Ph70

Ph 70a. Oral and Written Communication
Fall, 2009
Instructor: Prof. David Hitlin (http://hep.caltech.edu/~hitlin/ )
Teaching Assistant: David Doll

The class will have an organizational meeting in 469 Lauritsen from 2:00 to 4:00pm, Tuesday, September 29
Note that henceforth the class will meet from 2:30 to 4:30pm

On October 6 the class will meet in 362 Lauritsen

The first meeting, held on Tuesday, September 29 will be primarily for informational and organizational purposes. We will discuss the question of whether we can find a more convenient time for the class, as historically the nominal time conflicts with certain other courses. Changing the meeting time, however, often creates as many conflicts as it resolves.

Catalog description: Provides practice and guidance in oral and written communication of material related to contemporary physics research. Students will choose a topic of interest, make presentations of this material in a variety of formats and, through a guided process, draft and revise a technical or review article on the topic. Ph70 is intended primarily for senior physics majors; enrollment will be limited. Completion of this course satisfies the Institute Core Communication Requirement.

This course is part of the Institute Core Communication Requirement.
The six unit requirement is to be met in the Junior or Senior years.
The Oral Presentation portion of Ph 70 will be graded by the class as a whole (see below).

Ph 70 is organized as a seminar. After some introductory discussion, each student will settle on a theme with a specific topic or topics of physical interest. Students will make oral presentations and write a paper, in an ongoing dialog with the instructor and TA.

Presentations:

Each student will make three presentations.

*	A 30 minute physics seminar on a subject of contemporary interest, aimed at a professional audience (your peers)
*	A 10 minute physics presentation such as might be given in a parallel session at an American Physical Society meeting
*	A 30 minute popular presentation aimed at an educated but non-technical audience

As a courtesy to the rest of the class, if you drop this course or are unable to appear for a particular presentation, making it necessary to alter the order of presentations, please inform the instructor, so that others are not inconvenienced.

Topic proposals:

Edward Chen
Ryan Hamerly
Eric Mintun
Gugilermo Lockhart

DATE	NAME (click for video)	PRESENTATION TITLE (click for presentation)	TIME (min)
Tuesday September 29	Organizational Meeting
Tuesday October 6	Assignment due: Proposal for paper and first presentation
Tuesday October 13	No Class
Tuesday October 20	Gugliermo Lockhart Ryan Hamerly	Maximal black-hole spin from quasi-circular binary mergers Perturbations of black hole event horizons	30 30
Tuesday October 27 Paper outline due	Edward Chen Eric Mintun	A Phonon Laser in the Context of Cavity Optomechanics Quasicrystals	30 30
Tuesday November 3	No Class
Tuesday November 10	Gugliermo Lockhart Ryan Hamerly Edward Chen Eric Mintun	Maximal black-hole spin from quasi-circular binary mergers Perturbations of black hole event horizons A Phonon Laser in the Context of Cavity Optomechanics Quasicrystals	10 10 10 10
Tuesday November 17 Paper draft due	Gugliermo Lockhart Ryan Hamerly	Maximal black-hole spin from quasi-circular binary mergers The physics of the LHC	30 30
Tuesday November 24	Edward Chen Eric Mintun	What is a phonon laser? Quasicrystals	30 30
Tuesday December 1 Final paper due	No Class

To view the videos of your presentations you will need the VLC viewer, which can be downloaded from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Paper:

The written portion of the course will consist of the writing of, over the course of the term, an article on a technical topic in a style appropriate for Scientific American. The idea is to communicate an interesting physics topic to a literate, but non-technical, reader. The subject may be the same one on which your popular oral presentation is based. A proper set of references should be included.

The writing of this paper will proceed through a series of stages: proposal, outline, draft and revision, in order to provide an environment in which you can receive (we hope) helpful feedback.

The schedule is as follows:

Proposal (October 6): A one page statement of what you plan to write and how you plan to approach the project with a few references listed.
Outline (October 27 An outline in sufficient detail to convince us that you have a clear idea of how to organize the work, together with a list of references you intend to use.
Draft (November 10): A complete version of the paper. This will be read in detail and we will provide suggestions that you may incorporate to improve the paper. Students will read and comment on other students' paper drafts.
Final Version: (November 24)

The medium of exchange for papers will be Adobe .pdf or Microsoft Word .doc files. Send these to me by email; do not hand the "paper" in on paper.

Grades

The oral presentation portion of the course will be graded by the class as a whole. A rating sheet will be handed out to the class for each presentation. The class will briefly discuss and then rate the presentation, with ratings (which will be anonymous) on a scale of 1 through 10. To receive a passing grade in the class, you must not only make all of your required presentations, but you must hand in ratings for the presentations in at least seven of the nine class meetings (after the Organization Meeting).

Oral presentations will be recorded on video and made available to the presenter as streaming video. Presenters will be asked to view the video of their lecture and grade themselves in the same manner as the audience.

Here is a sample grading sheet:

Presenter:
Title:
Type of presentation:
Date:	Rater:
	Lowest --------------- RATING -----------------Highest
Talk Attribute	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Appropriateness of Level
Interest of material
Organization
Use of allotted time
Slide organization/clarity
Clarity of exposition
Speaking style
Overall presentation

Glossary

Appropriateness of Level	Was the presentation pitched at a level that would make it interesting and intelligible to the attended audience?
Interest of material	Was the chosen topic and illustrative material interesting to you and would it be interesting enough to hold the attention of the intended audience?
Organization	Was the presentation well organized? Did it have a clear introduction, motivation, exposition and conclusion?
Use of allotted time	Was the allocation of time to each of the above areas appropriate? Did the speaker fill/keep to his/her allotted time?
Slide organization/clarity	Were the slides well organized? Were they readable? Did they illustrate the points intended?
Clarity of exposition	Was the presentation as a whole well-organized? Were points made clearly and in such a way as to lead you through the topic in such a way as to convey the intended information?
Speaking style	Was the speaker clear? Did he/she speak with adequate volume, making eye contact with the audience. Was the style appropriate to the type of presentation?
Overall presentation	How would you summarize your overall impression of the presentation?

Paraphernalia

Most presentations in physics are made using either a laptop computer with an LCD projector or, less often, transparencies with an overhead projector. Both an LCD projector overhead and a transparency projector will be available for the class. You can either provide your own laptop, send the presentation to me as an email enclosure, or post the file in a network-accessible place. If you want to use my laptop, be aware that it has a network connection, a USB 2.0 port, and a CD-ROM. I encourage you to send me the presentation by email (or provide a URL) before the class meeting time, in order to allow efficient use of class time. It is a good idea to embed fonts in either pdf or ppt files, to minimize mishaps.

References

While most of what you need to know to make an effective presentation is common sense, there are techniques you can learn to improve the quality of your presentations. You may wish to refer to some reading material for general orientation, or for some particular pointers. Here are references to some books and web sites that you may find useful:

Books

1) Sinclair Goodland, Speaking Technically, London, Imperial College Press, 1996.
2) Peter Kenny, A Handbook of Public Speaking for Scientists and Engineers, Bristol, Adam Hilger, Ltd., 1982.
3) Dan O'Hair, Rob Stewart and Hannah Rubenstein, A Speaker's Guidebook, New York, Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.