Day 1
1. Importance of water - Dirty and clean
Keeping water clean is more important than I thought as when it is dirty, there are many kinds of waterborne diseases like typhoid, cholera and dysentery. About 1.1 million people in the world do not have access to clean water and proper sanitation. Many people also die each year due to these waterborne diseases. Animals who go into the rivers or streams dirty the water and start the diseases spreading among humans. I learnt that we should not take clean water for granted even though it is easily and readily available.
2. Revolution of Microelectronics Technology
Microelectronics is very important in our lives as it has by creating many things that are part of our daily lives. It is used for different things that all end with the letter o: bio, radio, auto, info, nano, water/hydro, audio, video, energy. They spell out brainwave. In the future, microelectronics can possibly be used for programmable blood or even brain transplants. Therefore, it has revolutionized technology.
3. Innovative breakthroughs in Nano-Science and Nano-Technology
Nano-technology is very important as it helps us make things smaller. Modern computers are small like laptops and we can easily carry it around, but the first computer took up the space of a large room. When things are broken down into smaller things, its surface area increases and its effectiveness also increases. It can also help in things like targeted drugs which will help fight cancer without harming normal cells. It also is easy to be grown in a certain shape.
4. IT for Animation
I learnt that The old 2D way of animation is much more costly than animating in 3D. Animating in 3D costs only about $30 million but animating in 2D cost about $45 million. It is possible to animate anything, like web pages etc. 2D animation includes stop motion and drawing, which is very labour intensive and you need 24 frames for a second of animation. However, some programs can automatically fill in the gap between keyframes. 3D animation is much easier as it uses the computer to animate digital models.
5. Disappearing glaciers, rising sea levels, and why gravity is even more important than you think
I learnt what geodesists do from this talk. They study the earth’s shape, its gravity, sea level changes etc. Modern geodesist use satellites to study the rise and fall of sea levels throughout the year. The sea level rise is not constant everywhere, it is due to the gravity of big ice caps which pull the water to it. The melting of the ice caps in Greenland will make water levels around that area to decrease but cause water levels in further away places to increase which will greatly affect Singapore.
