ESS C109/C209 Term Project

Description:

In addition to homeworks, a midterm, and a final exam, students in Isotope Geochemistry are expected to complete a term project. The project will consist of two parts:

1. Oral presentation – a 5-10 minute presentation on the project topic, delivered to the class. Presentations will be given during the final week of classes. The presentation should include enough introductory material to allow the class to follow the material presented, and should emphasize the motivation (Why are you interested in this topic? Why should we be interested in this topic?). There is an art to giving such a short presentation, and you will want to carefully decide which aspects of your topic are most important and interesting. Giving a few practice run-throughs to a small audience (or even a potted plant) will help you streamline your delivery. You are encouraged to use visual aids (i.e., Powerpoint or an overhead projector) – be aware, however, that there will only be time for a few slides. Each student should also prepare 14 copies of a ~1-2 page abstract summarizing their presentation, to give to the rest of the class.
   
   
2. Term paper – a 10-15 page (double-spaced) paper summarizing the research relevant to your topic. This should include a full bibliography, emphasizing reports from the primary literature, rather than review articles and textbooks (a few review/textbook references are fine, particularly for the introductory sections of your paper, but do not rely on them exclusively). Aim for at least a dozen references.
   
   Structure – the paper should be divided up into sections, including an abstract, introduction, body, and summary. These should be followed by a bibliography. You may wish to create or reproduce a few figures to help illustrate your topic – make sure these include a citation to the original source. Figures can either be inserted at the appropriate spot in the text, or attached in order of citation at the end of the paper. In either case, make sure to insert a pointer to each figure in the text; i.e., “Holocene ocean surface temperatures reconstructed from foraminifer d¹⁸O measurements (Figure 1, adapted from Shackleton et al., 1994) clearly show a reduced equator-pole temperature gradient during …”. You will get a general idea of how the structure of a review paper looks as you accumulate references for your paper – feel free to use one of these as a style template. For the purposes of this assignment, bibliography and figures do not count towards the length of the paper.
   
   Citations – Be generous in providing citations to the literature that you consult in writing your paper. Make sure to provide, at minimum, a list of authors, a publication year, the title of the article/book chapter cited, the journal or book of publication, the volume number, and page numbers. References to books should also include the geographic location of the book publisher. A good model is the American Mineralogist format – articles from older volumes of this journal (1995 – 2005) are freely available for download at http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/AmMin/TOC/. Look at a few articles in this journal to see how references are handled.
   
   The term paper will be due on Wednesday of Finals week (June 13).
   
   

Topic: You are free to choose any subject in the general area of isotope geochemistry that interests you. Feel free to consult with your instructor, classmates, mentors, etc., for help in coming up with and refining your topic. You will want to survey the primary literature to help build your reference list – if you are unfamiliar with article search tools like Web of Science please see me or a librarian for a tutorial. Try to choose a topic that is sufficiently narrow that you can cover it in significant depth within the scope of a 10-15 page paper. “Isotope geochemistry and photosynthesis” is probably too broad, for instance (unless you feel like summarizing hundreds of papers), but “Tracing the rise of grassland habitats in the Cenozoic with carbon isotopes” will be much more tractable. Again – feel free to consult with me or your fellow students for help refining your topic.

For graduate students, it is expected that the presentation and term paper will also include a proposal for research to help resolve one or more open questions in the isotope geochemistry topic you choose. Be sure to consider why the question is significant, what kinds of samples or apparatus will be needed to do the research, and what results are expected. Undergraduate students are also encouraged to consider proposing a research project, but it is not a requirement.

I will gladly look at drafts of your paper and provide feedback, up until June 6. I will not be on campus between June 8 and June 11.