Flowchart for Term Paper Preparation

Physics 954 Term Paper

Topic of your choice out of the material of this class. It needs to contain material that goes beyond the Lecture Notes and textbook. This should comprise about 50% of the material (I am not picky!). You must have source material other than textbook and lecture notes. These cannot just be www sources, although www sources may be included. The length of the paper should be about 5 - 10 (single spaced).

Flowchart for Term Paper Preparation

Stage 1: What should I do? What do I want to write about?
(This stage should be passed by Mid-Semester)

Ask yourself, what you are interested in!

You write the best paper on something that you want to learn!

Stage 2: Searching and Reading of Material

- Reference List in Course Review
- Library
- World Wide Web
— Journals, + + +

Stage 3: Great Confusion?

- Organize your material!

- Write down a list of points you have learned on your topic

- Then structure this material (Audience? Toss out stuff!)

Stage 4: Outline of Paper

- Structure of paper very important for a scientific write-up!!!

Stage 5: Paper Writing

- Fill the outline with a logical flow of arguments

Stage 6: Critical Reading and Editing

- You want to impress, but not with sloppiness!

Items that must be included for full Credit!

• Title

should be descriptive (what is the paper about?)

• Paper needs to be organized in sections with sub-titles

flow of your arguments should become transparent
information and arguments on the same topic should be together under one sub-title

• Reference List at the end of the paper

reference all sources that you used (books, articles, web pages)
you must use more than just the course book!!
Rest not only www sources!
supply all information to find the reference:
Book: Author(s), Title, Publisher, Year.
Article: Author(s), Title, Journal, Page, Year.
WWW: Author(s), Title, Address (http://...), Date when used.
(I am not picky about the format)

• If you use Figures and Tables in the paper

they need a descriptive caption
they need to be referred to in the text