土木一 Patricia Naomi N. G. 邱婉婷
In the department of civil engineering, first-year students are required to take ‘Cornerstone Courses’, which is one of the ‘STONE Courses’. The other two stone courses are Keystone and Capstone. In the cornerstone stage, there are two required courses: Conceptual Design Studio and Physical Model Design Laboratory. Each of them consists of 2 credits, and both lie under Criteria D in the NTU Civil Engineering Department Course Framework. What do we do in those cornerstone courses?
In the first semester of our freshman year, we are suggested to take the Conceptual Design Studio (CDS) course. This course’s schedule is once a week, with 3 hours per session. At the beginning of the semester, the class is divided into several groups, with four students in each team. This is the team that will last throughout the entire semester to complete the project. So, bluntly speaking, the people in your group will decide how your semester will go. The huge project we had to do in this course was to build a prototype of a tower. The professor provided us with the dimensions requirements and materials we could utilize. The materials include thin wood pieces, copper plates, copper strings, and nail screws. The whole process was divided into small steps that progressed each week to guide us on how to build the tower. With that, we had to present our team’s progress once every few weeks.
In the 112-1 academic year, we had to build a prototype of a floating tower to be placed on NTU’s Drunken Moon Lake. With that, our challenge didn’t stop at how we could make the tower stand but also how we could balance it and keep it floating on the water surface. Therefore, we had to apply what we learned in other courses to successfully plan, design, and build our tower prototypes. Some especially important subjects that came in handy in the process include Applied Mechanics I for the calculations and Engineering Graphics for the planning and designing stages. After 15 weeks, the towers we created finally came to a test on week 16, where we placed them on the lake to test the floating system we fabricated.
It sure was a tough assignment. However, with the help of the professor and all the TAs, we could successfully get it done in time. At the end of that semester, an exhibition was held for our final exam. It was attended by several guest judges to participate in the scoring of our finished towers. All teams got to present their tower with the visual aid of posters. Everyone also got to be a judge because we had to fill out the polls, voting for our favorite tower. The combined votes from everyone got to decide which team would be nominated for the ‘People’s Favorite’ award. Besides that, there were many categories of awards nominated that same night, such as ‘Best Tower Design’, ‘Best AutoCAD’, ‘Best Mooring System’, etc. The award categories depend on the criteria of the project, which might differ from year to year.
Once we’re done with the floating tower, our task doesn’t stop there because, in the second semester of our first year, we had to take the second cornerstone course, called the Physical Design Model Laboratory (PMDL). For this course, in total, there were six class options to enroll in, and most of the classes were conducted in English. Similar to previously, all the students in each class are split into teams of 4.
The concept and flow of the PMDL course are similar to those of CDS. However, the content and aim of this course totally differ since, in the Physical Model Design Laboratory, our task was to build a roller coaster prototype. For this project, we had to utilize copper rods and solder for the majority of the project, plus a wood plate as the ground and wood pieces as the support system. In the beginning of the semester, the TAs taught us the basics of how to build a simple track, and from there on, we got to develop the skills ourselves to fabricate tougher and more complicated track designs of our choice.
This course is divided into two parts, ‘Structure’ and ‘Automation’, which alternate each week. For the automation part, we were taught the coding part, such as the simulation of our roller coaster track on PointCloud. Meanwhile, in the structure part, we were taught the details about the track fabrication, such as things to consider while designing our track and also the simulation of the sphere’s motion on the track. For that, we had to come up with an equation of acceleration for the sphere’s motion, considering various forces we think are acting on the ball, and we had to put all that into the code we’re provided with to create an outcome graph and compare that simulation graph from our equation with the simulation from our PointCloud file. This is where the lessons we learned in Applied Mechanics II and Computer Programming came in handy. Furthermore, similar to CDS, we had to update the progress of our project by giving presentations once every few weeks in the structure class.
For this course, although the track fabrication is also a challenging part, it is fun as long as the team cooperates well and completes each other. Teamwork is the key to a successful track and completion of the PMDL project. As with the previous semester, there was an exhibition at the end of the semester, and again, everyone got to vote for their favorite track by ranking other groups’ tracks. On the same night, an award ceremony was held to announce all the winners of the awards. The award nominations were divided into several aspects, such as ‘People’s Favorite’, ‘Most Creative Design’, ‘Most Thrilling Track’, etc. It sure was a memorable night for all of us, especially winning some of the awards, because it showed us that our hard work paid off in the end.
To conclude, both of the cornerstone courses are fun but have their own twists, which make them challenging. They both require creativity and teamwork. In the beginning, they would sound overwhelming, but as time goes on, everyone eventually gets the hang of it, and everything will make sense at some point. So, just trust the process!