PHYS 228 Template Example Author 1, Author 2, and Research Advisor Name Street Address (optional), Dept, Institution, City, State, Zip Code (Dated: August 31, 2017) The abstract should summarize the paper s contents as concisely as possible. It should make the goals of the paper clear, and state the main results or conclusions directly (not merely allude to them vaguely). The abstract should be written so that any physicist, regardless of area of specialization, can read and understand it. Abstracts must be self-contained without references or footnotes. I. INTRODUCTION This first section is usually the Introduction and/or Background. For now, we will focus on the introduction. This section puts your work in the relevant sub-level of physics. Notice that the introduction is not a physics history lesson, rather the focus of this section is helping your audience understand the significance of your work. It is common to cite information on the techniques and/or models that others have used that are relevant to your work [1]. Citations should appear before the period at the end of a sentence. Multiple, related papers may be cited together [2, 3]. The introduction typically does not include equations or figures. II. BACKGROUND The next piece of the paper is to introduce the specific model or physics concepts relating to your experiment. This section can either be combined with the introduction or with the methods section. You should begin with concepts that would be familiar to any undergraduate student and work from there to the concepts needed to understand the experiment. The driving force behind the theory explanations should be to help the reader understand the methods and results of the experiment. A figure here representing the general physical set-up is included here to orient your audience to what you are talking about. As you introduce equations, you should make sure you define all of the variables either before the equation or after. Here is an example of defining the variables before the equation.
2 The mass m of an object, its acceleration a and the net force applied to the object that causes the acceleration, F net. Then, introduce the equation that relates them together, known as Newton s second law: F net = m a. (1) Here is an example of defining the variables after presenting the equation. In relativity, energy of an object at rest, E, is given by E = mc 2, (2) where m is the mass of the object and c is the speed of light. Note that using $ in the code makes the font of the symbol in the text the same as the font in the equation. Notice how the equations are treated as part of a sentence and punctuated appropriately. Further equation references, like Eq. 1 or Eq. 2, should be included like text in the sentence. III. METHODS This section explains the salient points of the process one would use to reproduce your study. It focuses the background to its specific application to your apparatus. Usually you end up with one or two governing equations that you will use to analyze/graph your data. You should not need to introduce any new physics equations from the ones introduced in the background. Rather, you should move from the general expressions in the background to equations that apply to your specific experimental circumstances. A. Experimental Set-up The methods section often includes a figure that helps define the parameters or describe the experiment. All figures should be described in the body of the paper and you should always reference the figure in the text. The figure (see Fig. 1) should help describe your experiment schematically. Although a set-up photo is helpful for you in lab or recording settings and such in your lab notebook, a photo is too cluttered for the reader. Therefore, it is almost always better to use a line drawing or block diagram rather than to show some kind of photograph (which is often harder to understand). Figures are automatically placed on the page using the code [htpb]. This tells the compiler to put the figure here, at the
top of the page, at the bottom of the page, or on its own page. You should use that code for all your figures. 3 2z 0 V(t) R z x E zs FIG. 1. Figures must be labeled with a descriptive caption. The caption should describe the meaning of all of the parameters shown in the figure (e.g., z 0, R, V (t), and E zs ). The graphics file must be saved as a PDF, PNG, or JPG with no extra white space. The thickness of lines should be thick enough that a printer has enough resolution to print them. I suggest at least 1 pt font. B. Procedure The methods section is not a lab manual, describing a step-by-step reiteration of everything that you did, but is rather an overview of the different parts of the experiment from a conceptual point of view. You must carefully weed through the details of what you did to determine what is essential to reproducing your work and what were the choices you made to finish your task based on what you had on hand. For example it is more important to know that the detector should be far enough away from the source so that you don t saturate the detector but not so far that you have a low signal to noise ratio rather than that the distance from the detector was 5 cm. You will likely report that the distance is 5 cm with your constants later in the results section if this is necessary. But if someone has a similar but different model of detector, knowing why you chose the distance is more important than the actual distance in explaining your methods. The methods section will often include diagrams and illustrations that show, in graphical form, key experiment setups as shown in Fig. 2 that are more detailed than Fig. 1or show
4 specifically how measurements are made. Each diagram should be an integral part of the description. Each variable and symbol in the diagrams are described in detail in both the methods figure caption as well as in the body of the text. ~ f Trap V 0 center RF electrodes z 0 = 0.6 mm 3.7 mm z y x outside RF ground and z bias electrodes λ=405 nm laser 2.43 mm 0.62 mm x bias electrode 20 y x y bias electrode glass plate microscope objective FIG. 2. Figures must be clearly labeled with a descriptive caption. The caption should describe the action or purpose of the equipment shown in the figure. A reader will often jump from one figure to the next, reading the captions as a quick way of scanning the paper. Therefore all acryonyms must be defined in the caption even if they are defined in the text. IV. RESULTS The results section is typically the shortest section of a paper. This section provides the values of all constants necessary to compute your theoretical results, presents your theoretical results (i.e., what you are comparing your results against), and presents your experimental results. All values (constants, theoetical results, and experimental results) should be provided with uncertainties rounded to appropriate significant digits. Tables are an excellant way of presenting lists of constants, while graphs are usually the best way to present data and show trends! A sample graph is provided in Fig. 3.
5 You should explain any processing that you have done in presenting data. In general, data should not be excluded unless there is a very good reason to do so and that reason is presented in the paper. All data and measured constants should be presented with uncertainties. Since the reader assumes you using standard techniques to calculate uncertainty, you should not describe mathematically how you calculated uncertainty unless you did something nonstandard. It is sufficient to say that you used standard propagation of uncertainty techniques to determine uncertainty in measured and computed values. 1.0 Voltage Data Fit 0.8 Voltage V 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 0 FIG. 3. Data files must also be clearly labeled, axes must be labeled, there must be units on the axes, the data must be in discrete, point form, any fits must be in line form, and if multiple graphs are shown together, there must be a legend (internal on the graph). If a legend does not fit, the different graphs must be identified in the caption. Graphs are best produced in Kaleidagraph or Mathematica. If the error bars are too small to be visible as above, you can either state that in the caption or multiply them by a factor of X and then state that in the caption. V. ANALYSIS/DISCUSSION This often includes the experimentalist s interpretation of the meaning of the data. This section compares your expected results to your experimental results, discusses the accuracy and precision of your results, discusses sources of error, and what conclusions can be drawn from your data. Depending on your experiment, sometimes the results and analysis are combined into one section. This is common especially if the experiment consists of many
smaller separate experiments that are more easily discussed individually. You should be sure to reflect on the original question that this experiment was designed to answer. 6 VI. CONCLUSION For short papers, this section is usually folded into the Analysis/Discussion section as a few sentences at the end of the last paragraph. The conclusion can contain a summary of the key concepts covered in the paper and/or a discussion of the implications of the experimental findings. The conclusion section is also the place to make suggestions for possible improvements on the experiment and suggestions for possible follow-up experiments. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This section is where you acknowledge individuals who contributed to the accomplishment of the work, but were not responsible for the science you were doing. For example, here is where you mention lab support personnel (e.g., your lab TA, the department lab manager, the campus machinist, etc.) or people that you had significant discussions with. You should mention the persons name, role, and contribution. PARTICIPATION DISCLOSURE This section is required for PHYS 228. You should list the role of each group member and discuss the strengths and weakness of how well you worked to gether as a team. [1] Freeman J. Dyson, Feynman s proof of the Maxwell equations, Am. J. Phys. 58 (3), 209211 (1990). [2] D. J. Berkeland, J. D. Miller, J. C. Bergquist, W. M. Itano, and D. J. Wineland, Minimization of ion micromotion in a Paul trap,, J. Appl. Phys. 83, 5025 5033 (1998). [3] E.R. Post, G.A. Popescu, and N. Gershenfeld, Inertial measurement with trapped particles: A microdynamical system, Appl. Phys. Lett. 96, 143501-1 3 (2010).