A New Writing Intensive Physics Course (PHY220W)
Steven Schwarz, Dept. of Physics, Queens College
Physics 220W – “Current Issues in Physics” was
offered for the first time in the Fall of 2005. The class
was designed to allow students in the sciences to
delve deeply into a specialized topic of their choice,
while simultaneously developing skills in technical
presentation, both written and oral. Some of the
resources and exercises employed in this course are
highlighted below:
Figure and Caption Exercise:
Examples of Good Science Writing:
Students accessed a short list of numerical data on our
class Blackboard site, and were asked to plot the data in
publishable format, with a caption included. They were not
told what the data represented, and were allowed to invent
a situation where such data might be produced. (In fact,
the data describe the behavior of the consumer price index
over a 90 year period.) Here is one student’s output:
The class discussed the American Scientist 1990 article
(vol. 78, pp. 550-558) by George Gopen and Judith
Swan entitled The Science of Scientific Writing. This
article pays particular attention to sentence structure.
David Custer (MIT) has a fascinating style manual online at http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Writing-and-HumanisticStudies/21W-783Science-and-Engineering-Writing-for-Phase-
In the excerpt below,
he has improved a good paragraph, but his example
illustrates how difficult it is to provide students with the
level of detail required to restructure their prose.
IIFall2002/StudyMaterials/detail/style.htm.
Style and Grammar Exercises:
Michael Alley and colleagues have created a
wonderful web resource entitled Writing Guidelines for
Engineering and Science Students,
http://www.writing.eng.vt.edu. Students performed
weekly on-line exercises, and turned in one
paragraph summaries of the exercise that most
surprised or confounded them. Three quizzes were
based on this material.
The Galileo Exercise:
Students examined and commented on abstracts
from a recent meeting of the American Physical
Society. They were then given two pages of excerpts
from Galileo’s The Starry Messenger, and asked to
write a conference abstract based on this material.
Unsigned copies of the abstracts were analyzed in
class. Here, with permission, are examples:
V14 5 Heliocentric Universe: The discovery of new Celestial Bodies.
GALILEO GALILEI, Galileo Institute of Technology The Earth Centered
Universe, a philosophy proposed by Aristotle and Ptolemy has been the
standard, of how most of the world views the composition of the
universe. My discovery of three new celestial bodies orbiting around
Jupiter refutes idea of an Earth Centered Universe. After creating a
telescope based on Fleming’s spyglass, I was able to study the three
prominent starlets around Jupiter. After my first observation (January 7,
1610) I witnessed 2 starlets to the east of Jupiter and one behind the
planet, believing all were fixed stars; however, after observing on
January 8, 1610, I noticed that the starlets were now west of Jupiter.
This refutes the idea that the earth is the center of all celestial motion
and validates the Copernican Heliocentric Model of the Universe. Also,
in studying the moon I have discovered that the moon does not have a
smooth surface, rather a very rough and cratered once, refuting the
idea that the moon has a smooth texture.
Spyglass uncovers revolving moons about Jupiter. GALILEO
GALILEI.
The importance of understanding the effects of the planets and stars
within the universe is invaluable. With my advances in spyglass, using
both concave and convex lenses fitted to a lead filled tube, I have made
numerous discoveries, furthering man’s knowledge of the solar system.
In the following report I have detailed my discoveries and have made
conclusions about the activity of planets, more specifically about Jupiter
and its four moons that revolve around it. Although these starlets are
the backbone of my findings, I have also discovered smaller spots on
the moon with the use of my spyglass.
Copenhagen:
The class viewed the PBS movie version of Michael Frayn’s
2000 Tony Award winning play Copenhagen. The play
addresses a fateful conversation between Niels Bohr and
Werner Heisenberg during WWII, and raises the question as
to whether Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle might
describe the interaction between people as well as between
particles. Students also viewed small segments of 12 hours
of symposia proceedings in which scientists, historians, and
critics discussed the play. These tapes are available at
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/sciart/copenhagen/nyc/order.htm
Students voiced their opinions in an in-class essay.
Examples of Bad Science Writing:
The class explored two interesting examples of bad technical
prose. The first was an excerpt from a popular textbook on
scientific writing that devotes three pages to the use of a
computer mouse. The second was an excerpt from the
famous 1995 hoax by Alan Sokal entitled Transgressing the
Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of
Quantum Gravity. Sokal was able to publish his lengthy but
nonsensical tome in a leading humanities journal. A good
description of the Sokal Affair may be found at the Wikipedia
website.
Case Studies in Ethics:
Library Research:
The Poynter Center provides a valuable booklet
entitled Moral Reasoning in Scientific Research,
available in pdf format at
www.indiana.edu/~poynter/mr-main.shtml. The
class examined case studies addressing such topics
as lab notebook ownership, data manipulation, and
plagiarism. Students also examined a particularly fine
discussion of the various levels of plagiarism at
www.ccc.commnet.edu/mla/plagiarism.shtml
Students were asked to select an article of interest to them
from a late 90’s technical journal. They searched for
citations on-line using Google Scholar and Web of Science.
They searched in the library using the paper format of
Physics Abstracts and Science Citation Index, as well as
the CD format of the latter index. Finally, they submitted
short descriptions of the relative advantages and
disadvantages of these resources.
As a model technical paper, the class studied a
controversial report by R.P. Taleyarkhan, et al. (Phys.
Rev. E69, 036109 (2004) in which the authors claim to
observe fusion induced by bubble collapse.
C.V. Exercise:
Students received a short description of a mythical
physics major by the name of John Smith, as well as
an actual employment ad from the NY Times. Each
student prepared a C.V. and cover letter. In class,
unsigned copies were examined, and one of the Smith
applicants was “hired.”
Seminar Review:
Each student attended one technical seminar on
campus and wrote a short review.
Research Paper and Oral Presentations:
The paper and oral presentations accounted for about
half of the students’ efforts in the course. Students
chose a recent paper in a major technical journal, and
rewrote the paper in the style of Physical Review
Letters, but at the level of a typical physics
undergraduate. First drafts were edited by the
instructor and by a fellow student. Each student
delivered a 12 minute oral PowerPoint presentation on
their research topic in conference style. Students also
presented a 5 minute talk, in lieu of a final exam, on a
newsworthy technical development.