SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH PROJECT February 2, 2009
Posted by Ms. Klemundt in Help with Assignments.trackback
We’ve put together some ideas to help students in Conceptual Physics get started on the research portion of their paper and project. Library staff is happy to help! Stop by and see us if you’re having difficulty finding resources, evaluating web sites, or if you want us to take a look at your bibliography. If you need a blue sheet with the usernames and passwords for the subscription databases described below, we have those in the library, too.
Do some background reading about your topic in Britannica Online to gain a basic understanding and to find more and better search terms. You can also read articles in weekly news magazines like Time and Newsweek or in newspapers like the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, or Chicago Tribune. And don’t forget television programs like NOVA, Nature, or FRONTLINE, or even Animal Planet and Discovery Channel. Spending some time doing background reading will pay big dividends when you start searching for more advanced articles in science journals or when you’re evaluating web sites.
The Res Library subscribes to a number of databases. Two of them will be particularly helpful to you in this assignment: EBSCO Science Reference Center and Readers’ Guide Full Text Select.
EBSCO Science Reference Center
- once you login, click on the “EBSCO Research Databases” link to get to the Science Reference Center
- then click on the “Advanced Search” link
- you can limit your search by “Publication Type” to only retrieve articles from “Academic Journals” and/or “Periodicals.” Use Control-Click to select more than one option
- use the “Date of Publication” boxes to limit your search for material only published within a certain time period, say the last 10 years
- click the checkbox next to “Cover Story” to retrieve only articles that cover a topic in-depth
- if you’re not getting as many results as you’d like, try clicking the checkbox next to “Also Search Within the Full Text”; the database will then search all of the words in the articles
- use the “Sort By” option to order your results by date of publication
- once you’ve entered a search and have a list of results, look at the Subject Headings in the left-side menu; these may help you find more articles on your topic
Readers’ Guide Full Text Select
- once you login, click the checkbox to the left of “Readers’ Guide FT Select”
- you can limit the dates of publication by filling in the boxes in the “Limit Dates To” section
- under “Document Type” you can choose “Feature Article” to only retrieve articles with some depth to them
- if you are finding articles that are too simple, click the checkbox next to “Peer-Reviewed”‘; this will retrieve articles written at a much higher level of sophistication
- once you’ve done a search and have a list of results, look at the left-side menu at the Subject Headings; these Subject Headings may lead you to more relevant articles or more terms to use in your search
Part of your assignment requires you to use science magazines and journals. Here are the names of some science magazines. It’s not a complete list by any means, so if you have questions about a journal or magazine, ask your teacher or the library staff.
- Scientific American
- Science
- Science News
- Discover
- Natural History
- National Wildlife
- Astronomy
- BioScience
- The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
- E : The Environmental Magazine
- Psychology Today
You will also have to find credible web sites for your project. Use your background reading to suggest individuals and organizations connected to your topic. Make sure you know who is putting up the information on the web sites you use. Try to find a link like “About Us” or “Mission” or “History” — something that will tell you about the organization or individuals providing the information. If you have trouble finding this information, it may be a clue that the site is not credible.
A good place to start looking for websites is the Librarians’ Internet Index (http://www.lii.org). These websites have been selected by librarians. They provide a short description of the web site and almost always tell you who is responsible for the site. Also try the McHenry County College Library’s Subject Guide to Web Sites (http://www.mchenry.edu/library/SitesbySubject/sitesbysubject.htm)
Agencies of the federal government put massive amounts of information out on the web about science, nutrition, disease, etc. Use the Federal Government Portal site (http://www.usa.gov) to find specific sites or government agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency.
If your topic is health-related, try the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services site (http://healthfinder.gov). To find articles on health, psychology, and other topics, try the National Institutes of Health’s index site (http://pubmedcentral.nih.gov).
For this assignment, you must cite your source according to the APA format, both within the body of the paper and in a list (bibliography) at the end of the paper. Don’t forget that you must also cite your sources for your graphs, charts, and other visuals. Here are some places to get help with these tasks.
The Online Writing Lab (OWL) from Purdue University (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01). In addition to help with formatting your bibliography, the OWL site will help you learn how to properly cite a source within the text of your paper.
The Oregon School Library Information System (http://www.oslis.org/resources/cm/apacitations). There is an online citation maker, but always double-check any online citation maker, including MicroSoft Word. They don’t always format the citation correctly, especially if it deviates from the typical citation for that format. Scroll down to “Citation Resources” along the right-side menu for “APA Citation Examples.” This is a very good resource that you might want to print out and consult as you’re creating your bibliography.
The Res Library has a copy of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association which you can consult. It’s probably behind the Circulation Desk some place so just ask for it. Library staff would be happy to look at your bibliography and make sure it is correctly formatted, so don’t hesitate to stop by and let us take a look.
Finally, make sure you have some FUN with this assignment. They’re all interesting topics and you have the opportunity to discover amazing things about the world around us and in us. So get busy learning!
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