Cub reporters, light bulbs, tomatoes and new media
In the spirit of a better life and focusing on the worldwide issues, groups of young reporters, organized by Shanghai Daily, have a rewarding summer holiday in Shanghai.
The young reporters were divided into two different tours. One went to General Motors China Campus and Cadillac plant in July. The second learned basic knowledge of journalism at Shanghai Daily in August, and also had a high-tech journey to the Signify. The joy of doing the experiment with their friends, the excitement of finding the answers by themselves, the amazement of seeing scenes in the car factory and the practical knowledge learned from journalism are all unforgettable experiences for these young reporters.
Car factories tour
Starting with a video on how future cars may work, the professional car engineer raised a question — what kind of car do youngsters’ parents own now, is it a hybrid or something else — for the young reporters to answer. A lot of young reporters quickly raised their hands to answer, and told the advantages and disadvantages of their parents’ cars.
“They have a wide range of knowledge,” one professional engineer later recalled. The lecture, which was divided into three parts, went on, letting the youngsters learn the history of batteries, different kinds of batteries and how the batteries in a car work together.
“What I find most fascinating is the electric machinery,” Wei Zhicheng, one of the young reporters, answered with a smile. “I think the experts gave good lectures. They tear down the terminologies of real mechanisms and convert them into simple and vivid words that we can clearly understand.”
Very soon, the reporters were asked to do an experiment together. They were required to make the LED shine only using wires, six cherry tomatoes and positive and negative posts. Plugging both positive post and a negative terminal into the tomatoes and created a circuit, the LED indeed gave out light. “It’s such an interesting experiment, it is just so amazing!” Chen Jiabao, one of the young reporters, said with sparkling eyes.
The second part is about the causes and prevention of car accidents and some assumptions on how future cars can help with that. Perhaps the highlight of the whole lecture is the third part, which was about autonomous driving, where the atmosphere started to get heated up.
The experts showed a picture containing five different levels of autonomous driving. In fact, only level five is called autonomous driving because it does not require people to watch or manipulate, while the other levels are partially autonomous. Young reporters were asked to see a short video about a person driving in Cadillac and answer the question of which level it belonged. Our reporters could hardly wait for the expert to finish counting down the numbers to raise their hands, however, only a few of them got the right answer.