Well hello product managers and welcome to this presentation on more cooks in the kitchen getting engineering involved in discovery. My name is Tim Sims. I'm a director of engineering at full story. And you might be asking yourself, how can I learn more about product management from an engineering guy. I get it. I promise you stick with me. We're going to have a lot of fun together unpacking this topic that is really near and dear to my heart. Because I do see a huge opportunity that's not being realized when it comes to getting engineers more involved in the discovery process. So we're going to unpack that talk about how it plays out why it's valuable and some tips for how you might be able to instrument this in your own organizations. And speaking of which, I do need to point out as a disclaimer that I recognize different teams have different modes or different ways of operating. That's fine. Maybe some of this content isn't applicable. Maybe you're already doing many of these things. That's great. So my encouragement would just simply be take the nuggets that are beneficial. Take the nuggets that are helpful. And hopefully you can use that in order to build better teams that build better products. So at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. All right, let's go ahead and get started. More cooks in the kitchen. So have you ever heard the phrase, too many cooks in the kitchen? Yeah, of course you have, right? Don't have too many cooks in the kitchen when my device and the premise behind this is quite simply that when you have more people in the room, it makes it more difficult to come to any type of decision because you've got lots of different inputs and competing forces. And yet in product teams for product, it's all about getting more information, more data, more evidence, more validation, and more cooks should be welcomed into the kitchen as a result. And yet in many product teams, again, not all, but in many product teams today, there's a portion of that product triad that doesn't have a lot of involvement in the discovery process. And that is, of course, engineers. So there's a huge opportunity, as I mentioned, in order to combat this, and we're going to talk a little bit about why it's valuable, why it's important. Okay, so here's the question. Maybe you've asked this in your mind, how can I get engineers to move faster and ship features more quickly? Yeah, I think we've all been there, right, even as an engineering manager, like thoughts come through my mind about how can I get more or get engineers to move more quickly. Maybe this is something that you've asked, hopefully not out loud. But maybe you had maybe, I don't know, like the relationship you have with your engineering teams or your engineering counterparts. But this is kind of the crux of why this is important, we want to move faster, we want to move more quickly. And this question comes to mind because we think that there's a secret formula for getting engineers to move faster. And so this idea of having engineers involved more in discovery kind of seems counterintuitive, right? Like my engineers are already overworked in, yeah, the backlog is a million miles long and they don't have time to do what they're currently doing, let alone be involved in the discovery process. So we're going to talk a little bit about that as well here in just a little bit.  So you might recognize this chart, this is sort of a diagram that, of course, we know this as waterfall, where you've got different phases of the development process, starting with requirements, and then it goes into design. And then those designs get turned into a specification that gets developed phase three. And then that implementation goes into testing. And then after testing is done with QA or test engineering or whatever the case might be, it goes to deployment. And then that cycle sort of continues on. And again, we know this as waterfall in software development. And part of the problem with this, there are several, but part of the problem is this model kind of assumes that requirements are fixed, that they're not changed, that they don't change, that you can define what a requirement is and then get through the process. And hopefully by the time you get through phase five, those requirements are still valid, still appropriate, still relevant. And of course, that's not always the case, especially in technology where things are moving so rapidly. The other issue with this is we tend to see some silos of information, right? Between these phases, there's usually some sort of artifact that gets developed or gets created to sort of communicate that to whatever that next group is. And so because you have development in like later in the process, like in phase three starting, it's oftentimes the case that feasibility hasn't been sort of addressed or hasn't been looked at earlier in the process when it comes to requirements and such. So we like to say that having engineers involved early in the process is critical, is a critical thing to your development software cycle. So again, we know this as waterfall. We sort of over time modified it to look kind of like this. The thought being, if we can create this cycle that's faster, that's more nimble, that's quicker to iterate, then we can ship things faster, right? And so the idea is that this loop is continuous on the inside, but there's data that gets fed into it in order to start the process. Once it started, it just keeps on going. And out of that, we have sort of our CI CD in order to create consistency in our deployments and such. So C planning requirements, analysis and design, implementation, testing, evaluation, those things just continue to happen. We get good hopefully at being incremental and being iterative. And as a result of that, we're able to get more things coming out of that green arrow for deployment. And so we know this as kind of the agile model, right? And yet we still see some challenges in this model, because again, planning requirements that light blue arrow in the upper left, there is oftentimes siloed and reserved for maybe it's project managers, maybe it's UX researchers, maybe it's UX designers. Wherever it's like siloed and we oftentimes don't have folks involved in that part of the process. And becomes a bit of a stickling point. Why? Well, let's talk about the discovery and delivery ownership. This is really where I feel a lot of teams end up struggling. Because for discovery, these are sort of the questions that we might be asking what problems do customers have? Which problems are worth solving? How might we solve these problems? Those are typical for discovery and the goal of discovery. And then on the delivery side, it's like, let's build and ship a product. And so naturally, you oftentimes have engineers really focus in on that delivery part, let's build and ship the product. And you've got project managers, you know, serve owning that process of discovery. And so why, well, we won't talk about the why as of yet, but the result of this is that we get these silos, right? That we just looked at in the previous slide. What we really need, love this slide, is a good pairing, right? I don't know how many foodies we have out there. And I by no stretch would claim to know a lot about this topic of pairing. But that idea is fascinating, right? It's intriguing. There are certain compliments to a good meal in a fine wine that really work to bring out the flavors or bring out the aroma or bring out the flavor of different foods that we eat. And the pairing is what's magical, right? So, yeah, again, what I try to do, someone told me this a long time ago. I don't know if this is going to gross you out, but if we have a steak lovers in the house, that's me. I do enjoy good steak. They say, at least this is what I've heard, you can certainly cut and eat your steak anyway that you want. But they say that a great way to eat steak is to cut your piece in a bite-size manner. That's pretty self-explanatory, right? If you're going to put it in your mouth, it's going to be bite-size.  But you don't swallow just yet. Instead, you take the wine and then you take a sip of the wine. And it's that wine flavor mixed and merged with the flavors that are coming from that steak that make it just absolutely delicious. So, give it a try if you've never done that before. I'm sure there are other foods where that's also the case. But why am I saying this? The point is that we need a good pairing. Good pairing. And the pairing here for FRAG teams is discovery and delivery. Now, discovery, building the right things, delivery, building the things right. And the idea is that you're continually going back and forth between discovery and delivery. Delivery is being fed from discovery. And as we're doing that, we're taking things on at the same time. So it's not like doing one thing and then you don't do it anymore. It's a continual process. You see those two horizontal lines there? Those are happening at the same time. And I would encourage you to really consider having engineers part of that discovery process. And we'll talk a little bit about that right now. So as we go through this presentation, I just want to introduce you to some of the cooks at Full Story. This is Chef Lucy who says, I like the triad partnership between engineering design and product rather than the typical model of FRAG and design, funneling feedback towards engineering. Instead of a waterfall model, we're able to be true product partners and spend less time on communicating and context sharing. That's a huge, huge time sink in just how much time do we spend in trying to explain context and re-explain context because engineers specifically aren't necessarily involved earlier on the process. Because of that, you continuously are trying to help them understand context, understand the problem space, understand what customers are truly needing, and whatever it is that you're building applies to the greater business or the greater strategy. You might recognize this definition from Tim Herbig who says, at its core, product discovery is the evidence-informed process of reducing uncertainty as you find problems worth solving and solutions worth building. It emerges through a series of nonlinear activities conducted as a cross-functional team, so important. Find problems worth solving, solutions worth building, doing that as a cross-functional team. So we've got problem discovery and we've got solution discovery. And oftentimes we think of discovery in just that first box, the problem discovery space. And then after problem discovery, it's like now we're ready to build it. We're ready to look at the problem, now it's time to go out and deliver on that and get that implementation. Understand the problem space, validating that existing or future problems are future problems worth solving by answering these questions. What's the impact of the problem? How's the problem manifested? How widespread is the problem? I'm going to pick customers to solve it and how does this problem affect our business? And on the solutions discovery side of potential solutions, because there's probably more than one way to, I won't say that, but the phrase is like more than one way to skin the cat. I don't know if we have a way to say that more animal friendly, but it's a phrase, please don't be offended. But all the potential solutions choose the best option while validating each to properly de-risk along the dimensions of feasibility, usability, and viability. By answering, can we build it? Can customers use it? Can the business support it? Problem discovery and solution discovery. Engineers are really good at the solution discovery piece, right? We're problem solvers as engineers and we just relish in the idea that there's a problem that we can find a solution for. And oftentimes it's that building of things that really energizes engineers. But oftentimes there's an energy that comes out of being involved, like being in that problem discovery space as well. Oftentimes engineers haven't experienced that enough to know whether or not it's something that they'll really, that they'll really enjoy. But I promise you, as we go through this, you'll learn that there are ways to really get engineers to really enjoy and embrace the problem discovery space. Just as much as a solution discovery space. Okay, here's another chef. This is Chef Prashant. He says, our team is happy to gather customer feedback to consider what we can do to make an impact next quarter, as opposed to waiting for someone to tell us what we should focus on. Here's what Chef Ralph says. Love this picture with the tilted sunglasses. Way to go, Chef Ralph. I really enjoy the creative problem solving of discovery. Again, like solution space, right? This is when your creative neurons are really firing and you're exploring the cross section between customers, their challenges and what's possible. It's that intersection of things that's really interesting and fulfilling from Chef Ralph. So why should we get engineers more involved in discovery? I realized that was, you know, that was a big lead up to this question here. Like, why should we get engineers more involved in discovery? I'm just going to pause as you ponder this for yourself. Maybe you've got engineers somehow involved in the solution discovery, or maybe they're already doing some things in the problem discovery space. Maybe you guys are doing that as a team, like you have activities for problem discovery that you guys are collaborating on and doing together. I think that's fantastic. But why should we get engineers more involved in discovery? There are many reasons I'm going to focus on three. Here's the first. Who's that? Well, that's your customer. Your customer is like, what in the world is going with the salad? I don't know if the salad's missing salad dressing or what, but the point here is that the first reason for getting engineers involved in discovery is an increased customer empathy. So your customer has a problem, clearly by his expression. And we're trying to get everyone involved to understand, to really feel the problem and to create that customer empathy, because there's no greater motivation for engineers than to experience that pain for themselves that customers are facing. So increased customer empathy. That's the first. Here's what Chef Clint says, directly hearing from the customer allows for shared language, making the issues they are facing understandable. Understanding that perspective and how problems impact them specifically changes how you think about size, scope and priority of possible solutions. It's great for context. Okay, sometimes it's critical that folks hear directly from a customer versus having it translated through multiple people to really get that. So the more engineers can be in the room when these problems are being discussed by customers, the better. I truly believe that. Here's what Chef Jordan says, customer interviews provide useful insight into the specific problems we help customers solve. But even more importantly into how customers feel about using our software. I learned something unique about each customer's experience within moments of talking to them a difficult feat without interviews. Okay, so that's the first reason increased customer empathy. Here's a second. What is going on here? Second is self discovered context. We've been talking about this idea of context context is so really important. There are many, many, many decisions that are being made by engineers and being able to have that first hand context that engineers can discover for themselves get to a point where they're understanding it. They can embrace that context and utilize it when it comes to making making those decisions. And that in turn helps engineering move, move more quickly. So self discovered context. And again, I think this is the reason why this is on screen is because this is a vegan bowl, right? Lots of vegetables. And you would never stick a slab of steak in this bowl here because you know the context is it needs to have vegetables. It's vegetable only right? It's it's vegan. Okay, so here's what chef Evan says. He says I love to see teams dripping with context so everyone is equipped to make informed decisions. The PM should go on vacation. How many of you guys go on vacation? Hopefully you do. PM should go on vacation and the team should generally be able to make the right decisions for the customer. Lots of decisions need to be made. We don't want the PM to be the bottleneck, but we want to use this self developed context in order to help drive and direct those decisions that do need to be made. Okay, here's the third. Why should engineers be involved in discovery? This guy right here and just let you digest what you see here. But you see how distraught this guy is? That's a picture of you. That's a product manager. And the point of this slide is the reason is so that you can share the load because look at him. He's like exhausted. He's realizing he needs more cooks in the kitchen. He's all there by himself. Well, with the exception of his design friend in the back who's washing pots, I think. But he's thinking like wouldn't it be great if I could share the load if I wasn't the only one doing this? Being a PM is sometimes a very lonely, very lonely space, right? Because you're taking on the brunt of these problems that customers are having and you're dealing with lots of different stakeholders and opinions and everything else. And it'd be great to be able to share that load with the rest of your team. So here's what Chef said, says it's I've got more than enough time to do everything I need to do, including all the vetting and validation work on future requests coming in from all our product stakeholders. It's from Chef never said. Yeah, wait for it. Okay. So in all seriousness, here's from Chef Ivan, one of our practice designers. I think about the Steve Jobs quote a lot design isn't just the look and feel designs also how something works, especially true in practice line for that reason. It's crucial to have input from an engineer who has a deep understanding of the inner workings of a feature. So share the load. All right. So how might we get engineers more involved in discovery or HMW, right? How might we get engineers more involved in discovery. So now we're going to shift gears and talk a little bit about the tactics that we can use in order to get engineers involved. Okay. So let's, we're going to go through these pretty quickly. There's four stages to this invite, equip, activate and celebrate. So on the invite, we've got to invite engineers into the kitchen first and foremost. So how do you do that? One, let's state the problem. The share of the impact of not having engineers involved in holistic discovery. Again, we just looked at at some of those read we looked at three reasons right but that context one will resonate there very strongly with with engineers, especially as they're asking lots of questions. It's like, well, you know, what might be more effective is to get you involved more directly in assessing and understanding this context around whatever the problem space is, right? So let's find ways to, to get you involved because without it, you're just going to continue asking questions and I know that's that could be frustrating because now you're waiting for, for a response and that likes or holds you up and such. So that's one way to actually state the problem to be generous with information, right? There's no better way to build trust with your engineers. In fact, because you do hold the keys for with all this data that you have gained from all the customer reviews that you're doing. Maybe you've got some analytics or you've got other tools in place to to really surface information for yourself and data that you can use. Be generous with that information. And by doing so, you'll build trust with the engineers. Three cast the vision of one team. Love this. It's not a we versus them. It's like, we're all in this together. And if you can cast this one team where it's like there's no egos and there's no like sort of structure to it, but we're all involved in this because as a team, we've got goals and we have objectives that we're trying to accomplish. And then four, as for optional participation, don't force this on engineers. That's one sure way to make it unsuccessful, but start small. Start with, you know, who might be interested in getting involved in a customer call once a week or who might be interested in saying up a regular weekly meeting where we're talking about the problems that we're intending to solve. Or how can we sort of meet on a regular cadence at the start of our development cycle at the start of our process to define what these requirements are together. Let's find who those champions are within the engineering side that can that can help get that get that through. Okay, so share the problem be generous with information cast the vision of one team and ask for optional participation that's in bite. Just a second equip. Right, so no chef can be successful without the right tools, talking about the tools here. One, Leah discovery workshop. So explain what discovery is and not. Again, a lot of times folks are thinking that discovery is just that problem discovery space, and then solution discovery is actually the implementation. Like draw the contrast of we need to make sure that we know the right things to build. And then we need to know how we're going to build the right things using the right solutions right so help engineers understand and demystify this idea of what what discovery is you can lead a workshop. We've seen that very successful where you know, engineers are curious about what what that is, and how they might be able to play a part in the discovery process to host a book club. Synchronized reading to foster discussion share and understand discovery. We did this a full story. We went through the inspired book by Marty Cagan. I'm sure you're all familiar with that book fantastic, fantastic read. We went through it in 10 weeks actually have a slide on this in a bit. Let me just get to it. Here's a book club slide right here where you're not going to be able to read this, but reach out to me and I'll send you the sort of how how we broke it up into 10 weeks so you don't have to squint in order to try to read this. Let's go back. Create space for discovery work. Again, what's what's difficult here is when you're empowering engineers to actually do this discovery is to help them understand how they're going to fit that into their existing work. I mean it's probably the number one challenge right. How much time can you offer engineers to dig into problem discovery and solution discovery. And so you can time box discovery activities like prototype experimentation. I've seen that done very well, especially when it comes to like evaluating different options for solutions and such being able to create a time box for for that is is is really effective. But ultimately, find ways that engineers don't feel like they're doing discovery on their own time, but find ways to work it in. Sometimes that means sticking discovery tasks on to your JIRA board. I think that's a great way to do as well so that there's no perception of the work on the JIRA board is the most important stuff. And then we're going to find time outside that in order to do discovery because the reality is if it's not on the board then it's likely not to get done for for many reasons. We won't dive into that right now. Okay, and last but not least share exemplars of successful discovery. So map out the steps of your discovery process help engineers understand how to connect the dots between idea. To the problems to the potential solutions vetting those coming up with the solution and then getting that into the delivery process. So we do that using a framework called powerful execution. You're not going to read this it's you're going to squint but this is our discovery flow chart and though you can't read it. It takes things from that very ideation stage and ideation meaning not just that you're generating ideas but your. Yeah, you're curating ideas from all your various stakeholders and data points that you might have. And then how is that sort of matriculate its way all the way down into that yellow sort of de risking space where we're talking about feasibility we're talking about value we're talking about business viability. And then like a little bit later in the process we talked about usability, but this is kind of how we lay this out and might not look the same way for for you and your teams but this is a great way to. To help engineers just really understand the mapping and create a mental map for themselves to to be able to. To visualize like how how how they can sort work things through the process. I just mentioned the execution tree this is kind of framework it was I think it was invented by Spotify so there's a blog post about that. Do Google search stuff execution tree you'll learn more about that maybe it's something appropriate for you as well. Okay, so activate number three. So look at this kitchen here. We get everybody's working collectively working as a team. Everyone's got their job their role and they're sort of effective at that now the analogy isn't quite. Yeah, it's not great necessarily because what we're talking about is having additional context but I guess you could say, you know the folks who are plating on the front left I guess the guy who's bending down right there on the left. Like, you know, you sort of have to know like what are the, what are the, I don't know where the foods that are going to go on that plate in order to know like how or you got to know like what the presentation should look like or I don't know I'm making it up now. But the point is we need to activate. So let's talk about that carve out time from weekly stand weekly team meetings. Yeah, we do this we've got discovery activities where we're looking at, you know, sessions of customers like trying to figure out like where the problems that that folks are breaking down. We call it game film. You might call it something else where you can sort of look at and internalize as a team and yeah just talk about like where the where the trouble spots are. That's just one aspect of it. There is also sort of aspect of, and we talked about this a little bit of creating space where you're actually diving into potential solutions and your brainstorming is such like you know use, use your weekly meetings that you have in order to really activate this concept of, of engineers being a part to empower empower with data access, talked about you hold the keys right so how about enumerating and providing access to these customer interviews, there are lots of tools available and or do that if you use gong or other similar tools make those available customer behavior data is another one. And there are other data sources that I know that you're using in order to gain more context that make those available as a from a self serve standpoint so folks don't feel like they're asking a favor in order to get access to that. Three, adopt processes that focus on customer insight, find simple tools and frameworks that can be used to share learnings from customers, like the customer interview pyramid principle. Yeah, you should Google that one as well it's a really good one you guys are probably familiar with that game film and watch parties we talked about that. And for conductor regular discovery activity interview customers that you know, let me just emphasize this point. Discovery isn't just customer interviews, right. It's a piece of it, but, but it's not the whole thing, customer interviews is a subset maybe that's the part that that folks get my engineers get most anxious about it's like, I don't want I don't feel like I'm good at talking to customers. That's fine there's lots of, there's lots of room within the discovery space where where maybe they can do something that's that is of interest to them. Okay, run surveys, collaboratively review problems talked about that bill prototype experiment with ideas de risk solutions. So that's active and last but not least celebrate. There we go. Did we did a thing. Now let's celebrate a thing, right connect the dots show the connection between problem discovery and solution discovery. Show how these are things that we came up with in the problem discovery as we dove more deeply into the problem space, and we came up with some potential solutions for that. This is how we went through the process of choosing the right solution, help to connect the dots it'll make it much easier and reduce that cognitive load for for folks. There's tools like the opportunity solution tree Teresa Torres. It's a great resource as well. Take a look at that if you're not familiar with it. Recognize when engineers create wins. Maybe it was hopping on customer interview celebrate that a deep dive in the customer problem celebrate that a fruitful ideation session celebrate that successful experiment or working on prototypes celebrate celebrate celebrate all those things so that you're building this and reinforcing this culture of discovery and how important it is, you can very, very much be successful at, you know, encouraging and fostering more of that activity by celebrate. So that's definitely what you want to do and it's fun, right, you know, this work should be fun. And that's a big motivator for folks. We like to be recognized to so all those things can can certainly help when it comes to further adoption. And then last and not least share the wins with others in the company as you continue building culture provides success stories to encourage other engineers to participate in discovery. This is the superpower here. Again, we're going to start with some an optional set of, well, an option set, we're going to start with engineers who opt into this process. But what's going to happen is they'll start to see because you're sharing these wins with with others they're going to see like how effective and how enjoyable and how, how important these discovery activities are, and then they'll to in turn be interested in getting involved in the story. So that's it. Thank you. Really appreciate the time and the opportunity to speak with you here. And if you want to connect with me here's just a couple ways to do it Tim sims at full story that comments email but LinkedIn. You know, try to be active on on LinkedIn regularly so definitely reach out and stay in touch. And if you've got questions I've got a bunch of resources as well that I mentioned throughout this presentation here so if you're interested in this or you want the slide deck then happy share that just reach out. Okay, well thank you product leaders really appreciate you guys keep up the good fight and hopefully as you start introducing engineers in the discovery, you guys will make your teams more successful and your teams being more successful means that your business will make better products. So that's my hope. My name is Tim Sims. Thank you everyone. Have a good one. We'll talk to you soon. Bye.


Hello in this lecture we're going to work some smaller test type questions which will be basically the size of what a multiple choice question can be but we will not be looking at the multiple choice answers we'll just be looking at the size of a problem that could fit into that format. First one says if a firm forecast sales of 244,000 and its break even support accounting instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course each course then organized in a logical reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as excel practice problems PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it are 187 the margin of safety in dollars will be what so if we're talking about the break even what we need to know here of course is what is the break even point what is the margin of safety break even point in dollars means how many units how many dollars of sales do we need to have in order to not have income or loss but to break even so that point is going to be the 244,000 I'm sorry that point is going to be the 187,000 that's where that's how much sales we need to have in order not to have income not have a loss if we're estimated or projecting ourselves to actually be 244,000 it might be useful for us to think okay what's the marginal unit of safety margin of safety being the amounts over the break even point so we'd say oh worst case you know if we have the 244 is what we're projecting to make in sales that's a margin of safety over the bare minimum that we want to do in order to be making money at least at the bare minimum and that gives us a margin of safety of 57,000 during a recent fiscal year company reported pre-tax income of 128,000 a contribution margin ratio of 25% and total contribution margin of 430,000 total variable cost must have been what so we're looking for variable costs so we're going to write out our calculation here and it's kind of like an income statement but it's on a cost volume basis rather than on basically a way a normal income statement would be so rather than revenue minus expenses we're going to calculate the contribution margin by having sales which we don't know they didn't give us sales less the variable costs which is what we're looking for so they didn't give us that of course either which is kind of disturbing we would like to have one of two of those but that's okay and then we're gonna have the contribution margin they did give us that so we know that sales minus the variable cost is going to give us the contribution margin which they gave us to be 430,000 so we can underline that that's going to be the 430,000 now they also gave us the contribution margin percent I usually put that over here next to it so it's 0.25 I'm going to put my cursor back on there I'm going to add decimals home tab numbers add decimals or we could just make it a percent make it a percent and then we have some added information this is all we really need to figure out this variable cost but the thing with multiple choice questions they often give us added information if we were to complete this we would then say less fixed costs which we don't know and that would give us the pre-tax income basically net income before taxes pre-tax income which we do know to be 128,000 but it's not useful to us we really only need this information here in order to solve for this item there so how are we gonna we need to back into this number of course multiple choice questions often have us back into numbers and so we're gonna back into this and we know that well if I knew sales then I know that I can kind of back into this number because sales minus this would equal that and so how could I get to sales possibly well we can think about the contribution margin calculation the percent calculation for contribution margin percent is contribution margin divided by sales so let's write that out because we have three two of the three variables there and therefore we can solve for what sales should be so the contribution margin percent that 25 percent is calculated as equal to the contribution margin the 430 divided by sales which we don't know so let's plug that in again and we're going to say what do we know we know what the 0.25 is here I'm going to bake that a percentage again we know that that equals and I'll type this in here so you can see how I'm formatting this this time the contribution margin we know that's the 430 so I'm going to actually type it in the 430 I'm going to put the comma and then I'm going to select alt and enter and that'll go underneath in the same cell and then we know we're going to divide by sales that's the unknown so I'm just going to put sales that we could put x and I'm going to highlight the top and I'm going to underline it to show that it's a ratio and then we could center this if we wanted to do that to make it look nice we don't have to make it look nice obviously for just calculation purposes but there we have it and again this is something might be good to write out by hand and then we know that the sales over here if we're going to solve for sales now we could see that this is basically a cross multiplication problem by saying that we can put anything over one and we could say okay that's going to be underlined and if we look at it this way because anything over one is itself so I didn't change anything on this side it's still 25 percent because 25 divided by one is 25 percent but we can now maybe more easily see that we can cross multiply 25 times sales and one times 430 so that would give us this formula we would say then it would be sales times 25 percent is going to be equal to the 430 times one cross multiplying which will just give us the 430 thousand and then if we're going to solve for sales we can divide each side by 0.25 to get rid of it so it's a multiplication problem that we need to do the opposite to get rid of it so it's just going to be sales then equals and we're going to say this is equal to the 430 thousand divided by 0.25 and that will give us the sales of 1,720 so now we got sales of 1,720 and now the only question is well what does sales have to be uh sales minus what equals this so we've got our our next calculation of sales less x the variable cost we just say variable cost is going to equal the 430 thousand let me put a comma there and so then we got to then we have to say well sales is going to be we can plug in what sales is obviously is 1,720 thousand so we can then solve for the variable cost and we can basically see it's going to be a subtraction problem so we're going to go ahead and do i'll just do the subtraction problem here it's going to be the 1,720 minus the 430 thousand and that'll give us the 1,290 and then if we double check this calculation here then we can say okay well does that make sense does it make sense that if sales is 1,720 minus 1,290 thousand does that give us the 430 it does so that makes sense we can also check that okay what about the 430 thousand divided by the sales number of 1,720 does that work out and it's 25 percent or 0.25 so that works next one says we're going to use the following information to determine the break even point in dollars and we have the sale the dollar sales the fixed costs and the variable cost so first we need to know what is going to be the break even point formula in dollars let's say and we're going to say that's going to be equal to the fixed cost let's say fixed cost over the contribution margin percent and i'll let you you can kind of derive that but if you just know this formula you'll be able to work problems such as this i'm going to go ahead and center that and i'll put this like kind of in the middle there so we're looking for that so we first we need to find i'm going to look for this contribution margin percent we've got the information to do that we can figure out the contribution margin and then the contribution margin percent so we know that sales total sales in dollars uh were this 580 thousand we know that variable costs are going to be this 2175 so that means that the contribution margin total contribution margin then is going to be sales minus the variable portion sales minus the variable portion it's going to be an important number because again the relationship between sales and variable costs is similar in that they change in a similar way so there we have the the 362 000 then we can figure out the contribution margin percent and that's calculated as the percent uh the contribution margin divided by sales contribution margin divided by sales it's not one why because we need to account for the decimal so we're going to go to the home tab and go to the numbers and we could increase the number of decimals now notice we usually make it to two places but if i check and say okay there's another place out there and if i keep going it goes out to three places so note that if i make it a percentage it goes back to 63 rounding and then if i put one more it's really 62.5 so that's really what it is if we calculate that so if you put in 63 and you're off by a bit then you might want to try 62.5 and vice versa so if we put this into our formula then we have the fixed cost of 214 000 and we're going to say that is alt enter over 62.5 percent i'm going to go ahead and underline this and so we can center this out i'm actually going to pull this over here i'll pull this over here i'm going to center it and so this we're just plugging the numbers now into our equation so there's our equation and that's going to be equal to then if we did that calculation this equals 214 000 divided by 0.625 and that'll give us our 342.4 so the 342.4 then is the breakeven point in dollars than the number of sales the dollars in sales we would need in order to cover total cost both variable cost and the fixed cost


Namaskaram, Victoria, wonderful. I've just been a little while ago been watching all your magic points that you scored.  Oh, thank you so much. It's… it's… it's my true honor to speak with you. I'm… I'm very, very excited and I've been actually thinking about this… this moment for… for a while now and I'm just very, very happy that I'm here today speaking with you, so it's… it's my honor. Victoria, the thing is right now, this conscious planet movement, hmm… well, it's picked up very well on the ground, lots of heads of state are all coming together. All UN agencies, we have formed partnerships with them. They're all going. Yeah. Lot of, you know, political leaders, social celebrities, movie stars, musicians particularly, sports people are also coming in now. So it's going very well on the ground. So from March 21st, I'm riding from London to India through twenty-five nations. So this is one hundred days. From March 21st, one hundred days, we want the whole world to talk about soil. So simple thing is whatever tweets you do, whatever messages you do, just instead of saying, I love you, you say save soil because that's the only way we can express our love to future generations. Really. Yes. Yeah. And one of the… one of the things I've… I have been before… before anybody reached out to me, I've watched a lot of videos about this movement before and I love the idea and the way you describe in that for future generation, you know, my generation, I don't think of myself as old, still only thirty-two, but I have a son who is five years old and I feel like to get him educated on those type of things is really, really important. And that's, you know, what… his generation is the one who is going to be part of, you know, future and probably affected more than our generation. So I always… that's kind of my mission also as a parent to make sure that I give him tools and understanding of the planet. I grew up on… not on the farm, but my grandparents, my parents, they had a summer house where they taught us all about how to understand the soil, how to grow vegetables, how to be more in touch with nature. So I grew up knowing and understanding that, but in, you know, in society that we kind of live it now with all the technology and everything, it becomes a bit further away from more natural ways. So something that I would love, you know, also for my son to understand and be in touch with. And thank you for, you know, bringing the light to this issue and I hope that obviously with your mission and little part of what I can do is to educate people more on the importance of it. So the important thing is everybody who matters in the world, we do it in a coordinated way that for these one hundred days we want the entire world to speak of soil from March 21st, one hundred days. So that's what we are activating. I don't want to call this my moment because this is not about me. This is about life on the planet. This is a generational responsibility. See every responsible scientist in the world right now is pointing out, by 2045 we will be producing forty percent less food and our population will be 9.2 billion. That is not a world in which you would want to live.  So and you have a baby and a smaller baby. You know, in twenty years time, where I will be is a question mark but all of you will be around on this planet and it's very, very important because soil is not our property. It's a legacy that's come to us from previous generations. Keeping it alive and passing it on to next generation is a most important responsibility that we have. People have been dodging soil as a issue for a variety of reasons. I don't want to go into the politics of it. But right now in the last two years that I've been working on this project, I have spoken to many, many scientists, many heads of states, various leaders, celebrities. Till now I have not met one person who's spoken in negative. All of them want this to happen. Because one important aspect of the project and movement is that it is not against anybody. This is not against chemical fertilizer, this is not against oil company, this is not against anything. This is about keeping the soil alive.  It doesn't matter what… whatever you may believe in. But essentially all of us come from the soil and we definitely go back to the soil one way or the other. So… Yes. It reminds me of your question and answers that you do with the sessions where you talk if people don't believe that you're going to die some day, that you're going to end up in a big surprise at some point. So, yeah, that reminds me of that. If you don't mind me asking, I wanted to kind of ask you this question. I'm, you know, I'm a professional athlete and we have this kind of, I think the culture where a lot of people talk when you are an athlete, you have to go through pain and no pain, no gain is one of the things that is the biggest slogan. And throughout my career and throughout my childhood, you know, I had a pretty not easy way to get to my professional career, but it was always about, you know, kind of fighting the adversity and proving people wrong and that was the core of my motivation to make it to the top of my sport. And then it faded very quickly after I've got there and I realized that that type of motivation that came from other people was never sustainable for me. And I'm finding the new, I'm finding a new way of, you know, a new way of motivation in my career and I realized more and more with practice that I do that it's all about inner confidence and in how what you can do and how you can motivate yourself and it doesn't depend on anybody else. So that's a, that's an interesting way of completely different approach in, you know, in sport. And I see a lot of young people that I love to mentor and when, when I think about myself as a younger kid, I wish I had somebody who, you know, maybe could have explained to me a little bit better. So that's kind of… When you were fifteen, I was still around, huh? When you were fifteen, I was still around. It was, but there was no YouTube that, that there was no YouTube. There was harder to, to get the information that, that you, that's so easily accessible now and, and that's what I feel like with younger generations that some of, who are responding really well to me, how I can also explain that to, to them a little bit more because it's, it's a very interesting dynamic that doesn't, I think, ever talked a lot about sport and I was wondering if you could give me some thoughts. So yeah, Victoria, it's like this. Do you enjoy hitting the ball? Yes. You love hitting the ball, isn't it? So that's all it takes. See, the problem is most sports people are going like this.  At the same time, everything else is happening out of that.  That's all. You should not love victory, you should not love the trophy, you should not love the money. You should just love hitting the ball. If that is very strong in you, you will hit the ball really well. If you hit the ball really well, somebody else will keep the score, I'm saying. That's all that matters. So unfortunately, you know, people are always wanting to win the game. See, in yoga there is a saying, if you have one eye on the goal, you got only one eye to find your way, which is very inefficient. You need both the eyes to take the next step.  Winning will happen because you got the right shots. Not because you want to win, everybody wants to win. Everybody has a desire to win. Desire is not going to get us there. What is going to get us there is just that we are doing what we are doing really well. You know, like here you must come, someday you will definitely come to the yoga center and see how everything is being done. We have business programs where top CEOs come. They're all looking at the place and say, Sadhguru, how does it run like this? Everything is happening like clockwork, but nobody is managing anything. Everything is happening well, how is this? So I told them, see, you are all devoted to the goal. You want to achieve something, we are just devoted to the process. Because if you do the process well, the goal will come. Not because you desire the goal, it is going to happen to you. Every fool wants to win, all right? But will they win? It's not going to happen out of your desire. So being devoted to the process, hitting the ball is not going to happen. Ball is the process, and that's all that matters, how you hit it. Whether it's in or out, somebody is going to look at it. What is the point? Somebody is going to look at it. Who is the winner? Somebody is going to look at it. You don't have to look at all those things. You don't have to be motivated like this. Just with great joy, hit the ball, and your body and your mind functions at its best when you're joyful. I would like to see athletes laughing. I keep always using this with athletes because they're so serious and they're like, you know, they're looking like death. What is the point? You're doing something that you love to do and what is the point of this? So I always give this example of the only one athlete that I know who is always grinning is Ronaldinho. You know footballer, such a big grin on his face, no matter what sort of match winning or losing. Because you're doing something that you love to do and you will do it best, only if you're in that kind of state. Otherwise, what your competency is somewhere a few percentage points below that you will be. That's not how it should be. What your physical competencies, you must go a few percentage points over that, not below that. And those things happen to every athlete, I'm sure you have experienced it. The moments when you are totally there playing it with great passion for the game itself, those moments you exceed your limits, other moments when you're tense about wanting to win, you come below your own competence. In our lives, if we do not do what we cannot do, there's no problem. But if we do not do what we can do, that's a disastrous life. That should not happen to us. Yes, that's a lot to think about. But I love how simple you always put things in where, like, okay, why didn't I think of that? Why didn't I think of that before? But it definitely is, I think it's very cultural, well, the athletes need to look a certain way and they have to not show any weaknesses and, you know, as you said, being very like focus and, well, focus I think is one thing, but being looking like angry. If you're laughing, if you're laughing, your opponent may not know what to do. Exactly. But the intimidation process, you know, the intimidation process happens sometimes before the game. And it does work at a certain moment when maybe you're not that aware of the game that is played with intimidation, but... No, no, I am aware of all the mental games that people play, but I'm saying this is also a game. See, if you're just joyful... No, no, no, no, no. I mean to say, among the athletes I'm saying, well, especially in the boxing, you know, I've been talking to some of the boxers like Mike Tyson and others. The whole thing is about intimidation, the previous night itself it'll start, start saying all kinds of things, all this. See that is one way of doing it. Another way of doing it is, you go joyfully, even they may not be willing, but you go and shake their hands and say nice things to them and you play joyfully, you will see that will also kind of put them off the rails. But the important thing is not necessarily putting them off the rails. The most important thing is you never go off the rail, isn't it? Yes. Yeah, it's definitely about how it makes you feel. I've noticed that with the more obviously with my career and for me to go through a more of a spiritual process that I've been, I have started in June of 2020 is the... What you do something is how it makes you feel not about other people and what other people do is also how you take it and how you feel about it instead of having the other people affecting how you feel. So there's definitely been a very eye-opening process for me and I really enjoy the journey that I'm learning. I just wanted to mention I've done a Shambhavi Kriya in October and it was very interesting because I was doing it during my tournament and I asked my referee if they could put my matches later so I can do my program in the morning. They did help me out so I was able to do the completion of the hours because when I signed up I wasn't sure where I'm going to be and what my schedule will look like but I was really committed to finishing it and it was such an interesting process because in the beginning when I started the meditation and I always thought that I don't know how to do meditation and it's very difficult and I don't know how to do it and then slowly I started to just accepting the moment and how it is and it really is my medicine every day when I do my meditation and I've noticed one day where I didn't do it the difference how I feel and how much clear I think and it's really transforming so I wanted to thank you for it. It's all yours Victoria you are 32 I feel you need a little bit of upgrade within yourself. If you give us one week a year we will do something with you which will definitely heighten everything because I'm not saying you're old okay 32 is I said you're a baby but I'm saying as an athlete well I see when you were 21, 22, 23 you've done fantastic but because body is not the same at 22 what you are and 32 what you are now it becomes more based on your experience and skills rather than your just your strength. So when this happens how to conserve yourself how not even to make one extra movement that is not needed is something that you have to learn because as you get older conserving ourselves becomes very important to be effective we can't do the same wild kind of things that we were doing when we're 22 so for that process as an athlete I'm sure you know these things but if you spend a week in a year either in United States or in India we will set you up with something there's enough space you can also come with your child it'll be good for him also. Yes I actually because I do meditation every morning and my son knows that please don't disturb mommy when if he wakes up not to do not to disturb me during my meditation and he starts to imitate me a little bit because the way the way the way I think a little bit about parenting is saying something to your child is maybe valuable but showing by example I think it gives so much more so much more benefit to them and I try to approach it with everything like that and my mom told me a couple times that if I go to work earlier something that he just sits down and just you know tries to do a meditation and yeah and actually I have some pictures of when I was playing the match and he was watching my match he's sitting in the meditation mode because so I would love to introduce him a little bit more to that because I know how helpful it is been for me and again I wish I knew that you know when I was a kid but where I'm from it's not it's not very known it's it's not really talked about my parents never never been introduced to any of that they probably still don't understand what I'm actually doing with meditation which is which is absolutely fine but I would love to introduce my son a little bit more and I watched the video where you speak about your daughter and how she was traveling with you everywhere you went and she grew up with you know different surrounding different people and my son is a little bit in that way he travels with me and he spends a lot of time around adults and a lot around kids as well and one of the very interesting points you mentioned is that we don't really you know teach our kids to be one way or the other way is to help them give and give them the tools how they can flourish and develop their own personalities and it's it's it is the approach that I feel the most connected with but sometimes it's it's you know I lose myself with how do I need to kind of impose sometimes a little bit of rules and and a bit of structure and compared to you know kind of giving giving freedom and Victoria Victoria you still haven't seen anything once the boy becomes nine ten he'll give you the works I guess I have time he's only five he's only five so I have time well it's okay children are who they are you it's not that you shouldn't mold them at all but you don't try to mold them to a point that they have to fit into the block that you have in your head they don't have to fit into any block the less blocked up they are the better they are because the idea is the next generation should be freer than us and more joyful than us better than us not less than us or not even like us they don't have to be like us so I mean you don't worry about the boy he will grow up well see all it takes is a loving and joyful atmosphere and you make sure the child never witnesses anger jealousy hatred you know these kind of things that he should never see some things he should not know what it is if he grows up like that he will grow up into a beautiful human being maybe he will he may become an athlete he may not become an athlete that's not our business that's his choice yeah I don't I don't have a specific plan for him I I didn't I was I was actually very fortunate that you know a lot of parents of athletes have a specific specific idea of who they have to be and what they have to do and I've been I've been lucky that my parents wanted me to be the best that I can be and what I what what I want to be so I don't take it for granted looking at you know other other situations so when I think about what my son wants to be I just want to support him and who whatever he wants to be and give him tools to be able to do what he wants to do but in today's western society one important thing challenge you will have is to protect the child from influences which are negative both offline and online influences there is simply chemicals all over the place and you know that one thing if you just make sure that they don't make those kind of associations the rest of it is you know children will grow up well one of the things that I I actually I I've never been really drinking alcohol or anything like that but I thought that if I will have to have a talk with my son you know in 10 15 years about alcohol and he ever sees me drinking alcohol that will be not a very compelling argument from my side so I don't drink any alcohol at at at all and I did it for myself but also in mind with with that and I said okay if he if he doesn't ever see me doing that that hopefully I can I can at least try to give a compelling argument and then we'll see what happens yes very important what example what example you said because children are not listening to you they're only looking at you carefully they're observing everything that you are how you sit stand they're observing you not with any intent simply because they're curious about everything they're looking at it but they're never listening to the advices that you're giving them so the example is the most important thing definitely definitely I don't I don't want to take too much of your time I know you're very very busy and I'm very very grateful for the opportunity to speak to you and I will definitely come to the to the center to continue my practices and in the month of March April where are you Victoria in March I am going to be in United States I'm going to be in California and in Florida and in April I will be in Europe oh April I'm passing through Europe I don't know where you are but I'm going through all the 17 18 nations across Europe so hopefully we will bump in somewhere maybe I hope so maybe we can give you a short ride one 10 20 kilometer ride for you just to have an experience oh that would be amazing that would be really amazing I will believe me you're safe with me you believe me you're safe with me because I've gotten this old without breaking a bone on a motorcycle that means I'm good you know I've I've heard you talk about your your wild rides where you you don't even need to look because you you memorize the the roads so well so I I I believe that you are a very very good rider so I will I would love to I would love to join but thank you so much thank you Victoria and all the best for whatever future tournament you have this year you must do well we are I'll be watching you you must do well thank you so much that girl I appreciate Namaskar


So welcome back, in the previous class we had looked at secondary kinetic isotope effects. So in secondary kinetic isotope effects essentially the bond that is broken in the rate determining step is not where you are doing the isotopic substitution. The isotopic substitution is done at the alpha or beta position of the bond that is breaking in the rate determining step. The great thing is it is mainly bending vibrations that are important and the steric effects due to the fact that the CH bond is longer than the CD bond leads to this difference in kinetics between CH and CD. So usually you see secondary kinetic isotope effects when there is some sort of hybridization change. So when you have a reaction which involves a change from sp3 to sp2 you see what is called as a normal kinetic isotope effect that is KH would be greater than KD. But when you have sp2 going to sp3 what you see is called an inverse kinetic isotope effect where KD is actually greater than KH and the explanation for all of this was seen in the previous class. So now I had asked you in the previous class to match the following. So you have reactions given on the left and KH over KD values given on the right. You had to match the KH over KD values with the reactions that are given. So let us see if you have the answers correct. So in the first case what is the mechanism of the reaction? So what you have here is you have OH- coming in, deprotonating and then you have these electrons coming in and eliminating the amine to give you a double bond. So what kind of an isotope effect is this? Is this a primary or a secondary kinetic isotope effect? So it is a primary kinetic isotope effect. So which of these would be the correct answer then it would be 4. So now let us look at the second and third reaction. Now in the second reaction is the CH bond broken? The CH bond is not broken. So you know that it is a secondary kinetic isotope effect. So now what you need to look at is you need to look at the change in hybridization. So let us look at the hybridization change. So what is the hybridization here? It is sp3 and what is the hybridization in your product? It is sp2. So the change that you have is sp3 to sp2 which is a normal secondary kinetic isotope effect. So the value would be greater than 1 and so the correct answer would be 1.4. So now you know that the last answer is 0.8 and why is that? So here again is the CH bond broken in the reaction? No. So it is a secondary kinetic isotope effect and what is the hybridization change? Here you have sp2, here you have sp3. So you are looking at sp2 to sp3. So which is why you have an inverse effect. So this summarizes whatever we had seen so far for primary and secondary kinetic isotope effects.  So as usual you will have to think of the answer first and that is actually most beneficial for your learning because if you just watch me solve this example on the video it will look easy for you but then I am doing most of the thinking. But if you want to learn it is better if you do the thinking so that you know what are the mistakes that you are making and then once you look at me solving it you can figure out how to rethink this the next time you get a problem like this.  Now this reaction see carefully is done with 5.7 mole percent of methanol. So that means the concentration of methanol in the reaction mixture the solvent is acetonitrile which is shown as CH3CN. So this is the solvent and here you have only 5.7 mole percent. So a small amount of methanol in the solvent. So now if you add 5.7 mole percent of methanol to your starting material there are two products which are formed right one is based on substitution and the second is the elimination product and the nucleo and the isotopic substitution is done here. So what is seen is that the KH over KD value for this product if you remember our class on kinetics you can study the kinetics for formation of multiple product. So if you study the kinetics for formation of this product you get a KH over KD value which is 0.88 and inverse kinetic isotope effect whereas in the case of elimination you get a KH over KD value of 1.63 which is a normal kinetic isotope effect. Now what I would like you to do is I would like you to write the mechanisms for formation of each of these products and then based on the mechanism see if you can justify the KH over KD value. So I will repeat the question I want you to write the mechanism for formation of each of these products let us call this product A and let us call this product B and then based on your mechanism you should be able to justify why you see an inverse kinetic isotope effect in one case and why you see a normal kinetic isotope effect. So go ahead press the pause button on your video and work out this problem. So you can now see if you have worked out the problem correctly. So let us first start with the mechanism. So the first step in the mechanism would be formation of the carbocation. So you form the carbocation where you have, so this is the carbocation. Now once you form the carbocation you can have methanol add in. So if methanol adds in you will get product A, product A. Now the same carbocation in one case methanol is acting as a nucleophile whereas in the second case it acts as a base grabs the proton so you get product B. So now hopefully you are able to write these mechanisms for each step now you can write the hybridization that you have. So here you have sp3, here you have sp2, so remember this is next to the carbon hydrogen bond that is being substituted which is what you see in a secondary kinetic isotope effect and here again the bond is not broken so you have sp3, here again it is sp2 and here you have sp2. Now here you have the bond breaking but what do you observe? In the first case you observe an inverse kinetic isotope effect whatever you have studied so far for SN1 we have always said that the first step is rate determining right. Now if the first step where rate determining for formation of A, so let us call this as reactant R. So if the first step where rate determining for formation of product A what would you see you have a change from sp3 to sp2. Now based on whatever we have studied in the previous class a change from sp3 to sp2 would indicate a normal or an inverse kinetic isotope effect it would indicate an normal kinetic isotope effect but what you are observing is an inverse kinetic isotope effect. So what that suggests is now if you look at the next step you have so if you look at the next step you have sp2 going to sp3. So here you would observe an inverse kinetic isotope effect. Now whatever steps usually come after the rate determining step do not usually impact the kinetics. So what that tells you is that actually what you have is second step which is rate determining. Now some of you might be confused thinking why is that the case we have always studied that Sn1 means the first step has to be rate determining but here you see that second step is rate determining and why is that remember I told you one thing is very important you are using a very very small amount of your nucleophile which is methanol and methanol you are using such a small amount and it is not that great a nucleophile. So what you see is that the rate for the second step is actually slower than the first step here. So the second step which becomes rate determining and which is why you observe an inverse kinetic isotope effect alright this is all because the second step is the rate determining step. Now let us look at formation of product B. So the first step you have R giving you the carbocation R is the reactant. So once the carbocation is formed it appears that the elimination occurs quickly. Now the elimination and here you do not see much of a change in hybridization. So in this case what you have is you have the first step being the rate determining step alright. So this is a very nice example so here you have a normal kinetic isotope effect because your first step is the rate determining step. So this is nice illustration of how you can get 2 products and each actually have a different rate determining step. So now let us see another example where the kinetic isotope effect information could be used to determine the nature of the transition state and what is the mechanism of a given reaction. So the reaction is shown on your screen this is an epoxidation reaction. So you have your double bond getting converted to an epoxide using a reagent which you must have heard as MCPBA that is metacloro perbenzoic acid. So what I would like you to do is again press the pause button on your video write the mechanism for this reaction and see if you can justify the kinetic isotope effects observed. So let us see if your mechanism explains the kinetic isotope effect. So your starting material here is styrene so let us draw the structure of styrene and then it is interacting with metacloro perbenzoic acid. So that is the reason why I am writing this structure like this. So now let us try to push the arrows. So when you push the arrows what you would see is you have so essentially what is happening is you have the carbonyl group here grabbing the hydrogen here so it is grabbing it as the proton and so you have this coming in. So now if you were to write the transition state for this people call it what call this mechanism as a butterfly mechanism. So if you were to write the transition state for this nothing happens to these bonds. The bonds are partially formed with the hydrogen this bond is breaking this bond is also breaking and then it is forming a new double bond here and then you have a new bond being formed between the oxygen and the hydrogen and here again nothing happens so we are just going to rewrite it. So this is what your transition state will look like and finally you have the product. So what you see here is that in this case you have sp2 going to both these centers are sp3. So you see an inverse kinetic secondary kinetic isotope effect. So you see an inverse secondary kinetic isotope effect. So now let us look at each of these examples. So in the first example you have isotopic substitution at this position. So if I draw this CH here so you have isotopic substitution at this position. So it is again a secondary kinetic isotope effect because this CH bond is not broken. Now what you see is that when you do an isotopic substitution here you see that the KH over KD value is not that high alright. So you see that the KH over KD value is 0.99 almost close to 1 whereas I will just write the value here it is 0.99 whereas if I do the isotopic substitution here so here you have the value is 0.82. So it is actually much lower than the isotopic effect that is seen at the position right next to the aromatic ring. So what that tells you is that there must be some difference between these two positions. What you see is that in this position there is greater sp3 character as compared to this position because you see a value of 0.99. So what that tells you is that so if I were to think of the position of transition state with respect to this bond I can say that major bond formation occurs in the transition state. So that means it is a late transition state compared to formation of this bond whereas this bond is partially formed. So what that tells you is that the transition state is not as symmetric as one would expect in the as shown in the drawing in front of your screen. What it tells you is that you have major sp3 character at this position and smaller sp3 character at the position next to the phenyl ring. So what it tells you is that although the process is concerted you have different extents of bond formation. So it tells you that you have a greater extent of this bond formation as compared to the other bond. So the kinetic isotope effects can not only give you insights into the nature of the transition state it can also give you insights into the extent of bond breaking and bond making that happens in the transition state. So this is a nice illustration of this epoxidation of styrene using metacloro perbenzoic acid. So you can also think as a homework as to what will happen if you do an isotopic substitution at this position, so at this hydrogen. So I want you to think about this. If you make an isotopic substitution at this hydrogen what kind of an isotope effect would you see? Alright? Would it be a primary? Would it be a secondary? What do you think would be the magnitude? And you can have this discussion in the discussion forum. So now we look at an application of kinetic isotope effect in understanding biology. We have been doing that throughout this course where each of these so even in case of the linear free energy relationships we saw how you can simplify complex problems in biology by using model systems and looking at the simple chemistry behind it. So in our body we have an enzyme which oxidizes amino acids it is called a D amino acid oxidase enzyme. So what it does is in the presence of this enzyme the amino acid gets oxidized and there are two pathways that are proposed for this. It is proposed that the reaction takes place in the presence of a base.  Now once this anion is generated there are two possible pathways it can interact with this cofactor shown here where you have an ionic mechanism so you can imagine this. So you can imagine this acting as a nucleophile to give you the product that is shown here. The other option is where you have a radical like mechanism. So here what happens is once you form the anion so once you form the anion instead of the anion acting as a nucleophile it can actually undergo electron transfer. So what it has done is it has given an electron to the system here so you are again pushing electrons as shown earlier. So you have the electrons going towards so you have this conjugated system so you have a negative charge that comes on the nitrogen and you have a radical that is generated here and of course because it is an electron transfer single electron transfer you have another radical generated at the amino acid. Now to understand which of these pathways is taking place is it pathway one or is it pathway two a model system was used. The model system is nitroethane so we have seen nitroethane before right when we were looking at primary kinetic isotope effect. So what was seen was that when nitroethane was used you get a kh over kd value of 0.89. So now that you have this information I have shown you both the pathways one involves a nucleophilic attack or an ionic mechanism and the other one goes via a radical pathway.  So you can press the pause button on your screen and see which is the pathway taking place and as a hint I can tell you that you can write the hybridization change at each position to tell you whether you would have a normal or an inverse kinetic isotope effect. So let us see if your understanding is correct. So in one case you have formation of a tetrahedral product whereas in pathway two if you have the first step which is rate determining what you have is you have a carbon ion getting converted into a radical and then what you have especially for the amino acid because that is where you are going to make the substitution. Instead of amino acid what you have is you have nitromethane so you would have a situation like this where you have NO2 and then CH3H dot whereas in the case of your reactant your reactant anion would be I will write it on the right because we have space here it would be CH3 NO2 minus. Now why was this particular model system chosen is that the abstraction by base will not be rate determining it would happen pretty quickly because you are using nitroethane here. So this step is not rate determining one of these would have to be the rate determining step. Now in the case of pathway two you would have this anion versus the radical and now if you are imagining so you have a hydrogen here. So if you look at the transition state and whether the CH over CD bond length will make a huge impact in the case of pathway two the impact would be minimal as compared to pathway one where you have some SP3 character coming in because of your tetrahedral product. So you have the bond angles would be such that your CH over CD bond length would have a greater impact and because you see an inverse kinetic isotope effect you can say that the reaction follows pathway one so this is what would be the mechanism. So using a clever model system one can understand the pathway for formation of a particular product even in biology you need not use a very complex system. So before we leave I have a question for you. So shown here is a it is not a reaction it is essentially an equilibrium for rotation about this CC bond. So we are talking about rotation about this CC bond. Now what you see is if you have a biphenyl system if you have a biphenyl system you can imagine the two phenyl rings connected by a single bond the single bond has free rotation so it rotates very very easily but in this case we have restricted the rotation by interlocking the molecules. So because the two aromatic rings are now interlocked they you have restricted rotation. So now the question to you is the kinetics for this rotation from going for A to from A to B, CH over KD so you are actually making substitution at this position. So when you have X is equal to CH3 versus X is equal to CD3 you observe an inverse kinetic isotope effect and the value is 0.87. So what I want you to think about is why do you observe an inverse secondary kinetic isotope effect. So you can use whatever principles we have learned in today's lecture to understand why this inverse kinetic isotope effect is observed. So thank you and I will see you in the next class where you will have the answer for this problem and we will also look at some other isotope effects. Thank you.


In this module, I will talk about the 10 reasons or the 10s for the Amazon web services and this module of course is not possible to cover those 10 reasons for the design with reference to a cloud and why the users use Amazon web services. This is just an intro and this module I will just very very briefly talk about some of those aspects among the 10 and towards the end of this course we will be spending a lot of time on all of those 10s. So without further ado, when people ask why certain the programmers they are using Amazon web services, they are unable to describe why they are using it or maybe sometimes people are interested or they are inclined about using the Amazon web services but they cannot spell out the reasons why they want to use the Amazon web services and of course then there are people or the programmers or developers who are in fact using the Amazon web services but when the management ask them that why they are using Amazon web services, they are kind of tongue tied. So that is one aspect of Amazon web services which of course is the strength of Amazon web services. So what I will do is briefly talk about in the details of these modules that what are the 10 main fundamental reasons or the strengths of Amazon web services. Now the second aspect is the design aspects or the cloud aspects of the Amazon web services. Now for example, people will say or tell you that use the right tool for the right job. So the right tool for the right job in the context of the web applications, in terms of the scale of the web applications, they require the processing power. So Amazon web services is the tool, is the tool, so the tool for example Pinterest. So a lot of images, hundreds of thousands of millions of images and visitors, so they are using Amazon web services. Then of course is the one should have the skill to select the right tool for the right job. So what is that skill? That skill in the context of Amazon web services is that you should know that which service or the characteristics of the service is suitable for your application design. And then of course, it's a combination of these things, which results into a design which I will tell you the 10 reasons why and what are the considerations for the cloud aspects of the Amazon web services. So these are the 10 reasons, of course, it's not possible to go through all of those 10 reasons. I will just go through the IT agility of the Amazon web services, the cost considerations and it is good for your career. So let me first talk about the IT agility, IT agility of the Amazon web services. Now in the context of the IT department, people will say kind of jokingly on a lighter note that the IT department is the no department. Now if you ask them to provide services and resources, they will they will have many issues, they will have many procedures, they will have many processes. And those procedures and processes have developed over a period of time. And they are kind of failsafe processes and procedures. But as a consequence of those processes and procedures, is that if I need processing power, okay, I have to go through a lot of hurdles, a lot of roadblocks and a lot of barriers, and it can take months, it can take weeks before I get the processing power which I need. But with the Amazon web services, that processing power is there. I don't have to go through all those hurdles. I don't have to go through all those impediments. I don't have to go through all those barriers. That processing power is is there. And as this as the point I am going to discuss right now which is underlined it is cost effective. Amazon web services are cost effective in terms of processing power. There are hardly any penalties. And I can use this services and I am billed for what I have done. And when I'm through, I can stop using those services. And when I want to use the services again, I can again refer back or use those services again. So they are cost effective. And they are they have the agility also. And then with reference to the carrier. What is most important is you, your carrier, right? So you have to develop an understanding which I will also talk about and discuss and explain also that what are the different types of Amazon web services and develop an understanding in a thought process of aligning the application needs with the characteristics and applications of the Amazon web services. So that you have a productive career, we'll talk more about it. Everything fails at the time. So design principle for the cloud. Now, there's something is called as the Murphy's law. Murphy's law says that if something is going to fail, it is going to fail, right? And it is going to fail in addition at the worst possible time with very painful consequences. So the one aspect of Amazon web services for the cloud is that things fail. Things fail because in the traditional IT setup, there's a lot of effort which has which which has gone into and is going that the applications stay. They don't fail that the infrastructure stays. It doesn't fail. But the thing is that they do fail and when they fail, then the IT department people they put in extra effort to to add redundancy in the system. But still the system will fail. So it is just kind of running about trying to make a perfect system, which is not there. But with the Amazon cloud, we we know we we understand and we work with the understanding and the concept that things fail all the time. And then is the monitoring the problems. Now, if I have a redundant system with redundancy, a very nice system. But if the system component fails, application fail, part of the infrastructure fails, then that nice redundancy is gone. It is gone. So I have a non redundant system. So how to prevent it by monitoring when I monitor it. And there are prediction models also, which can predict when something is going to fail, which is part of business intelligence. I can make preparations. I can have a more proactive approach instead of a reactive approach to address those requirements. And then of course is the tier based design approach. Now, usually if I divide partition the security groups, then I have a secure tier, right? But something which is kind of overlooked is that if I have redundant resources and I have a flexible tier, then what I can do is that as per the requirement, I can have a strong tier. I can have strength with it and I can remove things and I can add things. So that increases the efficiency of my design and goes along with the Amazon web services. That's all I have to talk about in this module.


The Taiwan technical mission has officially handed over the newly refurbished pack house to the Department of Agriculture. The pack house being managed by the St. Lucia Marketing Board creates a space for farmers to prepare produce that meets the international standards for food safety. Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries, Physical Planning, Natural Resources and Cooperatives Honourably Zika Joseph says the newly constructed facility will also allow for the enhancement of packaging as well as grading of products. What we realize that apart from the potential for expanding our market share as it pertains to bananas, there's also a call for us to look at other crops. And the number of other crops and business discussions with Ms. Daniel and her team, there are other crops that have potential for us to export to the UK. But without the requisite facility, it would be very difficult for us. And that is why when the idea came and we had a discussion with your head of technical mission, we saw it was necessary for us to construct this pack house. We would provide an opportunity for us both. Ambassador of the Republic of China Taiwan to St. Lucia, His Excellency Peter Chen, says the new facility marks a milestone for the agriculture sector in St. Lucia. The completion of the packing house will be a transformational moment to emerge from the pandemic stronger. The packing house is not only a house for agricultural products, it is a house for farmers for better life and for hope. I sincerely hope and wish this meaningful project will bring confidence to both farmers and customers. And it will further strengthen the friendship and cooperation between our two peoples. Parliamentary representative for Castry's Southeast Honourable Guy Joseph expresses gratitude to the government of the Republic of China Taiwan for the new opportunities provided to farmers in his constituency and the wider society. The opening of this place today, this pack house is welcome. And I think that it would be an encouragement to our farmers to continue to produce because markets are being sourced. The linkages between tourism and agriculture is strong. And while we are in the COVID environment, it gives us a good opportunity to prepare ourselves for the rebound of the market to get greater share of what is happening in this area. The newly renovated pack house forms part of an initiative under the Seven Crops project with the overall aim of reducing the food import bill. From the information unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, I am Anisia Antoine reporting.