Tuesday @ Kims
Our Tuesday morning started cloudy, hot and way too early.
Departure at 8:00 from Busan and arrival to Kims in Changwon at 9:30. Kims,
which shortens from Korea Institute of Materials Science was the third government
funded research institute we visited. Kims has R&D activities in metallic
materials, powder and ceramics, surface technology, composite and
implementation research and industrial technology.
Our excursion started with a short presentation in a fancy meeting
room with big leather chairs and held by a young gentleman whose English name
was Chris. After this short presentation where we heard a bit about what Kims
is about, they had planned a laboratory tour for us. We then headed into the
basement, where they had their laboratories.
We were guided around the basement and given presentations in
several different “departments” of the laboratory. We saw different equipment
for their experiments and heard interesting presentations about their research.
This time, not like in most of the excursions we have had, we actually heard something
from the presentations as they had a microphone, yay! During the lab tour we
saw for example plasma coating in action, gas atomizer (which can make 25kg
metallic powder in one batch), hot isostatic press and transparent polymer
films for example for food packaging.
After the lab tour we almost had starved to death, but we still had
30 minutes until lunch. That time we spent opening our presents from Kims,
which were swiss army knives and then we had the honour to bang an old bell
outside of the Kims building, which is usually only banged when they have VIP
guests visiting. For lunch we had quite nice bibimbap, salmon and of course
kimchi, and for dessert some tea and weird meatpie cookies.
After lunch, our excursion was over and we headed back to the hotel.
We had a quick shower and powernap break, and then the bus headed to Busan city
center. We went to visit a local fish market and got up to Busan tower to see
the city views.
- Ellu
