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PHY 415: Electromagnetic Theory I
Unit 8Unit 1 • Unit 2 • Unit 3 •Unit 4 • Unit 5 • Unit 6 • Unit 7 • Unit 8 Final Project The final project is intended for you to learn a topic that goes beyond what we have covered in the course, and to give you a taste of what it is like to write up a research paper for publication in a journal, and to serve as a referee for a journal. As you continue your graduate career and beyond, these will be good skills to have! The class will be divided into 8 groups of four students each. You will get your group assignment by Thursday, November 5. Each group should then discuss among themselves and make an ordered list of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices from the topics below, and email me that list no later than Monday, November 9, 5pm. I will then notify each group of their topic on Thursday, November 12. No topic can be used by more than two groups, so the sooner you send me your preferences, the more likely it is that you will get your preferred choice. When you click on the above links for each topic, you will go to a page discussing the topic, and what things you should try to do. You can use this description as a guide, but you are also encouraged to read up on your own from other sources. Your group will then write a short (no more than 4 pages, double column format) journal article about it, as if you were the discoverers of this effect. Your article should contain an introduction explaining why this topic is interesting and important. The body of the article should contain enough explanation and derivation of the effect, so that your classmates, who are unfamiliar with this topic, should feel they understand what it is about. You should not give every last detail of your derivations, but rather just enough detail that the reader has enough information to understand your arguments, and would feel comfortable filling in the missing steps on their own. You should not rely on lots of references to explain things, your paper should be self-contained, assuming of the reader only a level of physics appropriate to first year graduate students. Your paper should conclude with a short summary of the main points and why they are important. A first draft of your paper, uploaded to Blackboard, is due Monday Debember 7, by 9am. I will then distributed each paper that day at noon to four of your classmates for review. Each student will get one paper to review, and reviewing will be double-blind -- the reviewer will not be told who the authors of the paper are, and the authors will not be told who the reviewers are. Reviewers need to read the paper and comment on how good a job they think the authors have done. Did the authors adequately explain their topic to someone unfamiliar with it? Did they explain the importance of the topic? Was the paper clearly written? These reviews are due on Wednesday, December 9 by 5pm. They will then be sent to the authors, who then have the opportunity to respond to the reviews and to revise their manuscript. Your must submit your revised manuscript and your reply to the reviewers (saying how you did or did not respond to their comments) by Wednesday, December 16, at 5pm. Your grade on this final project will be determined both by your final manuscript and by your review. A large part of the grade for the manuscript will go towards how clearly you have explained your work, not just whether you have gotten the physics correct. To summarize, the timeline of the final project is as follows:
For writing up your paper I would like you to use the REVTeX package for LaTeX2e. LaTeX2e is a document composing language particularly well suited for scientific manuscripts. REVTeX is the particular style format for Physical Review, the collection of journals published by the American Physical Society. Please use the two column PRE format. You review should also be typed up, using whatever software you like. You might find it useful to assign different members of your group to different tasks. For example, one person might be given the job of writing in REVTeX, while another one or two focus on the topic. Someone else could focus on the style of the paper to improve its readibility. Such division of effort is up to you!
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