• Welcome to the home page of PHYS 4F90 . Watch the Brighspace page for important announcements.
• Be sure to review this statement on academic integrity
• To help you plan, the important dates of the current academic year are listed here.
• Seminars: Tu 15:00-16:30, B209, starting Sept.12, 2023. [Check Timetable]
• This course uses Brightspace primarily to accept your written work.
• You are expected to prepare your written work using LaTeX. It is available on all computers in Physics labs, and online at overleaf.com.

  In preparation, students are encouraged to open overleaf accounts. Some useful resources for writing reports are here, and will be reviewed in class.

What Brock calendar entry says:

• Small experimental, theoretical or applied physics research project to be carried out under the supervision of a member of the department.

  Restriction: open to PHYS (single or combined) and CAST majors with either a minimum of 14.0 overall credits, a minimum 70 percent major average and a minimum 60 percent non-major average or approval to year 4 (honours).

  Note: the project may, under special circumstances, be started in the summer months. Students must consult with the Department Chair regarding their proposed program during the first week of lectures. This course may be offered in multiple modes of delivery. The method of delivery will be listed on the academic timetable, in the applicable term.

Course Goals

The aim of PHYS 4F90 is to give the student experience in conducting an independent piece of basic research in Physics. Although original findings are not necessarily the primary goal, the work must be of high quality and must show considerable scientific maturity.

• to develop ...;
• to discover ...;
• to gain experience in ...;
• to enhance scientific writing skills.

Supervision

• The work is to be carried out under the direction of a supervisor, who will usually be a member of the Brock Physics Department. Each student wishing to take PHYS 4F90 is advised to consult separately each of the faculty members to learn their suggested projects, if any. Students with a project of their own devising can suggest it to the course coordinator who, upon approval, will try to find a suitable supervisor.

Workload

The time spent on PHYS 4F90 should be 20% of a full academic load. This can reasonably be interpreted as 8 hours per week.

PHYS 4F91 may be taken together with PHYS 4F90 with the permission of the Department Chair. A student enrolled in both PHYS 4F90 and PHYS 4F91 will give the three seminars described in the table below, and submit a final written thesis. Typically, the student will be expected to carry out a more detailed, or sophisticated project than would be attempted were the student enrolled only in PHYS 4F90. As such, the total time spent on the project should be 40% of the year's work which can be interpreted as 16 hours per week. Given the more involved nature of the project, the final written thesis may also be somewhat lengthier than that specified in the guidelines for PHYS 4F90. In general the student will receive identical grades for PHYS 4F90 and PHYS 4F91 unless a clear delineation has been made between two distinct aspects of the complete PHYS 4F90/4F91 project.

This is an approximate list, based on previous experience. As the course progresses, some of topics may be removed and some others may get added.

• Topic One
  • subtopic 1
  • subtopic 2