Instructions from the professor:
Overall Format: Approx 7-10 pages, double spaced, and with a 12-pt. Times Roman font.
The purpose of this Research Paper is to familiarize you with some current topics in the field of chemistry. This will also expose you to the experimental approaches and techniques routinely used during scientific investigations. The research paper also represents an opportunity for you to explore an area of your own academic or professional interest.
The paper is in the form of a report and should include Headings and Sub-headings as described below.
The Research Paper should consist of the following sections:
I. Title:
The title should be concise and interesting and to grab the attention of the reader and convey what the paper will be about.
II. Background information:
The background information should provide any information necessary for your reader to understand the information you will present in the discussion. You could mention some historical information that is relevant to the topic (e.g., the involvement of a particular scientist, a historic moment, an important observation that led to a discovery, etc). In this section, you can define the scientific terms that are important and/or specific to your research topic (e.g.; Ozone layer is a layer in the stratosphere that absorbs the harmful UV radiation from the sun).
III. Discussion:
This section forms the main body of the report. Here you should answer the questions/discuss the information as required to fully develop the topic.
IV. Conclusions:
This section provides a summary of the previous sections. Show how the reactions, techniques, problem, and solution discussed in section III relate to the topic and background information discussed in section II.
V. References:
You must reference the source of your material. This means within the text, you must cite the referenced work, for example:
Recently, efforts to reduce stratospheric ozone depletion have been connected with climate
change in the troposphere [Molina et al, 2009].
The full reference must be given in the Reference section at the end of the paper, for example,
References
Mario Molina, Durwood Zaelke, K. Madhava Sarma, Stephen O. Andersen, Veerabhadran
Ramanathan, Donald Kaniaru (2009). Reducing abrupt climate change risk using the Montreal
Protocol and other regulatory actions to complement cuts in CO2 emissions. Proc. Natl. Acad.
Sci. U.S.A. 106 (49):
All Figures that you use must be properly labeled with the Figure number, title and reference of where you obtained the figure, for example,
Figure 3. Emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels during the last 200 years [Marland et
al, 2007]
You should reference at least five sources of information for your work. For example, two of these references could be citations of the sources of the problem and solution in the Discussion section. You should include at least one book and one journal article. Please use the American Chemical Society (ACS) format for accepted referencing practices:
(http://chemistry.library.wisc.edu/writing/acs-style-guidelines.html)
or you could consult:
http://library.laguardia.edu/ask
Some possible sources of scientific information for your research paper:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://library.laguardia.edu/ee/
http://catalog.nypl.org/