Second year CSCT student, Andrew Hall is currently working towards his PhD looking at “Biogenic Alcohols and Sugars as Sustainable Reductants: A Combined Spectroscopic and Theoretical Approach to the Development of New Homogeneous Catalysts for Dehydrogenation, Hydrogen Transfer and Reverse Water-Gas-Shift Chemistry”. As part of his PhD he uses Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (aka. Hidden Force Looking Machines) to monitor how chemical reactions occur and get an understanding of the reaction mechanism and kinetics involved.

As a Public Engagement activity, Andrew has produced the following poster (and accompanying introduction) using only the 1000 most commonly used words, using his own research as his inspiration.

Explaining ideas to other people can be very hard, but it is often important to tell them what we are doing. I often have to try and explain what I do when visiting schools and talking to other people, and I find it is important not to use too many big words which are hard to understand.

I came across this book which uses pictures and the ten-hundred most often used words to explain how things work, and it made me think about whether I could use this idea as a new way to explain what I do, so I thought I would have a go: