Internet, a new way to learn english » English Lessons Summary

How to make clear a scientific concept

fadijouni — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:09:35 +0000

When you are a researcher in a scientific field, there are many ways to make people understand what you are working on: the classic way is to teach them the phenomenon in a class, but of course it is only aimed for students. For a larger public, you can make a conference, but the problem is that it is not enough interactive.

The last fashionable and better idea in the scientific world is to present your work on a simple poster. This one must be clear, with not too much text and it must contain many pictures: the principle aim is to attract people with good pictures, letting them read the short texts you wrote. If they are interested and want to learn more about your work, they will ask you some questions. And now your job is to explain more than the texts on the poster by basing you on the pictures.
The advantage of this strategy is at the beginning, to let the interested person understand the main idea by himself (because you don’t talk to him first, not like in class or in a conference). So it will be easier for him to be precise when asking questions, and it will take less time to make you clear (because he already knows the subject and its consequences)!

On last Tuesday, students in master 1 in physics had to make a poster about a scientific device or theory. I found one very attractive and very clear about the different microscopes invented and the way they work. I would like to show it to you because it is for me a good example of what I was just telling you before in this post:

You can see that the colour (brown/red) makes the poster very good-looking. There are lots of pictures that give us easy information and catch us to learn more about microscopes. The texts are now here to make us curious and asking questions to the poster owners: this is exactly what happened to me. For example, about the third slide on Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy, I couldn’t find the link between the IBM picture and the device because this picture shows us that you can move atoms as you like whereas the presented device is used to see atoms. The missing information was a good way to interact with my colleagues and that was the point!

Thank you for this pleasant time with drinks and peanuts!

The last summary!

fadijouni — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:46:18 +0000

Hello,

I’m unhappy to tell you this will be the last English lesson summary of this semester.

So last time, we read an article from the Chemistry World written on February 2008. It was about a new reactor invented by researchers at a laboratory situated in New Mexico: they made a successful process to recycle carbon dioxide into petrol!

The idea is directly taken from the process designed to split water to form hydrogen. In fact it uses solar energy to split carbon dioxide to get carbon monoxide. And when these two processes are combined, you can get methanol or petrol.

The ultimate aim of the researchers is to have a series of solar-powered reactors, but a first prototype will be operational only in 3 or 5 years… And today the main problem is to speed up the reactions, making up a concrete and efficient device to market.

The very interesting way to understand this article is to keep in mind that carbon dioxide is the molecule which is responsible for global warming. So using it to synthesise liquid hydrocarbon will transform the devil polluting circle to an harmonious circle!

Of course we learnt a bit of vocabulary about it: the word “endeavour” that means effort, “worthwhile” that means something is useful to be done, and the verb “to belch” that tells us something is thrown away (obviously, in the article, we talks about the carbon dioxide belched by cars!).

Thank you!

How to make clear a scientific paper…

fadijouni — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:05:24 +0000

We saw during the last english lesson the better way to make an abstract easier to understand. In fact, if you want to be clear in your explonations, you may follow this typical order when you write an abstract:

Start with some background information
Explain the principal activity of the study and its scope
Expose some information about the methodology of the study
Show the most important results
Write a statement of conclusion or recommendation

The main problem is that the examples we saw didn’t follow what we’ve explained before : this is a bit strange, but scientific abstracts are not easy to understand because they are too messy. For example, in paper called “ Ohmic and Schottky nanocontacts on ZnO nanorods ”, the abstract was exposing too much information about the methodoloy, with no introduction telling us some background information.

We did some vocabulary too, when reading a paper about “ Deformation of microcapsules in 3D shear flows ”, in micro flows : a shear flow is a ‘cisaillement’ in french, a droplet is the little water sphere when it rains, and the term unbounded means you are far away from the canal limits.

The most interesting thing we did (in my point) during the last lesson was to understand some english expressions. They are so strange and so funny ! Here are some examples i liked :

“ I’ve just had forty winks ” means you don’t want to sleep (where is the link ?)
“ I’ve let the cat out of the bag ” means you’ve revealed a secret !
“ I’ve got butterflies in my stomach ” means you’re nervous… Poor butterflies !
“ I’ve lost my tongue ” means you’re speechless… Why a tongue ?

Think about it :)

Thank you !

What about new technology?

fadijouni — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:03:52 +0000

During this lesson, we read an article taken from the website newscientist.com. It was about a device designed to generate power while people walk. The idea consists in a backpack you carry and it generates a power of 7 watts, taken from the ordinary motion of our bodies. It contains fibres that produce a voltage as they are brushed together trough the natural walking movement. The person can hold a kind of leg brace too : when the legs move, the gears in the brace turn, generating a power of 5 watts.The idea is pretty good and original, but the main problem is the weight : the backpack is a very heavy ,around 38 kilograms ! But scientists are trying to optimize the system to make it easier to hold, with a better power results.

The article permits us to learn some vocabulary about mecanical physic : a brace is an orthopedical device, a gear is an ‘engrenage’ in french, a loping means you’re running taking long relax steps, and a treadmill is the device where you can run in a fitness room.

At the end of the course, we made a little oral presentation on an article about thin coatings in the industry. We had to explain the idea of the process by writing on a slide, which showed the main steps of it. The principal difficulty was to make it clear for other people, by explaining small drawings we made, showing the process advantages and problems.

Thank you.

My first post ever

fadijouni — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 12:04:42 +0000

Hello everyone!

I’m happy to say i’m in! Here is my first blog (i know this is a bit late for my age… my little sister have one since 2 years), and i’m going to tell you what i’ve done during the last english course: we saw last week a movie about the RSS utility and a bit of vocabulary about it. The movie showed us that the RSS technology has many advantages, like the fact you can control every information you want (better than email because there’s no possible spam), and you don’t have to wait for news publication on magazines, you can get the information directly and automatically. About vocabulary, we learned two interesting expressions: “cutting-edge” and “bear with me”. The first one means what you’re talking about is up-to-date. The second expression means you have to be patient and wait for something.

Hope you liked my first post!

Thanks