Reflections
What have we learnt?
Throughout the course of this project, one crucial skill which we have learnt is to be more proactive and ask questions the moment you are unsure. Working together with professionals in the field, many jargons and technical terms appeared during our discussions. Hence, in order to make full use of such opportunities and learn as much as possible, we often ask questions about certain terms on behalf of the group and tried to make connections between the concepts and our experimental process. We believe that this is highly essential in facilitating our understanding and had definitely played a part in my ability to tackle higher-order questions related to our research.
Additionally, we have learnt that another key aspect to making projects a success would be efficient communication amongst the group members along with the mentors. Unlike past years of research education, this time, our mentors are mostly not from our school. As such, it is not as convenient as before to conduct discussions with them and this makes communication even more important. Besides regularly sending emails to arrange meeting timings and entry to their laboratories, we have also understand the importance of keeping everyone in the group in the loop of information, so as to ensure that all of us have a clear idea of what to achieve during each meeting. On top of that, this has enabled us to utilize the time with our external mentors fully and make speedy progress in our research process.
We have also learnt the importance of planning ahead. Besides a tight schedule posed by the Gifted Education Branch, our group has to also cope with the deadlines of the Singapore Junior Water Prize. As a result, our group had to speed up in our progress of the experiments. To achieve that, the PhD student which we worked with and us had to plan each phase of our project well and arrange for as many lab sessions to fulfill the schedule. In our case, we divided our project into 3 phases—Synthesis of nanotubes, Copper removal and Hydrogen generation. Our group had around 2 lab sessions per week during the weeks before the report submission for the Singapore Junior Water Prize. Another aspect of me which we have developed during the project would be the ability to communicate with other group members to carry out the delegated tasks. With such tight deadlines, being able to complete delegated tasks is essential. At times, due to individual busy schedules, some of us place the work for research education at a lower priority. When such issues occur, we would first try to understand their situation and try to arrive at a win-win alternative whereby reasonable compromises are made to meet the deadlines. Though this may not be easy at times, we enjoyed the process and believe that this has allowed us to grow.
Besides all that, the project has also widened our scope about chemistry as a subject. It allowed us to understand about many concepts such as equilibrium, electron-hole pair, doping, band gaps, adsorption, redox reactions etc. that come into play in water purification and hydrogen generation. It also allowed us to realize that indeed, these concepts can be materialized into inventions that can improve the quality of life.
Through this, we have realized the importance of making connections between ideas and applications. During the process, we asked us if it is worth it to undergo our methodology just to obtain the hydrogen gas. One of us responded with our background knowledge and said that if this technology is scaled up then there would be a net gain of energy. That question made us realized that if we wish to convince others, we would first have to relate it to real life applications which can bring about benefits to their lives. As a result of this, my group is motivated to continue this project and make it a possible application in the real-life environment through doping, which would allow the system to operate on visible light instead of UV light.
Thoughts about working as a group
Working together has been a very enjoyable and fun experience. we strongly feel that we are able to work quite well with one another. All of us are very committed and would do our best to fulfill deadlines and expectations. The group dynamics was balanced and as such, our brainstorming and other processes were efficient.
Difficulties faced + How did we overcome these problems? / What else could be done?
Our research journey was certainly not a bed of roses and we did face several difficulties along the way. Firstly, our group had a hard time trying to obtain a project by the Science Mentorship Programme. Despite submitting many proposals to obtain a project from the list provided by Gifted Education Branch, we still did not manage to get a project which we desired. In the face of this, our group made a decision to come up with a self proposed idea which was related to water technologies.
The brainstorming process was also another hurdle which we faced. Fortunately, after looking at many research papers and past ideas that ranged from bacterial removal to biomimetic water purifying systems, we soon came up with a preliminary idea of using transition metal oxides to synthesis a nano-membrane for water purification.
The next difficulty which we faced would be finding a professional in this field to mentor us in our preliminary idea. We combed the websites of various research institutes such as A*Star, NUS and NTU, in search of professors that could mentor us in this field of study. Our group actually contacted around 20 professors to ask if they could mentor us. We were turn down at many occasions but fortunately there were 1 or 2 professors who expressed interest in working with us. As such, we managed to find a mentor for our self proposed idea before the SMP deadline.
Another issue which arose during the course of the project would be cost. Our mentor said that it is their school’s policy to charge the usage of equipments for external students, as such, our project would incur a cost higher than the $500 provided by Gifted Education Branch. Fortunately, this issue was solved as the project progressed and our mentor used his research funds for our project.
We are very grateful for this opportunity, to be able to work with nanotubes, advanced equipments and to experience experimentation in a university laboratory. On the whole, this was a fruitful and fulfilling journey for us. This has also ignited a new interest in us towards the field of nanotechnology and we strongly believe that this would be an exciting and innovative field that would give a whole new dimension to scientific research in the future.
Lawrence, Melvin and Ryan 2012
Throughout the course of this project, one crucial skill which we have learnt is to be more proactive and ask questions the moment you are unsure. Working together with professionals in the field, many jargons and technical terms appeared during our discussions. Hence, in order to make full use of such opportunities and learn as much as possible, we often ask questions about certain terms on behalf of the group and tried to make connections between the concepts and our experimental process. We believe that this is highly essential in facilitating our understanding and had definitely played a part in my ability to tackle higher-order questions related to our research.
Additionally, we have learnt that another key aspect to making projects a success would be efficient communication amongst the group members along with the mentors. Unlike past years of research education, this time, our mentors are mostly not from our school. As such, it is not as convenient as before to conduct discussions with them and this makes communication even more important. Besides regularly sending emails to arrange meeting timings and entry to their laboratories, we have also understand the importance of keeping everyone in the group in the loop of information, so as to ensure that all of us have a clear idea of what to achieve during each meeting. On top of that, this has enabled us to utilize the time with our external mentors fully and make speedy progress in our research process.
We have also learnt the importance of planning ahead. Besides a tight schedule posed by the Gifted Education Branch, our group has to also cope with the deadlines of the Singapore Junior Water Prize. As a result, our group had to speed up in our progress of the experiments. To achieve that, the PhD student which we worked with and us had to plan each phase of our project well and arrange for as many lab sessions to fulfill the schedule. In our case, we divided our project into 3 phases—Synthesis of nanotubes, Copper removal and Hydrogen generation. Our group had around 2 lab sessions per week during the weeks before the report submission for the Singapore Junior Water Prize. Another aspect of me which we have developed during the project would be the ability to communicate with other group members to carry out the delegated tasks. With such tight deadlines, being able to complete delegated tasks is essential. At times, due to individual busy schedules, some of us place the work for research education at a lower priority. When such issues occur, we would first try to understand their situation and try to arrive at a win-win alternative whereby reasonable compromises are made to meet the deadlines. Though this may not be easy at times, we enjoyed the process and believe that this has allowed us to grow.
Besides all that, the project has also widened our scope about chemistry as a subject. It allowed us to understand about many concepts such as equilibrium, electron-hole pair, doping, band gaps, adsorption, redox reactions etc. that come into play in water purification and hydrogen generation. It also allowed us to realize that indeed, these concepts can be materialized into inventions that can improve the quality of life.
Through this, we have realized the importance of making connections between ideas and applications. During the process, we asked us if it is worth it to undergo our methodology just to obtain the hydrogen gas. One of us responded with our background knowledge and said that if this technology is scaled up then there would be a net gain of energy. That question made us realized that if we wish to convince others, we would first have to relate it to real life applications which can bring about benefits to their lives. As a result of this, my group is motivated to continue this project and make it a possible application in the real-life environment through doping, which would allow the system to operate on visible light instead of UV light.
Thoughts about working as a group
Working together has been a very enjoyable and fun experience. we strongly feel that we are able to work quite well with one another. All of us are very committed and would do our best to fulfill deadlines and expectations. The group dynamics was balanced and as such, our brainstorming and other processes were efficient.
Difficulties faced + How did we overcome these problems? / What else could be done?
Our research journey was certainly not a bed of roses and we did face several difficulties along the way. Firstly, our group had a hard time trying to obtain a project by the Science Mentorship Programme. Despite submitting many proposals to obtain a project from the list provided by Gifted Education Branch, we still did not manage to get a project which we desired. In the face of this, our group made a decision to come up with a self proposed idea which was related to water technologies.
The brainstorming process was also another hurdle which we faced. Fortunately, after looking at many research papers and past ideas that ranged from bacterial removal to biomimetic water purifying systems, we soon came up with a preliminary idea of using transition metal oxides to synthesis a nano-membrane for water purification.
The next difficulty which we faced would be finding a professional in this field to mentor us in our preliminary idea. We combed the websites of various research institutes such as A*Star, NUS and NTU, in search of professors that could mentor us in this field of study. Our group actually contacted around 20 professors to ask if they could mentor us. We were turn down at many occasions but fortunately there were 1 or 2 professors who expressed interest in working with us. As such, we managed to find a mentor for our self proposed idea before the SMP deadline.
Another issue which arose during the course of the project would be cost. Our mentor said that it is their school’s policy to charge the usage of equipments for external students, as such, our project would incur a cost higher than the $500 provided by Gifted Education Branch. Fortunately, this issue was solved as the project progressed and our mentor used his research funds for our project.
We are very grateful for this opportunity, to be able to work with nanotubes, advanced equipments and to experience experimentation in a university laboratory. On the whole, this was a fruitful and fulfilling journey for us. This has also ignited a new interest in us towards the field of nanotechnology and we strongly believe that this would be an exciting and innovative field that would give a whole new dimension to scientific research in the future.
Lawrence, Melvin and Ryan 2012