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Additional Information about the Honors Thesis

Choosing a Thesis Topic

Finding a research topic idea is your responsibility as a student who is endeavoring to complete an honors project. Conversations with faculty, graduate students, and other individuals in the relevant arenas is encouraged.  Pursuing DRiP (PHYS 498) early in the process will teach you how to explore the scientific literature in an area new to you.  Researching a topic in the Honors Seminar (PHYS 485-6-7) can also help you acquire the relevant background knowledge.  Once you decide on a thesis topic, it is recommended that you discuss both your topic and the honors timeline with both your research supervisor and the Undergraduate Faculty Advisor.  It is essential that your project have physics at its core and be tractable on your intended timescale with the resources (including your own time) that you have available.  The project may be experimental, theoretical, computational, synthetic, or pedagogical in nature.

Information about different research areas and groups in the department may be found at:
Physics Research Areas, Groups, or Individuals: https://phys.washington.edu/research

You can find people on campus working on a topic you are interested in by using a relevant database (such as Web of Science, arXiv) and searching for the union of key words of interest with “98195” (the UW Zip Code) in the address field.

Thesis Research under an Outside Supervisor

While most students will work with a physics faculty member for their honors thesis research, students may pursue thesis research outside the physics department, either with a non-physics faculty member at UW (e.g., in astronomy or other cognate field) or via an off-site research experience. This arrangement must be preapproved by the Undergraduate Faculty Advisor.  There must be physics at the core of the thesis research, and you may not use the same project for departmental honors in more than one department.  When filling out the application for PHYS 488, select the Undergraduate Faculty Advisor (Prof. Olmstead) as your research supervisor and include the name and contact information of your research supervisor at the top of your abstract.  The supervisor will need to agree to vet the scientific content of your thesis as part of PHYS 488.

Qualities of a Thesis

  • A thesis should be evidence of a student’s ability to carry out an independent research investigation and to present the findings in a clear and systematic format.
  • The Physics Honors Thesis should be ≥ 7000 words (equivalent to 10 pages, single-spaced, Times New Roman, 12pt font with 1” margins). The paper should be written in English.
  • The thesis should cover a unique topic that cannot readily be found in a textbook. The result or synthesis should be sufficiently novel that it could be included in an archival journal publication or presented at a scientific meeting (even if not yet part of a complete enough picture to do so yet).
  • Collaborative work is appropriate as long as the honors student plays a significant role in obtaining and/or understanding the result.
  • The thesis should be written so that the next student taking over the project will understand why the project was done, what was found, how to repeat the measurements or calculations, and what the next step should be.
  • The thesis should conform to the American Institute of Physics Style Manual

Thesis Structure

There is no strict format or required template of your thesis, except that it must contain a title page, abstract, body and references.  Below is a suggested structure.

Title Page

  • Title should be succinct and comprehensible to the non-expert.
  • Include somewhere on the title page:
    • Title
    • By [NAME printed] [Signature] [Date]
    • This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Undergraduate Departmental Honors in Physics at the University of Washington, in [QUARTER, YEAR]
    • Approved by Research Supervisor: Prof. [NAME printed] [Signature] [Date]
    • Approved by Physics 488 Instructor: Prof. [NAME printed] [Signature] [Date]

Abstract

Introduction

  • Your result should be placed in context of the greater scientific arc of knowledge.
    • What was known before you started this project?
    • Where was there a hole in scientific knowledge that you sought to fill?
    • Why will others care about this new knowledge?
  • To communicate this context, you will need to:
  • Obtain and report on material from the archival scientific literature.
  • Study books and parse relevant information from them.
  • Read material that is above your current level of information processing, but spend the time to understand the concepts and be able to present it in a format that is in your unique words and understandable to the audience (your peers).
  • Include appropriate referencing.
  • The introduction should also include a guide to the rest of the paper
  • What, in a nutshell, is the novel result you found?
  • How is the thesis structured?

Methodology (or Materials and Methods or …)

  • Recipes for creating your samples (if experimental)
  • Key experimental and/or theoretical techniques used
  • The reason(s) for choosing these particular samples or techniques
  • Location where work was performed; identify commercial products/software used
  • Key parameters to be able to reproduce the results (e.g., temperature, growth rates, etc. for experiments; convergence criteria for calculations)

Results (may be multiple sections)

  • Clearly present all relevant measurements and/or calculations (with error bars)
  • Include figures and/or tables that are clear, well-labelled, and have explanatory captions
  • Include enough intermediate steps that the interested reader can understand what you did and follow your logic, but details on calibration, software, etc., are more appropriate for an Appendix.

Discussion (may be multiple sections)

  • Discuss proposed meaning(s) of your results
  • Discuss potential sources of random and systematic error
  • Connect your various results to each other
  • Connect your various results to the existing literature.
  • NOTE: difference between “results” and “discussion”
    • Results will stand the test of time, even if your interpretation of them (which goes in the Discussion) may change with the appearance of new results.
    • Results are “there is a shoulder on the low-energy side of the main peak.” Discussion is “the shoulder is attributed to phonon excitation during the transition,” after which you can refer to the shoulder as the phonon side-band.

Summary and Conclusion

  • Give a brief overview of the results, highlighting their significance.
  • As appropriate, make suggestions for further study

Acknowledgments

  • Thank and acknowledge people who helped you with your work and its presentation. This can include personal (e.g., family, friends) as well as professional (co-authors on publications, lab mates, supervisor).
  • Check with your supervisor to determine what acknowledgments to funding agencies need to be included.

References

  • Everything that is neither your original work nor readily found in standard textbooks should be referenced.
  • Your introduction should include sufficient references to original literature to place your work in the greater scientific context.
  • Include titles in your citations. Format according to the AIP Style Manual.

Appendices

  • Details that are important to be preserved, but are peripheral to the main result. This may include calibration runs, an index relating the notation of samples in the thesis to that in your research logbook, detailed steps in a calculation, code you wrote to generate results, a side experiment or calculation that ended up not being especially relevant to your main result.
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