Second Day

What did you do today?

Briefly describe your day's activities
Today, I went to the School of Materials Science and Engineering. We had to do the composite material processing first. We were given instructions then were let off to make our own composite material out of Glass Fibre and Carbon Fibre. We had to mix the matrix and the fibres together which was also mixed with epoxy to create a hardened plate. The lecturer also proved to us that it was hard by knocking it on the table and it did not break because of the epoxy.

Then, after a tea break, we were on to test the tensile strength of the engineering materials. There, we used a machine to test how much stress a type of material can handle before it broke. The materials that we tested were aluminium+copper alloy, mild steel, polystyrene and polyethylene. We took the remains of our fractured materials to bring home as a souvenir.

How do you feel about today's activities?

Describe how the project has affected your understanding of the discipline

The project has made understand more of the project that physics and chemistry is not just about theories, calculations and memorisation of the periodic table, but to be able to apply what you learn, appreciate more about the things that we see everyday and understand what material they are made of and how the materials are made.

How may this discipline be applied elsewhere?

This discipline can be applied when we are in the engineering field, where we use the most suitable materials for our blueprints of the devices that we are going to make.