Creating Group Work

The plans for today didn’t work out as we hoped to have an industry visit however it turned out to be a bonus for the students as it gave us some much needed time to catch up and start organising group work. This day started off with team nano meeting together to organised the various part of the group work and also started to research key parts of the assignments.
After this morning of intense researching driven by the team leader Trey Guest, we went to meet Paul who took us to the SMART CREATE MIT centre. This was mainly focused on micro fluidics and the applications they can have. It was really educational to see how they mircofluidics were made and how they could be applied to problems that hospitals face. It was really intruging to learn how cancerous cells where separated from normal cells considering that they are almost identical. Today was an extra day to plan our assignments that we hadn’t planned on and therefore it was super relieving.

RP plus fish

Today’s start was the earliest of the tour so far, meeting up at 7:15. Trey was able to join us for the trip today, however eli was unable to stay with us the entire time today.

The first visit for today, and the reason we had to get up so early being so far away, was to the republic Polytechnic. While there, we learnt more about how their school system works. To teach the students they use a problem based learning approach, while also giveng them hands on experience. While there, we also saw, and got toured by some of the students who had visited La Trobe earlier in the year. One of the places they took us to their aircraft workshop area, where we got to see some different types of aircraft.

In the afternoon we went to the S.E.A. Aquarium, which is located on Sentosa island. Met students doing a biodiversity summer program, who are from different places around the world and who we’ll also meet when going to the zoo later on. For the aquarium visit all of us had to be split up into   groups of no more than 10, this gave us a good opportunity to get to know the other students a bit better. The tour was Interesting as it is the world’s largest aquarium and they were able to teach us things that some of us hadn’t previously known about some of the fish/ animals  they had there.

Repbulic Polytechnic and Aquarium

Today we’re going to Republic Polytechnic and then the aquarium. I had to get up at 6am, which is way too early to meet with the rest of the group by 7.15. I cooked bacon for breakfast this morning, which was yum.

We arrived at Republic Polytechnic and we were greeted by the Republic poly students that we hosted when they came to La Trobe University. We had a tour around their campus, they have pretty amazing facilities, including an aircraft hanger with a private jet, two smaller planes inside it, and a control tower simulator of the Changi airport.

We then had to quickly rush back to our accommodation to get changed and then caught the shuttle bus back to the science department. Once there, I was pretty hungry so I quickly ran over to the food court and brought some spring rolls and chicken curry puffs. We met with some other students, some from California, Hong Kong and Western Australia.

We went with the other students to Santosa island to the aquarium, where we had a backstage tour of the aquarium, which was pretty interesting, I even got to feed some fish! They also have the second largest viewing tank in the world which spans 36 metres and is 8 metres high.

NUS visit

Last night Nic and I found a little kitchenette at the accommodation, so this morning we had vegemite on toast for breakfast, it was nice to have something I usually have for breakfast at home. We met up with the rest of the group at Starbucks, and then caught the shuttle bus to the science facilities at NUS and had a quick snack at the foodcourt there.

Next we met some students from NUS who are studying a very specialised degree, where they are hand picked to gain entry to the special science degree. It sounds like a very good program, along with their studies, they are assigned a mentor, under which they undertake research assignments.

We then went to CIBA, which is a multidisciplinary centre that uses high energy ion beams. We got to go down and have a look at the beam line, which was really cool. We were given talks by some of the professors there on what they utilise the beam lines for. Majority of the projects use the beam lines for proton bea, writing, which allows micro-nano structures to be produced in materials such as polymers and semiconductors, the projects were really interesting.

We then got to see the graphene research facilities, which included a large clean room, this was also very interesting, but unfortunately, we weren’t able to go into the cleam room. We then went to the Quantum centre, where we had a tour of a lab where they are trapping atoms in a localised area in a vaccuum using, magnetic fields and also by cooling them to almost zero kelvin using lasers. We also got to see the facilities where they, make the chips for these experiments. I found this part of the tour particularly interesting.

We then went and had lunch with the NUS students at a food court where I had some delicious mie goreng noodles. After lunch we went to the science demo lab, which was a fun experience, it was similar to a small version of science works. We got to play with superconductors which was awesome! Along with many other fun, interesting science phenomina. Eventually, we had to stop having fun and head back to our accommodation. All around, today was a very interesting, and informative day, and I discovered NUS has amazing research facilities and I would be very interesting on going on exchange here.