Winter presentations

We've scheduled the Winter quarter progress reports for
• Monday February 5, 5:30 - 7:30
• Tuesday February 6, 5:30 - 7:30
• Monday February 12, 5:30 - 7:30
• Tuesday February 13, 5:30 - 7:30

  food and venue

  The Physics Department will not be providing food for the winter quarter. We invite you to bring your own food. Location is KPTC 206, like last quarter. The Department will provide soft drinks.

  guidelines from last quarter

• You will give a 20 minute presentation followed by 5 minutes for questions. Make sure you practice and time your talk.
• If you want to give a PowerPoint or pdf presentation, let MJS know. You will have to bring it to him in advance on a memory stick for downloading onto his laptop since we won't have time to switch computers. If you have a Mac, make sure all of the figures and fonts work on a PC. If they donŐt, convert the talk to a pdf file before you give it to him.
• Please arrive at 5:20 each day. We have a tight schedule and must start on time
• Overhead transparencies: virtually no one used overheads last fall, Please contact TW or MJS ahead of time if you want to use overheads.

  revised schedule of speakers

Winter progress reports

As told in the guideline sheet we ask you for a progress report near the end of the quarter. This quarter the reports will be due at Noon, Friday March 9 by email to Prof. Shochet, Prof. Witten and Ms. Mcneil. If necessary, you can give us hard copy instead.

Sample theses

We've scanned in some of the better theses from past years, to give you an idea what a good thesis is like. Together with your advisors guidance, these examples are here to help you write a good thesis, too.

Guideline sheet

This document gives our plan of what the Thesis course entails and the sequence of events. It was distributed in our initial May meeting. Please read it and email us with any questions.

update 31 may: Here is an explicit statement of the advisor's role.

Information return form

Please go to this link, fill out this form and return it to Mrs. McNeil in the physics office, so that we know of your plans and can contact you.

Faculty consent form

You'll need this form to tell us your arrangements with the faculty advisor for your thesis, as told in the guidelines mentioned above.

Course catalog description

29100-29200-29300. Bachelor's Thesis. PQ: Open to physics majors with fourth-year standing and consent of instructor. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form in Autumn Quarter. Students receive a grade in each quarter of registration: P/F grading in Autumn and Winter Quarters, and quality grading in Spring Quarter.

This yearlong sequence of courses is designed to involve the student in current research. Over the course of the year, the student works on a research project in physics or a closely related field (e.g., astrophysics) leading to the writing of a bachelor's thesis. A student who submits a satisfactory thesis, earns a grade of B or higher based on the project, and achieves a GPA of 3.0 or higher in the required undergraduate physics courses is awarded a B.A. with honors. The project may be one suggested by the instructor or one proposed by the student and approved by the instructor. In either case, all phases of the project (including the literature search, design and construction of the experiments, and analysis) must be done by the student. The instructor, faculty adviser, postdocs, and graduate students are, of course, available for consultation. Autumn, Winter, Spring.