Senior Research
All physics majors must complete a full year senior research requirement. Students sign up for senior seminar courses 491 and 492 and work on an in depth project for their entire senior year. This capstone experience is designed to have students work through a relatively complex project in a semi-independent manner. Students are expected to make use of their previous physics courses and to bring together all the skills and techniques they have leaned throughout their college experience. Typically, students work in groups of two or three with a faculty advisor on these projects.
At the end of each semester, students must make a formal presentation of their projects to the department. These presentations are typically 20 minutes in length and take place in Tome 115. In addition, each group of students (excluding honors candidates) must write a paper that gives a complete description of their research project (students attempting honors must write a separate, independent honors paper). Although the details of these papers will largely be determined by the particular project and students involved, the formatting of these papers should all follow the same basic guidelines. The following templates have been designed to make the formatting of the senior research papers uniform and professional looking. Please use these templates when writing your senior research papers.
If using LaTeX, please note that if you would like to use jpg or gif images then you must choose to compile with pdftex. Otherwise, you would use (encapsulated) postscript files (eps) and compile with regular latex.
Physics Research Paper Guidelines
Senior Research Paper (LaTeX) Template (pdf file)
Senior Research Paper (LaTeX) Template (zip with all LaTeX files and figs)
Senior Research Paper (Word) Template (pdf file)
Senior Research Paper (Word) Template (doc file)
Honor Thesis Template
Students who write an honors thesis must follow College guidelines for the formatting of their papers. The following template is designed to satisfy these requirements.
DC Honors Physics LaTeX template (pdf file)
DC Honors Physics LaTeX template (zip with all LaTeX files and figs)