SECTION 3: Class Presentations
Presentation Topics
Student presentation topics must be selected by Friday, Oct. 25th.
Please contact Dr. Jones for preliminary materials and references for your
topic. You may request a topic that
is not shown in the list. There will be two presentations per class period
beginning on Monday, Nov. 11th, and ending Monday, Dec. 2nd.
Each timed presentation should be between 10 – 15 minutes, with 5 minutes
for questions and discussion; a total of 20 minutes.
We will use the same evaluation rubric as Senior Seminar.
The Seminar Section is considered the final evaluation for the course and
is weighted 25%.
Topics:
1.
Adaptive optics
2.
Mass of Center of Milky Way
3.
Cosmic Microwave Background variations (curvature of the Universe)
4.
SN Ia “standard candle”
5.
Hubble Diagram – acceleration of the Universe
6.
CMB variations + SN Ia Hubble Diagram – the Cosmological Constant
7.
Parallax method for stellar distance
8.
Cepheid Period-Luminosity relation “standard candle”
9.
VASIMR plasma rocket – humans to Mars?
10.
STARE Project “reverberation” method
11.
Density wave theory of spiral arms
12.
Radio interferometry
13.
Basic radio telescope principles – NERT
14.
CCD photometry – preprocessing, mag measurement
15.
21 cm radio HI emission line
16.
NASA Fireball Network
17.
Kepler mission final update
18.
Exo-solar planet light-curve analysis
19.
Galaxy cluster mass determination from gravitational lenses
20.
Detecting exo-solar planets