LIBRARY RESEARCH PAPER & TALK
These count (25%) in your final grade.
RULES
1. These must be on a solid state physics topic or application of your choosing, but it should be one which we did not have time for in class.
2. The paper should be 5 to 10 typed pages long (a typed paper is preferred, but not required) and should be written with proper grammar and spelling.
3. The paper should MOSTLY be based on OUTSIDE readings. Some material researched for it can come from the texts, but the majority should come from other (outside) sources. This is the reason it is called a LIBRARY Research Paper & Talk! Using internet sources is also acceptable. A suggestion is to start by doing a web search on your topic using, for example, the “Current Contents” (“Web of Knowledge”) search engine available to ALL TTU users. A link to it from the TTU Library page: http://www.lib.ttu.edu/. Direct link: http://apps.isiknowledge.com/. To use this, you must access it from a computer on the TTU network.
4. ALL outside sources used for the paper MUST be properly acknowledged in a bibliography. Internet sources should be acknowledged by citing the URL for the web page. Failure to properly acknowledge sources is PLAGIARISM, which will not be tolerated! Plagiarism includes, but is not necessarily limited to:
a. Quoting or paraphrasing texts, journal articles, or web pages without acknowledging the source.
b. Presenting someone else’s work as your own.
c. Presenting as your original work already prepared papers on your subject which might be available for sale (or free) on the internet.
Note that TTU has strict policies against plagiarism and that there are severe penalties for it,
including possible expulsion from the university. In the case of copyrighted work, plagiarism
is also ILLEGAL. See further discussion of this in the Catalog or the Student Handbook.
The paper is due at 5pm, Wednesday, December 14! NO EXCEPTIONS!!!
THE TALKS
Your talk should be about ½ hour long. It can be (but isn’t required to be) done in Power Point. If you are nervous about talking in front of the class, you need to get over it! If you are going to be a professional scientist you have to get used to talking!
1. Out of courtesy to the rest of the class
EVERYONE WILL BE PRESENT TO HEAR EVERYONE ELSE'S TALK!!
2. Presentations MAY be done in Power Point, but this isn't required!
3. I will try to schedule the Physics Conference Room for the talks.
4. If you plan to use Power Point, you need to arrive in the room EARLY to set up your talk with the computer & projector & to make sure that it all works correctly! I am SERIOUS about this!! It is VERY RUDE to the audience if several minutes is wasted while a speaker works with computer & projector trying to make them work together properly! I have seen this happen for invited talks at national & international conferences! There is NO excuse for it at conferences & there is NO excuse for it with class presentations!!
5. In the near future, we’ll pick firm dates for the presentations & set up a schedule. We should have them some time during the Final Exam period: Friday, December 9 – Wednesday, December 14.
This is not required, but I request that, if you do your presentation in Power Point and/or your paper in Word,please send me the electronic versions of them. My plan is to post them on the web as examples for future students in this course. Note that, if you send me these electronic files, you are implicitly giving me permission to post them on the web so that others may use them in this way.