Students will develop skills in oral presentation by giving several brief talks. There will also be a substantial collaborative project, that will involve both oral and written presentations. In addition to dealing with communication skills, the course will include a segment on scientific judgment, including the uses and abuses of statistical arguments and the analysis of cases of scientific frauds. This requirement must be satisfied by all students before graduation. The collaborative project will consist of a research paper, in a format suitable for submission to a journal like the American Journal of Physics .
Homework is due in class at the appointed times.
Late homework will not be accepted without a papal dispensation. I think its appropriate to include a statement about plagiarism here. This is the text resource used in the MIT writing program. Examples and readings will be taken from other sources, but the Mayfield Handbook is the only required text. Students are expected to have satisfied the University's lower-division writing requirement.