An article acceptable as the subject of this report must be
1) from a science magazine that lists references to original source articles
in the scientific literature These references may appear at the end of the
main article, or in the section of the magazine called "Further Reading"
or such.
Among the magazines that have such references are Scientific American,
Physics Today, American Scientist, Astronomy, Mathematical Intelligencer,
Science, SLAC BeamLine, and Nature
2) published in an issue dated of May 1, 1999 or later
3) at least four pages of text in length
These articles typically are written by active scientists, explaining their work to students at your level. Your task is to explain the article, in 500 or more words, in language understandable to a ninth grader.
Please submit:
(1) the Recent Research Report Checklist/Grading Sheet found in this packet;
(2) a photocopy or print out of the article on which you are reporting;
(5) a photocopy or print out of one of the source articles referenced
in the main article;
(4) your report itself, which need not be copied.
The purpose of writing a research article is to acquaint the student with the science journals available to the general educated populace that are available both on the world wide web and from news stands and libraries. If there is a subject of personal interest to you, then you can most often readily find a high quality article about it that you will be able to understand. The point of looking of the references is to see that one can follow up to a deeper level.
A typical student will find that the total work involved is not more than for a typical problem set. There are some students who feel more comfortable with their writing and rudimentary mathematical ability. If such a student wishes to put more and extra effort into the research report or more likely the book report, they should inform the course staff, that they want this effort to represent a larger portion of their grade.