Student Seminar and Essay - PHYS 401

Seminar Presentation:

• Each student will investigate a topic of his/her choice (subject to my approval) and share it with the class in a short seminar.

• The oral report will be an 8-minute seminar-style presentation in class, followed by 3-5 minutes of discussion and questions. (This may seem short, but it is typical of the time allocated for contributed talks at conferences.)

• All students present for the seminar will participate in its evaluation. Seminar marking will count as one homework assignment.

• The final exam will probably include several "quickie" questions on selected seminars.

• You may choose your seminar topic and date using the handy Seminar Selection Form (you must login first) where you can also privide an abstract and links to your presentation and/or paper if available on the Web. (Talk to me if you want to store the files on this computer.)   Rules for scheduling: you may not choose a date on which two seminars are already scheduled. It is in everyone's interest (especially yours) to pick your date as early as possible and stick to it. Once all the remaining dates have two seminars scheduled, there will be no more changes except for "swaps" negotiated by mutual agreement.

Writeup/Essay:

• Your presentation will be accompanied by a short (3-6 page) report summarizing the same material. This is the usual procedure at conferences, so it will be good practice.

• In keeping with that model, I would like to present each of you with a hard copy of the "PHYS 401 Seminar Proceedings": a collection of all your essays, or rather all those which you give me permission (in writing) to include. Written permission is necessary because otherwise I would be violating your copyrights.

• Although I am always tempted to suggest "publication" on the Web, this does invite others to "borrow" your ideas. If there is any interest, I can set up a wiki for this purpose. Participation in such a "collaborative publication" would of course be strictly voluntary.

• For those of you who use L^AT_EX and would like to typeset your paper to look like a journal article or conference proceedings, you can download a revtex.tar.gz file containing the Physical Review REVTeX style, either from this site or from their site. Detailed stylistic instructions are available at the APS Authors Website. I am also working on *.zip files for the Hyperfine Int. and Physica styles.

• It is in everyone's interest (especially yours) to submit your paper as soon after your presentation as possible (or even before it). That way you may avoid the inevitable "end-of-term crunch". The final due date for papers is the last day of classes. (Submissions by Email will be accepted until midnight.) Late papers will be marked like the others, but the mark (M) will be renormalized by the following formula:

  M(t,N) = M₀ [1 - t / (E-N)]

  where M₀ is your "raw" mark, t is the number of days you are late ("days" start and end at midnight for this calculation; an integer value will be used), N is the number of people who turn in their papers late, and E is the (integer) number of days between the due date and the final exam. Thus (for example) if there are 17 days between the last class and the final exam but 10 people turn in their papers late, there is no point in turning in your paper a week late because it will receive zero marks. The intent of this formula is to ensure that I have time to give each paper the attention it deserves without running past the exam date, after which I must mark exams as quickly as possible to ensure that graduating students get their marks in time for graduation.

Some Suggested Subjects

Log in to see Schedule of Talks and Web form for Marking

Paper version of Seminar Marking Form (a 25 kB PDF file)