Students should start this project by formulating a research question that is to be based upon the broad topical area to be announced by your instructor. The research question should be relevant to the course and it should also fall within the given topic. It also should be reasonably specific and timely. That is, it should address a current question within astronomy.

Library research

We're fortunate to have librarians at Mountain View who are ready to assist you in finding resources (databases and articles, in this case) that will help you answer your research question and write your paper. Many resources are available on-line, or otherwise in electronic form, and you may also use any other resource such as books, journals, or astronomy magazines.

It is very important to get help from the librarians, because they are experts at determining the authenticity and reliability of the many articles that are available to you. They will help you select articles that report the results of actual scientific research.

When working on this project, please keep in mind that science relies upon evidence and logic. So, when you're looking for articles to use, as yourself: How did they conduct this research project? Can I be confident in their results? Does their interpretation of the evidence make sense to me?

On-line or print encyclopedias such as Wikipedia can help you quickly get some background information about your research question, and might even help you find useful articles. But the articles upon which you base your paper should be original reports of research, not encyclopedia articles such as Wikipedia. Even magazine articles are acceptable, as long as they say something about how the research was conducted - that way, you'll know where the data come from.

The MVC library web site can be a good place to start your research:

There will be two important links on the left of the page: "online databases" and "research tutorials."

To start your research right away: click on "online databases," then scroll down and select your broad research area (astronomy) in the box with the heading "What subject are you looking for?" then click on "Go." This will return a list of databases relevant to astronomy. Then you can select one or more databases and start searching for articles.

In most of these databases, you can click on a box that will limit your search to full-text articles, which means that you'll be able to go directly to an html or PDF document without having to do any further hunting for it. You may also be able to limit your search to academic journals, if you need to.

If you want to familiarize yourself first with some of the databases and other resources (before you start searching for articles), you can go to the main library web page, and click on "research tutorials," which will give you an introduction to doing research for writing assignments. You may want to use these tutorials especially if you have not done electronic library research before.

The paper

We ask that students write a paper of approximately three pages, double-spaced, based on a topic to be announced by the instructor. In your paper, please include references to at least three articles that report the results of research in astronomy. These articles should describe the methods used by researchers to obtain their data. Newspaper articles generally do not include enough information about the methods used by researchers.

Please cite the articles that you use within your paper, in order to support any statement that is not common knowledge. You may include quotations from the articles, as long as you place the quotations within quote marks, and you cite the source. Please, however, keep quotations short - the paper should be written mostly in your own words. Even when you use ideas or information from someone else (not just their exact words), please cite the source to give them proper credit for their work.

Using your own words is challenging - we know that! But you can make it easier by trying to think of your own original way to explain the subject to someone who is not familiar with astronomy, and who hasn't read the articles that you're using. How would you explain this clearly to a friend or family member? That's usually a good way to write a scientific paper.

Please use standard, formal English, complete sentences, and include several paragraphs of reasonable length. A paragraph is generally at least two sentences long, but not half of a page. Paragraphs that are of reasonable length, and logically structured, make it easier for the reader to understand you.

Attachment:- Sem-proj-assg-1403-SP13-rev.docx