Towards good report writing: Summary, Introduction

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Towards good report writing Summary,
Introduction General Guidelines

• Department of Chemical Engineering
• The University of Sydney
• GOOD_REPT_WRITING.ppt

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Contents

• General guidelines
• Report layout contents good not so good
  practice
• Examples of good not so good practice
• General comments about report writing
• Summary pro-forma
• Notes on oral written communication
• What can you expect from this introduction?

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General Guidelines
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Report Layout Contents Good Practice

• Good practice illustrated-
• Some notes in handout.
• Handout notes on experimental program, report to
  management, references, symbols, technical
  content and oral presentations.
• Model report on website
• Notes on website

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Report Layout Contents Not So Good Practice

• Bad practice includes (not limited to)-
• Ignoring the previous advice (regarding good
  practice).
• Nonsensical statements.
• Poor quality graphs and expressions.
• Method not clear from text.
• Non-quantitative summary.
• No real analysis in discussion.

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This is a good report because

• you have taken the initiative to quantitatively
  assess how a number of different flow
  visualisation techniques apply to improving the
  performance of a liquid-liquid mixer.
• you have correctly identified clearly
  demonstrated the -side control of heat
  transfer by plotting against the
  .
• ( used since cant reveal all details before
  report-writing exercise !)

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• you have quantitatively assessed the reasons for
  the mass and energy balance discrepancies. From
  this assessment, you have made a reasonable
  analysis of the mass-transfer coefficients,
  giving the scale-up calculations some
  plausibility.
• your figures have correctly distinguished
  between side side Reynolds numbers.
• ( used since cant reveal all details before
  report-writing exercise !)

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This is a poor report because

• plotting results like heat-transfer coefficient
  against run number is just nonsense and shows
  that you have no grasp of how to approach this
  analysis.
• your finding that the mass balance discrepancies
  are over 100 contradicts your statement that
  the agreement between the theory the
  predictions is reasonable.

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• we are not interested in a long list of possible
  reasons for the disagreement between theory
  experiment. What we want is an assessment of the
  impact of each reason, some judgement regarding
  what is most important, constructive
  suggestion(s) made regarding possible
  improvements.
• your statement that the kinetic theory of gases
  applies to liquid phase systems is nonsense.

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So How Do I Get a Good Mark?

• Not a superficial question here, means addressing
  key marking criteria.
• Download James Ansteys report from the web site
  partial version available initially (due to
  report writing exercise) full version available
  later
• This is a very good report indeed, 80-85.
• Follow the basic layout, use analogies between
  this experiment others.

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So What is So Good About It?

• Energy balances presented discussed first
  establishes the reliability of the results.
• Analogies.
• Leaching mass balances overall, solids dye.
• Distillation mass balances overall ethanol
  energy balances.
• Spiral heat exchanger energy balances, one for
  each exchanger.

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Think About Key Technical Features

• For example, in heat exchangers where is the
  limiting heat-transfer resistance?
• How can we show this from our data?
• Can the discrepancies be explained by propagating
  the errors from measurements?
• Propagation of error analysis notes on web

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Technical Precision

• Be careful to distinguish between different
  flowrates
• in the spiral heat exchanger, there is a hot
  stream, an intermediate stream a cold stream
  there are 4 Reynolds numbers hot side, hot
  exchanger cold side, hot exchanger hot side,
  cold exchanger cold side, cold exchanger there
  are 2 overall heat-transfer coefficients.
• So dont just plot overall heat-transfer
  coefficient against Reynolds number without
  distinguishing which is which.

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Graphs Technical Common Sense

• Very severe penalties for technical nonsense.
• Do not use run number on the x-axis this is not
  an independent variable (cannot be set
  independently, run 2 must follow run 1).
• Think about basics of engineering science
  Reynolds numbers of 13 in the spiral heat
  exchanger do not make sense.

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General Comments About Report Writing

• Technical writing is not essay writing.
• Skills needed for technical writing are exactly
  those needed to be a successful engineer - logic
  precision.
• Present information in the order in which readers
  can best assess it.
• Write from the readers perspective.

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Writing the Summary

• In the summary, and for the report as a whole, it
  is necessary to answer these questions
• what did you do?
• why did you do it?
• what happened?
• what do the results mean in theory?
• what are the results good for in practice?

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Summary Pro-Forma (i.e. follow this form)

• This (report, study, experimental program)
  examines the (effect, economics, origins,
  background, likely future trends, desirability)
  of (employing, commissioning, scaling up,
  shutting down, purchasing) the (proposed, new,
  old, current)(separating, mixing,
  controlling)(plant, procedure, method) in order
  to (make a business decision, create a better
  quality product, optimise the operations,
  determine the number of middle management to
  retrench, discover the source of the leaks, find
  the most reliable conditions, find a design that
  fits the constraints).

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• To do this, we (did some measurements, read some
  literature, asked people, performed
  experiments). In our experiments, we varied
  (pressure, flowrate, temperature, composition,
  speed) over the range (Y to Z) (units). The
  data were converted from BC to DEF in order to
  find the (greatest, least, average) value of
  (profit, power consumption, efficiency,
  reliability). The results indicate that the
  (proposed, new, old, current) (separating,
  mixing, controlling)(plant, procedure, method)
  is likely to give the (greatest, least, average)
  value of (profit, power consumption, efficiency,
  reliability) at a (pressure, flowrate,
  temperature, composition, speed) value of Q.
  The (effect, difference, improvement) is over
  95 significant, as shown by error analysis.
• It is recommended that we (do noting, purchase,
  commission, decommission, retrench, revise,
  quote) for ().

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Writing the Introduction

• Short general introduction to topic get to the
  point quickly (why this experiment has been
  done), without long explanation of all the
  industrial (or other) applications.
• Theory that is relevant to aims.
• Aims.
• Try to develop a logical flow of information.

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Example James Ansteys Introduction

• Aim necessary to test the reliability and
  accuracy of existing correlations between heat
  exchanger design and heat transfer rate (for
  example Kerns or Bells methods) for the
  determination of overall heat transfer
  coefficients and pressure drops.
• Identified aim quickly, in his own words.

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Layout of James Ansteys Introduction

• Overall heat-transfer coefficients ?individual
  heat-transfer coefficients ? general form for
  correlation of individual coefficients?how
  individual coefficients put together to estimate
  overall coefficient (from correlation) ? how
  overall coefficient extracted from experimental
  data?pressure drop estimation ?restated aim again
  (in his own words).

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Key issues in report writing

• Content It is somewhat late in the day to
  address issues of language and grammar, sentence
  construction, spelling, word order, etc. If you
  are worried about these aspects, please seek help
  from the Learning Centre.
• Structure What aspects go where? How do I start
  writing what about?
• Report writing exercise

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Conclusions

• General guidelines
• Report layout contents good not so good
  practice
• Examples of good not so good practice
• General comments about report writing
• Notes on oral written communication.
• Summary pro-forma.
• Introduction.
• Expectations.