In all ways imaginable, today was the antithesis of yesterday. Kicking off the day the team from RoboHike walked us through their work on autonomous quadrupedal robots. From the devices and coding used to allow the robots to sense their environment to the current and future uses of autonomous robots in our society we at LIYSF have a broad range of knowledge on an exciting, but uncommonly talked about field. Additionally, we got to see some robot dogs! One person in the LIYSF crowd was talking to it like a regular dog which was pretty funny.
Photo 1: Two men and a robot dog walk on stage
Video 1: Robot dog from LIYSF
This lecture was so fascinating, regardless of its heavy engineering focus, and I couldn’t help myself scribbling ideas I had for new legs for these autonomous quadrupedal robots.
Photo 2: My thoughts on robot legs
That wasn’t the most illuminating talk of the day though. Discussing his passion for bioluminescence (see what I did there?), iridescence, and utilising colour to indicate stress on materials Dr. Pete Vukusic showed a side of science that was fun and filled with childlike wonder like no other speaker at our forum. I wish I could remember more of the specifics of his talk but I was just sitting there saying “ooooh, ahhh” at all the cool demonstrations he showed off during his time on stage.
Photo 3: Bioluminescence
Photo 4: iridescence in butterfly wings
Our day had only begun as a bonus, an optional “lecture” was given. I say “lecture” because even though that’s what the LIYSF staff referred to it as, I don’t think it falls under that category under the title of The Amazon Rainforest and the Role of Indigenous Wisdom I assumed we would get a history of the area, peoples, and cultural practices on preservation and alternative medicine; I WAS excited for. Instead, it seemed to be a call to action for protecting indigenous cultures mixed with an advertisement for donations to a group called the Aldeia Segredo do Artesão. Don’t get me wrong these are important topics to talk about and deserve a stage in which they are shared however, I worry about the age demographic they were presenting to as most of LIYSF was ~16 year-olds. Which is an extremely passionate age, but unable to grasp the scope, and complexity of these issues, and have little to no experience with critical thinking; Hell even at the age of 22 most of us lack enough humility to look at these extremely complex issues in a serious manner like they deserve. Secondly, during this talk, the speaker openly rejected the need for modern sciences such as chemistry which I believe goes against the purpose of LIYSF. Regardless of my concerns and critiques of this event, which I could spend hours discussing, I still found the message powerful and was enthralled by the song performed at the end of the “lecture”. I wish I had a photo or video to show you of the traditional garment worn and the song played. Out of respect for the speaker, I focused intently on the talk and turned my phone off.
After three unique talks on extremely diverse topics, we still had the LIYSF Olympics to attend. Divided into three colours (red, blue, and yellow) based on the places each student was staying in, our teams competed in events such as sitting on balloons to make them pop, 1v1 capture the flag, and science trivia. Though simple in concept the games became intense as team pride was high and the red team (my team) started cheering so loud they had to threaten a penalty to our score. Tobias, one of the team’s hype men, can be seen starting one of our many chants.
Photo 5: Tobias the hype man
After the games concluded and the scoring was concluded by the judges it was revealed that our team crushed the competition and we all grouped up for one final cheer.
As this was a jam-packed day there was little energy for nighttime shenanigans between AUS and me tonight. I simply returned home, laid down, and called it a night.
– Connor