Senior honours projects Report and poster writing John Loveday

Report Aim to describe all the relevant aspects of the project as succinctly as possible without loosing important details Demonstrate that you are familiar with all the relevant literature and understand it! Demonstrate that you understand the techniques that you are using Level to be understandable to your colleagues Four parts introduction, experimental, results and conclusions Overall length pages of A words

Introduction A description of why the problem you are tackling is interesting and important A review of other relevant work in the field (Literature survey) Not just a listing of what work has been done but relevant details of the work What has been done What was well done and what not I have read the literature and written this so that you don’t All annotated with references to work in Journals or Books (generally do not use internet pages as references) A short review of the theoretical background relevant to the project Principles of the experiment Again referenced

Literature survey Start from information given to you by your supervisor You will need to read more widely find other papers Use search databases like web of knowledge wok.mimas.ac.uk Search of keywords, names, years, Journal names Forward Search on Citations Back Search on References

Experimental A description of the experimental procedures Enough to allow the reader to form a general idea of how the experiment was done. (Very important for people attempting to reproduce your results) A short description of the apparatus and how it works to show that you are familiar with it

Results Description of the analysis procedure including error propagation (statistical and systematic) Some of the mathematical basis but don’t get carried away Again important for readers wanting to test the results Results presented graphically wherever possible (no large tables of numbers)

Conclusions What the results mean What consequences do they have What confidence do you have in this Suggestions for futher work and how the experiments might be improved

References [1] A.N.Author, A.N.O.Author and A.Waster, J. Improb. Res., Vol, page (year)

Latex Typesetting language but written specifically for Scientific paper writing Very simple for equations Can embed figures Cross referencing done automatically so figure and reference numbering Can download references from wok A latex dummy SH report will go on the website in the next couple of weeks

Poster Posters are the main way that science is communicated at conferences posters up on boards in a room with everyone visiting posters and talking to the authors Efficient way of presenting and also very effective (one to one communication) We will have a poster session at the end of semester 2 (Audience will be you and members of academic staff)

Poster II Poster should be a summary of what is in the report on an A2 sized area (4 sheets of A4 is also OK) (ignore 300 word limit) It should be visually attractive, you have to persuade people to come and look at it It should be understandable without you there to explain it (it has to be handed in) And it should provide something that you can amplify when speaking about it. Various styles are possible (wordy or lot of pictures and bullet points) look at posters around the school The winner of this year’s graduate poster prize is a good example

Assessment 30 % for the laboratory work Assessed by the supervisor (log book part of the hand in) 55 % Report Assessed by supervisor and second marker 15% Poster (handed in) Assessed by supervisor and second marker Poster session is not assessed but there will be a prize for the best poster and a 5% deduction for not attending.