Research Project:

I'm offering you instead the following assignment, with several choices. You may prepare any of:

1. A set of lecture notes on a topic, relevant to the material we will cover, that interests you. If you select this option you may be asked to present the lecture(s), time permitting. This is an especially good option for people who have had courses that have significant overlap with something we will cover, but requires early action!
2. A review paper on a topic, relevant to the material we will cover, that interests you. Typically, in the past, students going into (e.g.) FEL have prepared review papers on the electromechanism of the FEL. That is, relevance to your future research is indicated but not mandated.
3. A computer demonstration or simulation of some important electrodynamical principle or system. Possible projects here include solving the Poisson and inhomogeneous Helmholtz equation numerically, evaluating and plotting radiation patterns and cross-sections for complicated but interesting time dependent charge density distributions, etc. Resources here include Mathematica, maple, SuperMongo, the Gnu Scientific Library, matlab/octave, and more. Obviously now is not the time to learn to program; presumably you are all competent in f77 or C or java or perl or SOMETHING if you select this option, or are willing to work very hard to becomes so. I can provide limited guidance in many (most) of these languages or environments, but will not have time to teach you to code from scratch in this class.

If you choose to do a project, it is due TWO WEEKS before the last class^1.1 so don't blow them off until the end. It is strongly recommended that you clear the topic with me beforehand, as a weak topic will get a weak grade even if the presentation itself is adequate.

I will grade you on: doing a decent job (good algebra), picking an interesting topic (somewhat subjective, but I can't help it and that's why I want to talk to you about it ahead of time), adequate preparation (enough algebra), adequate documentation (where did you find the algebra), organization, and Visual Aids (pictures are sometimes worth a thousand equations). Those of you who do numerical calculations (applying the algebra) must also write it up and (ideally) submit some nifty graphics, if possible.

I'm not going to grade you particularly brutally on this -- it is supposed to be fun as well as educational. However, if you do a miserable job on the project, it doesn't count. If you do a decent job (evidence of more than 20 hours of work) you get your ten percent of your total grade (which works out to maybe a third-of-a-grade credit and may be promoted from, say, a B+ to a A-).