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Physics 493, Seminar I (On the Craft of Scientific Presentations)

Dr. Greg Severn

M * 4:00pm - 4:55 pm * SCST 232 * Spring 2025

Professor

Dr. Greg Severn, ST282 x6845, severn@sandiego.edu

Help Sessions

MW 11:05-12:05pm, W 2-3pm Th 9:30-10:30, 3-4pm and by appointment. These may change during the semester so stay tuned.

Course

A weekly (1hr) seminar devoted to instruction on scientific presentations in physics. Students will give short presentations on topics of interest, and a lengthy presentation on the subject of their research work, and this is the reason why students need 496 in advance of the course (co-registration in 496 is OK too). The course is repeatable up to a maximum of 4 units. Participating in the research process can be a stimulating part of the undergraduate experience, and it is a valuable one whether the student plans to go on to graduate school or to go into industry. But the student also needs to become effective at scientific communication, and the seminar is dedicated to inculcating necessary skills. And so, students will prepare, critique, and present short talks on topics of interest and will give a seminar on or related to the student's own research work.

Required Text

The Craft of Scientific Presentations, Michael Alley, Springer-Verlag, 2013 (2nd ed.) ISBN-13: 978-1441982780, Paperback.

Learning Outcomes

By the course's end, the student will demonstrate a set of skills of fundamental importance for physicists, whether in academic research or industry, specifically associated with oral presentation, including the ability to

1. deliver a clearly organized, informative, and compelling oral presentation of research that is appropriate to the audience using both verbal and nonverbal delivery techniques that imbue the speaker with confidence and create authentic credibility with the audience
2. critique research talks for a) clarity and adequacy of support for the main assertions of the talk, and of each slide, b) effectiveness of slide-craft toward this end, and c) the extent to which the talk engages intelligent non-practitioners.

Student Talks

Each student is required to compose and give 1 short talk (t = 15 min, comprising a 12 min. talk + 3 min. for questions, and and one long talk (t = 30 min, 25 min. talk + 5 min. for questions) corresponding roughly to American Physical Society guidelines for contributed and invited talks. Students will also score the talks of their peers and those of Nobel prize winners (or, other speakers) as class participation. There is also a 'slide tech talk', very short, 5 minutes-ish a weird beast, that is to say, not a complete talk, in which a mapping slide and a substance slide is presented (3 min. plus 2 for questions). Short readings are assigned for class meetings. Familiarity with the ideas found in them will be assessed through class discussions and pre-classes quizzes which will also be part of class participation. The other part of class participation is the submission of scores for talks. More on this later!

Grades

Your final grade will be determined as follows: class participation: (reading quizzes, submitted scoring rubrics, and slide tech stuff presentation) 30 %, short talk: 30%, long talk 40 %. Roughly speaking, I assign letter grades to one's cumulative score according to the scale 85/75/65/50, for the lowest A, B, C, D. Students performing at a lower level will be transferred against their will. Maybe USC or something like that. You'll go into the portal and who knows where you will end up. According the our academic calendars for this semester, the final exam for our course is scheduled for , 19 May. 2025, 8-10pm. But we have no formal final exam; the last deliverable is the 'invited talk' length 'Long talk'.

some resources

• fun talk about talks (anyone taking our class could appreciate this!:)
• grading rubric for the two-slide presentation
• grading rubric for short talks
• grading rubric for long talks
• notes for making strong slides
• extremely brief notes on preparing to give talks
• see especially the link for ``Design of Presentation Slides"
• J.D. Callen's talk, ``Preparing effective scientific presentations"
• improving on power point slides (Michael Alley)
• TED talks (Brian Cox)
• Eric Cornell's Nobel Prize address