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A Sequence of Assignments from Physics 381: Writing in Physics
William Mullin, Fall 1999
Assignment 1
Write a five page newspaper article (such as might appear in the New York Times or Boston Globe science section) describing an experiment that illustrates some phenomenon characteristic of quantum mechanics. The point is to show aspects of quantum mechanics that are absent in classical mechanical systems. I will give you some examples of such effects in class. Others are discussed in the texts. You have certainly seen such examples of these in your course Modern Physics I.
When discussing this phenomenon, try to go beyond the usual textbook description and find some aspect of the effect that is new to you and gives good insight into the nature of the concepts involved. In some cases, looking up the original journal article or finding a popular description, say, in Scientific American or Physics Today about the effect by one of the original discoverers will provide the desired insight. You should include as much theoretical background for the ideas of quantum mechanics as you are able, this early in the course, as well as experimental verification of the effect.
The audience is to be an intelligent college-educated reader, who is interested in science but has no formal physics education beyond, say, a Physics 100-level course (Conceptual Physics).
Newspaper articles are usually written in the “inverted pyramid form”: Catchy beginning to hook readers, general outline of the ideas, gradually more detail later on. Details are usually given later on so that an editor can cut parts off the end without completely ruining the logic of the article. You don’t really need to follow this format strictly, since no one is going to lop off your ending.
Assignment 2
The Quantum Challenge discusses some two-slit experiments, including some famous ones involving photons. (Chapter 3 of the John Gribbon book, Schrödinger’s Kittens also considers several interesting two-slit photon experiments.) Pick a modern two-slit (or some other closely related type) experiment, which has actually been done, from those experiments discussed in these books or elsewhere, and pretend you are thinking of doing this experiment yourself. In one fantasy, the experiment has not been done and you are, say, Alain Aspect.) The assignment then is to write a five-page proposal to the National Science Foundation, asking for funding you your experiment. In an alternative scenario, you are proposing to set the experiment up for an Advanced Laboratory course or as an Honors Thesis in the Physics Department at UMass and the proposal is to be submitted to the Undergraduate Studies Committee for funding.
If you pick an experiment from one of the books mentioned, go beyond the use of just that reference. Look up the original articles and other commentaries on that experiment.
Proposals are a necessary part of academic and business life. There are often read and reviewed by individuals who have less than perfect knowledge of the subject area. Thus you should not assume that the reader has a high level of background in the subject. Keep it relatively simple (with a low math level, i.e., mostly verbal). On the other hand, if the reviewer believes you are not giving enough knowledgeable detail, he or she will think you probably don't really know what you want to do or how to do it and won't support funding. You have to strike the correct balance.
What are the necessary sections of a good proposal? We will discuss this in class.
Some other places to look for references:
American Journal of Physics
Physics Today
Science News
Scientific American
There are many others.
In connection with this assignment prepare a 20 minute oral presentation to the class, describing the experiment of your proposal.
Assignment 3
One of the basic non-classical concepts in quantum mechanics is superposition; the wave function can be a linear combination of several, even an infinite number of different states. This feature leads to the possibility of entanglement as well as one of the most interesting neo-classical ideas: non-locality. Write a five-page essay for Physics Today that explains some aspect of quantum non-locality (this could involve some aspect of EPR, for example) or quantum entanglement (which might involve EPR, or even quantum teleportation or encryption, for example). Your description should be designed to illustrate the meaning and consequences of these fundamental ideas. Experimental implications and tests should be included in your description. Pick one aspect of all the possible phenomena and concentrate on that rather than considering generalities, if possible. Be as specific as possible and avoid considering only vague abstractions.
This paper is conceptually the most difficult of the semester. By probing these ideas in detail you will be getting to the heart of some of the material we are attempting to understand this semester.
Articles in Physics Today are meant for professional physicists; however, they must be set at a level so that almost any physicist, whatever specialty, can get the general idea of the topic. Thus while all can be expected to understand quantum mechanics at some level, the fine details may need explanation.
There should be lots of references available. The review article by Balletine has may references. You can also look in American Journal of Physics, Physics Today, Science News, the magazine Science, or Scientific American, for example.
Assignment 4
Write a five-page essay, intended to be read by your fellow students, that treats some aspect of an important event or idea in quantum mechanics from a historical or biographical point of view. In other words, you are to seek the human factor of the advance, or the historical context in which the advance was made. You should spend about 2/5 of the paper on the history or biography and 3/5 on the explanation of the quantum physics involved. Such an essay is common in the physics literature, with many such articles occurring in American Journal of Physics, Physics Today, or Scientific American, for example. The books of Abraham Pais on Bohr and Einstein are good examples of longer versions of this genre.
In connection with this assignment you should prepare a 20 minute talk to be presented to the class. The topic of the talk can be the subject of the present assignment, or of the one of the previous assignments.
Assignment 5
The last assignment can be on the topic of your choice as long as that topic is related to the foundations-of-quantum-mechanics material treated in the course. The intended audience is also up to you. Required length, as always, is about five pages.
You might think of this paper as kind of a capstone of the course, that is, you might want to summarize rather philosophically what have you learned in the course. What are the implications of quantum mechanics? How does it affect your view of the world? What are the remaining mysteries you would like to probe?
Updated September 3, 2008
