Qioptiq

For the whole of this year as I was studying for Physics, flipping through the notes relentlessly in hopes of scoring the high grades. It wasn't that easy to draw a connection between Physics and fun, at least not in the conventional classroom setting.
Well, the Qioptiq course, despite having Physics-inclination, is not conventional.
This year we learnt in more detail about lens and optics. I may have the rudimentary knowledge in this topic (in terms of theory anyway), but I am in no way competent in this topic. Hence, it has certainly came as a shock that immediately after the introduction, we have to create a dental imaging prototype with real lenses (which costs a lot, and this might be an understatement). So, we fumbled with the delicate glassware and tried to piece something together.
In the end, our "invention" was simply to use the strong light from our phones as an illuminating source to light up the mouths and then use a lens which is connected to our phone camera to take a picture of the image in the mouth. Well, theory always sounds better than how it works in practice. Our invention failed. However, to be fair, the other groups had astounding inventions, and how they thought of those ideas remains a mystery to me till now.
Integrating theory (whatever we have learnt in class, such as the thin-lens equation, ray diagrams, etc) into practical proves to be quite a challenge. It points out to us the deficiency in our learning curve, how we lack the experience to do something innovative with the knowledge and skill sets we acquired in class. This is what industries do, apply knowledge to the real-world. Thus I find it appropriate that such a creative and enriching class is placed as the first program, giving us an insight as to the creative process needed for industries to succeed.
Addendum: This is one of the few Physics lessons that I am actually enthusiastic about.