I work in a lab that produce polymers and then test them. Usually I run my test on a so-called tensile machine. It works this way. I have a sample and this machine just stretches it until it tears and gives me the data, data, like strength, Young’s modulus and elongation break at the point of when this break happened. Sometimes I don’t need to tear immediately. I want to do some cycles of stretching it and going back in order to see how the material resists to there. And I had this technological problem with my machine that in order to do these cycles I need to write a program which I did but for some reason the machine didn’t see this. I would click save, it would show me that it understood what it needed to do and it would do the previous program. It was very challenging to solve because I didn’t find any solutions on the internet and I still don’t understand what went wrong because people who used this machine before didn’t face the same difficulties as I did. It was, I was very devastated because from five samples that I tested this way, I would get the proper results only two or three, which is very bad for error propagation. It would be enormous and basically won’t tell me anything about, wouldn’t tell me anything about my experiments. I solved it by saving the program over and over at least twice, so the machine would definitely get me. I didn’t think that the solution would last long because it’s very temporary and I’m searching for a specialist who can help me to maybe reprogram the software or find the problem. Since I planned to test it, use it a lot.
Band 7+: Describe a challenging technological problem you faced
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I work in a lab that produces polymers and then tests them. Usually I run my tests on a so-called tensile machine. It works this way: I have a sample and this machine just stretches it until it tears and gives me the data, like strength, Young's modulus and elongation at break at the point when this break happened. Sometimes I don't need to tear immediately. I want to do some cycles of stretching it and going back in order to see how the material resists to that. And I had this technological problem with my machine that in order to do these cycles I need to write a program which I did but for some reason the machine didn't see this. I would click save, it would show me that it understood what it needed to do and it would do the previous program. It was very challenging to solve because I didn't find any solutions on the internet and I still don't understand what went wrong because people who used this machine before didn't face the same difficulties as I did. I was very devastated because from five samples that I tested this way, I would get the proper results only two or three, which is very bad for error propagation. It would be enormous and basically wouldn't tell me anything about my experiments. I solved it by saving the program over and over at least twice, so the machine would definitely get me. I didn't think that the solution would last long because it's very temporary and I'm searching for a specialist who can help me to maybe reprogram the software or find the problem. Since I planned to test it, use it a lot.
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Speaking Time: 115 seconds