3: Sabbatical - Monday - Physics

I joined Science Eureka! this term. I was put into bidding round 2. I forgot to click the 'confirm' button. If I did, I would have only used 1 point to get in instead of 250. Sighs. But anyway, let me talk about the lessons.

On Monday, we learnt physics. I was in the same group as 2 1P2 guys and my classmate Tan Jun Jie. There was very less theory involved in the lessons. Instead, the whole thing was about practical. We made a whole lot of stuff, like parachutes, a bridge and a magnet. Also, we learnt about density through something like a lava lamp, and also of the Doppler Effect. The experiment that I enjoyed most was the bridge and the parachute ones.

In the bridge experiments, ice cream sticks were given to us. We could use glue and string to make a sturdy bridge capable of supporting 2 kg. 2kg with only 15 sticks! I came up with a interlocking design that used the tension of the ice cream sticks to hold itself in place without any glue. Using it would only destroy the structure. However, I only remembered there was strings to be used in the last 5 minutes. The string could have been used to hold the structure together more tightly. Thus, in the end, we lost because of my forgetfulness.

In the parachute experiment, we made a parachute from newspapers and string. I was proud to say that this was my masterpiece again, and we were the best group. Our egg was only briefly scratched because it rolled on the ground after landing safely.

I loved the physics day. The only sad thing was that we had to prepare a PowerPoint on heat transfer to be presented on Friday.