Research Projects
Guidelines
The idea of a Research Project is to tackle a topic borrowed from research frontiers (such as from recently published in journal articles) while spending more time on researching literature, doing computation, and compiling a report than it is usually required for simple homework problems. When you have enough results to tell a coherent story, you should end the Research Project by writing (in a clear writing style, obeying the rules of grammar and spelling) and submitting a Report. The Report should be understandable to a person who has not done the assignment.
Format of the report for the midterm project
The midterm project should be finalized as a paper similar to research articles dealing with Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics posted every day on arxiv.org. The format of the paper mimicking this is:
- Title, Name of the person and affiliation, Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Dicussion, Conclusion, and References.
- Paper should be typed in two column style. For this you can use:
- LaTeX in the form of RevTeX style for Physical Review journals, as implemented by PHYS 824 template and the embedded EPS figure for this example. You can also find more examples of typing mathematical formulas in Math into LaTeX: How to Beautify Equations (and the embedded EPS figure).
- Open Office version of Microsoft Word (Word itself is not advisable since you need additional programs, such as MathType, on the top of it to be able to type equations).
Format of the report for the final project
The final project will be reported during the final exam time as a poster during a Poster Session which will also include peer reviewing. To make a poster, you can use this PowerPoint Template. Poster printing is available in Smith Hall and its cost will be covered by the Department.
Midterm Research Project
The project explores recently discovered graphene nanoribbons by computing their electronic structure as a property in equilibrium using simple tight-binding method and more involved density functional codes.
