Reflection on 28-7-2011

Joey Chu (4S)

It has been another busy day today. Patsy, Katherine and I were further amending our robot so it could carry out its function in “Meltdown”, which is an in-class competition between mentor groups with the help of our mentor, Aimie. Our robot was to cooperate with the two other robots in the group so communication was really important. However, everyone else in our group were boys and were much more skilled than us in building robots. This had made it more difficult for us to join in group discussions as well as coordinating. Luckily, one of our group mates, Ping-Ko was really nice to have helped and led us throughout the preparation for the competition along with Aimie.

In the afternoon, we started to prepare for our presentations tomorrow. We chose to talk about medical robots in addition to introducing our own robot. After the training in the past three weeks, we are now much more skilled and familiar with project making. We quickly did an outline and allocated our work, then search for information online. Within two hours, we have finished our PowerPoint as well as our script! All that was left behind was to practice our script several times and we hope we will do well tomorrow.

We had the STEM world 2011 cabaret at night. Our group was the last to go on stage so we were really nervous all the way when other performances were up. Actually, we considered our performance as the “most embarrassing 11 minutes” ever at first. We would not expect ourselves to be singing Do-Re-Mi and Spongebob Squarepants as well as the translated English version of Guangliang’s “Fairytale” at the age of 16/17. Our mentor, Leonard even dressed up as a woman and pretended to be Maria in the Sound of Music! Luckily, response from audience was quite good and they even sang along. Perhaps we would consider this a really special experience, and a good show!

Patsy Lau (4S)

During today’s lesson, we continued to build a robot to perform the melt down task. In this task, our robot must try to collect as much glow stick as possible within the time limit. As all three of us have not tried to build robots before, we found this task really tough and we needed a lot of help from our mentor. Luckily, our mentor was really kind and helped us a lot in building the robot, so the robot can be built successfully. We have learnt a lot while building the robot. We have learnt to be precise because when one screw is in wrong position the robot may not function properly. Moreover, we have learnt to be persistent and not to give up easily. If we give up easily when a mistake was made, we will never be able to finish the robot.

At night, we had a talent show. Although all the participants only have a few nights to rehearse, the performances are really interesting and wonderful. All of us enjoyed ourselves.

The four weeks trip almost comes to an end. This is a precious experience and I am sure that I will remember this forever!

Reflection on 27-7-2011

Ingrid Lai (4U)

We continued building our car this morning in the Engineering lesson. Cynthia, Seb and I worked as a team. We modified the design of the car since it could not run smoothly. We added some weight to our rear wheels by adding two more wheels on each side. During the process of making our car, we showed our team spirit by specialising the tasks. Seb worked with the rubber band and powered the car; Cynthia dealed with the decoration part; and I was responsible for testing the speed of the car. Finally, we had done it! We made a ‘Pepsi Car’ since the front part of the car was coloured with red and blue. We were all very glad to see our car racing successfully.

After lunch, we visited the Department of Materials. We saw various technological equipments. There was a large water tank testing the patterns of waves which impressed me a lot. We also saw some experiments involving how the properties of materials changes with alteration in temperature. The tour gave me an insight of what studying Engineering was all about in a university. I definitely enjoyed it so much.

reflection on 26-7-2011

Yammie Lam (4S)

Today we had our engineering lessons again. We were told to make a car that is powered by rubber bands and made of wood. We were designing for the whole morning from sketch and started to make it by cutting and drilling all by ourselves. It was the very first experience of us to use these equipments so it was really fantastic. After the lessons, we went to watch Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. We had been looking forward to watching it since we came here one month ago. We were very excited while we are walking to the cinema. It was really awesome and thrilling. As there was no subtitle, we could focus more on the story and the actors more than when we were in Hong Kong. But still I think I will watch it again after I get back to Hong Kong. It was such a memorable night.

Cynthia Wong (4S)

I am studying Engineering this week. I have learnt more about Engineering, for example, there are about 80 kinds of Engineering in the world and it involves everything.

Yesterday we learned how to build a paper bridge in a most efficient way and today we have learned how to build our own car using different kinds of materials. In the morning, we were demonstrated a model car designed by the professor, then we had to think about the design of our own car and what materials we needed. It took us a long time to design a car that has the least fiction and can travel the longest distance. Although my drawing was not good, it was fun to design our own car.

After we did the paper work on designing, we had to do our design on the computer, using a software called ‘solid work’, which was specialized for engineering and building stuff. We had to divide our draft into different parts and make it in the computer, which is called ‘CAD design’. The software is so complicated that we spent a lot of time on knowing how to use it. But I have gained an experience on what actually engineer is doing every day.

Although our car was not finished, we were looking forward to seeing it. In the process of constructing the car, we had to cut the wood using the machine that an engineer uses, this gave us a chance to experience how Engineering works and let us think about whether we should choose studying Engineering or not.

Reflection on 25-7-2011

Debby Chau (4S)

Our last week in Imperial College started today. We met our new academic and pastoral mentors in the morning and we were all in different new mentor groups. I will be studying Haptics this week. We were introduced to the machine – THE NOVINT FALCON haptic device and learnt how to write Java programme.

Next in the evening, we played a team building game and through this we were more familiar with our new group mates. The aim of the game was to build the highest and most stable tower using spaghetti and jellybabies. As we had already played this game on the first week, we could use our past knowledge to assist our group. The mentors didn’t announce which group was the winner, but all of us enjoyed the game.

We are all looking forward to the rest of the week and hope we can meet more friends from different parts of the world. 

Maggie Yam (4S)

Today, we were all separated into different mentor groups since we have chosen different strands of subjects this week.

I am studying engineering and it’s really enjoyable. I understand why engineers study energy and how engineering is applied to the use of energy. Energy is being used everywhere, and we do use a lot of it, such as the telephone charger we use every day, lighting of households, heaters we use in winters, etc. Energy is really very useful to humans, however, the supply of energy can’t satisfy its demand. Therefore, engineers have to think of ways to generate electricity for household, with care of different aspects, which are affordability, sustainability and security. They have to design machines to minimize the cost of production, think of ways which last long, for example the burning of coal, is not sustainable because it will be used up. Lastly, countries have to ensure that their supply is capable to satisfy its demand, so that they won’t spend lots of money on purchasing energy from other countries. Energy saving is not just the job of engineers, but also related to our daily lives, so we have to use energy efficiently, such as switching off the electrical appliances after use, and using energy-saving appliances, etc.

After the lesson, we made paper bridges together with our group members. Paper is soft as we known, so we have to think of ways to make it strong so as to hold heavy objects. It is a challenging task for us and we did enjoy the process, we also made new friends. What an enjoyable day!