Day 19 - July 4th

By Lars Zondervan,

At the time we woke up there was a pleasant surprise when we discovered we've gotten an email from the father of the kid who caught the ball at the baseball game last Friday. Some of you will remember that after the kid caught the ball a picture has been taken with the kid holding the ball in one hand and a scintilla sticker in the other. His dad has found the scintilla website and through the intermediate forwarding from the scintilla board his email to board@scintilla.utwente.nl has reached us. Delighted to hear from the good man again we send him an email with the picture.

Getting back to the report of the day we find ourselves having a couple coups of coffee to get the sleeps out of our eyelids and getting ready to visit the first company of today: IMAX. After somewhat of a traffic jam we arrive fashionably late at IMAX and are welcomed by coffee (for those who haven't met their caffeine quota at the hotel). A short presentation was given about why IMAX is better than any other cinema experience out there today. They sell experience, as they put it nicely, and the two most important IMAX theaters are both in the Netherlands, or so they say. All kinds of interesting stuff like 3D movies, digital IMAX and the conversion from regular Holywood production to IMAX quality film is explained. More about these techniques can be found in the report from the visit to the IMAX company.

After all the presentations and a nice 3D IMAX movie we had lunch in their cafeteria with Pizza and coke. This was also the moment everybody was able to ask their questions and talk with the guides and technicians from IMAX about their products. The next company we visited is just a couple of buildings away. The afternoon we would spend at Xerox Research Center Canada (XRCC).

The Xerox research Center Canada is a research facility where the chemical research for new types of ink and toners takes place. When we got there we had to undergo some security measurements and after these we got a quick peek at what looked like a Xerox wall of fame. Also some history about the writing on paper and the skill to reproduce written work was discussed. Also the some history of ink manufacturing was displayed. Some of the first copy machines were displayed along with some book publishing machines.
We learned that the building we were being showed was actually quite new and consisted mainly of long corridors and research labs who were separated from the outside world from large glass walls.

First we got an overview of XRCC and after that some more information about the chemical engineering that was being performed at XRCC. After that we got a tour to the pilot plant were new processes to manufacture new kinds of inks and toners where being researched and optimized before going into large production. All these activities were extremely educational but these won’t be discussed here. For more information about the activities at XRCC, read the report from the visit to the XRCC.

After the visit to XRCC we had dinner. And after dinner the only thing I remember singing and a lot of laughter. But strangely these memories are somewhat clouded...