Final Paper Description and Grades for Physics 161
			Winter 2011.

	      (Black holes and General Relativity)


60% of the the grade will be from homework problems.

You may work together on homework, and discuss how to do it with others.
However, you must do ALL the calculations and ALL the write-up yourself.  
Copying any portion of your homework from anywhere else will constitute cheating, which will
have serious consequences if you are caught.  Allowing someone else to copy from your homework 
also constitutes cheating and will have the same serious consequences.    
You may not even look at homeworks or solutions from similar 
problems found online or from anywhere else.  Do the work yourself
and really learn!

40% of the grade will be on a final paper/talk.  
You chose one of the following options:

Option A:  Review paper	(7-10 page paper)
Option B:  Review talk plus notes (10 minute talk plus notes and bibliography)
Option C:  Calculation with talk/written presentation

Physics and Engineering majors typically do not get enough training in
written and oral communication, though this will likely be required
in any job in industry or academia.  So the written portion of the final
should be very carefully checked for clarity, grammar, spelling, etc.

For Option A, the idea is a Scientific American level paper clearly explaining
to an intelligent lay person some exciting topic in modern astrophysics.
The goal of the paper is to get the reader interested in the topic, to
maintain his/her interest throughout the paper, to explain things at a level
they can understand, and at the same time to be scientifically accurate.
This is not an easy task.

I will be looking for: 
	*how well you understood the subject you picked,
	*how well you expressed yourself; i.e. could the reader/listener follow?
	*how well you maintained a constant technical level
	*grammar, spelling, presentation, etc.
	*scientific accuracy 

Note, copying any portion of your paper from anywhere else
is cheating and is not allowed (except for short passages 
that should be explicitly quoted and properly attributed).


For option B, the goal is similar but the talk will be given to the class,
with the written part being your working outline/presentation notes and bibliography.
The talk must be well rehearsed and well organized.  
10  minutes is a very short time to get across the essence of any topic,
so I recommend preparing your material, then giving the talk out loud to
yourself keeping track of time, then redoing the the content and technical
level of the talk to fit in the allowed time.

The paper or talk may be on any topic relevant to the class, 
but it should be something you are interested in.  
Examples:   quasars,  time travel, gamma ray bursts, the big bang, 
	gravitational lenses, gravitational waves, LISA, LIGO, 
	Numerical GR, Hubble space telescope, Chandra telescope,
	Dark matter, etc., etc., etc. 

You can get the information from books or magazines in the library,
from your textbooks, from the internet, or from any other sources.
I recommend looking through these to find a topic that interests you.
When you have picked a topic, you can ask me for recommendations of
where to find appropriate information.
You will be required to use several sources (that forces you to synthesize information;  one
purpose of this assignment.)  While the internet can be a good source of information,
note that you 
MAY NOT USE EXCLUSIVELY WEBSITE SOURCES.
I want you to find articles or books on the subject.  Also, you
are responsible for the scientific accuracy of your writing;  if you use incorrect information from
flaky websites, you will be marked down.


For option C, you will give a paper or talk as above, but rather than review
some subject, you will present the results of a calculation.
Some examples:  
   *Computer solution and graphical presentation of trajectories near a 
		black hole.  
   *Fuller calculation of some class topic that we skipped over quickly
   *Computer generation of gravitational lens effect
   *etc., etc.