Index

• Office hours and contact information
• Course structure
• Topic
  
• Overview of class schedule
• Schedule of Talks
• Grading
• Links for potential topics
• Physics career links

Office hours and contact information

• Prof. Gerald Miller   miller@phys.washington.edu   B457 PAB  543-2995
  
• Consultations and questions on topics can be done by email or in my office by arrangement, or drop in and I'll talk to you if I am free 
  

Course Structure

• The aim of these courses is to provide you with an opportunity to learn in more depth about a topic in physics or a physics-related field that particularly interests you, and at the same time gain experience in doing literature research, preparing a scientific presentation, and writing a scientific article. My role as instructor will be to help you choose an appropriate topic, help answer questions that come up as you research this topic, and provide feedback on the drafts of your paper and your presentation.

Paper

• My intention is to provide detailed feedback on not only the scientific content of your paper, but also its style and use of language. I will give you comments on your initial draft and then reread the revised version (the latter being what the grade will be based on). The paper should be submitted as a PDF file. It should be "scientific" in style, probably with an abstract, introduction, the body, and then a conclusion and references. But what matters to me more than the precise style is the clarity and accuracy of the presentation.
• Here are some more details regarding the paper. 1)You should begin by producing an outline to organize your findings and thoughts. The usual outline of a scientific paper is: (0)Abstract (I) Introduction/Motivation/Review of what is known (II) Description of the method/experiment/calculation,\u2026. (III) Results (IV) Discussion (V) Summary/Conclusion/Outlook (VI) References In your paper section II , III and IV can meld together since you are not being asked to do original research. Create subheadings under these general categories and then subsubheadings etc.. 2) Then fill in the words and the figures. The paper should be about 8 pages long or about 3000 - 4000 words. Try to focus on the science and physics involved. Please do not simply copy from web pages but use your own ideas and words. Write clearly, concisely and economically. Use one tense (usually past tense) and stick with it throughout the paper, except for the outlook, which can be in future tense. You can look at articles in Physical Review Letters (PRL), Physical Review D (PRD), Nature, Astrophysical journal, etc and use these journal writing and format styles. In the end you can leave the above structure in, formatted as chapters or sections (as in PRD), or you can take it out and leave paragraphs (as in PRL). 3) References: all facts should be referenced to (preferably) refereed scientific journals. The references should be numbered [1], or some equivalent system[Smi] or (Smith2006) and should be listed at the end of the paper. All abbreviations should be explained in the text Example: University of Washington (UW) 4) Figures and tables: every figure/table should have a caption, usually below the figure/table. The caption should describe the figure/table content that is important, often there is some redundancy with the main text. If the figure is a graph, all curves/lines should be explained. Figures and tables are numbered and have to be referenced in the text (e.g. Fig. 1, Table III, or similar). 5) At the end write an abstract to summarize the most important facts of your paper. The abstract will be inserted directly below the title and your name and before the main body of the text. The abstract should be about 200 words. Paper delivery: I prefer if you email the paper to me in PDF format. Paper copies, slipped under my office door (B484) are ok also.
• The final papers, as well as presentations, will be posted on the class web page as they are completed, although each student needs to agree with the posting of his or her material beforehand.
Due date: The paper is due at the last day of classes (Dec 5th). Later submissions may not be accepted.