AOPP MPhys Overview

Don Grainger

This is the MPhys Bible

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Thomas Edison, 1903

Doing the Project

• Treat it like a job – spend 40 hours a week on it (at least)

• Learn to research efficiently– work in phase with people you need to talk to– try and work things out yourself and if you

can’t …– use books, papers (know about web of

science ; http://apps.isiknowledge.com)– ask your peers, postdocs & supervisor

• Keep a lab book – make notes as you go along• Write-up bits as you go along• Meet regularly with your supervisor• When you produce plots it is often a good idea

to separate the production of data from the plotting. This way if you need to replot the data you don’t have to regenerate it.

• Work out a plan and try to stick to it

Theoretical Timetable

Hilary

Week 1- 8 Do ProjectWeek 9 1st Draft to SupervisorWeek 10 Draft back to Student

Trinity

Monday Noon Week 1 Hand in Project

Realistic Timetable

Hilary

Week 1- 8 Do ProjectWeek 9 Friday 1st Rough Draft to SupervisorWeek 10 Friday Draft back to Student

[Hilary Week 10 = Trinity Week -4]

Trinity

Monday Week -2 Final Draft to supervisor Monday Week 0 Comments back from supervisor Monday Noon Week 1 Hand in Project

• To judge the level of complexity agree to swap with another student – if they can’t understand what you have written then it is not clear enough

• Make sure you have agreed the structure of your report with your supervisor by the end of term and perhaps shown him/her a couple of pages to get some initial feedback

• You might want to negotiate when your hand in your 1st draft and when your supervisor will give you feedback

• but you MUST give yourself time (at least a week) to make corrections

• Your Final draft should be as close to perfect as you can make it.

Housekeeping

• Doors open 8.30, close 5.30

• Use teaching queue

• Often coffee (on roof at 11 am) is a good place to catch people

• Fire alarm - tested weekly on Friday mornings; the assembly point is outside the front door in the event of the alarm going off

Brief Comments on Latex

Intro to Latex

• Latex is a type setting language – it is not wysiwyg like MS Word instead

• Why use it? (It is free!)

• Lots of nice features like– Consistency– Cross-referencing– Equations– Table of Contents– Bibliography– Index– Figures

How to use it

• Create .tex file the use the latex command to make dvi file

• xdvi to view it• Windows version – Texniccentre (uses MikTex)

• Easiest to copy a bit of code and modify it.• Template at my home page

http://www.atm.ox.ac.uk/user/grainger/index.html