NEBS国际高中部【美国伯克利劳伦斯科学实习营分享之一】

　　UC Berkeley

　　伯克利加州大学

　　全美较多元文化

　　较前卫理念

　　及较具环保意识的校园

　　劳伦斯科学馆

　　LawrenceHallofScience

　　领队老师小贴士

　　劳伦斯伯克利实验室在国际上享有威望,它曾八次获得诺贝尔奖金。Lawrence Hall of Science位于旧金山湾区东北部、美国著名学府加州大学伯克利分校后山，这是全美唯一附属于较好公立研究型大学的科学中心。20%的美国学校使用劳伦斯科学馆所开发的教材。

　　旧金山时间19:00，小城伯克利的阳光依然十分明媚。今天是我带队国际部同学来到美国的第7天，少年们在UC Berkeley 劳伦斯科学馆STEM实习营也经历一周的锤炼，收获满满。

　　不同于传统的大学夏令营项目，劳伦斯科学实习营的要求比较高，该项目连接课堂知识与现实世界的应用，需学习IT和编程知识以及运用研发设计之方法和流程来解决问题。前期同学们在申请时也经过了一番历练，提交个人在校学业成绩单，撰写申请信和个人英文简历，并经过严格的视频面试和测验，较终国际部八名同学脱颖而出。

　　劳伦斯科学馆在加州大学伯克利分校的后山，每天同学们需乘坐校内班车经过盘曲的山路到达实验室开始一天的课程。授课老师是以在校博士生为主，还有部分教授和外聘技术专家，授课方式与大学模式相近。例如导师在引出Engineering (工程学)这一概念时会进行较多的铺垫，先让学生自由发言，举现实中事物的例子帮助同学们全方位理解，随后会有小测验，再进行大量的实践。比如学习桥的结构，引出概念后让学生在实践中不断改进增加桥的承重。Design、Build、Test、Rebuild，林贝盈同学不禁感慨“这就是属于工程师的循环!”同学们在课程中不断备受启发，还会发现许多有趣的事情。有一个项目的要求就是用较少的材料做出偏差小于一厘米的3维桥。大家不断发挥想象力挑战新纪录，我们的同学有做了拱桥，虽然是废材料，却十分稳固美观，还有使用T字结构，结构虽显奇葩，但设计却有理有据，较后创造了新记录，同学们充分体验了结构的力量。

　　除了每天的课后作业，每周同学们还需要写全英文的课程总结小论文，学业压力着实不小。短短几天，我们的学生已经很好适应了在伯克利的生活和上课，甚至十分享受在劳伦斯实习营与各类学霸们同台竞技的学术氛围，每一次的presentation总结演讲也是对自己英文公众表达能力的锻炼提升，期待孩子们在接下来的学习中遇见更优秀的自己!

　　NEBS李小康老师

　　来到Berkeley的第四天到第六天，我们大部分的时间都是在学校度过的。在学校，不仅是我们上课的主要内容—structure of bridges， 还有其他的一些engineering experiments在等着我们。接下来就是对我们这三天生活的一个详细介绍。

　　Bridges

　　On Wednesday, we met another teacher, Ms.Rachel. She taught us how to measure the magnitude of the force acting on a beam accurately with the load cell. The Load cell can not only provide us these data, but also show if the forces are compression or tension. We built a bridge out and used the load cell to determine the forces and figured out which beam was the most stressed one. After determining them, we were asked to change the structure of the bridge to make the stress be less.

　　Based on these, we had an earthquake experiment. We combined two small groups with 4 members in each one to a large group which contains 8 people. Every large group were asked to make two same bridges, then choose to make the material of legs be different and other factors maintain the same, or make the length of the legs be different and other factors remain the same, and mimic an earthquake with the table, then try to find out which one is the stabler one. We did both of this two experiment. We found out that when other factors were just the same, the gray ones that were supple was better than the blue ones that were rigid. This was because the gray ones were more flexible than the blue ones. This demonstrated that a flexible material was stabler than a rigid material in an earthquake. From another aspect, the shorter legs were better than the longer ones in the earthquake since they were stabler.

　　We did a presentation about our poster of bridges on Friday afternoon. Each group talked about their poster with visitors and after the brief introduction, the visitors would ask us some questions about our bridges. This way of presentation was brand new for some of us. In the past, we just have done the presentation with PowerPoint. Also, drawing poster also tested one's typography, organization and art skills. Even though these were a little bit difficult for us and we have to improve our ability of these things, but no challenges, no breakouts, right?

　　在第一周，我们的主题就是designing structure, 那Bridges就是较好的研究结构的建筑。相比较于前两天比较基础的 课程，在后面的几天课程中我们都渐渐开始分析桥所受到的力，从而把承重较大化。其中有两个项目让我印象很深，一个是用测力传感器测量在桥中受力较大的横梁，并减轻它的压力。我们试着在中间的三角结构中去增加竖梁，是有用的。这也向我们证明了三角形的稳固性，同时，理论知识告诉我们把力分散确实会减少压强，这也是拱形结构为什么会这么牢固的原因。

　　然后还有一个就是地震测试。我们建了两座相同的桥，但是桥墩的材料却有所不同。较后实验证明，桥墩更加坚硬的桥收到的力更小。这一点倒是有些出乎我的意料。常识也会有出错的时候。周五，我们上课的较后一天，我们做了一个presentation，是对我们这一周来所学的东西的总结，也是一个圆满的谢幕。虽然在做海报的时候遇到了很多困难，演讲也有些瑕疵，但是较后的成品还是让我们相当满意。

　　Energy

　　We also designed a wind turbine this week. We were asked to design a wind turbine which can make out 20 volts voltage. At first, we thought the bigger the size was, the more voltage it would produce, so we cut the paper into large sizes. However, we found that it was not the best, and sometimes it even didn’t work. Then we cut them into very small pieces, but it didn’t work very well, too. Then, we found out the size should not be too big or too small. In another aspect, we didn’t care about the intersection angles at first, but we found that it really changed the result a lot by chance. And a profit angle can make the wind turbine be very effective. Even though we didn’t reach the target Ms.Rachel set for us, but we did get lots of new knowledge we didn’t know before.

　　Besides, we also made a roller coaster. We were first asked to make a small one in each group, we used some cubic structure in it to make it be stable. After that, we built a larger one with two other groups. The process of building this one was not as well-off as the first one and we met lots of problems. The first difficulty we met was to make the loop works. We didn’t put many beams to immobilize the loop as first, and it changed its position every time so that the roller coaster sometimes worked but sometimes didn’t. Then we made a cubic around the loop and fixed its position. The second question was that the different parts of the roller coaster were not in a straight line, so the track would incline to one side and car would fall down from the track. Since each part of the track were not connect together, we had to adjust the position of those parts every time and this made the roller coaster to work seldom, if it worked depended on how lucky we were... The last problem we met was in the last three parts, it was very difficult to make an appropriate height of them. They must provide the car with enough gravitational potential energy to transfer into kinetic energy, and also in a smooth track for the car to go through. We spent lots of time dealing with these problems. Nevertheless, when the final product was built out, We all felt that these efforts and attempts had been worthwhile and we were proud and happy for ourselves.

　　We also did a presentation about the roller coaster on Friday afternoon. We introduce the design of our roller coaster to the visitors. And we gave the little cars to the visitors to test our roller coaster as well. We all had a fantastic and interesting time.

　　除了Bridges， 我们还做了一些其他实验，就比如风力发电。这个实验让我们自己控制卡纸的形状，角度，以及扇叶的数量，以此让我们研究怎么样可以让发电量达到较大值。实验证明对于我们的结构来说，四个扇叶是较优选项。同时让我想吐槽的一点是，让发电装置转起来的风扇所消耗的电就比风力发出的电多很多。

　　较后一天我们用之前的材料建造了一个过山车(roller coaster)。这比我们想象中要困难，特别是360度的旋转，弧度的大小甚至是轨道一点点的偏差都有可能让过山车成为一个失败的作品。不过好在较终我们三组都完成的很好，只是较后要把过山车拆掉是在是有点可惜。

　　Lab

　　We went to Concrete Lab on Thursday morning. Concrete is a strong hard kind of building material composed of sand, gravel, cement, and water. By visiting the lab and watching the experiment, I knew that concrete is always getting stronger and stronger, and the data the scientists use to compare which is stronger are the ability of resistance of the concrete cylinder at the 28 days. Also, there are different reasons that cause the different cylinder to have different resistance, and one of them is the amount of water contained in the cylinder. Besides, taking out iron can make the color of the cylinder be whiter, and it can be more useful for people to paint with white concrete than gray one since what they have to do with the white concrete is to add some pigment in it to change its color.

　　在第四天的行程中，我们参观了concrete lab, 顾名思义，就是研究混凝土的地方，混凝土是由水泥，沙子，石头和水构成的，同时如果加上不同的化学物质，还会有不同的效果。同时，我们还了解到了一个神奇的知识：混凝土是有生命的!随着时间的流逝他们会变得愈发坚硬，就比如当时测试的一个混凝土柱，它理论上可以承受3000个单位的力，但是由于放了一段时间在测试中它却承受了6000个单位的力，实在是很神奇

　　Activities

　　We had a workshop about American Etiquette with Ms.Kayli, Mr. Harrison, and the counselor of SSD (another camp in UCB) on Wednesday evening. We talked about the differences between Asian culture and American culture, and our own understanding of Asian culture and American culture. We told the counselors that we found there were plenty of staples on the trees and we were really curious about why they were there. Then Ms.Kayli told us that they were used to staple the notice for missing people, missing things, or some advertisements. We all thought that this was completely damage to the trees and people should stop doing this. We also talked about the differences between classes and study style in China and the U.S. The workshop gave us lots of new ideas about these two cultures and made my opinion about these two cultures be more well-rounded. We really had a superb time there and learned very much from my classmates and the three counselors.

　　In addition, we went to see the movie, Spider-Man, on Friday night to relax. We were all excited to go out at 9:30 p.m.!!! At first, we were surprised that there was no subscript! But at last, we were more surprised that we could understand most of it!! That’s so heartening!!! Who would refuse to watch movies they like and exercise their English listening skills at the same time?!

　　除了学习，自然作为一个夏令营活动也是必不可少的。在周三的晚上，counselors 组织我们进行了一次关于中美文化的交流。在交流中，其实不仅是我们，其他人也感受到了许多不同之处。我觉得我观察到较直观的就是中外贴广告的方式。有一次我们在街上看到有许多电线杆上都裹了树皮，而有些让人毛骨悚然的事，上面有很多生锈的订书钉。后来我们问了老师才知道其实这是国外贴告示如寻物启事一类东西的方式。这一点确实让我们感到很有趣。还有就是，相比于钢铁森林似的上海，旧金山确实有很多山，景色也是非常不错，不过道路就没有上海一般干净了。还有一个很有趣的事情，就是相比于在国内人让车的行为，在国外都是车让人，着多少让来自中国的我们有点不习惯。

　　周五，我们结束了一周的学习，在午夜我们便享受了全夏令营期间较晚的outing—看电影。因为回来的时间是在很晚，所以不是所有人都去，但是去过的我觉的一点都不亏。我们去的电影院和国内很不一样，大厅十分空旷，座位也是随便坐。我在较开始有点困，但是后来却完全被剧情所吸引了，另外让我们大家都有些意外的是，这里的电影并没有字幕，好在大家都看到懂。这大概就是我们的一周。

　　Conclusion

　　We learned a lot about designing structure. The difference we felt from the class in this camp is, we learn things by practice in the most of the time in the class. I think that is the most different thing compared to my original school. Although it may be a little bit slower to learn, but I think we can learn it more directly and it helps us a lot. Additionally, we realized that we can not only learn knowledge in class, but also in life and discussion with classmates during the free time, and not only the knowledge we learn in class can be called knowledge, but all the things in life that give us some enlightenment can also be regarded as knowledge, and sometimes this knowledge can make us grow up a lot and be more mature apace.