Engineers

[glove81]

Having recently started on a change of career and embarking on an engineering course part of my assessments will include a 10 minute presentation of my choosing on anything to do with engineering.

People in the past have done microphones and such like.

Any of you engineers out there have any ideas of how to do the presentation on something to do with home brewing?

 

[Baldbrewer]

Hi,
Well "Engineering" is a huge spectrum and as such covers a wide variety of subjects under that general heading. Are you a home brewer?
There are so many subjects to choose from :hmm:

You could try explaining how some of the different things below are made by home brewers :

1, STC1000 controlled fermenting fridge this covers electrical engineering and also some low level form of process/ controls and instrumentation.
2, Wort chiller explain how these are made from micro bore copper pipe and how they work by the transfer of heat from the wort etc.
3,Mango chutney barrel Boilers,

The great thing about home brewing is that it is an excellent area of adaptive engineering, " what can I use to do this?"
This is one of the great things about our nations engineers, sadly we engineers are not look upon the same way as our German counterparts.

Good luck, there are always people here to help :

 

[cnelsonplumber]

Plus one for the above. There are lots of how to guides on the forum. Are you going to do a powerpoint type presentation?

 

[TRXnMe]

Thermodynamics innit

Control and management of thermal energy, exchange of thermal energy between ot liquor and grain, heat escape via the walls of the mash tun to the environment.

Should fill 10 minutes no problem

You can do fluid dynamincs, pumping wort around, pressure drop per meter of pipe etc next time around

I'm B.Eng if you have any questions I'm happy to try and help.

PS, try and go first, no one will want to be arsey about the presentation, if you go last you will get the arsey ones as you've no chance of 'revenge'

 

[glove81]

Cheers guys. I'm very new to homebrewing having been given a kit for my birthday from SWMBO in August

The course I'm on is basically an access course to a degree. Its called an HNC up here so it isn't going to be anything to complex. The course is called engineering systems and isn't specific as yet to mechanics or electrics etc. I think the premise of the presentation is more to check our communication abilities more so the content but I still want I to be good and interesting to me.

 

[Frogfurlong]

You could make a flowchart for the brewing process.

**Is water at 100*C? y/n ** etc. This would show you ability to think of complex subject matter in a rational and dynamic way, able to simplify concepts and represent them in an easily understood format that others could follow.

Just my 2p worth

 

[TRXnMe]

Cheers guys. I'm very new to homebrewing having been given a kit for my birthday from SWMBO in August

The course I'm on is basically an access course to a degree. Its called an HNC up here so it isn't going to be anything to complex. The course is called engineering systems and isn't specific as yet to mechanics or electrics etc. I think the premise of the presentation is more to check our communication abilities more so the content but I still want I to be good and interesting to me.

Mate, I did an Access to Engineering course back in 1991 as a mature student, took me a total of 5 years but I got my B.Eng at the end of it

The presentation will be to test youur cocnfidence in that sort of environment as well as to find out if youu can communicate an unfamiliar (to other people) idea clearly and concisely.

Use pictures, use charts, if you've got 10 minutes then use no more than 20 slides, 15 would be better,m DO NOT use any of the whizzy bangy **** in PowerPoint, you do that in a board room and folk will laugh at you. Also, make sure you get to the room early and checck the thing works

And I meant it about going first, the later you present the more folk there are who will ask you questions, first guy up doesn't get any questions asked.

 

[Baldbrewer]

+1 on going first,

You will all be nervous about presenting, but take a couple of deep cleansing breaths and just go for it.

You will then be able to sit back and relax and listen to everybody else make their presentation.

make sure you speak to the room not down into your notes as nobody will hear you properly.

If it helps some people say that picturing the audience naked helps relieve the tension!

practice your presentation to SWMBO and time yourself to make sure you have enough content.

make sure you really understand your subject and a bit of humour always helps oils the wheels.

Above all else try and enjoy it , afterwards you'll wonder what all the fuss was about!


Be prepared for questions that you may be asked.


And make it interesting there is nothing worse than death by powerpoint!

 

[Norik]

Some advice I received, a worrying number of years ago, on the giving of such a presentation:

People can bl**dy well read boy, so you aren't there to read a bl**dy slide to them; the slide is there to illustrate what it is that you're telling them.

There may have been more swearing, and possibly the slapping of a desk involved in the original... I forget, or have blocked some of it out.

Basically, don't put blocks of text up on the screen, just so you can read them out. And don't try to be Clever, just because your clever.