More relaxed

Have I mentioned to you that I've finished my Thinking Skills Group Project yesterday? I haven't, so I'll relate to you my experience.

This was by far the biggest project that I was involved in. The other assignments or projects were mere written assignments whereby we had to just do some research work over the Internet or encyclopaedias and then get them written in Microsoft Work before printing and compiling them into a book. This time, we were given both written assignment and seminar presentation work.

Sounds hard, right? Well, that was our initial impression of the project. Each group was assigned specific tasks to do, and my group was given two tasks (every group was given two tasks,too; one written task and the other is a seminar presentation). Our first task was regarding the rise of fuel price in our country and its impact to the people. We were suppose to come up with the impact and recommendations to the ministry concerned to minimise or eliminate the impact, using the certain Thinking Tools that were assigned. We were required to use the Other People's Views (OPV), Plus, Minus, Interesting (PMI) and Consider All Factors (CAF) methods to come up with the impacts of fuel price rise before thinking about the recommendations. To find out more about the Thinking Tools, you can search about them through Google. There are many more Thinking Tools to the ones I listed.

That was for our written assignment. For our presentation, we had to become Civil Engineers (so fast?). We were required to design a flood control system (but it was actually a flood detecting system); our task was to design a system that is effective in detecting and notifying nearby residents in case of flood. Therefore, using the Morphology Chart, Selection Matrix (or Pugh Evaluation Matrix) and from our datum and Decomposition, we had to come up with eight (there were eight members in my group) design concepts, and out of that eight, we had to determine which is the best design and what are the improvements that can be made. Eventually, we had chosen one design to use, with certain negative features removed and improved features to replace them. And this is the end-result (don't laugh, OK? I know it might not be what you first thought, but hey! The assessors said that it was a very interesting concept):

The picture might be a bit blur, but it's the best that we could produce. It's drawn by hand, so I don't expect much comments, yeah? Anyway, to describe a bit about our design, first of all, it's a floating sphere made of duralumin; it uses a pressure sensor to detect the pressure of water, it uses automated operation and the alert system is the housing alert system, whereby a siren is located at a strategic location so that the warning can be heard by all residents within that flood-prone area. It's chained to the ground so that it will not float all the way to the surface when the water level rises (the sphere will eventually be submerged in the water when the water level rises). The whole system is powered by hydroelectric. The trasmission of signals? Well, we'll use fibre optics here.

It's rather too long to justify our decision here in this blog entry, but use your knowledge of Physics (we didn't use such advanced Physics in this design), and you may soon understand the reason we chose this concept. Cost is not an important factor in this presentation.

Our presentation lasted for 30 minutes (we were actually allocated 20 minutes) because the assessors seemed to have so many questions to ask us, but we easily answered them all. They first thought that the sphere would float even though the water level rises, and then the pressure sensor will not be able to detect any water pressure, thus rendering the whole concept useless. We countered the question easily by saying that the function of the chain here plays an important role to keep the sphere at a maximum height. Therefore, the length of the chain must be shorter than the height of the river bank, otherwise, the whole concept would be of no practical use, because even when the river overflows, no critical pressure would be detected then. Do you see the reasoning?

It has been a wonderful presentation for a start. We were dressed in our formal attire which impressed our assessors very much. I currently don't have the picture of my group now, but once I have it I'll post it here in my blog. It's just too bad that we couldn't take any pictures of us presenting our work (using Powerpoint slides) in the lecture hall at Pocket D (only the group presenting was allowed to be in the hall; those whose turn had not come were required to wait outside the hall).

Now, with the assignments all done and with the Study Week beginning next week, our schedule has become much more relaxed. Nevertheless, the extra amount of time that we have now has to be put to good use in our studies and revision, because exams are on the 29th of May till the 6th of June (with a few days break in between). Therefore, this isn't the time to fool around anymore!