Genevieve reflects............

Pre-Camp Reflections:


1. I found that this project would be interesting as we would get to explore ways of getting energy from our surroundings, from natural resources in a way that would not hurt the Earth at all. Also, we get to explore different ways that people have already used to extract energy and come up with our own new ways. 
2. I want to learn more about the ways we can get energy from natural resources and not harm the Earth in any way. Also, I want to learn more about the simple ways of getting energy from natural resources. 
3. Does the prototype have any minimum number of steps before achieving the final objective, which is energy from the rain water? 
4.  I want to be able to come up with a great prototype together with my group mates, and also come up with a little personal design. I also want to be able to create such prototypes in the future after this project. 


Day 1: 
(A) Key learning points from Plenary Sessions: 
  1. Plenary session by Prof Kerry Sieh
  • How corals could help geologists study the uplift of the island. 
  • Cutting away a slab of the Earth could reveal several layers of deposit, such as tsunami deposits, animal deposits, which would then be further studied to differentiate the different layers and look at the tsunami deposits to find out the year in which mega-thrust tsunamis happen. 
  • How and why the islands would have uplifts
  • They could find out the year of the uplift just by cutting a slab of the dead coral due to not being under seawater and studying it. 
  • They used GPS to study the movements of the plates in order to be able to predict when the next tsunami might happen and how destructive it is going to be. 

  1. IT for Animation by Prof Seah Hock Soon 
  • Mathematics is applied in creating animation such as geometry is used for calculating the lines and curves, Calculus and laws of physics being used to create special effects. Basic geometry is applied for simple scenes, after which, a formula for ambient light is applied, which is to simply fill the shapes in with colour of the creator’s choice. Next, a formula for diffuse light is applied, which fills the coloured shapes with a bit of shadow in the right place. Lastly, a formula for specular light is applied to add in the shiny effect to the shapes to show the shininess of the object. Altogether, combining all this, you would get a nice looking scene/ picture.
  • 2D animation process: Script --> Storyboard --> Character Design --> Sound --> Key frame drawing --> In-between frame --> Colouring --> Composition --> Final Print
  • The 2D animation process is long and tedious. The process requires quite a lot of man labour to complete all the steps. Compared to 3D animation and stop-motion, this is actually a very tedious process and more expensive than 3D animation. 
  • Challenges of 2D Animation: Beautiful Art Forms, which would be complicated to draw, Skilled Artists to be able to create beautiful graphics for the animation, although most are drawn using computers these days, 
  • Motion Capture: Image Processing, Computer Vision, Computer Graphics, Robotics and Data Processing 
  1. Innovative breakthroughs in Nana-Science and Nano-Technology by Prof Ma Jan
  • More about the advances in Nano-Technology and Nano-Science such as bullet-proof coatings for cars, suits that help army soldiers camouflage at night and with the surroundings.
  • Nano-Technology could be used to replace the lens in a person’s eye with an artificial one in a way that would only require to cut a small bit and enter all the way in to do all the work. 
  • How Nano-Technology and Nano-Science could be used to make our lives better, easier. Quite a number of advancements have already been made and is going to be further improved on to make our lives better. 

Day 3: 
Personal Reflections and achievements: 
  1. I understood more about how rain water was not tapped on as a source of energy, and yet there could be many many methods of getting energy from rain water that have not been created yet or are in the process of improving and making. I realised that energy being a valuable resource, we should learn to tap on energy from natural resources since they will not run out in the next hundred years or so, such that we would have a constant supply of energy. Also, we should still continue saving energy despite having many ways to tap on natural resources as a source of energy. 
  2. I was not aware that people have not tapped on rain water as a natural resource, also I did not know there could be many possible ways to tap on rain water as a natural resource for energy. However, now I understand that people have not tapped on rain water, however the methods to do so were plenty and that people may have started working on such prototypes and contraptions to tap on rain water. 
  3. From this project, I learned more about how people tap on natural resources as a energy source, using contraptions such as wind turbines and solar panels to help capture the energy. I can connect this to my school work as we do learn about all these contraptions and we would discuss the pros and cons of the different contraptions. By learning more, we could express our view about this topic and share with everyone what we have learned from this.
  4. From what I have learned from this project, I can apply them to my school work in a few ways. For example, I learned how to construct a prototype with limited resources and limited amount of space. I can apply the thinking process from this into future Performance Tasks that require us to build a physical product with quite a number of limitations, which I have also learned from this project to minimise. I would minimise the limitations they are by coming up with a different and creative way to stick to the requirements and achieve the final goal. 
  5. Some new questions I have: Would more untapped natural resources be discovered and used as a natural resource?
  6. Aspirations: I would like to major in Mathematics, and maybe try out Gastronomy as it seems like an interesting topic. Also, I would like to major in Psychology so I could know more about the way we humans think. 

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