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CONTENTS
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The main purpose of an abstract is to contextualize and describe the work in a concise and easily understood manner. The abstract should not contain highly technical and scientific phrases. Potential reader from other engineering background can understand your work. Read through the entire thesis and distill main points or a short summary. Sentence connectivity and clarity in writing are extremely important in the abstract. Clarity is achieved by providing information in a predictable order (something like storyline). Consolidate the below points into 2 -- 4 paragraphs. Remember that the sentences must be linked to each other, similar to a story line. The examiner will like to read the abstract and encouraged to read the thesis.
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- General and specific background (around 75 words). Introduce the area of science that you will be speaking about and the state of knowledge in that area. Start broad in the general background, then narrow down to the relevant topic. Do not add much jargon or description.
- Knowledge Gap (around1 100 words). Now that you’ve stated what is already known, state what is not known. What specific question or challenge is your work attempting to answer? The new knowledge in your work.
- Method (around 100 words). State your general experimental or numerical approach, methodology to answer the question which you just posed in the ``Knowledge Gap" section.
- Main results outcome (around 150 words). Provide a high-level description of your most important results, and discuss in 4-5 lines. This is important to show how credible work is and what are the results.
- Conclusion (around 100 words). Describe how your findings influence our understanding of the field and/or their implications for future studies. What new knowledge you are adding to the existing state-of-the-art.
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-- Write abstract after completing all chapters and appendices of the thesis. Then, revise the abstract after one day with fresh mood. -- Make sure that there are no spelling errors in the abstract. -- Try to main number words in the abstract between 150 and 300. |
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Introduction is the first chapter generally students prefer to write very early. The introduction shapes reader-expectations of what they will find by reading the thesis. Include some nice figures/illustration in the introduction. This will help readers to understand the research field effortlessly. You can cite figures from the literature and internet. However, if you have own prepared illustration/figure, it gives positive impact to the reader and indicates your creativity. The initial paragraphs describe broad area of your discipline and the bigger challenge in the field. Then, narrow down the description towards your specific field of research, and present overall challenge in your field. Discuss concept and overall objective of the work, including importance of the work. At the end of this chapter, a potential reader receive more clarity about the research area, research gaps, and why this research is so important, what value does this work carry, etc. This will set tone for the upcoming chapter, i.e., Literature review, and maintain continuity.
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Since almost all thesis/projects in the Waterpower laboratory belongs to hydropower and hydro turbine. The first and second paragraphs should talk about the Renewable energy and Sustainable energy broadly and the statistics. The third and fourth paragraphs should talk about the hydropower and hydroelectricity. Then, hydropower in Norway, if relevant. The subsequent paragraphs should talk about the hydraulic turbines towards your field of research. Then, you should write about the core discipline of your research work broadly. Remember that the language should never be highly technical in this chapter. Once you have introduced the research topic broadly in the previous paragraphs, you should now describe the core topic of research and the challenges in broad way. Discuss concept and overall objective of the work, including importance of the work. At the end of this chapter, a potential reader must be clear about the research area, research gaps, and why this research is so important, what value does this work carry, etc. This will set tone for the upcoming chapter, i.e., \Literature review, and maintain continuity.
This chapter should provide a comprehensive detail about the research, which you are going to present. You can also divide this chapter into subsections depending on need. The last paragraph (100 words) should outline the thesis/project chapters as well as broad organization.
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Write goal and main objectives of your research work at the end of the chapter. You should consider bullet points to write the objectives.
Chapter 2. Literature review
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Use free software Zotero for research article management. You can use some addons to manage literature efficiently, example, ZotFile, Better BibTeX, etc. Finding literature via Google Scholar and ResearchGate is practice. When you read the literature and research articles, it is good practice to write a summary paragraph (200 words) with some bullet points when you complete the reading. The collected summary will be helpful to write this chapter. It is also good practice to write this chapter along with your literature review. |
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Chapter 4. Results and discussions
Proposed length: 8 - 15 pages or depending on need
Once you have presented method in previous chapter, it is time to write results of scientific work. This chapter is very important. Well-thought sentences, clarity, clear figures, usage of tables are important. Avoid too many figures and, at same time, avoid too few figures. Selection of colors in the figures is also important. Try to use color-blind pattern of the figures. Black color line plots look more professional. Do not write unnecessary jargon. You may have several figures and data from the results however, appropriate selection of figures and the data are extremely important. This will convey the main results and the outcome. The description must be scientific, avoid usage of unnecessary words. This chapter must be directed to meet the goal and objective your research work. If you are unsure whether to include certain results, relook into your research tasks and decide whether the results are relevant to them. This chapter should be written in the simple present tense. Most people are likely to write this chapter by preparing an outline, setting out the broad thrust of the argument, and support the hypothesis.
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There is no well-defined structure for this chapter because research content vary from one topic to another. However, you can think of following questions while writing this chapter.
Extra read: How to write dissertation discussion chapter |
Chapter 5. Conclusions
Proposed length: 1 - 2 pages
The conclusion chapter is equally important. The conclusion should address all the same parts as the thesis while making it clear that the reader has reached the end of the work. You are indicating the reader that your research is finished and what your findings are. Do not use references/bibliography in this chapter and make sure to use a tense that indicates essential points you mentioned in your chapters. Pay special attention to make sure you explain why your thesis is relevant to the field of research and how the results of your research fit in. No extra sections in this chapter.
A good way to start a conclusion is by restating the thesis goal. The next step is to review the main points from the thesis. You can repeat striking quotations or statistics, but do not use more than two. As the conclusion represents your own closing thoughts on the topic, it should mainly consist of your own words. In addition, conclusions can contain recommendations to the reader or relevant questions that further the thesis. End your conclusion with something memorable, such as a question, warning, or call to action. Your reader will probably wonder: "Why should I care?" By ending your conclusion with a broad question that causes the reader to consider how to use the information you provided them with, you can help them answer this question.
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At some point when you are toward the end of your writing, remove yourself from your work and free-write to these questions:
You can also think of following points.
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Some Useful academic phrases for conclusion
The paper concludes by arguing \\
On this basis, we conclude that \\
The authors concluded that --- is not confined to \\
This allows the conclusion that \\
The findings of this study can be understood as \\
This may be considered a promising aspect of \\
This may be considered a further validation of \\
Remaining issues are subject of \\
In summary, this paper argued that \\
This aspect of the research suggested that \\
In conclusion, --- seems to improve \\
In summary, this paper argued that \\
In conclusion, it would appear that \\
The analysis leads to the following conclusions: \\
It is difficult to arrive at any conclusions with regard to \\
The main conclusion that can be drawn is that \\
The present findings confirm \\
As we have argued elsewhere --- may be considered a promising aspect of \\
Ideally, these findings should be replicated in a study where \\
By using --- we tested the hypothesis that \\
In conclusion, --- seems to improve \\
Broadly translated our findings indicate that \\
This is an important finding in the understanding of the \\
More generally, these basic findings are consistent with research showing that \\
In addition, these findings provide additional information about \\
Despite the limitations these are valuable in light of \\
Overall, our results demonstrate a strong effect of \\
Nevertheless, we found \\
To our knowledge, this is the first report of \\
Our results on --- are broadly consistent with \\
The broad implication of the present research is that \\
This conclusion follows from the fact that \\
Collectively, our results appear consistent with \\
Importantly, our results provide evidence for \\
Results provide a basis for \\
This experiment adds to a growing corpus of research showing \\
Our data indicate that --- a result that casts a new light on \\
These findings provide a potential mechanism for \\
We have shown that \\
Our data suggest that we still have a long way to go to...
Future work
Proposed length: 1/2 page
The future work is a place for you to explain where, in your opinion, the results can lead and potential extension of the work. What do you think are the next steps to take? What other questions do your results raise? Do you think certain paths seem to be more promising than others? Another way to look at the future work section, is a way to sort of ``claim” an area of research.
References
Bibliography / references are generally placed before the appendix. Here you will list all the references you have used in the chapters. There is no specific guideline on how many minimum numbers of references should be included. It is equally important to avoid very few or very high number of references. Also avoid citing nonscientific websites or contents. For citation of references, we generally follow numbering style. That means the references are cited in sequence as you go on citing the references. The current citation style is borrowed from the ASME Journal of Fluids Engineering. Some examples of citations can be found here: References - ASME. The required BibTeX (*.bst) for the LaTeX reference organization is already included in Overleaf. This file is also available at the repository: https://ctan.org/pkg/asmejour?lang=en. You can directly export bibtex styled references from zotero using export options and citation type BibTeX.
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How to cite your project work Since the project work of Autumn semester is not publishable, you need to create bibliography manually in 'bibliography.bib' file. It is acceptable to cite your project work in the master thesis. Use following guide to create bib item manually to cite project work: @mastersthesis{..., % Write citation id here, your last name and year.
address = {Trondheim, Norway},
title = {...}, % Write title of your project in small-case
school = {Department of Energy and Process Engineering,
Norwegian University of Science and Technology},
author = {..., ...}, % Write your last name, first name
year = {...} % Write year of project submission
} |