Man:
Shall we make a start on that presentation about our battery-powered motorbike project?
Sarah:
It'd be nice to do a good job for the University Open Day.
Sarah:
I hope the lecturers write that it'll interest people thinking about coming here to study.
Man:
Well, they certainly should.
Man:
And at least it won't be assessed.
Sarah:
And I guess we should be proud our project was chosen rather than anything done by others in our class.
Sarah:
And our project's unusual because people usually think of environmentally friendly vehicles as being relatively slow.
Sarah:
But our battery-powered motorbike can get up to 165 km an hour, the same as lots of petrol-driven bikes.
Man:
And it has an efficiency of 90%, whereas ordinary bikes are far less.
Man:
They waste a huge amount of energy.
Sarah:
And our bike doesn't need a petrol tank or an exhaust system either.
Sarah:
So, markedly, the design is more straightforward.
Sarah:
And it's also lighter.
Man:
Anyway, it's going to be quite a challenge to prepare something interesting and appropriate for all the people who might come.
Sarah:
Well, time is certainly going to be an issue.
Man:
You mean in terms of how much we have to deal with in only 15 minutes?
Sarah:
Well, I was thinking more about the fact that the talk's next week, and we have a lot of other stuff on just now.
Man:
So, how shall we organize things?
Man:
We could just do a short talk and allow most of the time for questions.
Sarah:
Well, it'd be good to allow plenty of time for those, but I think we need to present quite a lot too.
Sarah:
We could start by showing a couple of minutes from the film of the race it took part in.
Man:
I'm sure they'd love that.
Man:
Then we can talk about how we built and tested the motorbike and so on.
Man:
For example, one of us could talk through the project from the initial brief to prototype stage, and then the other take it on to testing and development.
Sarah:
Well, let's deal with that later.
Sarah:
It might be better to have just you or me doing the talking, but we don't need to decide just yet.
Man:
So, what about the slides for our presentation?
Man:
Shall we work on the text for those now?
Man:
Well, we could just use keywords.
Man:
That'll help structure our talk.
Sarah:
How about using mainly visuals?
Sarah:
I took lots of photos as we went along, so it'd be easy to illustrate the progress of the project that way.
Sarah:
More interesting than diagrams.
Sarah:
And slides with lots of text can be boring.
Man:
So, do you think we should discuss things with the lecturer before going much further?
Man:
We could do that this afternoon.
Sarah:
Wouldn't it be better to get a first draft done?
Sarah:
Then we've got something more concrete to discuss with him.
Man:
Sure, but I'd quite like a bit more input before we spend a lot of time preparing something that might not be what's needed.
Sarah:
When did we have a work with Amish in the fourth year?
Sarah:
His tutor had him doing something similar last summer, so I'm sure he'd give us some useful pointers.
Man:
Let's do that after lunch.
Man:
Let's think a bit more about how the project went.
Man:
That might give us some ideas.
Man:
Well, first, I'd say that writing the report was hard.
Sarah:
Yes, I was dreading having to write 80 pages in just a month, but actually it was harder making sure we didn't go over length.
Sarah:
Anyway, I never imagined we'd deal with it with a day to spare.
Man:
No, it was lucky your sister had time to proofread it.
Man:
She picked up on several careless mistakes, especially in the bibliography.
Sarah:
Yes, well, she works in publishing, so she's used to checking things.
Sarah:
I suppose it helped that we kept detailed notebooks throughout the year.
Sarah:
That was a chore, but worth it.
Man:
Yes, I didn't enjoy keeping mine up to date.
Man:
I actually found it really time-consuming, noting down all the adaptations we made to the design as we went along.
Man:
I hadn't anticipated that.
Sarah:
Me too, and I thought the tutor could have given us a bit more advice at the beginning of the process.
Man:
I liked doing the concept sketches.
Man:
For me, that was one of the best bits.
Man:
I've always enjoyed those initial stages of the design process.
Sarah:
I was relieved that the tutor picked up on that mistake we made in our aerodynamic sketches.
Sarah:
It would have been disastrous if that hadn't been picked up at an early stage.
Sarah:
Finding sponsors took quite some time, of course.
Man:
Yes, but we knew that'd be an issue, and I never expected it to be enjoyable.
Man:
Not like the actual hands-on project work.
Man:
The tutor certainly came into his own at that stage.
Sarah:
Yes, I never expected him to have such useful contacts in industry.
Sarah:
Good thing for us he did, though.
