Honors credit in CEM 383 can be earned by submission of an original term paper on a subject related to the course material, macroscopic physical chemistry. Your paper should be based on a scientific publication that has appeared in the literature during 2009-2012. A good source for these articles would be the journals of the American Chemical Society. MSU has an electronic subscription to these journals and papers can be downloaded to any computer connected to MSU’s internet system. The web address for these journals is www.pubs.acs.org.
I will consider a broad range of possible topic areas for this project, you just have to be able to tie it into some aspect of CEM 383. My approach to this project would be to browse through journals, like “Biochemistry,” “The Journals of the American Chemical Society,” or the “Journal of Physical Chemistry,” and identify an article that could be used to base your report. References in the article could then be used to understand the background behind the research described in the paper. Once this research work is done, you should be able to write your report. Drawings can be pasted from several articles and included in your report to support your explanations. I would expect these reports to be about 10 pages in length including references and figures.
Another option is to get involved in actual research; I know some of you already have. There are many professors at MSU that are active in research and would consider allowing you to work in their research groups. Although this may be time consuming (about 10 hrs a week) it would be very rewarding and give you a head start in research carrier. If you follow this option, then your report should talk about that research and how it relates to CEM 383. Same depth, length and quality will be expected for this type of report for Honors option.
Time table:
Friday, Sep. 28 – Please tell me if you will be pursuing this option and how you plan to fulfill the requirement. If I haven’t heard from you by Sep. 28, I’ll assume you are not going to pursue honors credit in CEM 383.
Monday, Nov. 15 - Please submit current draft of the paper or brief report on the experimental data. Its purpose is to ensure that you are on the ritght track to complete the paper by the due date. By this date report/project should be mostly complete.
Monday, Dec. 3 - Turn in your reports.