Physics 453/454: Team Research Project

updated 2005Aug25

3 Credit hours per semester.

Catalog Description: Student teams will carry out major experimental or computational projects.  The team in consultation with the instructor will choose the topic and develop a plan for the project. Each team will conduct several oral presentations in an independent manner, carry out the project, and produce a final written report.  Must be taken in sequence.  Prerequisites: Physics 361, 461.

Course objective: to provide an integrative experience in which physics majors can apply and further refine a variety of skills, accumulated in previous theory and lab courses and developed in this course, to the achievement of a deliberate goal having significant physics content; this achievement shall occur in a team setting and make use of design, planning, tracking, and reporting methods widely practiced in the research and development activities of industrial and government laboratories. 

The important elements of this course are

• A team
• A goal
• A plan
• A result
• A report

Tentative schedule:

• Week 1 - form team(s), consider possible goals.  Team formation due September 5.
• Week 2 - propose goal(s), select goal(s), begin planning. Goal specification due September 11.
• Week 3 - present preliminary plan(s), begin implementation. Plan(s) due September 18.
• Week 8 - rough draft of semester report due October 16.
• Weeks 12 and 15 -  evaluate progress, present written and oral progress reports and recommendations for plan amendments.  Due dates November 13, and December 8.
• Weeks 20, 25 (weeks  5, 10 of second semester) - evaluate progress, present written and oral progress reports and recommendations for plan amendments.  Due dates to be determined. The week 25 report should be prepared as a rough draft of the final report.
• Week 30 (week 15 of second semester) - final oral and written reports. Nominally due last day of classes.

Additional detail and course policies:

• Teams - a team consists of at least 2 people.  Team members should share common interest in a goal.  There are goal-dependent limits on team size, outside of which the team becomes ineffective or unwieldy.  Good teams have good balance of skills and abilities.  Group "dynamics" issues should be considered in forming an effective team.  Joining a team is a voluntary action, but becomes a commitment not to be broken lightly.
• Goals - Teams will propose project goals in writing and deliver them to the class in oral presentations. Acceptable goals in the context of this course must have strong, identifiable physics content and must include a tangible result, such as a working apparatus, a documented measurement, a functioning computer program, or some combination of these.  A suitable goal should be achievable within the timeframe of two semesters.  It is a folk legend among practicing physicists that most tasks take between p and p² times as long as expected, and it is frequently necessary to redefine goals in order to meet deadlines.  While this sounds like cheating, like cooking the books, the reality of research is that worthy goals are often poorly understood ones; as understanding improves, it is easier to ask answerable questions. Appreciation of this point should be built into the planning process.  
• Plans - Teams will present written and oral initial project plans, which will detail goals, methods, division of effort, scheduling, assessment, and feedback.  A good plan is a design that includes a method of attack, a division of labor among team members, a schedule, an assessment process, and a feedback mechanism permitting adaptation to changing conditions.  Some things may change, causing unavoidable delays during the term of the project, while the term of the project will not change.  There must be means to identify delays and changes and to amend the plan to compensate for them.  
• Results - The result must be a tangible product as specified above under goals.  The best result is the achievement of a worthy goal that was sought from the outset, but with a good plan, it is acceptable that the goal actually achieved is one that evolved in response to events and according to plan.  
• Reports - The final report should concentrate on showcasing the result(s) from the perspective of physics content and physics context (i.e., "Where's the physics in your phrammitz?" and "Where does your phrammitz fit into the bigger physics/science/human picture?").  Interim reports should be constructed with a view toward constructing a project portfolio which chronicles the project from conception to end result.  This portfolio should then consist (at minimum) of the initial proposal, the initial project plan, all intermediate progress reports (which demonstrate evolution of the project goal, if necessary), and the final project report. Note that the week 7 interim report and the week 25 interim reports are expected to be rough drafts of the semester final reports, and are due immediately following fall and spring breaks.