Instructor: Horst D Wahl,

Office 512 Keen Bldg.,

Phone 644-3509, e-mail: wahl@hep.fsu.edu;

Office Hours: After class and by appointment, any time you can get a hold of me

Credits: 02

Prerequisite: PHY 2048, corequisite: PHY 2049 (or instructor's permission)

Text: no text needed

Purpose of course:

The purpose of this course is to develop abilities in the area of oral and written communication in physics. (note that communication of scientific results and ideas takes up a large fraction of a scientist's time and effort)

Outline of class:

• The class will be conducted in an informal format, with everyone participating. At the beginning of the semester, we shall discuss areas of specific interests to the students, and  identify the sources of background materials related to these areas.
• In consultation with the instructor, students will choose topics. The selected topics can be drawn from any area of physics or close to physics, and can be the subject of the student's research project or his/her interest, or can be one that the group as a whole is interested in learning about.
• For those students who take the intermediate or advanced lab during this semester, the physics related to the lab experiments, including description of the experiments and discussion of the results, can serve as suitable topics.
• Once topics have been agreed on, students will then
  • produce a written outline of a short presentation of their selected topic
  • make short (about 10 minutes) presentations of the subject ;
    for this presentation, transparencies (or projection from a computer file) must be used, and the files have to be submitted to the instructor before the presentation
  • eventually, prepare a longer presentation (about 50 minutes) in colloquium format
  • write a paper (about 10 pages) about the chosen subject.
• goal of all of these activities:
  • practice oral communication skills
  • learn how to organize the material in a presentation;
  • become more comfortable talking in front of others and develop skills in delivering a talk;
  • become accustomed to answering questions from the audience;
  • ...
  • have fun talking about physics or physics-related topics, and teach each other some physics
  • practice writing understandably about scientific issues
  • increase your proficiency with word-processing and presentation software tools
  • learn to use Powerpoint, TeX (if you are interested)
• grading: final grade will be based on class participation (~25%), the talk outlines (4%), and the presentations (~70%).
• The only accepted method of submitting the outlines and presentations is in the form of a computer file in a standard format (e.g. plain text, OpenOffice, MS Powerpoint, MSWord, TeX, pdf, postscript, html), as part or an attachment of an e-mail message to the instructor, or by posting on a Website. Paper copies will not be accepted.

Websites:

• class Website: http://www.physics.fsu.edu/courses/Fall03/PHY3091 . The Website can be reached via the Physics Department homepage (follow the links Courses ⇒ Fall 2003 ⇒ PHY3091), or from my homepage (http://www.hep.fsu.edu/~wahl )
• This course also uses the FSU Blackboard utility. To get to the Blackboard pages, go to http://campus.fsu.edu. You will be prompted to enter your ACNS username and password to log in. After having logged in, you will be given a list of all the courses for which you are registered and which use Blackboard. The Blackboard site will be used for announcements and for student discussion.
• useful links
• useful FSU links

ADA statement:

Students with disabilities needing academic accommodations should:
(a) register with, and provide documentation to, the Student Disability Resource Center (SDRC); and
(b) bring me a letter from SDRC indicating your needed academic accommodations. Please do this during the first week of class.
For more information on this see the Resource Center's web site.

Academic honor code:

Students are expected to uphold the Academic Honor Code published in The Florida State University Bulletin and in the Student Handbook. The first paragraph is:
The Academic Honor System of Florida State University is based on the premise that each student has the responsibility

• to uphold the highest standards of academic integrity in the student's own work,
• to refuse to tolerate violations of academic integrity in the University community, and
• to foster a high sense of integrity and social responsibility on the part of the University community.