Imagine NASA is asking astronomers and planetary scientists to develop a mission to study a planet -- they have put out a "Call for Proposals." You and your groupmates have joined forces to respond -- you will plan a mission and write a proposal to NASA describing your plan, focusing on the scientific study you intend to do on your planet. NASA will want a clear picture of how your proposed mission fits into our current scientific understanding the planet, as well as NASA's past/present/future missions to the planet and how they have contributed to it. [OK, in case you didn't get it, NASA = Layden].
The major milestones NASA has laid out are:
1) Each group should submit a Letter of Intent by Mon Nov 22 announcing their intention to submit a proposal. It should include the names of the proposers, the planet you will study, and brief descriptions of (a) the aspect of the planet you intend to study (scientific question/topic/hypothesis), and (b) an outline of what and how you will study to answer/test this question/topic/hypothesis. [Here is a short form that you can fill in and return to me by the deadline].
2) Each group will make a 5-10 min presentation to NASA officials on Mon Dec 6 to "pitch" their plan, and submit an 8-10 page written proposal which NASA will review. [In real life, NASA would expect several/many responses to a given Call, and would select among them to choose the proposal which provides the best scientific return at the lowest cost and/or risk of failure. In our class, I will assign your group a grade based on the quality of the in-class presentation and written paper].
NASA expects the following questions to be clearly addressed in your proposal:
Example: Last year, Yolanda Y. Yablonski and colleagues proposed a project to study planet Earth. They recognized that burning fossil fuels is not the only source of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and wanted to assess the CO2 input of other sources such as natural forest fires, slash-and-burn agriculture, volcanoes, etc., to the overall CO2 budget. They designed an orbiting spacecraft that includes a camera system that will photograph smoke from fires and volcanoes on Earth, and a spectrograph to determine the chemical composition of the smoke (e.g., concentration in parts-per-million of CO2, soot, etc). The concentration from the spectroscopy and the areal coverage of the smoke from the camera images would be combined to estimate the total mass of CO2 emitted from a particular fire/eruption event. By monitoring such events over several years, they will clarify the overal CO2 budget and the fraction that is natural versus human in origin.
In practice, your group will want to meet outside of class to plan and organize. Meetings may look like the following:
First Meeting (done in class):
Second Meeting (out of class):
Subsequent Meeting(s, out of class, weekly?):
Don't wait until the last minute -- good teamwork involves good organization and flow of information.
1) The target length for your report is 8-10 full pages of text (cover page, bibliography, and any figures/pictures do not count in this total). This assumes you are using 1-inch margins, and double-spaced Times font at 12-point. Scale the number of pages larger or smaller if you chose a different format.
2) Since this is a group project, every member of the group will receive the same grade. I leave it up to the group members to assign tasks and deadlines, and to distribute the workload fairly. If you are having chronic problems with a member of your group, contact me (laydena (at) bgsu (dot) edu) and I will talk with the offender (without specifying who the complaint came from).
3) Your grade will reflect how well you answer the five "NASA expects..." questions in Section 1 above. It will also reflect overall organization and presentation (including grammar and spelling), originality, use of graphics, and overall integration of ideas into a comprehensive whole.
4) Graphics (pictures, graphs, charts, maps and tables) are an essential means of conveying complex information. Include a short caption explaining each figure, and if it is copied (that is, not drawn by you), specify the source. Figures do not count toward the total 8-10 pages, but the effective use of figures will count toward your grade.
5) On the day the project is due, your group will present a 5-10 minute summary of your project to the class. Figures are nice -- ask me if you want to copy things onto overheads, or do a powerpoint presentation. The quality of your presentation will be a 20% factor in your total project grade (the written report is 80%). Grading will follow the principles outlined in #3 above as related to your verbal and visual presentation.
1) Introduction: Provide scientific motivation for the project, and outline the science goals and the mission plan.
2) Current State of Knowledge: What is currently known about your planet? Our textbook contains a lot of information and should probably be your first source. Focus on material relevant to your mission (see 3). How has the information about your planet been obtained? This may include study using telescopes (based on the ground or in space), but will probably be dominated by spacecraft missions to the planet. Some planets like Mars and Venus have been studied by many spacecraft, so concentrate on the missions that are most directly related to your own.
3) Problem: Define the question or topic your mission will address. Put it into the context you established in Section 2. Extend your research to determine what missions NASA are planning for the future -- how does your proposed mission fit into NASA's plan? Try not to repeat NASA's efforts (the taxpayers don't appriciate it!), instead come up with a mission that studies a new problem, or takes a new approach at solving an old problem. Think in terms of the "scientific method": (1) study a problem, (2) develop a testable hypothesis and design an experiment to test it, (3) perform the experiment and gather data, (4) analyze your data and determine whether it supports or refutes your hypothesis, and (5) revise the hypothesis as necessary. [Given that NASA isn't likely to actually fund your mission, we will have to forego the final steps].
4) Mission Design: Describe your spacecraft, including:
Broad descriptions are fine -- I don't expect technical details. However, base your plans on technology and funding levels that are currently available (don't propose a multi-trillion dollar drill to obtain rock samples all the way to the core of Venus!). Use recent and planned NASA missions as a model. Most importantly, tell how the information your instruments and/or astronauts obtain will be used to test your hypothesis (that is, to answer your question or clarify your topic). Be sure to consider where and how your spacecraft will be operating, and justify your choices to the above list. You might include a drawing or sketch of your spacecraft.
5) Conclusion: wrap up the proposal.
1) Textbook: Always read the relevant sections in the textbook. This is your key resource for defining a problem to study and for general knowledge about your planet.
2) Books: Many astronomy books in available in the Math-Science Library. Try to use ones published in the last 10 years. Covering an entire book may mean you never cover anything in much detail, so feel free to focus in on one or a few sections/chapters. You may want to supplement an older book with new material from a periodical or web source. Taking material from several books means you can compare different authors' opinions.
3) Periodicals: In rough order of increasing complexity, the best ones are Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, Mercury, Nature, Scientific American. Most of these are available in the Math-Science library, or on-line.
4) Internet: NASA's Solar System Exploration summary will be invaluable for this project. The search engine at the NASA website may help you find specific information. Additional ".edu" sites may provide useful information. As always, be critical when taking information from lesser-known websites.
It is always important to indicate where you obtained information. Your project should contain a bibliography with all the sources you used (books, periodicals, websites). This should include author, date, title, publisher, city, and page numbers. For example:
In the text of your paper, you should cite where material came from. In general, after a block of your text which you derived from one source, you should put a citation like (Smith 1995) or (Layden 2002), to refer to the article or website listed in the bibliography above. When referring to a book, include the page number: (Doe, p. 76-78). The idea is for you to make it easy for the reader to know where your information comes from. Depending on how you take information from your sources and put it into your paper, you may have citations every few sentences, or every few paragraphs.
Direct quotations are generally unnecessary in a science paper -- reserve them for your arts papers where you want to capture some particularly inspiring prose. Use them only if you need to quote the words of a person. Any ideas should be paraphrased -- rewritten in your own words. If, after a reasonable effort, you can't understand what the source is saying, either ask me for help, or don't use that material. Avoid using direct quotations as a crutch to explain what you do not understand or what is "hard."
1) Web Sources: In doing your searches, keep in mind that not everything on the Web is accurate, current, or true. To help discover which sites can be trusted and which ones cannot, ask yourself the following questions:
When quoting a web source, always include (1) the author's name, (2) the full URL (web address), and (3) the date the page was last edited. In a good site, this information should be available, usually at the end of the page (or perhaps at the end of the author's home page). For example, you could quote in the text a webpage by me as "(Layden, 2002)", and show it in the bibliography as "Layden, Andrew, http://physics.bgsu.edu/~layden/a201h.htm, Spring 2002."
In general, ".com" sites should be avoided. Education (".edu"), government (".gov") and some not-for-profit organization (".org") sites are usually ok (note: these are the U.S. conventions -- websites in other countries usually end with a country suffix (Britain = ".uk", Canada = ".ca", Germany = ".de") -- use them if they suit the criteria listed above). When in doubt, limit your on-line resources to those found in Lexus/Nexus or Academic Search Complete, which you should be familiar with through your General Studies Writing course.
2) Plagiarism: Every year I am surprised (shocked, horrified) to discover that a student has plagiarized. The Student Handbook defines plagiarism as "Representing the words or ideas of another as one's own in any academic exercise." Copying text directly from a source without putting it in direct quotes, or copying it and modifying a few words are considered plagiarism. A good rule of thumb is if your paper contains more that 5 words in a row verbatim from your source, you are plagiarizing. The ideas you get from your sources should be paraphrased -- thoroughly rewritten in your own words. Even better, you should mix information from different sources into your own, unique blend of information and expression. If you are uncertain about what you have written, ask me.
I take plagiarism very seriously -- it breaks a trust between professor and student, undermines your integrity, and is unfair to your fellow students. My reaction to plagiarism is therefore strict: you get a zero on the assignment, and I write a letter to the Dean of your College explaining the situation. If your Dean reports back to me that you have plagiarized before, you may receive a "WF" (withdraw failing) in the course.