We at Shad Dalhousie spent the morning predicting the future—or maybe, more formally, “prognosticating” (as our lecture was called). Delivered by our very own—Mike Smit—the morning delved right into exploring what the computer world, our world, beholds in near time. With embedded clips detailing tiny spider-sized robots in The Minority Report to a supercomputer that tracks one’s every move from Eagle Eye, we realized that we aren’t that far from such a “fictional” world.
Rec time, colloquially known as “sweaty time” was up next. But with exercise comes hunger, power eating, full bellies, and a clear head, one ready to learn. So off we headed to our self-selected seminars. I went to a 3D modeling seminar, where we learnt how to use Solid Edge, design software popularly used by engineers. This will be especially useful for our shad projects over the coming week.
Then it was off to eat again, but after that came the evening lecture. It was quite exciting—we didn’t just use our brain waves, we saw them! Aaron Newman from the Institute of Neuroscience and Brain Repair Centre came to talk to us about Electroencephalography while comparing activated brain scans of deaf to non-deaf people. Next, he took Shads from the audience and using an EEG recording net (as pictured), brain waves were recorded. It was fun seeing the graphs change rapidly as resulted from actions such as maniacal laughter or hard blinking.
The rest of the evening was spent working in our house groups, trying to finalize product details. We like to be secretive so I will leave it at that. Snack was next and it ended the day on a good note.
Rina Kang, Shad Dalhousie University 2011
Hometown: Toronto, ON
