Department of Chemistry

ORAL PRESENTATIONS FOR SPECIAL PROJECT

 

1. Start off with an overview and the motivation for the project.

2. Do not be too detailed in your presentation about the experimental procedure. The details should be in your written report. For example, you can indicate that you prepared your standards over a certain concentration range from a given chemical.  However, do not indicate the masses weighed, the volumetric flasks or pipets used, or the dilutions performed.  Likewise, for a sample preparation step such as digestion, present the general scheme but not every detail. If you use a more complex separation scheme such as ion exchange pre-concentration, solvent extraction, or solid phase extraction (SPE), outline the steps (e.g., solvents used). Often a transparency with a list of the steps is helpful.

3. Do not assume your audience knows the structure of all compounds.  Prepare transparencies showing the structures of any organic analytes or reagents and of chemical reactions that are critical to the procedure.

4. Practice your talk (as group where appropriate) using your transparencies and make sure it is less than 15 minutes.

5. Summarize your results in a table so that comparisons can be made easily.

6. When discussing possible improvements or future work, be succinct.  Focus on two or three points.  You can make additional suggestions in your written report due next week.

7. For a talk of 10 to 15 minutes, you need to use at least three or four transparencies or the blackboard or props. A data projector and laptop will be available for those that want to use PowerPoint, etc.  Unless you are a great speaker, a talk can be very boring without some other focus than the speaker. It is also very difficult for the audience to relate to numerical values that are not written down in some form.

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last updated:   01/31/2007  cp