Mensa workshop for gifted students – May 2017

Date and venue

• Dates: Thursday, May 25th, 2017 – Monday, May 29th, 2017
• Venue: Hotel Kapitán, Ústupky 120, Seč (mapy.cz)
• Assembly point and date:Thursday, May 25th, 2017, at 10:30 at the Pardubice Railway Station
• End: Monday, May 29th, 2017, at 15:00 at the Pardubice Railway Station

Programme

• The entire programme was focused on broadening students’ horizons in the fields of technical and scientific disciplines.
• For lectures, students were divided into two groups, according to age, to allow better targeting of individual age groups.
• On the other hand, for team building activities and other programmes, groups were assembled from participants of different ages to facilitate the forming of new friendships, and the mutual exchange of experiences.
• The workshop was held in co-operation with the Jan Perner Transport Faculty at the University of Pardubice. Besides the Faculty, we also visited the Educational and Research Centre in Transport.
• On the last day of the workshop, we visited the Pardubice racecourse, and the entire workshop was topped off with a sweet surprise. 

Selection of Lectures

• prof. Ing. Bohumil Culek, CSc. – Mechanics of the ride of rail vehicles
• Ass. Prof. Ing. Bohumil Culek, Ph.D. – Reliability, lifetime, steel constructions
• Ass. Prof. Ing. Pavel Švanda, Ph.D. – Materials, technologies, glues
• Ing. Aleš Šmejda, Ph.D. – Exogenous processes, landslides, hillside movements
• Ass. Prof. Ing. Oktavián Strádal, Ph.D. – Simulation of a continuous mechanical system
• Ass. Prof. Ing. Radovan Soušek, Ph.D. – The critical national infrastructure, temporary bridges
• Ass. Prof. Ing. Vladimír Němec, Ph.D. prof. h.c. - Aerodynamics and mechanics of an aircraft flight
• Ing. Martin Novák, Ph.D. – Construction of a transport aircraft; in the sky without an engine
• Prof. Ing. Eva Schmidová, Ph.D. – Material analyses, fractography 
• Ass. Prof. PaedDr. Jana Škrabánková, Ph.D. – Chemical calculations briefly and clearly; Special theory of relativity
• Ass. Prof. Mgr. Václav Brázda, Ph.D. – Molecular biology
• Ing. Bc. Pavel Kapler, Ph.D. – Czech Research Station of J.G. Mendel in Antarctica
• Ing. Tomáš Blumenstein – Infrastructure in the city; Building services engineering
• Ing. Martin Sedláček - 3D printing
• ...and others

Participant feedback

The meeting point for the participants of the May 2017 Mensa workshop for gifted students was inside the Pardubice Main Station. The “condensation” of the participants began on 25thof May 2017, as early as 8:30 at various places inside the station, with all 4 individual condensation nuclei merging eventually and forming a group that was impossible to miss. Gradually, some organizers arrived, namely Hana Kalusová, Eva Sedláčková, and Martin Sedláček. As soon as all of us were present (some lines had up to 20 minutes delay), we set off towards the bus station. Our first stop was the Jan Perner Transport Faculty of the University of Pardubice. There we listened to the presentation on the train protection systems (train control), the function of which we could subsequently see at a reduced scale at the Transport Hall. It was a model in 1:87 (H0) scale with a (if I remember well) four-fold increased velocity (one second of the model equals four seconds in reality). After that, we ate at the university canteen. Despite not being an expert in the field of gastronomy, I dare say that preparing better meals would not be too difficult. Then, we got on the bus again and relocated to the Educational and Research Centre in Transport. We visited many research departments, the one I personally liked the most was nail manufacturing – a demonstration in experimental archaeology.

This year’s workshop was at the hotel Kapitán, located not far from Seč, in the village of Ústupky. In the evening, we played icebreaker games, began a tournament in the “Take 6” card game, and went to sleep. The next days were relatively similar to one another, with a few exceptions. The lectures I personally liked the most were the one about motorless flying, closely followed by the Special relativity theory by Ass. prof. Jana Škrobánková, Building services engineering (Tomáš Blumenstein), and Exogenous processes and landslides (where among other things Prackovice bridge and a landslide on the D8 motorway were discussed). Also, the Jeopardy! game by Filip Oplt was – aside from a few minor oversights - well prepared. The only thing that made me angry was the fact that the PARTIALLY COMPLETED tunnel of Ejpovice (i.e. the Pilsen region) was not allowed as a correct answer to the question “Name the region in which the longest railway tunnel in the Czech Republic is located”, despite the fact that in one direction, the tunnel is already in a serviceable state (tracks are already in place, and the protection systems are working), and SZDC no longer classifies it as “under construction”, but rather as a tunnel (Filip, you have a lot to do for the next year!). The cipher game was also interesting. Granted, it caused our team some pain, but it was not too bad. We also experienced a lot of fun with the game Poisons, where we were tasked to recognize, just by colour, smell, and taste if the sample is Coca-cola, Pepsi-cola, Kofola, RC Cola, or other variants. It was difficult, but we did not fare too badly. In my opinion, the workshop was great, and I am looking forward to the next one.

Related topics

• Reports from past events

30.5.2017

Mensa workshop for gifted students – May 2017 30.5.2017

Back