Website for COSMOS Cluster 5 Writing and Communication

General information

Professor: Alexander Coward
Other Professors for Cluster 5: Richard Scalettar, Ali Dad-del & Rajiv Singh
Teaching Assistant: Tom Samuel Denton IV
Main Cluster 5 Website: http://leopard.physics.ucdavis.edu/rts/cosmos/cosmos.html
Main COSMOS Website: http://cosmos.ucdavis.edu/

Syllabus

The main goal of the Writing and Communication section is to develop an understanding of how science and research are communicated both in writing as well as through other means. The goals and specific topics that we'll cover will include the following:

Giving a scientific presentation.
Building and maintaining a website.
Scientific correspondence.
Writing a scientific paper.
Maintaining research records.
Commenting computer code.
Working in teams.
Preparing an Intel Science Fair proposal (see below).

Timetable

Week 1 (Commencing Monday, July 6th. Two classes.)

There are three main objectives for this week:

Setting up everyone's individual website.
Developing initial ideas for a project and Science Fair proposal.
A brief introduction to maintaining records.

Week 2 (Commencing Monday, July 13th. One class.)

We only have one class this week in which we'll look at makes a good (and bad) scientific presentation. We'll start work on slides for a presentation about your project.

Week 3 (Commencing Monday, July 20th. Three classes.)

This'll be a busy week for us with a lot to do. It'll include:

Finalizing the Science Fair Proposal.
Working out how a program which outputs the first N primes works and commenting the code.
How to work well in a team.
Writing a letter to an expert who you don't know to ask for technical advice on a scientific problem.

Week 4 (Commencing Monday, July 27th. Two classes.)

We'll have a few different things to wrap up this week, the most important of which are:

Finishing the Science Fair Proposal. The deadline for this is July 31st.
Finishing the slides about your project.

Intel Science Fair

Each student in Cluster 5 will a proposal of an Intel Science Fair. There is information about these fairs here. Although everyone will write a proposal, submitting it to Intel is optional and you should only submit it if you are certain you can attend the fair. The Cluster 5 students who submit the top two proposals will each be awarded $500 to pursue their project. The grants are intended to provide practical support for the projects, including equipment costs, entry fees to science fairs, and travel expenses. A budget for the project is not required. Winners will be asked to submit a more detailed final project description, as well as the results of the science fair in which they participated once the fair has concluded. Each proposal should include:

Your name, a title, and which cluster you are in (Cluster 5).
A 1-2 page abstract of the project, which describes your plans for the project.
The name, date, and location of the science fair that you plan to enter and contact information for the fair (website or physical address and phone number, if available).
The name of your mentor on the project, if you have one.

The deadline for handing in your proposal is July 31st.

Material for students

A starter website. This code works, but is very badly formatted.