Level 1 Physics

Vandebilt Catholic High School

W. Dupre

Research Project

Final Proposal - Guidelines

Written Proposal (Point Value 30 points):

1) Title page: Should include the names of the team members, the title of the project, school name, instructor's name, and date. The title page should be colorful and should include graphics.

2) Introduction: Your abstract should serve as the basis of your introduction. It should include an attention grabber, a statement of the specific question your research will attempt to answer, a discussion of why this topic was selected, and explain what will be in the rest of the proposal.

3) Current State of Research in Your Field of Research:

You are to identify the major principles which govern the field you are researching. You should identify, discuss, elaborate upon, and illustrate the key principles and concepts which are related to your topic. Additionally, your research should include all relevant information and experimental results conducted by other researchers in your field or in a similar field.

4) Final Hypothesis: State your final hypothesis and include the evidence from your research that led you to this hypothesis.

5) Experimentation: a) A brief overview of the experiment you will conduct

b) A list of needed materials

c) The detailed step-by-step procedure that will be followed in

performing the experiment. It should be written so that anyone

who reads it could follow it and duplicate what you have done.

d) A data table that shows the data that you will be collecting

during the experiment. The values of any constants or control

variables are to be filled in. The values of data quantities that

will be determined by direct measurement in the experiment or

from calculations should be left blank.

e) What quantities will be graphically analyzed to determine the

relationships that exists between them. It is these relationships

that will be the basis for the conclusions you draw from the

experiment. Graphs if these data must be included after the

experiment is performed.

6) Sources Cited Page: This page is to include bibliographical information on all the sources cited in your proposal. You may use any ACCEPTABLE format to list these sources. You are only to list sources that are cited in your proposal. There should be several sources that are cited (It is not wise to use only one or two sources when doing research.). In your proposal you may use internal notation, foot notes, or end notes to credit your sources. Use the method with which you are most comfortable.

7) Graphics: The paper must include visuals other than the blank data table that is to be included in the Experimentation section. These visuals may be pictures, drawings, charts, graphs, tables, etc. These visuals may appear in any section of the proposal.

8) Format: Use one inch margins on all four sides. Use regular Times New Roman 12 point font for the body of your work. You should label each section of the proposal using BOLD 16 point Times New Roman Font.

Oral Presentation: (Point Value 20 points)

1) All team members must have an equal - active (speaking) role in the presentation. For teams who have members in different class periods, separate presentations will be made at each period by only the team member(s) that attend that period.

2) The presentation will be a minimum of 5 minutes in length.

3) Introductory remarks including what field what are doing research in and what factors led you to pick this topic.

4) Briefly discuss the current state of research in your field.

5) State the specific question that you will be testing.

6) State your final hypothesis and discuss evidence from your research that led you to this hypothesis.

7) Give a summary of the experiment you will be performing in the fourth quarter to test this hypothesis.

8) Concluding remarks.

9) The presentation is to be enhanced by the inclusion of visuals such as, posters, models, videos, etc. These visuals are not meant to be for display purposes only; they should be incorporated into the presentation to demonstrate or illustrate concepts you are discussing.

You may note that the point values for this section of the research project have increased. I believe that what I am requiring you to accomplish is worth more points than I had originally proposed and in the spirit of fairness I have increased it.