From Zombies to Mentors

by - May 11, 2019

The last few days have been busy with all sorts of fun and activity.  So much so, in fact that I've gotten behind in writing my blog posts!  Apologies for that.  This post will fill in some blanks and provide some images and video.  Hopefully, you've been keeping up with the student blog posts and keeping up with us all and getting more detail.

One of the highlights for many of the boys was the trip to the 3D Printing labs.  Unlike the way we tend to use 3D Printers at St George's to make things, the purpose of this approximately $50,000,000 group of labs is to study 3D Printing technology.  While the primary material that we use is plastic, here at Waterloo, they're particularly interested in printing in metals.  They want to know if there are more cost effective types of metals to print with and how strong the end result of printing using different methods of printing in metal can be.  Some methods of metal 3D Printing are capable of producing custom metal parts that are significantly stronger than other forms of metal part production.

Another project that the boys spent a fair amount of time on was in building virtual worlds and then testing them by uploading them to a VR gaming console so that they can step into the world that they have created.  Some of the worlds that were created were detailed and truly amazing! 

Friday afternoon was the Fusion students' opportunity to present their personal projects to a number of Masters, Doctoral, Post-Doc, Faculty, and industry experts.  Each student sat down with 3 different mentors for 15 minutes each.  While the reaction was certainly not universal, I will say that I've never seen so many excited students coming out of their meetings filled with feedback and ideas for future improvements.  The mentors then were able to sit down over dinner with the boys for more casual conversations about engineering, industry, university life, and I'm sure, many other things.  Some of the boys commented that this informal conversation was even more productive than the formal meetings. 

Saturday morning gave the boys a chance to use electrical current and chemistry to change titanium rings to different colours.  They then took apart single cylinder engines and put them back together.  While they seemed to be successful and one group got through the activity in record time, I'm fairly confident that I don't want any of them doing repairs on my car (at least not for a few years!)

A final session on the personal projects put experts on business and networking in front of the group to look at ways of taking their personal projects the next step.  If the ideas that they have been working on are ones that they would like to take beyond their Fusion year, they now have some ideas on how they might connect with people and funding that might allow them to take that next step. 

Evenings are always scheduled with some fun activity.  While the first night was spent learning to juggle, the second and third nights involved playing Humans vs Zombies (essentially tag using Nerf dart guns) and going on a wild Goose Chase (a scavenger hunt that is monitored and run via social media). 


Enjoy the photos.  The last video on this page is in 360VR, so if you have a VR unit of some sort (Google Cardboard, Merge, Oculus, HTC Vive, etc) then you can step inside the lab that we did our engine dissection in and join in the activity!



Non-VR version (you can watch in your browser).


Best in a VR viewer!

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