Phys 341 Final Project
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The aim of this project is to further your understanding of the principles of experiment design and analysis in “real world” situations. In most cases, this will involve research and reporting on someone else’s experiment. An important component in assigning a final grade to your project will be how you relate and apply the topics and concepts learned in the course to the project.
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You are free to carry out your research in groups of up to five (5) people. If you wish to work in a group, you need to let me know as soon as possible.
I need to know what your group situation is by Tuesday, Nov. 26th.
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The final product will be a paper (1 per group), of no less than (4 + 2n) pages, where n is the number of group members. Figures, charts, graphs, and tables should be included in an appendix, and do NOT count towards the page total. In general, you should follow the normal procedure in a scientific paper of having sections devoted to an introduction, a review of the current literature (both experimental and theoretical if appropriate) related to your experiment, a discussion of how the experiment was carried out (either by you or someone else), a section on how the data was analyzed, a discussion of the results of the experiment, and a concluding section. I realize that in some cases, one or more of these sections may not apply, so there is some latitude here. These are meant to be guidelines only.
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The project is worth 20% of your final grade. If you are working on your own, the final product will be, of course, the final paper that you hand in. If you work in a group, you must also hand in a brief (less than 1/2 page) synopsis of how you contributed to the project. Not all group members need participate in all aspects of the project. It might be the case that one person takes on the background research, another does the data analysis, and yet another writes the majority of the final paper. I will leave that up to your group to decide. However, it is expected that all group members should contribute approximately equally to the project.
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List of possible topics:
(i) Frequency and severity of hurricanes in the modern era, and the possible connection to global warming (ii) Election polling – there are many topics that could be investigated here, such as “The Bradley Effect”, among many others (iii) The Electoral College – is is scientifically flawed? What is the value of a single person’s vote in a presidential election? (iv) Gender bias – what is the scientific evidence to support or refute this? (v) Racial bias – what is the scientific evidence to support or refute this? (vi) Safety of vaccines – is there scientific evidence to support that vaccines cause/are linked to autism? (vii) Election fraud – is there any evidence to support that this occurred in recent elections? (viii) What is the best computing language to use for particular applications? – i.e. scientific computing, string manipulation, client-server apps, etc. (ix) Does capital punishment affect the murder rate? That is, is it an effective deterrent? (x) Does the existence of a national health care program affect the general health of the population? (xi) Does gun control affect crime rates? (xii) What are the factors that affect the success or failure of various weight loss programs?
This is just to get you started. If you want to choose one of these, that’s fine. If you want to modify one of these, that is fine as well (but you have to let me know and discuss it with me). If you want to come up with something different, that you have a personal interest in, that is great, too!