Blog 1

WEEK 1: Team bonding

Week 1 was the beginning of ICPD and a lot of administrative thing however Dr. Noel made it fun and we had a mini team bonding. 

As we always go to ECTC, Ms Teo is definitely our favourite TE and so we decided to find her to start off for our team bonding and we saw the year 1s suffering like how we did in year 1.

After that we decided to find the other 4 teams and En Ting decided to vlog our journey and heres a few snippets.

En Ting's very first debut in vlogging. 

WEEK 2: Categories of chemical product design

In week 2, we learnt about the 4 main categories of chemical product design which are commodities, molecular, micro-structured products and chemical devices. 

Commodities - are made in large quantities and made through unit operation and has the highest efficiency 

Molecular - posses specific molecular structure

Micro-structured -products with specific function
Chemical devices - provides convenience and accomplish a particular chemical transformation

We were asked to do our first activity as a team which is to choose a category for eg household and personal and also a sub-category for eg appliances and electronics. 

For our group, thhe category and subcategory we chose are personal + fragrance = perfume 

The category of chemical product design is under chemical devices. This is because the nozzle sprays out the perfume and the molecules are dispersed out into the surrounding and causes diffusion. This phenomenon happens because there is a difference in concentration and molecules travel from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. 

WEEK 3: Needs identification

In week 2's lesson, Dr Noel asked us to think over the long weekend about what irritates us and makes us complain(duhhh ofc we love to complain 💁🏼‍♀️).

Needs are identifying what the customers wants, putting ourself in other peoples shoes or even thinking about what item in our life is helpful but not perfect, something that can make our life easier. 

Pain point are things that can trigger the customer to not want to purchase our products. For instance for myself, even though I love Lao Ban Dou Hua a lot but because of the payment method, it made me always ended up not buying. As technology is very advanced now, they are still not accepting cashless payments and only accepts cash.😠 

In week 3's lesson, we identified the needs of the user which was for second hand smoker to not breather in smoke from smokers by making a device for the smoker to blow in and makes it smokeless by using absorption. But we thought of something simpler, something more that we can relate to ourselves, which are sweaty palm and feet issue(people who have excessive sweating basically). People who have sweaty feet issue, for example me, always fear of taking out our shoes because of the unpleasant stench coming out from inside our shoe. Hence we decided that we want to come up with a convenient way to prevent or manage our sweaty issue🦶👣

There were few way we brainstormed:

1. an insole for feet that can absorb sweat to prevent odour
2. a bamboo antibacterial handkerchief for people with sweaty palms and feet
3. a pillowcase like handkerchief where people can change the inside filter(ply) and wash the outer so it is hygienic but the ply absorbs the sweat
4. antibacterial spray to spray onto the handkerchief

I also learnt that SP library actually provides a lot of databases for us and to make a good literature review:

1. The sources must be relevant and reliable
2. It must lay a strong foundation for your research topic
3. It should be narrow enough to eliminate irrelevant information
4. It should be wide enough to cover enough information required on the subject
5. It should strike a balance between sources supporting and opposing a particular aspect or argument

ICPD practical 1: Reverse engineering

We also did our first practical which I was kinda happy as I thought we were going to use a 3D making machine and build things.😢 However, practical 1 was still fun and made me learn quite a lot of things just by brewing a coffee. 

Here are a few takeaway points from practical 1:

1. A small amount of steam can act as a pump and push the water up which acts as an air lift pump.

2. The orange ball in the coffee machine tubing acts as a check valve to prevent the liquid from back flowing into the bottom section.

This was us trying out the flow of the liquid in the bottom section and discovered it can only flow from one end to another and not the other way round because there was a check valve.

3. Tissue can be used to measure the mass of condensed liquid on the lid. (I was totally mind blown at this)

This can be achieved by measuring the mass of the dry tissue paper then wiping the top surface of the coffee maker where all of the vapour condenses and measure the mass of the wet tissue paper. By subtracting, the mass of the condensed vapour could be known.

4. There has to be a minimum level of water in the coffee maker to act as an air lift pump cause of static lift

 5.The larger the static lift, the higher the flowrate

Through the video, we can see that the flowrate is slow and its like bloop bloop. This is because of the low static lift.