Building Bridges in Hong Kong

Dave Collins and Ed Tarleton spent a week at the Chinese University of Hong Kong running a Material Science course in a summer school organised by St Anne’s College. The summer school ran for 4 days, selecting 16-year old students local to Hong Kong. The Materials day was attended by a total of 100 students. The hands-on activities they organised by Ed and Dave included building bridges using lollipop sticks, then testing them to fracture- some of them weighing just 100g were strong enough to withstand 20kg! The students also got to see how Materials Science is important to sound devices, building and testing speakers, then examining resonance effects and standing wave patterns in a vibrating Chladni plate.