Sabbaticals

Term 1: Aviation Science

In term 1, I attended a sabbatical regarding aviation science and plane fighting. This sabbatical was something totally new to me as I  have never really paid attention to how planes fly and what is required for a successful take off. For the first 3 days, we learnt to take off and land a plane. We were given a flight simulator to try this out and I successfully managed to take off almost 70% of the time. It became easy after a few tries and we could then fly the plane anywhere in the virtual world. Here is a picture of the flight simulator:

Through this flight simulator, I found out that angling the nose of the plane downwards increases the speed of the plane while angling the nose of the plane skywards decreases the speed of the plane until the engines of the plane stall. When in a stall, the plane is unable to move and drops down towards the ground. If nothing is done to recover from the stall, the plane will crash. I also learnt how to plot a flight course for an aeroplane and found out that many of the annual aerial accidents happen because of a mistake in flight path planning and engine failure.

On the third day, we had a lesson on meteorites. We learnt about the different types of meteorites, the most common being the stony meteorite and the iron meteorite. 

Stony meteorite

Iron meteorite

Meteorites are lumps of rock which either used to be part of a planet or was discharged by a dying planet. These lumps of rock shoot across space at breakneck speeds and some of them end up on earth due to its gravitational pull. Many of the meteorites burn and melt away during their flight.

On the fourth and fifth day, we went into an advanced module on fighter planes. We were taught on the        types of missiles there are, the maneuvers we could perform to escape or destroy an enemy plane and how to use the radar tracking system in a plane. 

There are 3 main types of missiles:

~heat tracking missile

~radar tracking missile

~semi radar tracking missile

Here is a picture for reference:

Some Maneuvers we learnt are too difficult to describe but most of them include complicated twists and turns and it would be easier to view them through the diagrams below:

My reflections: This sabbatical was really engaging and fun as we got a lot of time to play around with the simulator and even had a mock battle within the sabbatical on the fifth day using planes from World War 1. The simulator was a realistic impression of the real aeroplane flight. I took a few tries to get used to the simulator but I knew from experience that failing at the first try is not unnatural. :)

Term 2: Environmental Science Studies

Day 1: Lecture on the effects of climate change

Watched video: The Day After Tomorrow

Lecture on Ecology

Day 2: Watched Movie: 1) Coral Reefs 

                                       2) Amazing Caves

At Omni Theatre

Day 3: Introduction to waste management and recycling

Visit to Marina Barrage with Guided tour

Day 4: Solar Power Course

Day 5: Visit to Incineration Plant

My reflections: This sabbatical was mostly boring lectures but they were informative at the same time. The field trips were enjoyable and helped increase my knowledge of what Singapore is doing for the environment.