Poster

In case you don’t know, the Part IIB students (that’s fourth year Chem. Eng.) have to do a research project this year, either alone or in pairs. This is really one of the more interesting aspects of the final year syllabus as it exposes us to research in general, and for most of the projects we also get to meddle with novel technologies or new applications in chemical engineering. However, apart from a report at the end of the year which will constitute a quarter of our marks, we also need to prepare a poster presentation about our project to other people in the department. Not surprising, since most PhD students have to do it as well after their first year of research.

How it works is that every group will have to make a 4-minute PowerPoint presentation summarising their project and trying to entice people to go visit their poster. After all the PowerPoint presentations are finished, each group will stand next to their A0 size poster, the examiners will go around asking questions and everybody’ll try their best to answer them and defend the poster.

In order to prepare for this, last week has been very busy for most of us. However, it was quite fun too. We made our poster using PowerPoint, printed them off A3 papers and laminated them. See the laminating machine below? First time I used one of them. We had nine A3’s to laminate; I did seven while Alastair did two. I told him he doesn’t have dainty enough fingers to do the job quickly, heh heh.

After laminating, we put them all together and hang them on a board using Velcro strips. That’s my hand that you see in the picture.

What strikes me as really amazing is this: throughout the year when we did our own respective design projects, I always heard some people having problems with their projects. They’ll be like, “Nooo, the rig’s not working!” or “The apparatus is broken. Now I have to wait ages for a new one,” or “Damn it, the data doesn’t come out quite right!” However, looking and listening to everybody’s presentation, they all sound really... professional, and well-researched. All of them are presenting their projects really well and you can never guess the difficulties that they’ve gone through in the year to get the final results. It’s remarkable, really.

Yaz.