MSE 521
Spring 2016
Start-of-Semester Literature Assignment
Skim the assigned article. Don’t worry too much if some of the content is unfamiliar and
so doesn’t make sense to you.
In class on 25 January, turn in answers to the following questions.
Put your name and the citation for the paper at the top of the page you turn in.
1. What is the (or one of the) main claim(s) made by the researchers?
2. What kind of evidence do they describe that supports their claim. (Note that it is
ok if you don’t understand WHY the evidence supports the claim. I just want you
to find some evidence in the paper).
3. Identify at least three terms that are unfamiliar to you.
4. Identify at least one experimental technique that is unfamiliar to you.
5. Describe some aspect of the paper that does make sense to you. For example,
do the authors talk about the geometry of electron diffraction and it makes sense
to you that it should be reciprocally related to the real-space structure? What
connects to your prior knowledge?
6. Write three questions you have about the paper. Choose your questions so that
the answers (if you had them) would help you to understand the paper a bit
better.
As this assignment is not technically a “homework,” I do NOT expect (or want) your
response to be hand-written. Please use MS Word or a similar word processing
package.