Waterloo 2.0 - Day 3,4,5 - Reflection

Days 3 and 4 are so far the highlights of the trip for me. On day 3 we anodized titanium rings which created color due to refraction occurring in the transparent titanium oxide and on day four we "dissected" 6.5hp four-stroke engines. The dissection has empowered me to further meddle with these engines as I now realize they aren't as complicated as I once thought. When I return to Vancouver I plan to buy one of these and perhaps start home projects with one such as building a go-kart. Two tours I found very interesting were the visits to the Perimeter Institute and the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) here on the Waterloo campus. At IQC we additionally learned about the fundamentals and theory behind quantum cryptography which I only knew about on a surface level prior to the visit. After the lecture and experiment, I now know the science, particularly polarization, behind quantum cryptography and why an eavesdropper would be caught. Ctrl V, the virtual reality arcade was also interesting although VR has not yet progressed to a stage where games are complex and nor is the framerate or resolution up to PC standards. As a result of these deficiencies and no external references for orientation or balance the games made me dizzy after ~15 minutes. Finally, we watched first-year engineering students doing a two-day challenge the results of which once again demonstrated that high-school students aren't too dissimilar from first-years.