How to create Nylon 6,10 in the lab

For the first lecture of Polymer Engineering Dr Tong brought a lot of things that are made of polymers like nylon gloves, plastic bottles, paint, polyester scarf, Styrofoam cup, Blutack, shampoo bottle, plastic wrapper and plastic bag. He also tells us briefly about his trip in USA and he went skiing over there so need to wear the think plastic gloves. He also said that his blouse is made of polyester. Of course it helps me to remember that polymers have such wide applications in modern lives that we can’t imagine a life without it.  

In the polymer engineering lecture, Dr Tong got demonstrate how to produce a nylon called poly (1,6-diaminohexane sebacide). You mix two solutions of sebacoyl chloride in hexane and 1,6 diaminohexane in water together. I got see this experiment in my secondary school I think. Then interfacial condensation occurs at the interface of hexane and water solution and a thin rubbery substance form in the interface. However, due to his poor pulling techniques he pull out a chunk of nylon instead of a nice string.The advantage is that you don't need to use stoichiometric ratios of sebecoyl chloride and 1,6 diaminohexane for this reaction to produce a high molecular weight polymer because using non stoichiometric ratios in polycondensation reactions does affect the polymer chain length drastically. If you use this method, the reactants will react at the interface in a 1:1 ratio even though you may have slighty more of one of the reactants. This method of production, however will introduce impurities in the form of solvent and you need to heat up to remove them, in order to get a useful nylon plastic.



 

Research and interest of myself

I am the sort of person that learns best visualisations and doing experiments and see the results myself... If I can see the changes that mean it’s a fact, if it’s just hearsay or rumour, don’t expect me to believe it. When the person (or marketeer) demonstrates something to prove his point, then I am convinced that is true. I don't usually buy into sweet talks of the marketers to convince me to buy that product as I know many of them are lying. Of course I got budget constraints lah, I can’t buy any thing I want.

I live for food instead of eat for survival that’s why I have grown a bit plump. I am an avid food taster and has gone to many hawker centres, canteens and fast food restaurant to taster their foods. I also have tried many snacks like potato chips, nuts, twisties and other sort of crisps. I like to try new foods as too much of the same boring old food I have at home bores me. My favourite foods are laksa, mee rubus, hainanese chicken rice, nasi lemak, tuna sandwich, turkey bacon burger, calabee potato chips (spicy), twisties (spicy), Domino’s tortilla corn chips, Indonesian prawn crackers.

Back to research projects, actually I quite like these; I don’t think it’s a waste of time like many of my classmates said. Like what Dr Yang said, researches are rather meaningful and I get to create new compounds which I can market and file for a patent which I can make money from my invention. If there is no research there will be no innovations and we won’t have so many gadgets like laptops, MP3 players, plasma TV, wireless LAN antibiotics, chemotherapy drugs, brain booster programs and so on. I can be as curious as Dr Yang for some subject areas, but due to my fear of failure or lack of time, the passion can die down as quickly as I started. I have been doing many researches for much of my studies, but most of them are theory, statistics or opinion based. Of course I have been surveyed on about my allergies, health status, monetary status and the foods I like. I have also done many independent research in the past like what laptop is the best value for money, what things do I need to build a customized desktop, what other things that are needed for good health (ie optimistic attitude, exercise), how to refine means-testing, what stall sell the food that is the most delicious, what kind of foods is the most healthy Only in this semester I am doing research that is experimental based which is very different from most of the research I done in the past... Actually I prefer experiments much more than theory, I learn so many modules all theory based one, only the chemical process labs I and II and research projects this semester are experimental based modules.

I learn so much theory until I become very blur already, don’t know what the lecturer is talking about. Computing is one of the subjects I hate most because that language is very confusing to me even though good programmers have done many trials and errors to get to their desired programs running without much problems (although still have bugs lah). I only computing program I know reasonably well is Matlab, that is good for Engineering calculations and Process Modelling. There are so many Maths in Chemical Engineering is extremely confusing for me. After the examinations I will forgot 90% of what the lecturer has taught. Only a few lecturers in Chemical Engineering that teach in a way I understand then I remember more of what they have taught me. A lot of modules I just manage to get borderline grades. PS: I HAVE DESCRIBED THEM IN MY PREVIOUS POSTS DONT NEED TO REPEAT AGAIN.

But I still remember the outline of many of the experiments I have done lah... I remember what I see better than what I hear lah. I still remember how to do titration run a fermentator, operate machine panels mixing A and B to get C and so on. I dreamt to be a chemist in the past but I think I chose chemical engineering instead because chemical engineers make more money than chemist does. I think a chemist with a bachelor’s degree earns a starting pay of $2200 a month but chemical engineers usually got a higher starting pay (probably due to their more valuable chemical processing skills). I sort of regret my decisions now as most of the modules I don’t have passion in. I only like subjects like Thermodynamics, Heat and Mass Transfer and Chemical Reaction Engineering which I can apply to chemistry also. I do have passion in chemistry research though; chemistry has been my favourite subject since I studied in secondary school. I am doing research on polymerization/ immobilization of living cells which require a passion for chemistry and polymer science both of which I have interest in. My project supervisor is also one of my favourite lecturers. I haven’t yet planned what to do for the research project but I will think about what to do during Chinese New Year haha, I have no rest during Chinese New Year leh.

My opinions of a good lecturer II

Haha, a good lecturer doesn’t need a PhD lah... Just don't understand that why the Engineering Department in NUS wants those full time lecturers to have at least a PhD degree... The Arts and Social Science, Business and Law faculty have many lecturers without PhDs. Good lecturers can change opinions of students about a subject even those the students may hate it at first. If you have a fun Maths teacher that teaches Normal technical students, most of the student’s grades will definitely improve from D to C or even A. If you have a lousy and boring teacher that only crunches numbers after numbers on the backboard without explaining properly most students will not be interested and only the very best students will score As. Lecturers with PhDs are proven good researchers but are they proven good lecturers??? Its up to the students to decide who’s good and who’s not. Actually I myself is not easily impressed by most lecturers and even pastors in thhe church. Those lecturers I like, definately have some qualities which wins me over and eager to attend his lecture.

Maybe NUS focus more on research than teaching, because research and innovation sells and makes money for NUS. But there are also a lot of meaningless research projects I know of that definitely won’t sell, like some repackaged or derivations of known equations for some phenomena. Some models do describe a process quite accurately, so it still has some meanings. Actually I find research rather interesting and I am rather curious about what researcher do, and I can learn many skills like literature review, methodology, chemical and separation process, report writing and presentation skills.   Although successful research projects for drugs and useful materials make money for NUS in the short term, lousy lecturers many be detrimental to the society in the long term. Lousy and boring lecturers will produce unmotivated students with disinterest in his subject unless he already have a strong background knowledge on that subject. There will be many students who get borderline or fail grades under a lousy lecturer or teacher (unless there is moderation by the lecturers and admin themselves) and they fail to impart useful knowledge to the students and they will forget about the subject once the exam is over. I strong feel that NUS should invest more on training lecturers and teachers presentation skills. They are already well trained in research, but many of them I feel are not well trained to be an interesting lecturer.

It’s unfortunate that most lecturers never take teaching course in how to be a good lecturer. Some basic subjects in Chemical Engineering like Thermodynamics, Seperation Processes or Engineering Principles don't need lecturers with PhDs to teach. A good lecturer should be passionate about his subject area, is clear about what to teach, good presentation skills, good sense of humour and uses real life scenarios to relate to what he teach. He has to speak reasonably good English or any other languages, use intonations appropriately and use some gesture to prove his point. If he can explain something abstract to me until a blur bum like me is convinced then he can be considered a good lecturer (and marketer haha). If the lectures can fulfill all these criteria then he can score an A in teaching and even get a teaching award.

In fact, I know of a few lecturers with Masters or even just Honours degree (honours cannot teach in NUS lah) that are quite good. I remembered that in my junior college I used to have a funny Maths lecturer called Mr Foo that looks sotong but he looks cute when he shows the solutions of some summation equations and also the hypothesis theory about reject of not to reject a value. Ms Cornie Chung is a relatively good lecturer also, she is good in using her body language, and she explains things like game theory, supply and demand, customer’s mentality, elasticity of customers to prices in a layman language. She convinced me that most decisions we make are based on economics. Mr Pang Nai Ho has Masters degree in Engineering and he teaches petroleum refining part time and tell some stories about his wife, the stock market, fortune and feng shui telling. He teaches about the units and processes inside those petroleum refining plants. He said that according to a feng shui master, he said that this year is a male rat year and it will favour Hillary Clinton to be a president. He said that is year is not good for the oxen though. He also said that whenever he comes to NUS to teach, the STI will fall, but luckily he had sold most of his stocks except for those he used his CPF to buy.

Although I don’t know Adam Khoo personally, but he had an interesting background. He used to be an unmotivated bum like me but he went to a top college after his O Levels and went on to get first class honours in Business. He is one of those underachievers who turn into a successful businessman and lecturer. He gives lectures at $1000 an hour which is more than the highest paid NUS lecturer. He has the ability to motivate lazy bums and underachieving students so that so that they found new directions in life. He teaches the right strategy of learning to improve memory. He also teaches ways about how be invest our way to become a millionaire on the stock market and the internet. He is not some boring lecturers I encountered in NUS; he is rather good in presenting and has a good sense of humour. He uses a lot of diagrams, mind maps and graphics in his presentations. That’s why schools are willing to pay him $1000 per hour or lecture lah.

My favourite lecturers

Most of the lecturers in NUS are either lousy or average and don't leave a good impression on me or good enough for me to remember them after I graduate. With so many boring lecturers it’s no wonder that I only got 15 minutes of attention span during the lecture before I got put off by the lecturer. There are a handful of lecturers that left great impressions on me. There are also a few lecturers that scare me so much that I don't want to approach them even I don't know what they are saying about. Some of the lecturers are so boring that their lectures are a cure for insomnia. There do also lecturers which give notes that have so many Maths equations, that I have problem understand what they are saying and they didn’t give much diagrams to associate with those equations. Those good lecturers that I appreciate very much and will thank them for the enjoyable moments I have which I going to describe below.

Dr Edmund Keung teaches Financial Accounting has a Hong Kong accent and is funny bamboo stick. He used to be quite bad in Maths (gets 70 for his exams) and his mother kept comparing him with his elder sister and praises his elder sister for being smarter than him. His mother always calls him a liability and his sister an asset. He also showed something funny and unrelated to Financial Accounting in his review lecture; he compared the brain sizes of human, elephant, whale, cow and mouse. Human does have brain about 2% of his body weight which is more than those big animals so he should be smart but then the mouse have brain which is 5% of its body weight and should be smarter than a human?

Prof Chung Tai Shung Neal teaches Membrane Science and Technology. I did not attend a few of his lectures because I was too tired to go after my lab lesson. He is quite a good lecturer and an impressive researcher. His final examinations are all multiple choice and its an advantage to me since I am rather good at MCQs and manage to get a B for his subject. He did give a few valuable lessons in the working world like we should work for a supervisor or manager who earns several times more than me so that they are more likely to give a pay rise. He also say that we should quote a higher than market wage to set a high bench mark so that we will get more pay increments in the absolute terms (ie $200 pay rise from $4000 is a 5% improvement vs $150 pay rise from $2000 is a 7.5% improvement, but of course $200 pay rise is better). If we set a low benchmark then the future employers also will shortchange you. He also says about secrets of lecturers moderating the grades so as to save their jobs.

A/P Wang Chi-Hwa is one of the nerdish looking lecturers I have seen and he teaches Heat and Mass Transfer, but actually when he teaches he doesn’t show his nerdish-ness. He is definitely good in Maths and knows how to derive those heat and mass transfer but seldom asks questions that ask us to derive those equations. He wants us to learn the concepts and not the derivations behind the equations which should be those graduate students’ task to find out lah. He shows which equations are the best for various conditions like different pipe diameters and length, turbulent and laminar flows. His lecture notes are quite easy to read with many diagrams that describe various heat and mass transfer processes. Of course, he got explain the various applications of heat transfer. He is rather lenient in his grading and did give a good credit for partially correct answers as long as we don’t leave the answer blank.

Dr Yang Kun-Lin teaches Process Modeling and Stimulation and he is rather humorous. He has a strong Taiwanese accent, but he teaches rather well and he also got a post doctorate degree in chemical engineering. Although his subject is not one of my favourite subjects as it involves a lot of Maths, I am motivated to learn more Maths from him. He is one of those lecturers that can make me like the subject I used to hate. He shows how Maths can be applied to processes ranging from systems of linear equations mass and energy balance, heat and mass transfer, reaction engineering, separation processes, fluid mechanics and so on. He uses a lot of visualizations and associations in his lectures. I still remember he taught me how to associate rules by famous Mathematicians like Taylor (the tailor turn mathematician) and Simpson (the funny yellow men cartoon). Of course, he does use fortune telling to solve some chemical engineering problems. His lecture notes is easier to read than many other lecturers that teaches Maths dominant subjects. PS: Models are mathematical representation of the process; they are not the process itself.

Dr Tong Yen Wah teaches Heat and Mass Transfer, Polymer Engineering and he is also my project supervisor. He is not as humorous as Dr Yang and Dr Keung, but he has charisma, an eloquent speaker, speaks fluent English, passionate, knowledgeable and of course a nice lecturer. I find him rather approachable and polite unlike some of the older lecturers that is haughty at times, and he explains concepts well. He is a rather interactive lecturer; he asks several questions in his lecturers for students to ponder over. He is one of those lecturers which I can literally communicate with even when is conducting his lecture (like those lecturers/teaching assistant who conduct seminars). I can learn in a two way traffic process from him instead of one way (lecturer to student only). He does use visualizations often to help me remember the applications of Heat and Mass Transfer to applications like doping, dialysis machine and drug delivery systems. I just remember about the radiation from the incandescent lamp burning my face to what he said about people who can see infrared or ultraviolet radiation haha. Actually I can sense infrared lah. In the Polymer Engineering lectures he got show some live demonstrations also. (See the more recent posts I wrote about him).

NUS lecturers that taught me

I will name all the lecturers that have taught me which I still remembered. Whether I like those lecturers or not, I will still thank them for teaching me for all these years. But the fact remains that there are only a handful out of the 60+ lecturers who taught me had impressed me.

Dr Anthony Pereira SSA1201 Singapore Society
Ms Sai Siew Min, A/P Albert Lau and Dr Quek Ser Hwee SSA2204 Nation Building in Singapore
Dr Matrinii Victur Aung HY2247 Sports and Society
Dr Tan Ban Pin, A/P Leung Pui Fai MA1505/MA1506 Mathematics
Mr Raymond Tan CS1101C Progamming with C
Dr Philippa Melamed GEK1527 Genes and Society
Prof Lee Kian Hee GEK 2500 Living with Chemistry
Dr Lu Yu Xin CM1501 Organic Chemistry
A/P Eugene Khor CM1111 Inorganic Chemistry
Dr Zhang Yong Wei MLE1101E Introduction to Material Science and Engineering
Mr Victor Cole EG1413 Critical Thinking and Writing
Prof Neoh Koon Gee, A/P Chew Chye Heng, A/P Oruganti and Mr Oliver Quek EG1415 Engineering Professionalism
Ms Cornie Chung EC1301 Principles of Economics
Dr Chng Chee Keong, Dr Edmund Keung FNA1002X Financial Accounting
Dr Mark Seays, Prof Zeng Hua Chun CN1111 Chemical Engineering Principles
Mr Qin Zhen CN2108 Chemical Process Lab 1
Prof Lee Jim Yang, Prof Tan Thiam Chye CN2116 Chemical Reaction Engineering
Dr Lanry Yung CN2121 and CN3108 Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics and Process Labs
Dr Ti Hwei Chen, A/P Chen Shing Bor CN2122 Fluid Mechanics
Prof S Farooq CN2123 Seperation Process Principles
A/P Wang Chi Hwa CN2125 Heat and Mass Transfer
Dr Tong Yen Wah CN2125, CN4203 and CN4118 Heat and Mass Transfer, Polymer Engineering and Research Project supervisor
Dr Krishnaswamy CN3121 Process Dynamics and Control
A/P Kus Hidayat CN3122 Mass Transfer Operations
A/P MS Uddin CN3124 Particle Technology
A/P Foo Swee Cheng, A/P Ting Yen Peng and A/P Reginald Tan CN3125 Safety, Health and Environment
Dr Yang Kun Lin, Dr Rudi Gunawan CN3421 Process Modelling and Simulation
Prof IA Karimi, A/P Feng Si Shen, Prof GP Rangaiah CN4119, CN4120 Design I and Design II
Prof Gong Zi Yuan, Dr Yu Hao, Prof Jeyaseelan and A/P Wang Shu LSM3402B Molecular Biotechnology
Mr Aspi Vani, Mr Cher Kwan Theng a nd Mr Pang Nai Ho CN4201 Petroleum Refining
Prof Neal Chung Tai Shung CN4210 Membrance Science and Engineering
A/P Li Zhi CN4247 Enzyme Technology

Summary of my thoughts and life in NUS

Hi friends,

I am a senior student in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and I will like to share with you what is going on with my life which I have kept in secret for a long time. Only my family knows roughly what is going on with me, but even then they don’t understand all of the as they don’t know how the university admin system works. I am in the last year (not semester) of my course and I am going to graduate in December 2008. I am going to share with you a summary of my life in NUS... But I am not going to describe my modules or project in this post lah!!! I am not a lecturer by the way

I admit I wasted the first 2 years of my university life procrastinating and blur about what is happening in NUS and what I am supposed to do. I thought I was wasting my parent $6000 a year spending money and then only to “return back” what I have learnt back to the lecturers. I was so blur that I even don’t know what modules to take and take many rojak modules during my first 2 years. It was only after the Chemical Engineering Admin talked to me about my plans then I know what is going on and register for the right modules. I was literally repeating year 2... It was in my 3rd year of study I woke up, and study the right modules and I have to cram the rest of the course which other people use 3 years to complete with 5 semesters. It was a bad blow to my self esteem that I had to study modules with students 1 year my junior. I admit I did not do well for many of my modules as I have quite a number of Cs and Ds and there are only 2 modules I have an A-. My CAP was not even enough for a 3rd class honours (only a BEng pass). But I will try my best for the rest of this year to pull up my CAP to get a third class honours. I am juggling with 2 heavy projects, the Design Project and Research Project.

There are several reasons why I did not do well in this course. I had low self- esteem and don’t believe I can beat those scholars. Maths is not really my forte and I did not do well in those subjects that require a lot of Maths. I am at a disadvantage as compared with those Maths experts. I envy people who can do an easy question within 10 minutes and I have to take half an hour or even 1 hour to do. That puts me at a disadvantage in an exam when I spend too much time pondering (poor time management) over a question and then when I want to do those easy questions the time is up and lost a lot of points due to that. Of course, I can do Chemistry question almost as fast as the scholars and even spot mistake in those questions. I am quite an expert in Chemistry and I believe I can do well in the Chemistry-based research projects. Another reason I don’t do well in my course is because many of the lecturers are boring and their lecture is a cure for insomnia. Some of the lecturers present too much Maths or Physics equations and not much diagrams to prove their formulas. Some lecturers speak in monotone and have poor command of English. Some lecturers seem to be irritating to me, with weird facial expression or eye expression which makes me feel uncomfortable. There are only a few lecturers I like out of the 60+ lecturers that have taught me.

Lastly, I will talk about my aspirations. I did dream of being a famous chemist with some accomplishments in my life like making a cure for AIDS or using environmentally friendly products. But after so many struggles with my university life I doubt I can do it. The best which I can do is to be a process engineer which is not a challenging job like what my lecturers said. I will really want to produce an excellent project so that I can get my dream job and dream employer. I also believe that God will help me to achieve great heights, but of course I need to believe in myself first. I used to be a lazy unmotivated bum, but after I sign up for the research projects I get to know what those lecturers really do besides teaching, they did some research behind the scenes and some of the research they have done can get patents and market out to those chemical industries to help them save money, find better drug delivery systems or better membranes for various purposes. It’s a tedious job to handle 2 projects in the same semester, but for the sake of my future I will work hard and excel in both projects. I will not like to end up as a test tube washer or lab technician in some research lab but be an active part of a research team.  I definately believe God will fulfil my wishes but I must believe in myself first.