Real-Life Communication
You are a semiconductor technician working for a company that manufactures
microchips to be used in computers. As a fabrication technician, your work
environment is the "clean room" where the microchips are made.
Because
it's important that the clean room remain as dust-free as possible, you wear
a clean-room suit over your regular clothes, as well as gloves and a surgical
mask.
In your facility, there are eight different stages to the production
process. You work in the section that involves putting circuit patterns on
to the silicon wafers, which are the basic components of the microchip. This
requires you to be proficient on three different types of machinery.
This
morning when you arrive at work, there is an email message from a secretary
with the public relations department. Each year, several representatives from
the company give presentations about their careers to local students. The
secretary wants to know if you would consider giving a brief description of
your job to a class of seventh graders.
The request unsettles you.
On one hand, you're flattered because you know that your supervisor must have
specifically recommended you for the assignment. At the same time, you are
a bit concerned. Your job is highly technical. Explaining it to a group of
seventh grade students with little knowledge of physics or chemistry is going
to be challenging, to say the least!
Despite your reservations, you
agree to the request. You begin working on the presentation that evening.
First,
you make a list of the terms you will need to explain in your talk. Next,
you write down a definition for each word. Here is the list of terms you will
need to explain your job, along with their definitions:
- Microchip: An individual integrated circuit built in a tiny, layered
rectangle or square on a silicon wafer.
- Silicon: An element commonly found in sand, used to make semiconductors
(or microchips) and one of the most common elements found on Earth.
- Fab: A semiconductor fabrication facility. Under precise conditions,
silicon or other semiconductor materials are transformed along with other
basic elements into semiconductors or microchips.
- Semiconductor: A material (such as silicon) that can be altered
to either conduct electrical current or block its passage. Microchips are
typically fabricated on semiconductor materials such as silicon, germanium
or gallium arsenide.
- Wafer: A very thin slice of silicon that functions as the base
material for building microchips.
Now you have everything you need to write out your presentation.