Gina L. Hoatson
Please remember to check your e-mail frequently since this is how I will contact you.
There will be no assignments for P452/496 this semester since you need to focus on making progress with your individual research projects. We will meet once, friday March 17th, to go over the details of the requirements, which are posted on both the Physics Honors web page, and the link to the Charles Center . I encourage you to read these CAREFULLY NOW. The requirements are almost identical for senior and honors research projects: the only differences are (i) Honors students have a Committee of examiners, senior projects students have their advisor and myself, (ii) the talks will be 30 (senior) or 45 (honors) minutes, plus 10-15 minutes for questions and (iii) a different number of acid-free copies are required for archive purposes.
At the end of the semester (final week of classes and first week of exams April 24 - May 5) you will give a final talk on your research project and submit a written thesis.
This thesis helps satisfy the writing requirement and needs to be produced with a word processor. Again, please check the Charles center web page for explicit details. It should incorporate graphs, figures and scientific formulae in a single document. Your advisor should help you with both the content and writing your thesis, and it's your opportunity to learn scientific writing. I am happy to help if necessary.
Please note that the Physics department interprets the Charles Center deadline of the first friday in April (7th) to be for the penultimate, not final, version of the thesis. However, students should have copies of their theses to their examiners two weeks before their talk. The final thesis version is due at the time of your oral presentation, but additional corrections might be suggested or required by the examinors. The Physics department also requires that you submit an electronic version (Postscript or PDF) of your final thesis.This must be submitted before May 8th.
The talk will be 30 (senior) or 45 (honors) minutes plus 10-15 minutes for questions. While there is some latitude, my experience is that using transparencies on an overhead projector works best. We'll discuss the details closer to the time, if you have sepcial requirements you need to come and see me in early April.
I hope that this clarifies the expectations and requirements of these physics courses. Feel free to contact me with further questions.
Friday 17 March 2 PM Small 102
Gina L. Hoatson
Professor of Physics
Phone: (757) 221-3517 FAX (757)221-3540
comments or questions? e-mail: gina@physics.wm.edu