“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The online science talk series SEU Wuxi launched for its master students to help middle school kids in remote areas, such as Inner Mongolia, were announced to be open with the first course of interesting facts or general knowledge around “Integrated Circuit”, “Wireless Communications”, as well as some easy but awesome science experiments started.
Through the Internet, volunteers from 2020 grade opened a door to IC knowledge for students in the No.9 Middle School of Zhungeer Banner, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
To guarantee the success of this online course program, we have got 4 groups of students responsible for teaching, course content review, experimental material management and live broadcast equipment debugging respectively.
They implemented a couple of rehearsals before the real show and even set up a team in case of any emergency.
In the very beginning, Zhou Mingrui, a girl volunteer, gave a 40-minute speaking about the scientific knowledge related to integrated circuits. [Photo provided to SEU Wuxi Campus]
IC chips, as she emphasized in her speech, can be almost seen everywhere around us, like the devices which do us a lot of convenience and amusement, from bus cards, computers, wrist watch, television, cell phones, etc.
Zhou asked the students to observe the wafer that were sent to them in advance closer to see how small the chip is. [Photo provided to SEU Wuxi Campus]
She also introduced the production process of the chip, seemingly a process of turning “sand” into gold, which involved high temperature, acid distillation, cutting, outer diameter grinding, slicing, polishing, chip on board, wire bonding, resin sealing, adding heat sink and so on.
Subsequently, the students watched a video showing how a chip is fabricated in a factory.
To make the part interesting, Ms. Zhou inspired the students to find the difference between the chip factory and the ordinary ones, with enthusiastic response received. [Photo provided to SEU Wuxi Campus]
Chen Siyuan, the second lecturer, first briefed the general knowledge of the previous theoretical class. [Photo provided to SEU Wuxi Campus]
He led everyone to carry out the water color lamp experiment. From counting components, screwing screws, winding resistors, arranging chip leads, connecting circuits, to fixing switches, Chen tried to demonstrate every step clearly. [Photo provided to SEU Wuxi Campus]
Although some students did not complete the whole experiment for the limited time, they did reap the joy of success finally with the help of the printed instruction book and the teachers' after-class guidance.
The students concluded that they had not only learned a lot of science knowledge but also feel the bonding with the country and society. The two volunteers also said that their biggest gain from this activity was the warm smiling faces of these children and hoped that they all have a bright future.
A group photography was taken for a memory. [Photo provided to SEU Wuxi Campus]
This activity is part of the “Online Science Bridge Series”. We do hope we really do something that’ll make some difference for kids in faraway areas. If these two short e-learning sessions could be an opportunit for them to start knowing or thinking about the world of IC, that must be a genuine reward for our efforts.
