Physics 210: Instructions for Term Project Proposals and Presentations

First, recall that your selection of a term project topic combined with your presentation of your proposal are worth 5% of your grade, with no evaluation component; i.e. provided that you send me an e-mail with an approved topic by the deadline and then make your presentation, you will receive that 5%.  If you don't, and there aren't extenuating circumstances, then there are likely to be adverse consquences.

Second, In preparation for the term project proposal presentations on Oct 21 and 23 you must do the following:
  1. Send me (choptuik@physics.ubc.ca) an e-mail message no later than Thursday, October 16 at 12 noon that states your project topic.  If you choose one of the following topics

    there is no need to get explicit approval from me to pursue it.  However, all other project topics do require explicit approval, so if you want to do something relatively novel,  please discuss it with me well in advance of the deadline. 

    Important: Even if you are going to do one of the pre-approved topics listed above and/or we've come to a mutual agreement in a lab etc. about what you will do, you must still send me an e-mail message stating your chosen topic.

    The subject of the message must be:

         210 term project topic from <your full name>

    Your full name should be something similar to the one that you used to register for UBC, i.e please don't assume that I'll be able to identify you by your initials or a nick-name that you tend to go by.  Please be prepared for a very brief response from me indicating that I've approved / not approved your project.

    Again, the deadline for this e-mail is Thursday, October 16 at 12 noon, and this deadline is firm.

  2. Prepare your presentation (using your favorite presentation software), and ensure that you can deliver it in 7 minutes or less (less is fine!). You must then e-mail a copy of your presentation to Arman (arman@physics.ubc.ca) as a PDF document---no other format, including .ppt or .pptx will be accepted. 

    The PDF file must be sent as an ATTACHMENT to the e-mail. 

    The name of the PDF file must be

    <last-name>.pdf

    If and only if your last name is one of

    1. Chen
    2. Wang
    3. Zhang

    please name the PDF file

    <last-name>_<first-name>.pdf

    The subject of the message must be:

         210 term project proposal from <your full name>

    The deadline for all submissions of presentations is Monday, October 20 at 12 noon, and this deadline is firm.


  3. IMPORTANT!!  To reiterate

    The e-mail message stating the term project topic gets sent to me (choptuik@physics.ubc.ca)

    The e-mail message with the PDF form of proposal presentation as an attachment gets sent to Arman (arman@physics.ubc.ca)

Presentation order will be alphabetical by first name for each lab section. The schedule will be posted soon.

Guidelines for preparing proposal presentations
  1. Your presentations need not be very detailed (remember, you have only 7 minutes to deliver it!).  Again, the main purpose for you preparing one is to ensure that you have chosen an appropriate topic, and that you have a good (though perhaps not complete) understanding of what will be required to complete it

  2. Refer to my sample presentation available HERE, as well as student presentations from previous years (available from the course Home Page -> Course Links -> Term Projects -> Previous student project proposals) to guide you as necessary.  In particular, you may want to adopt the sectioning that I used, but note that not all sections will be relevant for all projects

    1. Overview
    2. Project Goals
    3. Mathematical Formulation
    4. Numerical Approach (don't worry if you're unsure about this: for many projects, the computational techniques will be covered in future lectures and labs)
    5. Visualization and Plotting Tools (above comment applies here)
    6. Testing and Numerical Experiments
    7. Project Timeline
    8. References
Important note concerning N-body projects

For most cases I expect you to write a Matlab program in which all N bodies generate forces felt by the other particles (whether the interaction is gravitational, electrostatic, or some physically plausible force).  We will discuss the basic equations and discretization process in class. In some cases, such as the Toomre model, many/most of the particles will not generate forces, but the dynamics of a large number of particles will still have to be simulated. In those instances where only a few particles generate forces, there must be some well-defined physical behaviour that you wish to study, and you must ensure that your simulations will generate this behaviour.  If there is any doubt in your mind about this point, simply propose "Gravitational N-body" project and we can attempt to meet your initial goals as things progress (assuming that these goals are possible and compatible with the aims of the course).