemistry.

Lizette Chua (4S)

Today was the first day of the Imperial College Summer Course. Our group was to take Mathematics this week and Chemistry next. The topics taught today were Coding and Zero to Infinity. We found the lessons hard to follow at first since the instructor spoke fast English and the topics were very difficult. However, when we found the lesson too hard to keep up with, we asked questions and soon managed to understand the topic with the instructor’s patient and detailed explanations. Though this, we applied the Habits of mind of persisting, thinking flexibly, questioning and posing problems, and applying past knowledge to new situations.

After dinner, we participated in group activities, competing against international students from the STEM programme. We found that they were much more active and enthusiastic in the games, and were more outspoken. Perhaps this is due to a different upbringing. These activities helped to build up team spirit and we enjoyed them very much, and we hope to follow the international students’ examples.

We also got to know our mentors better during dinner and the group activities. In the beginning, we found it hard to communicate in English but it got easier after we had spent more time together. We made an agreement with our mentor that we would try to speak English as much as possible in the next two weeks, while she would try to learn Cantonese. We hope that our English can be improved this way.

Cheryl Chong (4T)

Today, we had our first lesson in Imperial College. We were divided into two academic groups –math and chemistry. As part of the math group, we encountered different problems such as dealing with infinity in math and exploring paradoxes.

Another topic we covered is code-breaking and number theory using math including current ideas in cryptography. We ran around the campus trying to find answers to the questions based on the encrypted locations.

One interesting and unique activity is Lecture (1) ‘How to beat superheroes, using science. They made hypothesis on how these superpowers came to be and how we could defeat them.

We can now beat Superman!

Cordelia Hau (4P)

After staying at Queen Mary University of London for one night, we finally arrived at Imperial College and started the first day of our programme. Our group’s mentor is Dawit who studied Mathematics at Warwick university. He’s very friendly and kind. Therefore we got on well with him very soon. We interviewed him and asked him about the course as well as the difference between the lives in Hong Kong and London. We even taught him a few Chinese phrases.

We were assigned to have maths lessons this week. Right at the beginning we were taught about several paradoxes ; from Zero And Infinity to the limits of different functions and decoding techniques. We explored the main question behind this topic: whether “0” is everything or nothing. This is actually a new concept and topic to us which intrigued us a lot. This is a really interesting learning experience.

Then in the evening, there were some ice-breaking activities with our pastoral mentors.These activities allowed us to be more familiar with the environment and history of Imperial college. We ran around the campus, finished the tasks and took photo shots everywhere. We enjoyed the activities very much!

Ingrid Lai (4U)

Today was our first day at Imperial College. I was very excited and was looking forward to the course. We began our programme by listening to a briefing conducted by Mr. Alan West in the lecture hall. At the same time, I met my group’s day mentor, Dawit. He is friendly and down-to-earth. He asked about my name and the names of my group members and tried to remember them. Then, he toured us around the school campus. I loved the college. Some buildings were elegantly built with Victorian pillars and statues while some were modern laboratories with the latest technology. The Queen’s Lawn was especially lovely since the students could relax there after a long day of hard work.

After the campus tour, we went back to the lecture hall and interviewed Dawit! We asked him quite a lot of questions, from his age and his hobbies to his favorite subject and his family. Besides, we taught him to count from 1 to 10 in Cantonese. He can now count from 1 to a 100 very fluently! He was fascinated with it and we all enjoyed our time together.

Then, there was a talk conducted by Mr. Neil Monteiro. It was amazing! He told us how to beat superheroes. He explained their tricks with scientific explanations and performed various interesting experiments. My favorite one was when he asked six students to come in front and hold hands. The first student in the line touched the one end of the wire while the other end was connected to a music player. Then, surprisingly, the speaker next to the last student in the line could amplify the music, and stopped when students stopped holding hands. Moreover, the students didn’t feel anything when the voltage was passing through them! I enjoyed this lecture so much.

Next, we had our lunch. We were given a £4 voucher and we could buy anything from the canteen. I had a tuna sandwich with a bottle of smoothie. I thought it was a great idea that we could choose our own lunch.

After lunch, we had our first Maths lesson with Mr. Nazmus Haq. We first had a coded tour in which we had to decode the codes from the worksheet to find the designated locations and answer the questions. The activity was fun but it was a regret that the time given was so short and we were not given the correct answers at the end of this game. Then, we had a lecture called “Zero to Infinity”. The idea of this session was incredible but I thought it was too difficult for us understand. For example, we have not learnt about the concept of “limit” but part of the question on the worksheet was based on this concept. However, I thought it was nice that it has aroused my interest in Mathematics and encouraged me to explore more about Maths.

After dinner, we met our night mentor, Gloryanne. We first had an icebreaking game, which was a treasure hunt, around the school campus. We were given several clues on the worksheet and had to find out the location and answer the questions. This was an interesting game for us to be more familiar with the college environment.

The last activity for today was building a ride. We were divided into 3 sub-groups and I brlonged to “Gloryanne A”. We used some sticks and snowflake shaped lego to build ours. It was a merry-go-round that could spin around. To our surprise, our group had win the champion despite the beautifully designed ferrous wheel built by the mentors!

At around 10pm, we went back to our accommodation building. It was very beautiful and my room was quite large.

Imperial college is such a great university. I hope I will be more active in the coming weeks and make some friends here!

Cheryl So (4A)

Today is our first day in Imperial College and it was an enjoyable day. In the morning, we met our mentor and had a campus tour. It was definitely a great experience since we’ve never seen such a huge university campus in Hong Kong. After that, we attended a guest lecture. The topic was “How to beat a superhero and take over the Earth”. We enjoyed it a lot as the lecturer showed us that science would be a lot of fun. After lunch, we had chemistry lessons with Dr. Melanie Bottrill and did a lot of experiments involving acids and bases. In the evening, we had ice breaking activities which include photo quest and spaghetti challenge. Through the photo quest challenge, we became much more familiar with the Imperial College campus, as we got to walk around and look for the answers to the clues given. The spaghetti challenge requires us to build a building as tall as possible with spaghetti and candies. It was exciting and we got to know more about our groupmates. This is an unforgettable experience which we would all treasure.

Katherine Lam (4A)

Today was our first day in Imperial College. Our group will have chemistry course this week and we had our first chemistry lesson today.

In the chemistry lesson, we carried out a lot of interesting experiments under the teacher’s instruction. The basic concepts about the experiments were taught before so we did not find it difficult to follow. The most impressive part might be the experiment about liquid nitrogen. The teacher put a rubber tube and some flowers into the very cold liquid nitrogen and they became very brittle. We had never seen that before. This lesson showed that chemistry is really magical and there are many ways to apply the basic concepts and theories.

After the lesson, we had some games. One of them was to build a building with spaghetti. We worked well in a group. The result was satisfactory and we had a joyful evening with lots of laughter.

We had a great day. It was a really good start for our tour and we look forward to the days to come.