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Assessment Criteria

Broad assessment criteria used across the Faculty of Science are explained in the Faculty of Science Honours Handbook. You should study these when writing your thesis. It is available, along with other rules and policy information, from the Faculty of Science Honours web site.

Coursework

Each course will contain up to 120 hours of work and the assessment may be any combination of: written examinations, assignments, essays and oral presentations. Each unit will have equal weighting in the final assessment of the course work.

Students doing the Physics Honours course must complete FIVE lecture units.

Projects

Honours students are required to complete a project in an appropriate topic. They will be expected to carry out independent research on this topic whilst working under a supervisor, usually in one of the research groups of the Department or of one of the research schools. The project work is presented in the form of seminars, a mid-term report, and a thesis.

The mid-term report is an introduction to your project of about 1000 - 1500 words. It should describe and explain your project at the level of a physicist who is not an expert in your project area. One of your thesis examiners will be such a person. It should include a brief overview of the major scientific literature relevant to your project.

Another way of stating its purpose is that it should:

• introduce the general area of your project,
• explain what is known and what is not known (the gaps in knowledge),
• state the question you will try and answer (the gap in knowledge that you will try and fill),
• describe how you will go about this.

It is due about two weeks after the presentation of the mid-term seminar. It is compulsory, but not assessed. It should be read and signed by your supervisor. You are encouraged to use it as the basis for the introductory sections of your thesis.

The final thesis, of around 50 pages of body text, should be written at the level of a research paper. It is due on Wednesday 1 November 2006 (Monday 15 May 2006 for mid-year finishes). You should look at the assessment form, and grading criteria given to thesis examiners.

The Academic Skills and Learning Centre offers help with thesis writing. See their web site for details.

A typical thesis might consists of the following chapters:

• Introduction and overview of the problem.
• Literature review.
• Theory and technical background.
• Method.
• Results.
• Discussion and conclusion.
• Bibliography.

Example theses are available online. There are many others in the Physics Department common area.

Three bound copies must be submitted. Two of these will be returned to you. I would also like an electronic PDF copy emailed to me, if possible. This will be archived online.

A thesis production plan, which will avoid a final rush, might be:

• Aim to have the thesis written by the Monday before it is due.
• Get an independent reader to check for spelling, grammatical and other production errors.
• Make final corrections on the Wednesday.
• Reproduce and bind final copies on Thursday.

Copies should be made using the copier in your project's department or a commerical copying service (there are several in Civic, see Yellow Pages under "Photocopying"). It is wise to arrange copying and binding ahead of time. The Physics Department copier may only be used by arrangement. The University Printing Service can also help.

The final seminar. Mid-year end students: TBA. See the seminars page for guidelines.

Assessment

For students enrolled in the Physics Honours course, the course work carries a weight of 50% and the overall project work 50%.

The weighting of the assessment is:

• Coursework assessment: 50%
• Honours thesis assessment: 45%
• Assessment of end-of-year seminar (average mark from all supervisors and Physics academic staff attending seminar): 5%