I would like to share my experience of the IVE infrastructure building competition.
In the competition, we had to construct a bridge model which was made up by 25 metre long wood sticks. It was a really challenging task as the amount of material was limited and all of us had no experience on making a wooden bridge model. We had never imagined that we could make it successfully.
Designing was the first challenge we faced. When we were designing the structure of the model, we didn’t find much difficulties because drawing a diagram of the model was much easier than making a real one. We designed different special supporting structures and they looked promising. However, a big problem came out. All the designs were imaginary. We had no idea about how to make a model the same as our design. We didn’t know any skill on wood craft. So, some of the designs were wasted as we couldn’t make it practically. At last, we decided to start from a really simple design and refined it. We counted the total length of wood needed carefully and finally came up with a suitable design for us.
After that, we put great deal of effort on preparing the wood. It was really a tiring job. We couldn’t make any mistake when we were chopping the wood. We couldn’t afford wasting any of the wood as it was limited. Otherwise, we would have lost opportunity to build the bridge successfully. Weeks before the day of competition, we prepared woods and kept refining our design after school till night. It was both exhausting and stressful. Gratifyingly, we didn’t make much mistakes and completed our preparation work successfully!
On 10th February, we were facing the ultimate challenge - to assemble the model. On that day, we worked for 8 hours on the bridge model. We had no time to take a rest except having lunch. We divided ourselves into two groups and each group made a lateral surface of the bridge. Although we didn’t have much experience on using the required glue, we still used it well luckily and this was not a big problem. The biggest problem was that we had to combine two bridge surfaces of the model together. We held them carefully lest they broke. After hours of effort, we completed our bridge model at last.
At the moment, we didn’t worry if we would get any reward. Completing the bridge model was a load off our mind. That was really a memorable and meaningful moment - the bridge model was a product of our efforts and patience. We have never regretted to participate in this competition as we learn much in it. It was a really great opportunity to learn about infrastructure and to improve our collaboration skill.
Cheung Kim Hang 4D