Chapter 4 Notes

1. Basic Presentation Skills

Ø  Preplanning

¨      Who is my audience? Know the age group, prior knowledge, and demographics about the topic, and what positions or opinions may hold.

¨      What is my purpose? What do I hope to accomplish? What response do I expect? What will the audience learn from my speech?

¨      Where is all the equipment I need? Where will the talk be held?

¨      When am I on the program agenda? Will I be the first presenter? Or the last one before lunch? If I’m first, the audience will be more alert. If I’m last, the audience will be more restless. What can I do to keep the attention of my audience?

¨      Why am I doing this talk? Why are they here?

¨      How long should I talk? Only few people can focus for more than 20 minutes. Shorten your talk so that people will ask for more information.

Ø  Preparing the Verbal Elements

¨      Which of the following statements makes more sense?

Ø  A: wile perambulating in the antithesis of the metropolis to evade the intemperate brouhaha thereof, my visual cortex perceived an ophidian.

Ø  B:  I saw a snake while taking a relaxing walk in the woods.

¨      Although A seems more intriguing, it obscures the underlying meaning.

¨      Remember the 4S formula:

Ø  Shortness: Use short sentences, avoid too many details, and do not talk too long.

Ø  Simplicity: Avoid wordy, lengthy phrases.

Ø  Strength: Use active voice and action verbs, not passive voice and “to be” verbs.

Ø  Sincerity: Convey empathy, understanding, and respect for the audience.

Ø  Three Structural Parts

¨      Introduction: Purpose: to capture the interest of the audience. Hook your audience.

¨      Body: Purpose: to keep your audience interested. They will continue to pay attention if you keep the material interesting and relevant to them.

¨      Conclusion: Purpose: to pull it together.

Ø  Summarize the major points

Ø  Show appreciation for the audience’s attention.

Ø  Allow for few question’s

Ø  Be sensitive to your audience.

Ø  Visual Aid Helpful Hints

¨      Keep slides simple

¨      Make slides in landscape format.

¨      Present data in simple graphs rather than in lists or tables.

¨      Lots of media

¨      Use bullet points

¨      Large text is the best

¨      Use high contrast colors, no light colors or fancy fonts

¨      Use a light background and dark print.

¨      Keep backgrounds simple.

2. Presentation Dos and Don’ts

Ø  Dos and don’ts

¨      DO:

Ø  Relax

Ø  Speak slowly and clearly

Ø  Drop your hands

Ø  Rehearse

Ø  Arrive early

¨      DON’T:

Ø  Turn your back to the audience

Ø  Read verbatim from the screen

Ø  Cover your mouth

Ø  Chew gum

Ø  Play with your notes

Ø  Fidget

Ø  Tell inappropriate jokes

Ø  Say ‘um’ or ‘uh’

3. Basic Technical Writing Skills

Ø  General Guidelines

¨      Be clear.

¨      Use 10 point font size and 1.5 line spacing.

¨      Generally, prefer past tense verbs.

¨      Define any terms.

¨      Present facts or inferences.

¨      Number and caption all tables, figures and appendices.

¨      Proofread and edit several times

¨      Read it twice.

¨      Spell out a number that starts with a sentence.

¨      Keep the leading zero with a decimal.

¨      For long numbers don’t spell them out.

¨      Use the dollar symbol

¨      Watch for significant figures.

4. Proper Use of References

Ø  ABCs of evaluating information offer a useful start.

¨      Authority: is it clear who is responsible for the site?

¨      Bias: what is the purpose of the article? Is it free of obvious bias?

¨      Currency: When was the information created or last updated?

¨      Use sources that have been reviewed by experts.

¨      Secure a peer review

¨      Compare the information found with content from other websites or from reviewed sources.

¨      Corroborate the information.

5. E-mails to your college Instructors

Ø  Email etiquette

¨      Be sure to correctly address the recipient.

¨      Use an appropriate subject line.

¨      Sign your full name and include contact information if appropriate.

¨      Change your sending name to your full name

¨      Keep it brief don’t use one continuous paragraph.

¨      If you expect a response, be sure items are clearly defined.

¨      Use correct capitalization and punctuation. Spelling does count.

¨      Check your work before sending it.

¨      When waiting for a reply, give a grace period of 48-72 hours.

Ø  Example:

¨      I don’t know what is going on with the computer but I have been trying to upload the assignment for an hour now and it will not work. I have to drive to (State) tonight so I wont be able to fix this problem later. I can not files on Monday so you can see when they were last saved and show you them then. I really need this one point. Please consider this.

Ø  Better Solution:

¨      I have been trying to upload the assignment since 6 pm, and will continue to try; however, I wanted to email you this assignment since the deadline of 10 pm is approaching. The system will let me browse and select a document but not do anything when I hit submit. I have tried to use a wired connection instead of a wireless, with no luck. Do you have any suggestions for fixing this problem? Thank you in advance for your assistance.

CHAPTER 2: ETHICS

INTRODUCTION

Ø  “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”

Ø  Every day we make ethical decisions.

Ø  The more you practice analyzing day-to-day decisions from an ethical standpoint, the easier it will be for you to make good decisions when the results of a poor choice may be catastrophic.

Ø  There are two reasons people try to make ethical decisions

1.    They wish to make the world a better place for everyone.

2.    They wish to avoid unpleasant consequences, such as fines, incarceration, or loss of job.

Ø  Each major religion all have fairly brief codes summarizing how one should conduct their life.

1.    Judaism, Christianity, and derivatives thereof have the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments.

2.    Islam has the Five Pillars in addition to a slightly modified and reorganized form of the Decalogue.

3.    Buddhism has the Noble Eightfold Path.

4.    Baha’i has 12 social principles.

5.    In Hinduism, Grihastha dharma has four goals.

2.1  ETHICAL DECISION MAKING

Ø  Step 1: Determine what the issues are and who might be affected by the various alternative courses of action that might be implemented.

o   For example: Whether to allow cutting down acres of trees to build a new shopping mall.

¨      The issues

Ø  CO2 footprint

Ø  Quality of life

¨      The stakeholders

Ø  habitats that were formed in the forest

Ø  traffic

Ø  Step 2: Consider the effect of alternative courses of action from different perspectives. (Consequences, intent, and character).

o   For example: Should middle schools have a Sexual Education class? (consequences)

¨      Stakeholders:

Ø  Teachers

Ø  Students

Ø  Parents of the students

¨      Consequences:

Ø  Teach about abstinence

Ø  Could lower teen pregnancy statistics

Ø  Give useful life information and tips to the students.

o   For example: Should social media have an age limit? (intent)

a)    Should everyone be a certain age in order to have a social media account?

b)    Should there be a law so that anyone under the specified age and has a social media account be approached?

c)    If you were a parent to a 12 year old girl, would you feel comfortable giving her the freedom of social media?

o   For example: Walking down the street you see a homeless person without proper winter attire. Everyone else on the street is just passing by him. Do you: (character)

a)    Stop and give him a coat or blanket

b)    Ignore him, pretend you don’t see him and keep walking

Ø  Step 3: Correlate perspectives.

o   It is in good nature of ethical decision making that different people will often arrive at different results in good conscious.

Ø  Step 4: Act.

o   If you believe that working on a project poses no threat to your soul, then little courage is required to follow through, since your career may blossom.

o   If you believe that the project you are working on is unethical, you will need to change the minds of the management or refuse to work on it, both of which can risk your job.

2.2 PLAGIARISM

Ø  Claiming someone else’s work as your own.

Ø  Plagiarism is labeled as academic dishonesty.

Ø  We should not live in fear of being accused of plagiarism because our brain drug up something we read, saw, or heard of in the past.

2.3 ENGINEERING CREED

Ø  As a Professional Engineer, I dedicate my professional knowledge and skill to the advancement and betterment of human welfare, I pledge:

o   To give the utmost of performance.

o   To participate in none but honest enterprise.

o   To live and work according to the laws of man and the highest standards of professional conduct.

o   To place service before profit, the honor and standing of the profession before personal advantage, and the public welfare above all other considerations.

Ø  In humility and with need for Divine Guidance, I make this pledge.

2.4 SOCIAL RESPONSIBILTY

Ø  Is the ideology that an individual has an obligation to act to benefit society at large.

Ø  As a profession, we recognize the importance of this trust in the Engineering Canons and the engineering creed that define our standards for ethics, integrity, and regard for public welfare.

Ø  In your opinion how do an Engineer’s ethics affect public safety?

o   An engineer with no morals, or one who can’t make ethical decisions could harm not only the environment, but the people and animals as well. For example, an engineer wants his company to dump waste into a wastewater system. When it starts filling up, one of his workers says that it cannot overflow. The lead engineer tells him that when that problem happens, they’ll take care of it and not to worry now. He did not make an ethical decision in this case. When the time comes and the system starts to overflow, many lives and habitats are now at risk for radiation, poison and even worse. Engineers with no ethical standards affect public safety in every circumstance.

Chapter 8 Notes Pt. 2

8.8 ENERGY

·        The Six Types of Energy and the Units used

Ø  Work: (W) energy expended by exertion of a force.

Ø  Potential Engery: (PE) a form of work done by moving a weight.

Ø  Kinetic Energy: (KE) a form of energy possessed by an object in motion.

Ø  Thermal Energy: (Q) or heat, is energy associated with a change in temperature.

8.9 POWER

·        Power

Ø  Power is defined as energy per time.

Ø  Power = energy / time

Ø  W = J / s

Ø  SI unit of power is watt

Ø  Power is the rate at which energy is delivered over time.

8.11 ELECTRICAL CONCEPTS

·        Electric Concepts (electric charge, electric current, voltage, electric resistance, electric power)

Ø  Electric Charge: Physical property of matter that causes it to experience a force when placed in an electromagnetic field. There are two types of electric charges: positive and negative.

Ø  Electric Current: measured in aperes. A flow of electric charge.

Ø  Voltage: is quantified using units of volts, and is an electromotive force of potential difference expressed in volts. (amasci.com/miscon/voltage.html) Voltage is what pushes the charges around to create current.

Ø  Electric Resistance: Repulsion of a current within a circuit. Resistance is quantified using ohms. One ohm is defined as one volt per ampere.

Ø  Electric Power: The rate at which electric energy is transferred by an electric circuit. The SI unit of power is watt. (One joule per second)

·        Discuss resistors

Ø  A device having a designed resistance to the passage of an electric current.

Ø  They act to reduce current flow and act to lower voltage levels within circuits.

·        Discuss capacitors

Ø  A device used to store an electric charge, consisting of one or more pairs of conductors separated by an insulator.

Ø  Like a battery.

Ø  Store electrical energy.

·        Discuss Inductors

Ø  A passive two-terminal electrical component which resists changes in electric current passing through it.

Ø  Stores energy in the form of a magnetic field.