来到Berkeley的第四天到第六天，上海新纪元双语学校学子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.

美国伯克利劳伦斯科学实习营

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?

在周，我们的主题就是designing structure, 那Bridges就是的研究结构的建筑。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。最后实验证明，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，我们上课的最后一天，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，但是最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.

美国伯克利劳伦斯科学实习营学习

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值。实验证明对于我们的结构来说，四个扇叶是最优选项。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。

最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。不过好在最终我们三组都完成的很好，只是最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?

合影留恋

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。我觉得我观察到最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最晚的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。我在最开始有点困，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.

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