The poster should be:
- Visually attractive with pictures, diagrams and graphs
- Concise and informative
- Split up into sections similar to the sections that would be used in a scientific report
- Labelled with the author’s name, email address and place of study
One more way that scientists communicate is by doing an oral presentation. A PowerPoint presentation may also be used to accompany the speaker (in this case a scientist) and handouts of the presentation can be distributed. This type of communication can be done in different scenarios. One scenario is a university lecture. This requires the speaker to stand at the front of the lecture theatre and present information that the students will need so that they will be able to understand the topic that they are studying. Another scenario is a public engagement talk. This is where the speaker communicates their ideas with the general public. This may be their research or a certain topic. One more scenario is a conference seminar. This allows the speaker to present and discuss their work with colleagues from all over the world.
Task 2 – How to write up a science experiment
The way in which students in schools and colleges write up a science experiment and students and scientists in universities and various institutions write up science experiments can be similar. However, there are also major differences that can be seen when both sides are compared. The two reports that were compared were my report on a titration that I conducted - Preparing a standard solution of Sodium Carbonate and dissolving the standard solution in Hydrochloric acid using volumetric titration and another report on another titration - an Acid-Base Titration of Streptococci and the Physical States of Intracellular Ions, which was conducted in the American Society of Microbiology.
Similarities
The first aspect of the report that was seen on both was the title of the report. This was placed at the top of the page and it briefly explained what experiment was done. In both reports, there was also an abstract with an introduction. The abstract had a description of the aim, method and results of the paper, while the introduction had the background information of the topic and experiment. The materials and methods used in the experiments were also outlined in report however; the title I used was apparatus instead of materials. The materials showed a list of chemicals and equipment that were needed for the experiment and the method showed what was done in order to carry out the experiment. It was written so that someone else could repeat the experiment.
Another section that was in both reports was the results and discussion. The results were presented in a table and also explained further, which meant that they were related back to the original topic. The discussion contained the conclusion and evaluation. It explained why the results were obtained. A bibliography was present in both reports. This is a list of all sources that were used to get information that was needed for the experiment and report.
Differences
One difference is the report that I am comparing with mine was written by three people - ROBERT E. MARQUIS, NANCY PORTERFIELD, AND PHILIP MATSUMURA, whereas I was the only author of my report. Another difference is that my report was not written in paragraphs not columns. This is because I was not expected to write in column however, most scientist papers that are published in columns as it is the standard presentation.
At the bottom of the other report, there is a section called acknowledgements. This is where the authors display their gratitude to colleagues or other people who helped them during the experiment. My report did not contain this section. Another feature that I did not use was graphs. Graphs were used frequently to show any data that was collected visually. It makes the data easy to follow and understand.
In my report I used a different way of referencing the sources of information that I used. The other report used the Havard System. This system contains:
- The name of the author of the source
- The year of publication
- The title of the book
- The chapter used
- The page number
I listed the website or the title of the book and the IBSN number. In my report, subtitles were used for each section of the report but in the report that I used for comparison, some subtitles were left out such as the Abstract. The calculations were also manipulated into the results as they where explained but my calculations were kept under one section. The last difference I found was that no risk assessment was added to their report. Upon investigation, this is because when scientists are conducting experiments in scientific institutions, they are expected to know the safety procedures so even if a risk assessment is done, it does not need to be included in a scientific paper.
There are two sections that were not present in any of the reports compared and are usually seen in scientific reports. One of them is beneath the abstract; there may be keywords that identify what the report is about. This allows the scientist to read the abstract and keywords and see if the report is relevant or interesting for them to read on. The other is about the DOI. This stands for digital object identifier. It is an unique identifier for a report. No report or paper will have the same DOI.
Bibliography
- mhtml:https://moodle.johnruskin.ac.uk/2011/pluginfile.php/13973/mod_resource/content/1/Journal_article.pdf.mht
- http://education.exeter.ac.uk/dll/studyskills/harvard_referencing.htm