英語で英語圏でプレセンする特訓の研修に行ってきました。聴衆全員と４秒ずつ視線を合わせる、たまに歩く、ジェスチャー多め、抑揚を大げさくらいに、地の声は普段より低め、ポインタ使うな、スクリーンは聴衆でない、結論 main point は開始一分以内に述べる、などなど。カルチャーショック。プラス cultural backgrounds に関する講義もみっちりと。
追記：モヒカン族なる言葉が流行ってるようで。セミナーでは Confucian/Socratic という分類を使ってました。孔子的/ソクラテス的。 Agree to disagree とか意見と人は別とか、英語圏ではそっちがデフォルト。
追記：しかしハッカーは、たとえば便利だけど処理が重くなる機能追加パッチとか白黒つけられない議論は、やってる暇あったらコード書きたいのでサクっとバージョンを分岐させちゃうかもな。そのへんは典型的欧米型議論とハッカー文化の違うところ。
以下は発表のスクリプト。でも一般のプレゼンでは聴衆の impression のうち What I say は 7% で、残りはHow I say てことらしいんでこれだけ読んでも伝わらないですけど。まあ学会では 50% くらいに上昇するかな。あと専門的には突っ込み所多いけどわざとです。
Good morning. I am Mitsuhiro Itakura from XXXXX.
[BG] In XXXXX, I'm studying material science, using computer simulations. My study can be summarized in just three words: that is, how things break. As you know, there are things that *should not* break, such as Nxxxxx Rxxxxx. If it should break, the consequence will be disastrous! By studying how things break, we can prevent these things from breaking.
[Topic & Main Point] Today, I'd like to briefly explain how things break. And I will show that knowing how things break is essential for your daily life.
[Org] In my presentation today, I'll start by showing that we break things in our daily life. Next, I'll show that some things break and some not, and why it is so. Finally, I'll show you how to and how not to break things.
[Logistics] My presentation today will take about 10 minutes. If you have any questions, please keep them until the end of my talk.
[Body]
We break things in our daily life. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. For example, we sometimes break a glass by mistake. We break, or tear apart, disposable chopsticks, waribasi. We tear open small sacks of soy sauce. We tear movie tickets. We break things in our daily life.
Here, I'd like to introduce an important concept: there are two kinds of materials. that is, hard and soft materials. Soft materials include metals, plastic, paper, clay, etc. What they have in common is that when bent, they bend. In fact, the word "plastic" is an adjective which means "bendable".
The other class, hard materials include diamond, which is the hardest material on the earth, and stone, glass, etc. When bent, they do not bend but breaks.
Now, suppose that, suppose that you are building an airplane. What material shoud you use? Paper? Cray? Not likely. Diamond? becasue it is the hardest material on the earth?
Well, in reality, metals are used. Metals bend, and airplanes are made of metals, therefore airplanes bend. You might have seen an airplane bend while you are in it and flying, and felt anxious: "Oh! Is it allright?" Yes. It IS allright. A diamond airplane wouldn't bend but it would break apart This is not good. This is worse. "bendability" is a very favorable propertiy for industrial purposes. Airplanes, ships, cars, trains, they are made of metals.
But why some things break and some not? To see that, let's go into the atomic scale. There are bondings between nearby atoms. When atoms are pulled apart with enough force, this bonding breaks, and basically this is how things break. But in soft materials, these bondings are flexible. Even if some bondings are broken, new bondings are re-arranged. This way, soft materials can change its shape, that is, they can bend. In hard materials, bondings are inflexible and cant be re-arranged. So once a bonding is broken, it is broken forever.
Now let's see more closely the process in which hard materials break. When a load is imposed to a material, all bondings share the load if the material is intact. But if some bondings are broken, they become a crack, and the remaining bonds feel much heavier load, and breaks much more easily. And they break and the remaining bonds feel yet heavier load and breaks yet more easily. This goes on and on and on until the thing breaks. In short, a crack breaks the thing.
We use this fact in our daily life. In chopsticks, small sacks, movie tickets, there is a small crack, and we can easily break these things.
As for glass, there are numerous small cracks (although they are microscopic and invisible to human eyes). Every time we clink the glass when we toast, the small cracks become longer and their number increases. This is a result of theorerical physics: When the force is stronger than one over squareroot of the crack length, it breaks. This means that, every time we clink a glass, it becomes more and more fragile.
[Summary] Now I'd like to summarize my presentation. So far, we have seen how things break, and now we have two practial knowledge for our daily life, that is, the way how to and how NOT to break things. If you want to break a thing, make a small crack: then you can break it easily. This saves your time. And if you want not to break a thing, avoid clinking. This saves your money.
Thank you for your attention, and do you have any questions or comments? .....
追記：しまった、 Better bend than break なんていうズバリな諺があったのか。使えばよかった。
