When first announcing such a competition, the turnout exceeded their expectations, as hundreds of students attempted to present their work in three minutes. Since then, the 3MT has spread to other colleges, challenging students to condense their thesis work into three minutes.
Both my roommate and I signed up in December, and forgot about it until January and two weeks before the heats. Even then, neither one of us prepared our presentation until three days prior to the date. After all, how difficult would it be to talk for just 3 minutes?
...
It turned out to be impossible. Although we were told to assume an "intelligent" crowd, the number of terms and concepts used in material science are often quite unfamiliar to even just other engineers. (Ask a mechanical engineer what is the grain size or microstructure of his tested metal). I think the trouble in our field often arises from the fact that we are still a science heavy field, and therefore we are in frontiers that people may not often recognize or know. Where as to explain engineering, it's often quite easier to explain the sort of the improvement you're making in material. But to develop a truly novel material based on a fundamental, scientific discovery is far more challenging.
While my roommate's challenge was to explain that plastics are polymers, which are made of up of individual monomer units (and furthermore she needed to get into atomic transfer rapid polymerization), my challenge was explain grain boundaries in microstructures. These are things that we don't see in person unless with a microscope, in a lab, and we realize if we started discussing just our research, only other material scientists would be able to follow.
We spent our entire weekend thinking of how to resolve this problem. I re-watched all the 2 minute thesis presented by PhDcomics, and figured if they could do it in just 2 minutes, I had to find a way to do it in 3 minutes. My roommate obviously did a better job as she won the heat and is moving on the next round (on Feb. 18th!) despite the stress this caused both of us. At one point we were completely resolved to not go, though we kept changing our minds back and forth. The rules said not to dumb it down too much, but it was necessary to communicate with the crowd. Regardless, we both felt extremely rewarded and quite content with both of our final presentations.
I'll type up the transcript another time, but ultimately I used the story of the three little pigs, who were dealing with a materials problem. Fundamentally, they were presented with a materials issue where they needed something to withstand the big bad wolf's huff and puff, therefore the material property needed to be rigid, strong, etc.
I turned this story around though, by assuming all the pigs had bricks now though (same starting material). But instead, one stacked his bricks up to make his walls, the other one spent some time to lay them but still had cracks and gaps, and again, only the last one took his time to carefully lay down each one.
The bricks represent the grains we find in a microstructure, and just as important as picking the right material is, so is how we put together the atoms, which become crystals, then are considered grains, are to determining the properties of the final bulk material. Therefore, grain boundary engineering, which takes additional time and work (thermomechanical processing) just like the last pig, gives us improved material properties just based on the way grains are configured alone, much like how the bricks are arranged.
At the end of the day, I realized I had found a way to explain my research a little bit better. Whether or not everyone would get it or not the first time, I don't know. Although maybe, I've found a way to explain it at the bar (this was a popular problem my former co-graduate student presented to me all the time =P). If you ever have the chance to participate in a 3MT, I would definitely suggest giving it a shot.
The following is the slide that accompanied my talk:
...
It turned out to be impossible. Although we were told to assume an "intelligent" crowd, the number of terms and concepts used in material science are often quite unfamiliar to even just other engineers. (Ask a mechanical engineer what is the grain size or microstructure of his tested metal). I think the trouble in our field often arises from the fact that we are still a science heavy field, and therefore we are in frontiers that people may not often recognize or know. Where as to explain engineering, it's often quite easier to explain the sort of the improvement you're making in material. But to develop a truly novel material based on a fundamental, scientific discovery is far more challenging.
While my roommate's challenge was to explain that plastics are polymers, which are made of up of individual monomer units (and furthermore she needed to get into atomic transfer rapid polymerization), my challenge was explain grain boundaries in microstructures. These are things that we don't see in person unless with a microscope, in a lab, and we realize if we started discussing just our research, only other material scientists would be able to follow.
We spent our entire weekend thinking of how to resolve this problem. I re-watched all the 2 minute thesis presented by PhDcomics, and figured if they could do it in just 2 minutes, I had to find a way to do it in 3 minutes. My roommate obviously did a better job as she won the heat and is moving on the next round (on Feb. 18th!) despite the stress this caused both of us. At one point we were completely resolved to not go, though we kept changing our minds back and forth. The rules said not to dumb it down too much, but it was necessary to communicate with the crowd. Regardless, we both felt extremely rewarded and quite content with both of our final presentations.
I'll type up the transcript another time, but ultimately I used the story of the three little pigs, who were dealing with a materials problem. Fundamentally, they were presented with a materials issue where they needed something to withstand the big bad wolf's huff and puff, therefore the material property needed to be rigid, strong, etc.
I turned this story around though, by assuming all the pigs had bricks now though (same starting material). But instead, one stacked his bricks up to make his walls, the other one spent some time to lay them but still had cracks and gaps, and again, only the last one took his time to carefully lay down each one.
The bricks represent the grains we find in a microstructure, and just as important as picking the right material is, so is how we put together the atoms, which become crystals, then are considered grains, are to determining the properties of the final bulk material. Therefore, grain boundary engineering, which takes additional time and work (thermomechanical processing) just like the last pig, gives us improved material properties just based on the way grains are configured alone, much like how the bricks are arranged.
At the end of the day, I realized I had found a way to explain my research a little bit better. Whether or not everyone would get it or not the first time, I don't know. Although maybe, I've found a way to explain it at the bar (this was a popular problem my former co-graduate student presented to me all the time =P). If you ever have the chance to participate in a 3MT, I would definitely suggest giving it a shot.
The following is the slide that accompanied my talk:
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