PHYS-4617/5617 Course Project Web Home Page

This Instruction Packet contains a list of suggested projects for undergraduate students (see the links below). You can do any of these projects or propose to do one of your own. The graduate students are to come up with their own projects (done at a graduate student level). This project (proposal and final manuscript) will satisfy part of the written-intensive requirement for the course.

Your codes can be written in any language in which you feel comfortable. The PCs in Brown Hall 264 have Visual Basic, Visual C++ (both located on the University's disk server), Fortran 77, and Fortran 90 (the last two installed locally on these machines) under the Windows XP operating system. Some of the Linux machines have IDL installed on them. Ask the systems manager of such machines to see if this is the case. Machines in the Department of Mathematics computer lab also have MatLab and Maple on them. Please note that your Professor is very skilled in Fortran 77/90 and IDL, and has had some experience in programming in Visual Basic and C. Your Professor has no experience what-so-ever in C++, MatLab, or Maple. As such, if you choose to program in those languages, you will not be able to seek advice about your code development from your Professor. For those of you with no computer experience, it is recommended that you use either Visual Basic or IDL (if you can access it) since these are the easiest to learn.

Your code must be capable of allowing users to input any information required by the code through either an input file or from a front-end GUI widget. One should not have to recompile the code upon the inclusion of new input parameters. Codes should also output data into files which can be examined by your Professor and used for your analysis. The best way to display the results of your code is through a graphics GUI widget (perhaps the same one used for input). Besides turning in the final report, you will also be required to turn in at least one of these output files and a listing of the code itself. Students in the past have supplied these items on a CD-ROM in addition to the hardcopy of the manuscript. When writing your proposals and final manuscripts, you must use some sort of word processor that can handle mathematical functions. I recommend that you use LaTeX (and you will receive "brownie" points if you do, indeed, use LaTeX). If you have no experience with LaTeX, see your Professor for further information.

Your research proposal must contain the following items:

A sample proposal can be found at link listed below. Details for each section of this proposal follow. Your proposals are due on 15 February 2005.

The Cover Page must contain the title of your project, your name, your institution, the date on which you submit this proposal, your class status (i.e., Junior, Senior, or Graduate), your major, the programming language you will use, and the total budget requested. Be clever on how you may this up (i.e., use different fonts and character sizes, etc.). See the Budget section for details on the budget.

This page contains an abstract that summarizes your proposed research. See the sample proposal at the link below.

This section contains up to 4 pages of text that describes the science behind your work and what you hope to achieve from this research. Please note that figures, tables, and equations are very useful to review panels in ascertaining whether or not your proposal is worth pursuing. This section is where you "sell" yourself to the scientific community.

This section contains up to 2 pages that describes the methods you plan to use to see to the successful completion of your work. Talk about the programming language you will use and what numerical methods you will use in this code. Also give a time-line on when you will complete various steps in your research.

List the references that were cited in your Scientific Justification and Plan of Work. See the sample proposal for an example of how one presents such references.

When a scientists writes a proposal to a government or private program, he/she requests a certain amount of money to carry out this research. This can include money for salary for the Principle Investigator (PI), Co-Investigators (co-I's), and any students and/or postdocs you wish to hire. For this program, you will only be allowed to request 2 months of salary for yourself. Assume that your monthly salary is $4,000. (Note that this is "funny" money for this program --- you won't really be receiving any money.) You also have to tack on money for "fringe benefits" such as health insurance and social security. Assume your fringe benefits are 18% of your salary (this is a typical value). You can request to use or purchase equipment. Assume that the rent to use the computers in Brown Hall 264 is $50 per week when calculating this part of the budget. You can include money for any supplies that you may need to carry out this research. This is the section where you typically include money to pay for the publication of your paper. Assume that publishing your paper in the Luttermoser Report is $100 per page.

At this point, tally up all of these costs which are referred to as Direct Costs. You then have to calculate "overhead" costs, which are often referred to as Indirect Costs. This varies from university to university and organization to organization. When your Professor worked for companies in the Washington DC area, the overhead rate was as high as 200% of the Direct Cost (which shocked me when I first encountered it). Here at ETSU, the Indirect Cost percentage is 46% of Salaries and Fringe Benefits. Use this percentage for your proposed budget. The purpose of this Indirect Cost is to pay for office space, utilities, and administration costs while you are doing your research. On a second budget page, you must justify all of the money you are requesting. See the sample proposal at the link below. Make sure you put the final Total Cost on your Cover Page.

Note that for this program, there will be a grand total of $200,000 of the "funny" money available. You will be competing with your classmates for this money. The average proposer will receive $30,000 of this "funny" money. The best proposals will get all of the money they request. Those of you who don't do as well will only get a portion of the funds requested.

Note also that you will only be allowed to proceed on your proposed research after your proposal is approved. You must achieve a reviewer score of at least 3.2 (out of 4.0) for approval. Once you get your proposal back and you were not approved, you have until 2 October 2003 to make corrections and resubmit your proposal. Once approved, you can begin the research of your project.

The Final Manuscript must be at least 10 pages in length (including references, tables, and figures, but not including the output and code listing) for undergraduate students and 15 pages in length for graduate students. Please note that this manuscript is due on 20 November 2003. You will need to follow the same style used in profession scientific journals -- break the paper up into sections: An Abstract, Introduction, Description of Work, Results, and Conclusions (as would be done in a scientific journal like Physical Review or the Astrophysical Journal). I have links to two of my papers that I have published in the Astrophysical Journal below. Feel free to download either of them as an example. I have a sample LaTeX file (called template.tex, along with a postscript and pdf version of the LaTeX file, including the encapsulated postscript file needed for the PS and PDF output) that the student can download and use as a template for their manuscript. Remember, this is a writing intensive course, so use correct English grammar in your paper.

Besides getting your paper published in a scientific journal, one must also write a Final Report to the granting agency (e.g., NSF, NASA). For this program, your Professor is the granting agency. As such, you must submit this report at the same time you submit your manuscript. This Report should be 2 to 3 (single-sided) pages in length and describe how you spent the "funny" money and the outcome of your research.

Besides writing manuscripts for publication in scientific journals, you also will be required to demonstrate the operation of your code to the class on April 26th, 2005. Your presentation should include a description of the science you are trying to accomplish, the methods used, and finally, the actual demonstration. The length of each presentation should be about 15 minutes.

The links below contain various files that may help you in your project. The "LaTeX" link enable you to download a LaTeX copy of a file. The "PS" link will download a postscript file (perhaps the postscript output of the LaTeX file). The "PDF" link should start Acrobat Reader on your web browser which contains a PDF version of the postscript file. One final note, the "EPS" link is an encapsulated postscript file that contains a plot used in the construction of the project manuscript PS and PDF output files. Good luck!