project 1 for portfolio

Michelle Chiodi
Major: Chemical Engineering
Citation style: varies based on journal

(1) Love, C.J. Integrated Process Design for Single Cell Analytical Technologies. AIChE Journal. 2010; 56: 2496-2501.
The articles from the AIChE journal appear to contain a lot of jargon. Someone from outside of the chemical engineering field might not be able to understand some terms. Certainly someone from outside of the science world would be lost trying to read one of these articles. I read an article titled Integrated Process Design for Single-Cell Analytical Technologies. This article was difficult for me to understand let alone someone outside of the field. From this I can gather that the audience for this article would be an upper level professional in chemical engineering or a related field. Within this article there are many citations that follow a format the looks similar to APA. This article contains a couple pictures to enhance and clarify the author’s points. Each picture contains a caption to explain what the picture is illustrating.

(2) Calloway, T.B. Energy Research: Following the Money. Chemical Engineering Progress. 2010; 106: 53-55.
The article in the Chemical Engineering Progress journal was far easier to read than those appearing in the AIChE journal. Jargon was not common throughout the text therefore making this article more accessible and relevant to the average person. This would lead me to believe that this journal has a broader audience which likely reaches from graduate students to professionals and professors. Included in this article are charts and graphs which are used to give supplemental information to further the author’s points. Like the AIChE journal, this journal also follows a citation style similar to APA. Numbers are used within the text to refer to a reference listed at the end. In this journal, the references at the end show the author’s name and volume number in bold. This article discusses many aspects of energy research. It explores where the funding for this research comes from and what aspects of energy research are being conducted.

(3) Zei, D. and Rogers, T. personal interview, September 16, 2010.
I conducted an interview with David Zei, a professor in chemical engineering, to gather more information about the writings in our field. Professor Zei invited another professor, Dr. Rogers, to join this interview. Dr. Rogers has published many works in chemical engineering journals so he gave me incredible information about the writing style, formatting, and citation commonly used. Something I found to be very interesting is that the citation style used depends on which journal you are publishing your work to. Some journals use a long reference style while others use a shorter style. In either style all of the references are assigned numbers and the number appears in the text as a superscript after the information cited from that source. Dr. Rogers gave me two of his articles that have been published in journals and tables, figures, and equations are numerous throughout. During the interview Professor Zei and Dr. Rogers said that visuals are very common in chemical engineer’s writing. The articles I received from Dr. Rogers were published in the Journal of Chemical & Engineering Data and a journal called Fluid Phase Equilibria. These are two common journals in chemical engineering. Professor Zei also said that the AIChE journal is very commonly read. Dr. Rogers said that it would be very hard for someone outside of chemical engineering to understand the articles commonly published. They are very dense and contain terms specific to our field. For this reason there is a specific audience for the journals. It is mainly professors and researchers who would read these articles. David Zei’s email is zei@mtu.edu and Dr. Roger’s email is tnrogers@mtu.edu.
Michelle Chiodi
Shampa Bhattacharyya
UN 2001
24 September 2010
Annotated Bibliography Reflection
When this project was first introduced I really didn’t think I would learn that much or that it would be very interesting. I thought the journal articles would all be above my head and not particularly interesting to me. The interview seemed to promise to be boring and to the point. However, working through this project my expectations were shattered; the journals were hard to read but still interesting and the interview was far from boring or ordinary.
I started off by setting up an interview with my Fundamentals of Chemical Engineering teacher, David Zei. He said he thought he had some good perspective that he could offer for this project and he did not disappoint with that statement. When I arrived at the interview, Professor Zei had invited another professor, Dr. Rogers to share his insight as well. Both Professor Zei and Dr. Rogers have published various works in chemical engineering journals so they had a lot of good information to offer. I was surprised when they told me that there is no set citation style for chemical engineering; it simply depends on the journal you are writing for. While there is no definite style, most of the citations you see in journals are similar to APA style. Prior to the interview I had read a couple journal articles so I was not surprised to find out that it is very typical for the articles to be dense and sometimes hard to understand. Another thing that I expected to hear was that visuals are often used in writings. This came as no surprise to me because I had seen some journal articles and done writing for engineering classes were charts, graphs, and equations were expected.
Working through this project helped me accomplish some of the goals of this class. This project gave me experience with the most basic goals of this class: to understand the process of creating written communication and to practice revising work. I got practice with the process of written communication by first submitting a proposal, then creating a rough draft and proofreading that draft myself, then submitting that draft for peer review, and then finally submitting it for a graded review by the teacher. That graded draft was returned with comments to help me improve my final paper. While understanding and practicing the process of creating written communication, I also got practice revising my work. After I created my very first draft, I revised this draft myself before it was peer reviewed. When I got the paper back from the peer review I revised the paper once more before submitting it as my final paper. Another goal that I accomplished by writing this paper was to understand how the target audience can shape a writer’s work. When talking with Dr. Rogers and Professor Zei they talked about how they have a target audience and they write for that audience. Their purpose is to convey the findings of their research to their audience in a clear, concise manner.
The style of the writing in chemical engineering is on a high level. For those outside of my major they might perceive the style and conventions to be above their level depending on their field. The writings in chemical engineering are academic and technical so someone outside of my major my feel like the writing is not for them. Chemical engineers have a specific audience and the writings are not intended for the general public. By creating an annotated bibliography the reader can better understand the style and the content of the information contained in the full source. This can be helpful to sense if the source is something that is on your level and that you would like to read.
Overall this project was enjoyable and I thought it was a good first project to start off with since it was not too strenuous. The interview was very enjoyable and allowed me to get to know my professor better and even meet a new professor that I will have in the future. I enjoyed reading the journal articles as well. It gave me a glimpse of what I may be doing in the future and exposed me to a style of writing that I am not that familiar with. In the end, this project proved my initial expectations to be incorrect and I enjoyed learning more about the writing style in chemical engineering.