Desas tries studying

Going back to basics yields a printable, transparent plastic that’s highly conductive

It was a simple idea—maybe even too simple to work.

Research scientist James Ponder and a team of Georgia Tech chemists and engineers thought they could design a transparent polymer film that would conduct electricity as effectively as other commonly used materials, while also being flexible and easy to use at an industrial scale.

They’d do it by simply removing the nonconductive material from their conductive element. Sounds logical, right?

The resulting process could yield new kinds of flexible, transparent electronic devices—things like wearable biosensors, organic photovoltaic cells, and virtual or augmented reality displays and glasses.

Please, for the love of God, please, make your papers more understandable.

Fuck you

Sincerely,

In the above example, 'huge' is not a very precise term. Could mean anything from "lots" to "About the size of a battleship" to "bigger than expected". Not a very precise term. I'm not sure what OP's field is, but they should probably be using a word that's more specific like "Statistically Significant Differneces" instead of "Huge differences", or maybe "Widespread Impact" instead of "Huge Impact". Whoever is providing critique here should say "the use of 'huge' here is imprecise and can confuse what you're talking about, please use a more specific descriptor".

What people generally are asking for when they want something 'understandable' is Clarity. Complex topics are perfectly fine, but they need to be explained clearly. Purdue has a good guide here, which I'll share the outline of, because it's genuinely good advice for many genres or writing:

Go from old to new information and keep the timeline straight. No Dr. Who Plots.

Use Transitional words when bridging concepts. Words like however, therefore, in addition, also, but, moreover, etc.

Keep your sentence structure simple, and mind where you put subordinate clauses. This is really hard for ADHD people who srt of tend to zig-zag across concepts, but in general, it's better to have several simple sentences than one huge rambling one.

Use Active Voice. Good: "The Comittee decided to postpone the meeting". Bad: "A descision was reached to postpone the meeting by the comittee"

Use Parallel Contructions. If you're comparing several things, use the same gramatical structure to describe each thing.

Avoid Noun Strings. Good: "These projects will stimulate investments" Bad: "Investment Stimulation Projects"

Avoid using the noun version of verbs. Good: "The Plan was implemented sucessfully." Bad: "The implementation of the plan was sucessful."

Avoid Multiple Negatives. Double negatives are confusing as hell, triple negatives are worse.

Chose Action verbs over forms of "to be". Good: "TV can report on events much faster than newspapers." Bad: "One difference between TV and newspapers is the relative speed at which they can report on things."

How to Study when Stuck at Home

In light of the amount of schools/colleges being shut down globally thanks to the corona virus/covid-19, I thought a little info graphic could be of use to people! 

I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're asking about the strictest technical definitions of the words you used. In essence, that by toughness you are referring to "the ability of a material to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing" (definition found here), and by structural material you are referring to materials that bear a load (using one of the simplest definitions, found here). As such, I'm going to answer the question in that regard. If that's not what you meant, just let me know!

However, all that being said, I still can’t give a specific answer, such as X alloy, or Y composite, etc, one, because I’m not sure anyone has done a strict comparison across materials, and two because toughness can be difficult to categorize. We’re going to further narrow things down here by going with the general definition of toughness, and ignore the separate but similar category of fracture toughness.

Mathematically, toughness is the area under a stress-strain curve, so the toughest materials are those which are both strong and ductile. In general, this eliminates most ceramics, and tends to put metals above polymers (though there is considerable overlap). Composites tend to have toughness values in the same range, or slightly above, as polymers.

We could get real complicated, and start discussing the effect of temperature, and strain rate, and other factors that influence toughness, but I’ll keep things simple and present this fairly well-used plot (comparing toughness and strength of materials):

As we can see here (source), those materials which contact the edge of the “tough” side of the plot include metals and alloys, polymers, and rubbers. Looking into more detail at each area of the plot (click on the source link above for breakdowns of each material grouping), we can see that those metals and alloys with the highest toughness are nickel based alloys (superalloys), and those polymers include polyethylene. So you have three answers there: polyethylene, nickel-based superalloys, and certain rubbers.

Unfortunately I don’t have anything more specific than that. But don’t hesitate to let me know if I didn’t fully answer your question, or if you want me to go into more detail on any part of this explanation.

Also, for all the newbie professors out there: a syllabus is not just a greeting and a list of assignments. If you haven't given your students AT LEAST your office hours, your late work policy, and your preferred method of being contacted, then you have not given your students a syllabus it's just sparkling announcements.

But really. Sir. SIR. You teach Speech 100. This is one of the most basic classes with like, 20 of the most widely available accepted textbooks and you want me to pay sixty dollars for a pdf of a book that you rewrite every semester so that there are no previous editions?

Buddy this is interpersonal communication, not introductory rhetoric. Why is one of your *four* total assignments about Socrates?

Maybe it's the fact that I've taken Spch 100 interpersonal communication three times already, maybe it's the fact that I grew up with somebody who taught Spch 100 interpersonal communication from 1981 to 2018, but buddy what the fuck are you doing?

"Some of our lectures will only be available for 24 hours so it is up to you to stay on top of it."

Friend, you are teaching an asynchronous online 100-level class at a community college during a pandemic. Get off your high horse, a third of your students are probably parents. There is no reason whatsoever to limit access to course materials to 24 hours unless you are doing it to be a controlling asshole.

Also YOU published your class a day and a half late! You don't get to publish your class late with an incomplete syllabus and tell students to "stay on top of it." Especially not since that means that people have two fewer days to buy your PDF textbook and only one full day to prepare for your mandatory 1pm on a Tuesday zoom meeting!

Why do you require me to have access to a printer for an online class? Oh yeah it's because you expect me to print out and draw on sections of your $60 ebook.

SIR. No thank you.

Kids, new students: this is a level of bullshit and disorganization from a professor that you do not have to put up with. This is a neatly ordered series of red flags that say "this professor is going to be absolutely unbearable."

"This Class Is Not A Safe Space"

"Discussion question: If you are MALE say four things that you think females normally say. If you are FEMALE say four things that you think males normally say."

Prager U vid is one of three total resources on the topic of climate

Chris Rock "How to keep from getting your ass kicked by the police" video as part of the "conflict resolution" unit

Democratic-Capitalism-Exceeds-Socialism-in-Economic-Efficiency-as-Well-as-in-Morality-by-Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali.pdf (Paper by the Hoover Institution)

This uncredited image:

The Unfortunate Fallout of Campus Postmodernism - Scientific American.pdf

A video on the "proven" techniques of how to spot a lie from the author who owns this webpage (time to update your security certs, Pamela):

And just for shits and giggles, the first assignment is due one month into the semester so you'll have no idea what his grading style is until well past the add/drop date and that assignment is the only one that requires the $60 pdf textbook that he wrote. This is HIS description of that assignment:

Purpose – To check that the student has completed initial tasks; included, but not limited to: 1. Having access to the textbook. 2. Demonstrating that the student has interacted with the text. 3. Reading and understanding the text.

Buddy.

No.

Every department has That One Fucking Asshole who everyone wants to see gone but students tend to complain about personalities or "why is my speech teacher assigning an economic ethics paper published by a conservative think-tank funded by the Waltons" and that is not how it's done. The administration may agree that he's an asshole, but "he's an asshole" isn't a good enough reason not to renew someone's contract and go through the time and effort to bring in a new hire.

So you get them on bureaucratic shit. "Published his course late," "did not provide office hours," "did not provide a way to communicate and did not respond to calls, emails, or canvas messages," "set required meeting times for asynchronous courses" - THIS is the shit that the administration can pin a professor to the wall on because it isn't student said vs. Professor said.