Our class for the second week was full of interesting facts and class discussions. There were so many things that we should have learnt as a child itself but sadly we were never told the importance of acquiring knowledge over grades. I am glad that I am finally concentrating on on a type of learning that is practical and will help me in future.
The class commenced with a few basic questions that most of us did not have an answer to because we never gave it enough thought. This is what I gathered after indulging into the discussions:
What is Space?
>It is nothing but reality’s gift to facilitate existence and movement. It could either be positive or negative.
What is a notion?
What is perception?
>What you see is not what is, what was or what will be!
>How you “register” objects.
>Boundaries change with time and perception.
A notion builds into a conviction which then turns into a fact.
Further, we went on to discussions that dug deep into scientific aspects of design.
We discussed elements and components and it’s types:
Elements- composite, materials ; Components- ceramics, polymers,celulose,plastic
I understood that the basic properties of materials or any other objects are:
- Mechanical
- Thermal
- Optical
- Chemical
- Radiological
- Magnetic
- Electrical
We learnt about the questions we must ask ourselves when we get any material:
- how heavy is it?
- how rough is it?
- how hard is it?
- how strong is it?
- what colour is it?
- does it radiate?
- does it stick?
- does it give a shock?
- is it brittle?
- what is the texture?
These questions will definitely come to my mind the next time I buy a material. I think this discussion has helped me take one more step forward towards becoming a smarter buyer.
I found myself completely engrossed in the next half of the class because it included facts that left us spellbound. These are some of the facts:
>We learnt about immortal African-American woman whose cancer cells are sourced the HeLa cell line, first and one of the most important cell lines in medical search.
>Dixie cup is a disposable cup made out of paper that prevents the outbreak of bacteria at railway staions
>Ferromagnetism is a mechanism were certain materials like iron form permanent magnets.
>Neptune’s core is made up of diamond.
>Both are palms come from different galaxies. We are all made up of star dust!
>Leather was called hide.
Overall, this class was not only extremely knowledgeable but it was also very interesting and indulging. I have never been interested in science but if these are the topics that we will be touching upon in design school, then I am definitely going to look forward to space and materiality classes.
As our assignment, we had to manipulate a hand-held object, I tried manipulating an umbrella-
Sirina’s blog 