Mensa workshop for gifted students – May 2016

In May 2016, a five-day workshop for gifted students aged 12-18 took place in Zbraslavice. It was aimed at improving students’ knowledge in the scientific and technical disciplines, as well as on development of logical thinking, creativity, and motivation for further study of these specialties. The participants listened to expert lectures, visited a car factory, competed in several contests for teams as well as for individuals, visited Kutná Hora, its historical centre, and the silver mines, and met similarly oriented students from all over the Czech Republic.

Tomáš Blumenstein, Hana Kalusová, Eva Staňková, Filip Oplt
5.5.2016, 10:05  —  9.5.2016, 16:00
Zbraslavice (Kutná Hora District)

Date and venue

  • Date: Thursday 5. 5. 2016 – Monday 9. 5. 2016
  • Venue: Zbraslavice, Kutná Hora District
  • Meeting point and date: 5. 5. 2016 at 10:05 at the Main Train Station in Kolin
  • End: 9. 5. 2016 afternoon at the Main Train Station in Kolín

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 the individual age groups.
  • Alternatively, for team building activities and other programmes, groups were combined from participants of different ages to facilitate the forming of new friendships and the mutual exchange of experiences.

Selected lectures

prof. Ing. Jiří Drahoš, DrSc., dr. h. c.

Prof. Ing. Jiří Drahoš, DrSc., dr. h. c.

Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

What is chemical engineering, what are fractals good for, and why can chemical reactors behave chaotically? The point of the lecture was to show students that besides well-known chemical disciplines, there is a fascinating world of chemical engineering. It is a hybrid multidisciplinary specialization, utilizing, besides chemistry, also mathematics, physics, and lately, increasingly, biology. The complexity of behaviour of chemical reactors is illustrated using simple fractal approaches and strange (chaotic) attractors. The lecture contains no chemical formulas, just a couple of simple mathematical formulas here and there, and a lot of illustrative pictures.

doc. Ing. Radovan Soušek, Ph.D.

Ass. Prof. Ing. Radovan Soušek, Ph.D.

Jan Perner’s Faculty of Transportation, Pardubice University, Faculty of Transportation, Czech Technical University in Prague

Transportation and its possibilities
(for the younger age group)
Transportation is an important domain, penetrating all fields of the national economy. A number of various professions are necessary to maintain a lot of different traffic types – road, railroad, air, water, as well as other unconventional types of traffic.
Managing “great transportation blunders” in the Czech Republic
(for the older age group)
Traffic and its proper function is by, most of us, perceived as a given, and most of us do not give a second thought to the fact it is not the case. Can we secure the proper function of traffic in non-standard conditions, and are we ready for that?

RNDr. Alena Drda Morávková, Ph.D., MBA

RNDr. Alena Drda Morávková, Ph.D., MBA

Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague 

What are viruses and what they can do to us
(for the younger age group)
Most of us have never seen viruses with our own eyes, but have firsthand experience with them. How come such miniature organisms are able to do as much harm as e.g. the Ebola virus in Africa or the Zika virus in South America? The lecture presents firstly what viruses are, and how they look. We will find out that the key making them successful parasites of (not exclusively) our cells is their biochemical nature. We will take a look at methods of fighting viruses - and methods they use to escape all our efforts for their destruction. 
Evolution of viruses and their co-existence with humans
(for the older age group)
Viruses are biological entities, on the border of living organisms and chemical compounds. Despite their simplicity, they have a huge global impact, and throughout the course of evolution, they have affected evolution of their hosts, including humans. The close connection between viruses and their host cells is probably one of the strongest driving forces of evolution. In the endless struggle for domination, parasites and hosts fight each other, employ innovations (such as immune systems), but at the same time, none of them can win, because it would lead to the winners’ extinction as well. This fascinating complexity of that co-existence and ability of viruses to change so fast forms the basis of this lecture.

Ing. Martin Sedláček

Ing. Martin Sedláček

Mensa Czech Republic

3D print in practice

Ing. Tomáš Blumenstein

Ing. Tomáš Blumenstein

Mensa Czech Republic

Home cryptography. This lecture gives information on basic cipher principles, and the audience can learn to create ciphers, as well as play a cipher game.

Building a house. A broader view of the building industry demonstrated on the construction of a house – from the plot through to the project, construction method and construction materials, to interior installations.

Mgr. Eva Staňková

Mgr. Eva Staňková

Mensa Czech Republic

Specialized English. The lecture illustrates the differences among particular styles in both English and Czech, and principal challenges presented by the translation of a technical text when compared to the translation of an artistic text.

 

Excursion into TPCA Factory- Toyota Peugeot Citroën Automobile

Programme:

  • video – construction, production, and life in TPCA,
  • tour of the shop floors on electric trains,
  • finally,  question time.

 

Participants’ feedback

From 5th to 9th May, a Mensa workshop for the gifted took place in Zbraslavice, near Kutná Hora. Sixty students aged twelve to eighteen participated in a series of lectures covering topics from biology to building an electron microscope. Students were divided into two groups, according to their ages, and lectures were adjusted according to the age group.

On the first day, we visited Kutná Hora, its historical centre, and the silver mines. This was followed by an evening lecture, where we were told a little about chemical reactors and fractals. On Friday, we listened to more lectures dealing with issues of organic chemistry, traffic, and transportation, as well as specialized English. Soon it was Saturday, and we hadn’t even realized that the workshop was halfway through. On that day, we printed pendants on a 3D printer, found out how to build a house properly, and finally, attempted to decode ciphers based on alphabet shifts and other interesting tricks.

Our everyday leisure time was spent according to individual preferences – we could have been in our rooms, outside on the pitch, or in the social room. Every evening, we played a team game where we collected points. After the last game, which was a devious outdoor cipher game, the Thálet team was declared the winners.

Let’s however go back to the programme. On Sunday, we had a lecture on NMR, electron microscopy, the evolution of viruses, and on cryptography, where we presented our ciphers to our colleagues. Before we knew it, it was Monday, which was connected with packing and the journey home. On our way home, we also visited the TPCA car factory.

Personally, I liked the workshop very much, and I can fully recommend it to anyone considering participation.

Jan Bohadlo (17 years)
Jirasek Grammar School, Náchod


At the beginning of May, I took part in the Mensa workshop for gifted students, which was organized in a marvellous way by Tomáš Blumenstein, Hana Kalusová, and Eva Staňková. The workshop was held in the Holiday and Sports Centre At the Old Pond in Zbraslavice, from 5th to 9th May. Workshop participants could gain new knowledge in many technical fields, as well as meet many great people.

On Thursday 5th May at around 10 a.m., after all of the participants had successfully arrived at the meeting point, i.e., Kolín Main Station, we split into two groups, one of which went to the Kutná Hora silver mines, and the other to the ossuary in Sedlc. Lunch followed, after which we swapped our destinations. After both groups had completed their programmes, we were transported to the above mentioned Holiday and Sports Centre At the Old Pond, where we were accommodated. The first lecture of the workshop followed, the topic of which was chemical engineering. After the lecture, we had dinner, and the last event of the day was a live “pairs game”, designed to get us acquainted with one another.

In the following days, we learned a lot of interesting information from many interesting people. We took a peek into the principles of biochemistry, virus evolution, 3D print basics, and found out about the methods a state can apply to solve crises, and what a crisis actually is. Besides these relatively specific issues, we also acquired practical knowledge, e.g., how to proceed with the construction of a house, and how to effectively translate Czech into English, and vice versa.

The entire workshop was livened up by “Home cryptography”, which consisted of small workshops in front of a table on which Tomáš projected various ciphers, which we more or less successfully attempted to decipher. We were also given advice on how to proceed with creating our own cipher, and were given an opportunity to create our own cipher, and to test it on other participants.

Other great activities included team games such as Millionaire and the cipher game, which were created by Filip Oplt, and which brought us a lot of fun with our teams.

On the last day, we had a very nice excursion to TPCA, where we saw the speedy car production. Many giant “robots” took part in the production, which was very interesting to me. We were also told about the basic principles of the organisation, and the cherry on the cake was a “high five” with a local worker. The excursion was followed by what was by far the worst point in the programme – the end. And so it happened that the Mensa workshop for gifted students ended at around 2PM at the train station in Kolín.

If I am allowed to bring my own feelings into this, I have to say that I really enjoyed the workshop, as is probably obvious from the text. I learned a lot of new, useful, and interesting things from many expert fields but, even more importantly, I met many really exceptional and great people.

Richard Veselý (16 yeras)
Budějovická Grammar School, Prague 4

Related topics

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