Choose a Topic for my Physics Senior Seminar presentation.

[Jeff W]

I am giving a presentation and writing a paper on a topic of my choice in physics. The paper must be 4-7 pages long and the topic may be on any physics or astronomy subject appropriate for a 4th year Physics Major.

Please suggest interesting topics.

Thank you.

[istewart]

The motion vector of Alizee's ass.

[Piz0wn0reD!!!!!!]

super string theory.

[peachy]

god wish my sn sem paper was only 4-7pgs on WHATEVER i wanted!

[Alobar]

non locality

[jimdmcevoy]

Gravity Waves are cool. You can go into the maths as much as you want up to some nice wave equations derived from General Relativity. Or you can keep it maths free and still have plenty to talk about.

[daryn]

high-tc superconductors

[jimdmcevoy]

Dude, that is soooo boring.

"Here is a conducter with no measured resistivity. Blah blah blah blah....."

I don't get people's fascination with this. The physics behind it is a little bit cool, but there is much better out there.

[J.A.Sucker]

Ultrasensitive detection of explosives or other compounds. Some amazing stuff done. Look for some papers from Nate Lewis' group at Cal Tech. Very cool (and doable stuff). His talk was the best one that I've been to in awhile, and I see and work with all of the best.

Other topics I like:

Organic LED's

Single molecule detection

Light scattering (you can talk about why rubies are red and the sky is blue)

The infeasibilty of molecular electronics. Really, this is one of the easiest, and most interesting topics you could study. Look back at the report issued by several notable physicists (led by a bunch of Stanford profs) in response Hendrik Schon (Lucent) who claimed to make all of these single-molecule transistors. He was going to get a Nobel prize, but then people realized that he made up the data. The biggest scandal in science since Cold Fusion (there's another intersting topic, and a good book was written on the Cold Fusion debacle, called "Bad Science"). However, the Schon stuff was really amazing - he had the same graphs in several papers (verbatim) with non-sensical data in the first place. A really intersting topic for several reasons. First of all, SM transistors are a holy grail for nanotechnology, and studying them is interesting in itself. Second, Schon's scandal exposed several issues with high-competition science. Thirdly, this scandal was a final nail in the coffin for Lucent (Bell labs), and really killed the basic reasearch done in industrial settings in the US forever. This is perhaps the most significant impact of this whole thing. This is what I'd study. Plus, all of the papers will be easily accessible from your computer (most are in Science, Nature, Phys Rev Lett, and Applied Physics Letters) and you won't even have to go to the library. A slam dunk to be interesting, informative, and a hell of a presentation. PM me for more if you want - I have all the lowdown on it.

[jason_t]

Blue LEDs.