Physics 351: Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics
Research Projects for spring 2017

For the rest of the semester, as well as the regular class activities we will be working on research projects.  These will primarily be "journal reports" - a report on some interesting and perhaps even timely research which has been reported in a physics journal. You will need to explain the journal article in detail. The project should focus on some aspect of thermodynamics or statistical mechanics.

The presentation will be either web-based, Powerpoint, or something similar, and will be presented to the class orally. Positive aspects of these will be using Mathcad (or Mathematica) to aid in a calculation or simulation, doing additional research, and calculating results.

The project will progress in stages:

1. Research journal abstracts: find a number of possibilities of articles that you might be interested in researching more deeply.  The easiest way to search is to use an internet search engine for physics journals.  You might stick to the American Journal of Physics - AJP  (http://ojps.aip.org/ajp/ - you can search the AJP abstracts back to 1975, and they have full text of articles at least since 1999 online.  Check out December 1999's special issue.  Let me know if you have trouble accessing AJP online).  You can also use any other journal search engine (such as Harvard's Abstract Search, First Search, or Ingenta - see SPS site's physics links).  We keep our own collection of Physics Today and American Journal of Physics in Dr. Schenk's office; there are a number of years in there. You can search for things as simple as "statistical mechanics" or "thermodynamics", or be more specific such as "entropy" or "ideal gas".  The article could be new research, a new theory, or a new look at an old problem.

2. Narrow down the abstracts to a few articles, and get copies of the articles.   We (the library?) have AJP back to 1981, otherwise, we might have to purchase it online

3. Read the articles, do some background research, decide which one would be best for this project, and what format you will use: web, ppt, other.  Choose an article that you can get a grasp on, but that you will also need to do some background work.

4. Make a detailed outline of your project.  Determine the main points and the sections of your talk.  Point out where it is that you need to do a calculation or a simulation.  Determine where it is that you will have to do more background research.

5. Research, calculate, put it all together on paper, and create final presentation.

6. Presentation. 4-5 minutes in length.

Timeline:

You will be graded on the first and third stage of the project, as well as the final presentation. The deadlines are firm.

See examples of previous projects: Mitzi  Keri  Stephanie; you do not need to adopt formats like they have.