Blog Entry 1

For what I've learnt over these few weeks, one thing I learnt about is the types of chemical products. Chemical products are primarily classified into 4 categories: commodities, micro-structured, molecular and chemical products. Commodities refer to products made in large quantities through reactions and unit operations. Micro-structured products refer to products which serve a singular usually niche purpose. Molecular products are small in size and are mostly discovered through research. Lastly, chemical devices are made for our personal convenience to help us in our daily lives.

We also learnt about pain points during these few weeks. Pain point are a specific problem or difficulty faced by consumers while using a product. One example could be the quality of a product being less than satisfactory, or the product actually causing harm to the consumer while it is being used.

After learning about all of these concepts, we were then tasked to come up with a product that could make use of these concepts. My group brainstormed for a week or two, and we eventually settled on a product that to our knowledge, had not been created before. insect repellent is often pungent or at the very least, is not very appealing in smell. Our group intended to create insect repellent that doubled in function, being both an insect repellent, as well as being a deodorant.

Learning Reflections -

• I believe that Tuckman's team formation model is very useful. In the process of forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning, the group would be able to cooperate with each other, which would eventually lead to achieving the required tasks.
• After performing literature review for 5 sources on topics related to the product that we wanted to create, it made me realise that literature review is actually very useful in gaining more in depth knowledge on the theories behind our product, as well as allowing us to decide how feasible the product is.
• For the first practical, we were required to disassemble a coffee machine, and study the inner workings of the coffee machine, before having to reassemble the coffee machine, in a process also referred to as reverse engineering. This experience was very interesting and surprisingly fun, as I had no idea that the inner workings of a common coffee machine were as complicated as they were.