(From Syllabus) PRESENTATION: Each student (or team of two students) will present a "sales pitch" for a currently available commercial instrument. They will detail its components and argue why those components are the best possible (including cost-benefit trade-off) choices for some particular experiments. Presentations will include results of "comparison shopping" to show why the competition is not as good for the particular application. This is the kind of presentation you will be required to make to your supervisors to gain funds for new instrumentation in the "real world".

Selection of a problem. Students alone or in pairs must decide on a problem they wish to solve or attack with a spectroscopic tool. They should choose something of intrinsic interest to them since that will make the work easier and the presentation more compelling. For example this might be a topic they have read about that catches their interest, e.g. pollution monitoring of Lake Michigan or impurities in fast food. Alternatively something close to your research may be chosen, as long as it involves optical spectra and analysis. Once a problem (global) is decided upon, a specific target analyte should be focussed upon. This will make selection of a technique and discrimination between instruments easier. It may sound narrow, but it is a real world situation to analyze for one thing (or related things) at a time. Remember: This is a problem in analysis. "To study . . ." is a recipe for failure. "To determine the concentration of. . . " and then tell me why I need to know that quantity, is a much stronger approach and will be strongly reflected in the grading.

Select a Technique. Choosing a technique will depend on the analyte, time scale, sensitivity level needed etc. You need to think this through before settling on a problem and method. Any of the techniques of the class will be appropriate--see later chapters of the book or syllabus. However, your pitch must establish your technique to be best within some working frame--e.g. there might be better ways to analyze for a specific species but you only need a certain sensitivity or a certain accuracy because of some realistic reason. Perhaps you want ot monitor a process, so speed of sample throughput could be the more important issue. You my propose simple or complex approaches, the point is to defend your choice.

Select an instrument. Choose a vendor and specific instrument for its value for the problem at hand. This could be cheap, or expensive, it depends on the problem and the need to solve it--you must defend the choice. I can give you leads for vendors, but analytical Chemistry runs and instrumentation issue each year and Web sites of companies offer the best detailed information, if available.

Get competing vendors. You must have at least two alternate instruments, preferably from other vendors that you show are not as good as your choice--for the problem you propose.

Make a summary of the strengths of your choice and the weaknesses of the competition. Charts or tables work well for this. Remember to include specifications. Price is an important variable--after all you are asking for pat of your group or division budget to be spent on your idea--defend it!

Prepare presentation, (aim for 15 min.) wherein employing a few overheads is useful for communication and for keeping you on track. Power point presentations are not needed, but use of it to prepare slides can be good, and will reflect the approach you would take in industry. Keep it interesting and on target -- succinct justifications get a reward.

Write up a summary (3-5 pages) of your problem, solution instrument and competition. Data from companies can copied from brochures, web and just be attached. Due day after presentation.

Timing: Presentations start April 17 or 19, depending on volunteers. We may need extra sessions. E-mail (tak@uic.edu) me partners and topic April 3, 2001.

Bottom line: Focus on something specific and tell us how to solve it efficiently and ecconomically for the situation you have chosen.