Presentations on experiments / lab work

[ergospherical]

I'm trying to prepare a slideshow presentation of some lab-work we've undertaken. It's to be around 15 minutes in length and comprise of a few different (but related) experiments.

I would like to ask if anybody knows of one or a few "exemplary" experimental physics presentations (on YouTube, etc.) of similar length so that I can get a sense of what style to aim for. What is an optimal structure of such a presentation? I'm interested to see what weighting is given to motivation/background, experimental considerations, results, error analysis, comments... any advice r.e. structure would be appreciated!

 

[Frabjous]

The best talks tell a story. It is rare that your audience does not need need to be motivated on why they should care and explained to on what they need to take away. Don’t overfill the talk.

 

[ergospherical]

Here's an example I found myself:



I think this is a really good presentation. It's informative but not overwhelming, and he explains all the key experimental considerations instead of just chugging through analysis. (There's a clear "story"!)

 

[ergospherical]

Another point; we have two experiments with very good data and one with mediocre data. I think it was my dad who introduced me to the concept of a "sh*t sandwich*... I'm assuming the best strategy is to put the mediocre experiment in the middle of the talk?

 

[Frabjous]

Another point; we have two experiments with very good data and one with mediocre data. I think it was my dad who introduced me to the concept of a "sh*t sandwich*... I'm assuming the best strategy is to put the mediocre experiment in the middle of the talk?

It depends on the story you want to tell. You could also place first with “we now can do better.” You could also place it last with ”there are things we still need to understand”

 

[Jody]

I just ran through some project where the results were not what I was expecting. Is it mediocre because it's wrong or is it mediocre because it wasn't what you were expecting? I think either way you can continue to tell the story as suggested above. Here's what we did and here's why it's wrong, and what we should have done... lalalala... next steps or what we recommend for the next person. We thought that doing X would get Y, but these are the lessons learned and why it did something different.

Something a lot of presenters mess up on (including myself) is keeping track of the time. I have a 7 minute presentation coming up on Thursday myself and those 7 minutes are way too short for what I would have liked to share. I would definitely be considerate of how much time you'll have on each slide if it has slides and you might even have less due to questions. Practice! Practice even if it's with nobody, and if you can practice with a few people or even a few 1:1 run it by some people, then you have the chance to see how long it takes, what kind of questions they might ask, or maybe they'll point out things they liked or didn't like (this graph didn't make sense, I don't understand why this is important, the arrows look silly).

Cater to your audience and make sure you understand what they want. My presentation for class it's not fun showing all the details up front and I love unraveling the mystery. At work: I better have a table with the results on the first slide or two. My managers can interpret graphs and I have it ready to go in case they ask, but they want the bottom line as soon as possible (doe this meet our criteria?). Here's what I have, here's how it improved or worsened, and then I walk them through the story... Here's what I tried, these are the knobs I turned, and here's what I saw. These results make sense because or don't make sense because of xyz fundamental.

Best of luck and have fun :)

 

[ergospherical]

Is it mediocre because it's wrong or is it mediocre because it wasn't what you were expecting?

The results themselves are still fairly accurate, but some of the assumptions are questionable and there are some aspects of the methodology I'd change in hindsight. Not the end of the world by any means, though.

 

[ergospherical]

Today’s the big day.
Write my slides in $\LaTeX$, feeling good.

 

[Frabjous]

Good luck.

 

[ergospherical]

That was quite fun, actually! As soon as I started talking I sort of forgot about nerves and stuff - one of the professors marking it commented that the style was very conversational but that he actually quite liked it as opposed to reading from a script. I also made sure to comment a fair bit on the stuff that wasn't quite right, which the panel seemed to appreciate.