ANALYTICAL SPECTROSCOPY
Paper/Presentation Requirements

One of the course requirements for CHEM 226 is a paper and a brief classroom presentation on the topic covered in the paper. The purpose of this exercise is 2-fold: 1) to allow each of you to delve into a particular subject area at a depth greater than would be typical of material covered in class, and 2) to communicate part of what you have learned in that area to the rest of the class. To address those goals, each of you will be assigned a topic area to cover in your paper/presentation. Although I will assign the topic areas, I need some input from you folks on topic areas that you would like to see covered and, as such, will require that each of you hand in a suggested topic to be covered by one of your classmates. I, of course, reserve the right to make final decisions on topic areas to be assigned, but your input is really very important.

This assignment really, then, requires that each of you participate in a process, with two of the requirements being the submission of your written paper and subsequent class presentation. Details, and a timeline, are presented below.

1. Topic Suggestion(s) - 15 pts. DUE: February 27th Each member of the class must hand in two pieces of paper: one which has your name on it, and one which describes (in no more than 1 sentence!) a topic which would be suitable for this assignment. Since these suggestions are anonymous, remember that it could be possible for you to receive your own topic suggestion . .. so please think carefully about the topic. Oh yes, the topic MUST be in the area of "Analytical Spectroscopy" (optical methods only) and should be of recent interest in the literature (i.e., a significant body of literature from '97 - '03).
   
2. Topic Assignment. WHEN: March 4th You will receive, in class, your assigned topic. It may be one that was suggested by you or your classmates, or one of mine. Each student will have a unique topic.
   
3. Paper Outline/Bibliography - 15 pts. DUE: March 27th By this date, you should have (to hand in) both a detailed outline of your paper as well as a reference list. Both of these need to be typed/wordprocessed and will be returned to you (with comments where necessary) on April 1st. Note that this (the 27th) is only a deadline and you are welcome (in fact, encouraged!) to turn this in earlier than the 30th.
   
4. Class Presentation - 70 pts. WHEN: Class Periods to be announced You will be expected to prepare a 15-20 minute presentation to the class based on your paper topic. Focus your talk on communicating the most important aspect(s) of your topic area to the class (i.e., what should everybody in the class come away from your talk knowing?). You will be asked to provide anonymous written comments/evaluations of your fellow students' talks which I will use to provide written feedback to each of you regarding your presentation.
   
5. Paper Due - 125 pts. DUE: April 29th A 5-10 page paper on your assigned topic must be handed in no later than our last class meeting on 4/29. In addition to a hardcopy of the paper, I would like all papers to be submitted on electronic media as well so that I can translate them to HTML and put them on the Web (don't worry, your grade and my comments will only be released personally to you!).
   
6. Final Exam Question - 25 pts. DUE: April 29th Prepare a single essay or calculation-type question that you feel anyone attending your talk should be able to answer (without looking at additional references). You need to provide both the question as well as what you feel is the correct answer to the question. Please take this assignment seriously, as I may very well include some of these on the final exam (and, to that end, I will post these questions on the course website).