Summer Challenge 2015

As an ice-breaker, the students experienced a popular Tokyo Tech class — Column land — evaluating short anonymous pieces of writing prepared in advance by all participants. This year's topic was simply "flower," and there were works of great individuality: one about a sunflower, another about a butterfly. A piece about wheat flour took everyone by surprise and won first prize. Yamamuro's approach made the students more familiar and comfortable with each other and teams got off to a flying start.

Team disassembling a metronome

This year's first evening event was the annual "Disassemble three things around you" challenge. The first item to take apart was a metronome, an item all music enthusiasts are familiar with.

"Piece by piece, disassemble the metronome and understand the mechanics that helps provide us with rhythm," Ueda gave directions to students. Uncertainty regarding the mechanical components such as the coiled metal plate in the metronome showed that students' interests are perhaps changing with the times.

The second disassembled item was a tally counter, often used in activities such as bird-watching. This helped students understand the mechanism behind carrying numbers.

The last item was a small electric motor manufactured by Mabuchi Motor Company. The observing high school teachers seemed more fascinated by this disassembly than the students.

After overcoming various challenges in teams, the students gave 5-minute presentations of their findings the next morning. This final challenge, one of time management, nicely wrapped up the session.

Code tree structure

Organizing chaotic reality and communicating it to others is an important function of languages. A language can be simplified into two codes — 0 and 1 — without commas or full stops. With some ingenuity, a system to find delimiters in a very long sequence of 0s and 1s can be created.

In Challenge 5, Uyematsu vividly described the wisdom and difficulties of predecessors in attempting to develop the ultimate artificial language for computer communication in the form of faster, more accurate, and more compact code.

Plenty of laughter during the lecture

"What's this?" students were puzzled when they were suddenly handed a black, flat, coin-shaped material. "Teams, try giving me an answer about what you think this is. I expect wild ideas such as mobile black holes and the like. But please refrain from eating it," Yamanaka's relentless jokes drew constant laughter from the students.

The lecture moved on to cell mechanisms and fuel cells which produce a chemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen through platinum catalysis. "Media reports often say that fuel cells are environmentally friendly, however technically speaking that is not correct. Nevertheless, fuel cells exhibit high energy efficiency and require plenty of further research," Yamanaka continued.

After an intense lecture, students finally got the answer to the initial mystery. "The unknown material is the conjugant of Nafion and platinum/carbon — basically, the brain of fuel cells."

Cancer cells producing red fluorescence

After inquiring whether the famous Japanese cartoon character Doraemon is a "creature", Ogura moved on to more challenging questions, "What is the definition of a creature? Once a cell dies, what state is it in?"

The lecture eventually brought students to cancer cells, the main enemy of mankind. When aminolevulinic acid is administered to patients, a material called protoporphyrin IX accumulates in cancer cells and glows red when irradiated. Thanks to this material, cancer cells can be completely removed during an operation.

"Our dream is to develop an over-the-counter cancer test kit." The professor's enthusiasm as a scientist left a long-lasting impression on many of the students.