The Capstone Design Contest

Have you ever heard of the National Capstone Design Contest? You may not know and even heard it except for some students that attend or graduate college of technology. It is an educational program for the engineering students. In order to improve their abilities to resolve a conflict and problem in industrial site, they are required to design and make an laborate work instead of writing a graduation thesis. To find out more about it, we interviewed the leader of a team that participated in the contest.

Question Please could you introduce yourself?

Answer Hello, my name is Gang Chung Hyeon. I am a senior at Kunsan National University, majoring in New Materials Engineering now. Five people including me participated in the National Capstone Design Contest and submitted a work about pounce box whose material is industrial sapphire.

Question What is the Capstone Design Contest?

Answer First of all, the Capstone Design Contest is a technology expo held in our university. It is an invention competition in plain language. To get engineering authentication, students have to take a class relevant to the foregoing event. We understood the whole process in our sophomore year and then organized a team in our junior year. By doing so, the seniors are required to make more improved work, so generally students have attended engineering college to prepare for the contest. If you get a brilliant showing about your work, you can take part in the National competition that is challenged by numbers of the brilliant engineering students from each national school.       

Question Why did you decide to make the sapphire pounce box?

Answer Do you know about the use of sapphire? Many people commonly say that the sapphire is a blue bright gem and it is used for a ring, a pair of earing or a necklace. However, that is not always true. The gem is classed as two types, commercial and industrial. Commercial and industrial ones are distinguished by their appearance, impurity, homogeneity and so on. Commercial one is expensive and hard to come by. However, industrial one is relatively cheap. So we have decided to make something with the industrial gem. The industrial gem used to make the display screen on our cellphone and watch mostly but we thought that it is possible to make more innovative product. We regarded a good decision to choose the bottle. We wanted to add something precious in this valuable bottle. We had hardly any discussion and voted without exception about what sort of liquid is special. In its final analysis, we chose the pounce box because we think that the perfume is most invaluable liquid.

Question Did you have any hard time story or episode from the working process?

Answer Actually, we planned to make a blue pounce box. However, something unexpected has come up while making the product. No one knew that university structure construction proceeded, so finally we couldn’t color a complete product. Furthermore, our equipment that makes the product broke down once. We lost our confidence in creating it again because it is almost finished. Nevertheless, we put forth our energies one more time and completed it.

Question What’s the difference between the sapphire pounce box and the other pounce box?

Answer First, low price perfumes are between 50,000 and 100,000 won and more expensive perfumes are hundreds of thousands of won, and extremely expensive perfumes exceed tens of millions won. However, most perfumes are filled in the equal glass bottles regardless of their price. By differentiating from other perfumes and making people aware of its specificity, it will lead sales volume increase. The sapphire pounce box gives customers a sense of superiority about purchasing and owning the better and expensive products contrary to glass pounce box.

Question Lastly, please say what you want to advise to fellow students who plan to participate in the next Capstone Design Contest.

Answer I think that the most important thing is to organize a team where the team members can communicate well. If they don’t tell each other their opinion or dissatisfaction, they may experience discord. So you need to decide who does what in the team and help each other well, you can successfully make a steady progress.