NSF IRES China 2017
Week 4
July 16th 2017
Today was a rest day.
July 17th 2017
Today started off as a lab day and it turned into a surprise party for one of our members as it was their birthday. So the day began with having Weijun distracting Quentin and having him drag Quentin around the Tsinghua campus while Linyuan and Yaritza went to get a cake, while the others got party balloons. After the surprise, we then proceeded to a Cantonese Restaurant to celebrate for lunch and had a great meal. Afterwards, we went to a billiards place nearby and spent a few hours there playing pool to close out the peaceful day.
July 18th 2017
Today we had a lab day where we once again continued to work on our code. As most of us had finished the structure portion of the code for the SDE we then proceeded to create a code to use the created structure and run a simulation and then return us a graph of the outputs the gate or drain voltage being on the x-axis and the y-axis containing the total current. Today consisted of lots of trial and error and as of today most of us are about a quarter of the way done.
July 19th 2017
Another day of working in the lab on our code. All of us continued to work on our code for the tool known as the S Device in the Sentaurus Workbench, which as the previous post stated ran a simulation to allow us to create graphs that correspond to already known data. By the end of the day most of us were tired as coding is not a task that we are used too and the trial and error of constructing the code became draining and frustrating as we constantly received errors, though in the end most of us were told that we were about 50%-60% done with the code for the S Device.
July 20th 2017
Today was an experience that all of us would not soon forget, as we got to visit the Great Wall of China. Just to get to the wall from Beijing required us to take the subway for quite some ways and then transfer to a bus that took about an hour and twenty minutes to get to the wall. The section of the wall that we got to see is considered one of the more well-known and popular portions and it resides in Badaling. We ended up exploring the northern portion of the wall and went through about ten towers. The scenery surrounding the wall was just breathtaking and as for the ambience and experience there is nothing like it in the world, as the Great Wall of China is unique. It is a place that we all recommend visiting if you ever get a chance too.
July 21st 2017
The lab was calling to us after our excursion to the Great Wall, so we hunkered down and got to work. We continued to build and expand on our portion of the code that belongs to the S Device and after trials and tribulations we got about 75-80% of our code done. So all in all the day was quite productive.
July 22nd 2017
Today we got to visit an amusement park called Happy Valley. The atmosphere is quite similar to amusement parks in the US so we were all excited when we arrived at the park. Our first ride that we went on was called X extra Power which was a ride that spun us around on a y-axis both forward and backwards at a decent velocity. Our next, stop was a roller coaster called Crystal Wing, its cart design is quite similar to Tatsu which is at Six Flags Magic Mountain, and all of us really enjoyed this ride. We then got to experience a ride called Happy World which is similar to It’s a Small World, which is a ride at Disneyland in California. Most of us by the end though felt that we were a little too old to be on the ride. Next, we got on a short ride called the Trojan Horse where you are strapped in and spun around just like on X extra Power, however there is a twist which is that the seating area also spins on the same axis forward and backwards so it ends up as a combination which makes the ride enjoyable. After, this most of us were hungry so we stopped and went to try KFC and had a decent meal. I think most of us enjoyed KFC more went compared to our time at McDonalds. Afterwards, we went on the roller coaster called Golden Wings in Snowfield and the ones who went on it all agreed that it was our favorite attraction of the park. For our final activity we went on to a haunted house attraction and although the ambience was there, when compared to haunted house attraction in the US the one here was a bit lacking on the delivery, but it was still a fun way to end our trip at Happy Valley.