academic writing in english for students of physics...as phase diagrams, adsorption, wetting, and...

Academic Writing in English for Students of Physics LECTURE 1 – 21 JANUARY 2016, MATTEO FUOLI

Your task

•  Write 1500 words in formal, academic English

Schedule

•  19 February midnight: your deadline •  26 February midnight: individual comments from me •  4 March 1-3 p.m. / 3-5 p.m.: feedback sessions

(Rydbergs room)

Submission instructions

•  Send your text via email to [email protected] •  Submit your text on the 19th of February only •  Send your text in .doc(x) format

–  .odt, .rtf, .pdf or .pages documents will be returned for conversion

Suggested topics

•  “The motivation for your scientific thesis work” •  “The contents / meaning / impact / philosophical

implications of quantum mechanics in the modern world.”

Guidelines for better writing

Basic principles

Clear writing starts with clear

thinking

•  Before you start writing, ask: “What am I trying to say?”

•  When you finish writing, ask:

“Have I said it?”

Basic principles

•  Bullet point list of main ideas

–  each idea will become a single paragraph –  ideas should be formulated as simple declarative

statements: these will be the topic sentences of your paragraphs

–  organize your ideas into sections

Planning is key

Online resources •  Academic Writing in English at Lund University:

awelu.srv.lu.se (http://awelu.srv.lu.se/)

•  The “Purdue OWL online writing lab” (https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/)

•  Online Dictionaries: www.ldoceonline.com (http://www.ldoceonline.com/)

www.merriam-webster.com (http://www.merriam-webster.com)

•  Synonyms dictionary/Thesaurus (http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-definition/)

•  ‘Collocations dictionary’ (http://oxforddictionary.so8848.com/o#.VeQjX7yqpBe)

•  Google UK (https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl)

Problem areas

•  Formalities •  Structure •  Word choices

Formalities

•  Layout •  Title •  References

Formalities Layout

•  Signaling new paragraph (indentation) •  Typographic alignment

(Olshtain and Cohen, 1983), later extended to identifying a speech-act specific‘sociopragmatic set’ of social and contextual factors (Olshtain, 1989; Olshtainand Weinbach, 1987). She further contends that only rarely have researchersworking on the apology as a speech act set out to explain its form and strategicfunctions in terms of underlying cultural attitudes, though some more recentwork has attempted to do this (see Luke, 1997; Marquez Reiter, 2000; Meyerhoff,1999; Obeng, 1999; Okumura and Wei, 2000; Suszczynska,1999).

Several other factors emerge from Meier’s review. First, research on theapology as a speech act has been very much focused on the interpersonal andinteractive behaviour of individuals in mainly informal situations. That is,someone apologizes to someone else for an ‘offence’ usually caused by actions,including other speech acts, which in some way violate a social or cultural normand which are often associated with impoliteness or rudeness. There is relativelylittle work on ‘public’ apologies, either within institutional or other professionalcontexts. Meier’s review makes no reference to political apologies (but see Meier,2004). Second, though there is some discernible agreement as to whatconstitutes an apology in terms of its component parts in a very general sense,the actual taxonomies produced by a wide range of studies ‘contain significantvariations both in their number of categories and in category types and theiroperationalisation’ (1998: 222). How an apology is defined is greatly influencedby disciplinary perspectives, emphasis and the scope of the particular researchstudy. To the extent that many such definitions and taxonomies are explicitlygrounded in specific linguistic and cultural contexts, their relevance to the studyof political apologies is perhaps less tangential than one might expect. Though itis unlikely ever to be possible to determine explicitly and comprehensively aspeech act set of the major semantic formulas for apologizing which will apply inall contexts, languages, and cultures, Meier (1998: 226) argues that ‘this doesnot undermine the value of such research’, but rather suggests that ‘its majorvalue may not lie in uncovering set patterns or norms of linguistic behavior’ andinstead that the goals themselves need to be extended.

Third, there is the question of the data on which most apology research isbased. As Meier’s review makes clear, though the studies represent a number oftypes of elicitation methods, these predominantly involve some kind of simulateddata, i.e. discourse-completion tests, questionnaires based on specified hypo-thetical encounters, retrospective self-reports, written or oral closed role-play,more open role-play, intuition and informal observation, etc. Clearly, naturallanguage recorded discourse is ‘conceded to be preferable’ (1998: 225) butdifficult to come by (but see Holmes, 1995, 1998; Jaworski, 1994; Obeng, 1999).Like Meier, Holmes (1998: 204) argues that ‘though it is not possible to specify acomplete speech act set for apology, it is both possible and useful for descriptivepurposes to categorize the range of strategies which were used in a corpus ofapologies collected from native speakers of English’. Even more interesting,Jaworski (1994) considers how methods of data collection on apologiesconstrain and influence the results of the various studies. For example, one of the

Harris and Grainger and Mullany: The pragmatics of political apologies 717

at LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES on March 24, 2015das.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Formalities Layout By studying our Galaxy we can see that it is made up of four components. The bulge/bar is an overdensity of stars and gas in the central region of the Galaxy, it is believed to have been formed by a buckling of the stellar and gas disk due to instabilities within the Galaxy (so called secular evolution). Stretching through and far above the Galactic plane there is a population of stars we call the halo. These stars are the oldest population in the Galaxy. It has not yet been determined with certainty where these stars came from, although the most probable origin of the Galactic halo is two fold; stars forming in the protogalactic cloud and stars accreted by the Galaxy from dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSph) as they were merging with the Galaxy. The Galactic plane consists of two components, the thin disk and the thick disk (the density of halo stars in the plane is orders of magnitude

Formalities Layout

By studying our Galaxy we can see that it is made up of four components. The bulge/bar is an overdensity of stars and gas in the central region of the Galaxy, it is believed to have been formed by a buckling of the stellar and gas disk due to instabilities within the Galaxy (so called secular evolution). Stretching through and far above the Galactic plane there is a population of stars we call the halo. These stars are the oldest population in the Galaxy. It has not yet been determined with certainty where these stars came from, although the most probable origin of the Galactic halo is two fold; stars forming in the protogalactic cloud and stars accreted by the Galaxy from dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSph) as they were merging with the Galaxy. The Galactic plane consists of two components, the thin disk and the thick disk (the density of halo stars in the plane is orders of magnitude

Formalities Layout By studying our Galaxy we can see that it is made up of four components.

The bulge/bar is an overdensity of stars and gas in the central region of the Galaxy, it is believed to have been formed by a buckling of the stellar and gas disk due to instabilities within the Galaxy (so called secular evolution). Stretching through and far above the Galactic plane there is a population of stars we call the halo. These stars are the oldest population in the Galaxy. It has not yet been determined with certainty where these stars came from, although the most probable origin of the Galactic halo is two fold; stars forming in the protogalactic cloud and stars accreted by the Galaxy from dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSph) as they were merging with the Galaxy.

The Galactic plane consists of two components, the thin disk and the thick disk (the density of halo stars in the plane is orders of magnitude

How can I adjust indentation and text alignment?

Try google it!

Formalities Title

•  Higgs Bosons

•  The Mass of the Higgs Boson

Informative, precise, concise

Formalities Title

•  An investigation of how a light pseudo-scalar Higgs boson decays to the γ-meson and a photon in a new experiment

•  Decay of a light pseudo-scalar Higgs boson to the γ-meson and a photon

References

[1] M. Ammosov, N. Delone, and V. Krainov. Tunnel ionization of complex atoms and of atomic ions in an alternating electromagnetic field. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics, 64(6):1191, 1986.

[2] Clementi, Enrico, Debora Raimondi, and William Reinhardt. Atomic Screening Constants from SCF Functions. II. Atoms with 37 to 86 Electrons. Journal of Chemical Physics, 47:1300–1307, 1967.

[3] M. B. Gaarde, M. Murakami, and R. Kienberger. Spatial separation of large dynamical blueshift and harmonic generation. Phys. Rev. A, 74, 2006.

Formalities References

Formalities References

interfacial tensions for a straight interface. For curved inter-faces, the tensions depend on the curvature and the calcula-tions become more involved. A discussion of some of thekey issues can be found in Ref. 34 and references therein.

When be! 1.2, the gas-liquid interfacial tension clg is0.38kBT/r, corresponding to the case for the profiles dis-played in Fig. 6. The other interfacial tensions are given inTable I, together with the resulting contact angle fromEq. (56). These values are in good agreement with the con-tact angle one can observe from the density profiles in Fig. 6.However, these profiles have a diffuse interface so there isalways some uncertainty in the location of the contact line.As ew is increased the drop spreads because it is energeticallybeneficial to do so. Complete spreading (wetting) occursonly when the sum clg" cwl is less than cwg.

Exercise:

Calculate one of the density profiles from Fig. 6, imple-menting the normalization procedure introduced in Sec. VI Aand then plot the density contour q! (qg" ql)/2, which cor-responds to the mid-point of the liquid–gas interface. Whereon this curve does the contact angle agree with the macro-scopic result in Eq. (56)? Is it where you would expect?

VIII. CONCLUSIONS

We have presented a derivation of a simple lattice gasmodel DFT and discussed typical applications. Workingwith this model gives a good hands-on introduction to manyof the important ideas behind DFT and gives a platform tolearn about different aspects of inhomogeneous fluids suchas phase diagrams, adsorption, wetting, and surface tensions.Studying this “toy-model” gives students good insight and afeeling for the physics of inhomogeneous liquids, leavingthem in a good position to continue on and study the “realthing.”2–6,8–12

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A.P.H. acknowledges support through a LoughboroughUniversity Graduate School Studentship. A.J.A. thanks allthe students who have done projects with him modelinginhomogeneous liquids with this lattice-gas DFT or variantsof it. This paper is largely based on informal lectures andmany discussions with Mark Amos, Blesson Chacko, ChrisChalmers, William Dewey, Mark Robbins, and Sen Tian.

1P.-G. de Gennes, F. Brochard-Wyart, and D. Quer!e, Capillarity andWetting Phenomena: Drops, Bubbles, Pearls, Waves (Springer, NewYork, 2004).

2Fundamentals of Inhomogeneous Fluids, edited by D. Henderson (MarcelDekker, New York, 1992).

3J. S. Rowlinson and B. Widom, Molecular Theory of Capillarity (Dover,New York, 2002).

4H. Ted Davis, Statistical Mechanics of Phases, Interfaces, and Thin Films(Wiley-VCH, New York, 1996).

5J.-P. Hansen and I. R. McDonald, Theory of Simple Liquids, 4th ed.(Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2013).

6R. Evans, “The nature of the liquid-vapour interface and other topics inthe statistical mechanics of non-uniform, classical fluids,” Adv. Phys.28(2), 143–200 (1979).

7R. Evans, “Density Functionals in the Theory of Nonuniform Fluids,” inFundamentals of Inhomogeneous Fluids, edited by D. Henderson (MarcelDekker, New York, 1992), pp. 85–176.

8J. F. Lutsko, “Recent developments in classical density functional theory,”Adv. Chem. Phys. 144, 1–92 (2010).

9J. Wu and Z. Li, “Density-functional theory for complex fluids,” Annu.Rev. Phys. Chem. 58, 85–112 (2007).

10J. Wu, “Density functional theory for chemical engineering: From capillar-ity to soft materials,” AIChE J. 52(3), 1169–1193 (2006).

11P. Tarazona, J. A. Cuesta, and Y. Mart!ınez-Rat!on, “Density functional the-ories of hard particle systems,” Lect. Notes Phys. 753, 247–341 (2008).

12H. L"owen, “Density Functional Theory for Inhomogeneous Fluids II(Freezing, Dynamics, Liquid Crystals),” Lecture Notes, 3rd WarsawSchool of Statistical Physics (Warsaw U.P., Warsaw, 2010), pp. 87–121.

13The students involved in these projects have generally been in the finalyear of either a three-year bachelors degree or a four-year masters degree,in either Mathematics & Physics or straight Mathematics. However, twicethese activities were given as summer projects to very good students at anearlier stage in their studies, which worked well too. The final-year proj-ects are typically supposed to be around 200 or 300 h work over the aca-demic year, including meeting with the supervisor for roughly one hourper week. In order to get students started and introduce to them the rele-vant mathematics and physics for these projects, 2–3 h of informal intro-ductory lectures are given; Secs. I–V of this paper are based on theselectures. Some students are also given a computer code written in Maplethat implements the method described in Sec. VI, for the fluid in 1D withjust nearest neighbor interactions, which the student then modifies totackle their particular problem.

14M. Plischke and B. Bergersen, Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics, 3rd ed.(World Scientific, Singapore, 2006).

15L. E. Reichl, A Modern Course in Statistical Physics, 3rd ed. (Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 2009).

16M. Schoen and S. Klapp, “Nanoconfined fluids: Soft matter between twoand three dimensions,” in Reviews in Computation Chemistry, edited byK. B. Lipkowitz and T. Cundari (Wiley, New York, 2007), Vol. 24.

17M. J. Robbins, “Describing colloidal soft matter systems with microscopiccontinuum models,” Ph.D. thesis, Loughborough University, 2012,<https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/9383>.

18M. J. Robbins, A. J. Archer, and U. Thiele, “Modelling the evaporation ofthin films of colloidal suspensions using Dynamical Density FunctionalTheory,” J. Phys. Condens. Matter 23, 415102-1–18 (2011).

19S. Fomel and J. F. Claerbout, “Exploring three-dimensional implicit wave-field extrapolation with the helix transform,” SEP Rep. 95, 43–60 (1997);available at http://www.reproducibility.org/RSF/book/sep/findif/paper.pdf.

20D. Chandler, Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics (Oxford U.P.,New York, 1987).

21F. Mandl, Statistical Physics, 2nd ed. (John Wiley & Sons, Padstow, 1988).22In the grand canonical ensemble a liquid drop is not an equilibrium state—

drops either evaporate or grow, depending on the value of l.23R. Evans, “Micoroscopic theories of simple fluids and their interfaces,” in

Liquids at Interfaces, Les Houches Session XLVIII, 1988, edited by J.Charvolin, J. F. Joanny, and J. Zinn-Justin (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1990),pp. 1–98.

24M. Schick, “Introduction to Wetting Phenomena,” in Liquids at Interfaces,Les Houches Session XLVIII, 1988, edited by J. Charvolin, J. F. Joanny,and J. Zinn-Justin (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1990), pp. 415–497.

25S. Dietrich, “Wetting phenomena,” in Phase Transition and CriticalPhenomena, edited by C. Domb and J. L. Lebowitz (Academic Press,London, 1988), Vol. 12, pp. 2–218.

26D. Bonn and D. Ross, “Wetting transitions,” Rep. Prog. Phys. 64,1085–1163 (2001).

27D. Bonn, J. Eggers, J. Indekeu, J. Meunier, and E. Rolley, “Wetting andspreading,” Rev. Mod. Phys. 81, 739–805 (2009).

28V. M. Starov and M. G. Velarde, “Surface forces and wetting phenomena,”J. Phys. Condens. Matter 21, 464121-1–11 (2009).

Table I. Interfacial tensions and contact angle h from Eq. (56), for differentvalues of the wall attraction strength ew.

bew rbcwl rbcwg h

0.5 0.12 #0.05 1158

0.8 #0.16 #0.09 798

1.0 #0.36 #0.13 528

1.3 #0.68 #0.23 08

1128 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 82, No. 12, December 2014 Hughes, Thiele, and Archer 1128

This article is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AAPT content is subject to the terms at: http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP:130.235.206.88 On: Wed, 02 Sep 2015 09:54:18

Structure

•  Text •  Paragraph •  Sentence

•  Punctuation

Structure The ‘hourglass model’

Introduction

Procedure

Discussion general

particular

particular

general

Structure Paragraphs

•  What is a paragraph? –  “A paragraph is a collection of related sentences

dealing with a single topic” (source: OWL) •  1 paragraph: 1 topic

–  one idea + several bits of supporting evidence –  several points, as long as they relate to the overall

topic of the paragraph » if the single points start to get long, then make new

paragraph

•  Structure: topic sentence + supporting details •  Ideal length: varies, but never shorter than 3 sentences

Structure Paragraphs

•  How do I know when to start a new paragraph? – When you begin a new idea or point –  To contrast information or ideas

– When your readers need a pause

(source: OWL)

Structure Paragraphs One factor that has been argued to play a vital role in how conflict is managed by offenders is apology (Darby & Schlenker, 1982; Ohbuchi, Kameda, & Agarie, 1989; Sitkin & Bies, 1993). In the introduction to his landmark book On Apology, psychiatrist Aaron Lazare opens by referring to apology as ‘ ‘One of the most profound human interactions” (Lazare, 2004, p. 1). On a national scale, apologies have helped to heal the wounds of the Holocaust, the Nanking Massacre, and many other atrocities (Brooks, 1999). Within organizational contexts, apologies can be used to resolve interpersonal disputes, improve customer experiences, and enhance leader effectiveness (Liao, 2007; Tomlinson, Dineen, & Lewicki, 2004; Tucker, Turner, Barling, Reid, & Elving, 2006).

Adapted from Fehr and Gelfand (2010)

Structure Sentence structure

•  What is a sentence?


A sentence may consist of one or more clauses: •  Main clause •  Main clause + subordinate clause(s)

•  Main clause 1 + and/or/but + Main clause 2


•  Typically, a main clause consists of a subject, a verb and an object

–  “A topic sentence identifies the main idea of the paragraph.”

•  Two main clauses can be connected by “and”, “or”, “but” or a semicolon

–  “This compendium consists of commented examples; all of them are taken from your essays.”

SUBJ VERB OBJECT


•  A dependent (or ‘subordinate’) clause can begin with a conjunction (except for “and”, “or” and “but”, which are know as coordinating conjunctions):

“Although not all the results are verified,...” “If that is the case,...” “..., which is a big problem.”

•  Or a non-finite verb form: “..., considering the impact of the results.” “..., considered as a whole.” “..., to be considered at a later stage.”


“To complicate the situation further, certain plants are able to absorb less 14C than they normally would given the atmospheric 14C/12C-ratio, depending both on plant species and local climate conditions, further complicating dating of humans and animals since it might not be known what plants were part of their diet, or in the case of carnivores, their diet’s diet, nor what the climate situation was at that specific place at a specific time, seeing as the time is yet to be determined.”


“To complicate the situation further [NDT, 2010], certain plants are able to absorb less 14C than they normally would given the atmospheric 14C/12C-ratio, depending both on plant species and local climate conditions, further complicating dating of humans and animals since it might not be known what plants were part of their diet, or in the case of carnivores, their diet’s diet, nor what the climate situation was at that specific place at a specific time, seeing as the time is yet to be determined.”


“To complicate the situation further [NDT, 2010], certain plants are able to absorb less 14C than they normally would. The atmospheric 14C/12C-ratio, depending both on plant species and local climate conditions, further complicates the dating of humans and animals since it might not be known what plants were part of their diet, or in the case of carnivores, their diet’s diet, nor what the climate situation was at that specific place at a specific time. That time, furthermore, is yet to be determined.”

Sentence structure Sentence structure rules

Rule 1: Dependent clauses cannot stand alone.

Otherwise, you get a sentence fragment (= incomplete sentence).

Sentence structure Sentence fragments

“Several features of quantum theory are rather puzzling. Such as the fact that energy levels often are strangely independent of some quantum numbers that one would expect, and depend on unexpected quantum numbers.”

“Several features of quantum theory are rather puzzling, such as the fact…”

Sentence structure Sentence fragments

•  “Using ladder operators, a concept known from traditional quantum mechanics.”

•  “this can be achieved using ladder operators, a concept known from traditional quantum mechanics.”

•  “Using ladder operators, a concept known from traditional quantum mechanics, it is possible to…”

Sentence structure Run-on sentences

Rule 2: A sentence can’t have more than one subject and

one verb unless the two clauses are

- subordinated (because, if, since, that...) - coordinated (and, or, but)

Otherwise, you get a run-on sentence (= a sentence in which two or more independent clauses are joined without an appropriate punctuation or conjunction).


•  “When a patient comes in to the emergency room with chest pains you need to establish a diagnosis quickly, if it is ACS, acute coronary syndrome, treatment needs to start immediately.”

•  “When a patient comes in to the emergency room with chest pains you need to establish a diagnosis quickly, if it is ACS, acute coronary syndrome, treatment needs to start immediately.”


“When a patient comes in to the emergency room with chest pains you need to establish a diagnosis quickly. If it is ACS, acute coronary syndrome, treatment needs to start immediately.” “When a patient comes in to the emergency room with chest pains you need to establish a diagnosis quickly, and if it is ACS, acute coronary syndrome, treatment needs to start immediately.” “When a patient comes in to the emergency room with chest pains you need to establish a diagnosis quickly; if it is ACS, acute coronary syndrome, treatment needs to start immediately.”


“Cells are abundant of various proteins (a biological molecule), these proteins can each regulate another set of proteins.”

“Cells are abundant of various proteins (a biological molecule). These proteins can each regulate another set of proteins.”


“Obviously this is redundant when probing static objects eg. solids, however pulsed lasers can be used in the same manner as a CW laser for these tasks.”


“Obviously this is redundant when probing static objects eg. solids. However, pulsed lasers can be used in the same manner as a CW laser for these tasks.”

“Obviously this is redundant when probing static objects eg. solids, but pulsed lasers can be used in the same manner as a CW laser for these tasks.”


Rule 3: The subordinate clauses need to have the same subject as the main clause.


•  “Having an interest in astrophysics, it might be familiar that stars are commonly considered to be one of the closest real objects to be approximated with satisfaction with the theoretical model of a black body radiator.”


Rule 4: “which” and “that” refer back to the noun

immediately preceding it.


“The mixed layer appears usually between sunrise and sunset which is very turbulent mainly driven by the buoyancy as a consequence of solar heating.”

“The mixed layer usually appears between sunrise and sunset, a period that is very turbulent, driven by the buoyancy consequent on solar heating.”

Punctuation

•  Period (full stop) . •  Comma , •  Colon : •  Semi-colon ; •  Dash – •  Quotation Mark “ ” (not ” ”) •  (Question Mark) ? •  (Exclamation Mark) !

Punctuation The comma

•  Use commas to separate independent clauses when they are joined by any of these seven coordinating conjunctions: and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet.

•  “These fishermen brought in their haul, and were pleased with the results.”


•  Use commas after introductory a) clauses, b) phrases, or c) words that come before the main clause.

•  “In addition to that, the performance cost of the looping logic is small compared to other computations.”


•  Use a pair of commas in the middle of a sentence to set off clauses, phrases, and words that are not essential to the meaning of the sentence.

•  “Construction of the Roman Colosseum, which was officially known as the Flavian Amphitheater, began in A.D. 69”

•  “The electrons, that were knocked out of the atom are attracted to the positive electrode.”


•  Do not use commas to set off essential elements of the sentence, such as clauses beginning with that (relative clauses).

•  “The electrons that were knocked out of the atom, are attracted to the positive electrode.”

See more rules for commas in OWL at: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/607/01/

Punctuation The semi-colon

“When a patient comes in to the emergency room with chest pains you need to establish a diagnosis quickly; if it is ACS, acute coronary syndrom, treatment needs to start immediately.”

Punctuation The dash

“When a patient comes in to the emergency room with chest pains you need to establish a diagnosis quickly; if it is ACS – acute coronary syndrome – treatment needs to start immediately.”

Punctuation Punctuation in Numbers

14.202 14,202

Word choices

•  Tense •  Style •  Grammar

•  Vocabulary •  Spelling

Tense

NOW (Present Tense)

THEN (Past Tense)

(Essential English Grammar sec. 5.7.2)

Present tense “Genomics provides crucial information for rational drug design.” •  Used to state

–  general truth –  Facts (including referring to figures and tables) –  states of being

•  Common in introduction and review of literature

•  Stative verbs usually used in present tense –  Examples: Contain, hope, know, need, own, resemble,

understand –  Rarely used in progressive:

»  *I am knowing English grammar.

(Essential English Grammar sec. 5.7.2; Using Tenses in Scientific Writing)

Past tense “Each of the three groups took 2 litre samples…”

•  Used to indicate earlier actions

•  Commonly used in –  methodology section where procedures are described

(as above) –  Results section –  Conclusion section

•  Sometimes used in literature review –  Davidson found that three treatments were most

effective.

(Essential English Grammar sec. 5.7.2; Using Tenses in Scientific Writing)

Style

•  Informal = many words, low information content: “I’m going to talk about how difficult it is to know if something is true or not when you first hear about it. This is something that we have all had to deal with at one time or another.”

•  Formal = concise and economical: “Ascertaining the truth of new information is a ubiquitous problem.”

Formal writing: •  Avoid using colloquial words/expressions (kids, guy,

awesome, a lot, etc.)

•  Avoid contractions (can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, etc.) •  Write in third person

•  Avoid clichés (loads of, conspicuous by absence, etc.) •  Avoid addressing readers using second person

pronouns (you, your, etc)

•  Use passive voice (e.g. It has been noticed that….), but don’t overdue it!

Style

Style

•  “In his article he discusses” •  “This study aims at evaluating” •  “Within the Standard Model of particle physics, there was

only one undiscovered fundamental particle. This was the Higgs boson.”

•  “Studies have been made that show”

Grammar

•  The genitive •  Plural forms of nouns •  Uncountable nouns

•  Articles •  Subject-verb agreement

Grammar The genitive

•  “A physicists goal is to make numerical predictions” •  “Minimal instruction’s give more interesting result’s” •  “A cloud of uncertainly hovers over nuclear fusion's

future.”

•  A physicist’s goal •  Minimal instructions give more interesting results •  The future of nuclear fusion

Grammar Irregular plural forms

•  Spectrum – spectra •  Medium – media •  (Datum) – data

•  Criterion – criteria

•  Phenomenon – phenomena


•  Analysis – analyses (cf. to analyse) •  Basis – bases •  Hypothesis – hypotheses

•  Thesis - theses


•  Antenna – antennas / antennae •  Formula – formulas /formulae

•  Appendix – appendixes / appendices •  Index – indexes / indices

Grammar Uncountable nouns

•  Evidence •  Research •  Science

•  Society •  News

•  Money •  Progress

•  Information •  Knowledge •  Behavior

•  Equipment •  Pollution

Grammar Uncountable nouns

Space Room Time

Paper Work

Society

Spaces Rooms Times

Papers Works

Societies

Grammar Articles

•  Countable nouns always need an article

•  A device / an appliance

•  The device •  ( ) Devices

•  The devices

Grammar Articles

•  Uncountable nouns never take the indefinite article •  Uncountable nouns only take the definite article if we’re

talking about a subset

•  “Solar energy is the energy of the future.”

Grammar Quantifiers

•  Only countable nouns can be preceded by: many, a large number of, several, few, a couple of, either of, neither of, both,

these, a, an •  Only uncountable nouns can be preceded by:

much, a large amount of, a great deal of, a little

Grammar Subject-verb agreement

•  I am •  You are •  She is

•  They are


“These cells enables the plant...”


“Water lines has been popping up in different detectors during observations of plenty of red (super)giant stars, even as early as K I stars.”


“This project differs from it’s predecessor [1] not only in signal processing method and a slight variation to problem type (AMI is a subset of ACS), but in raw input data, the new data set from 2006 is larger but also probably harder to classify as routines for when ECG’s are used has changed so that the more obvious cases are not included.”


“Figure 2.4. show the five best buffering behaviours”


Check out OWL on subject-verb agreement:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/599/01/

Vocabulary

Overused words: •  However •  Thus

•  This

Vocabulary

Synonyms: •  However: nonetheless, yet, still, all the same,

be that as it may, on the other hand...

•  Thus: so, hence, consequently, accordingly, in consequence, as a result, as follows ...

•  This: This x, that, here, the former, the latter...

Spelling

•  “ANN’s where first designed as a model of interactions” •  “ANN’s were first designed as a model of interactions”

•  Which witch •  Whether weather

Spelling

•  “Wavelets handles this better since it’s basis functions consists of rescaled and dilated versions of the mother wavelet.”

Spelling

•  “Wavelets handles this better since it’s basis functions consists of rescaled and dilated versions of the mother wavelet.”

•  “Wavelets handles this better since its basis functions consists of rescaled and dilated versions of the mother wavelet.”

Spelling

•  Its it’s •  Their they’re •  Whose who’s

Spelling

“In creating a new organ a stem cell must differentiate and thereby loose its pluripotency.”

Spelling

“In creating a new organ a stem cell must differentiate and thereby loose its pluripotency.”

“In creating a new organ a stem cell must differentiate and thereby lose its pluripotency.”

•  Cf. I choose today – I chose yesterday.

Spelling

“The ionization rate across the atom at any given moment can be assumed to be homogenous.”

“This process, known as heterogenous nucleation, is described in the following section.”

Spelling

“The ionization rate across the atom at any given moment can be assumed to be homogeneous.”

“This process, known as heterogeneous nucleation, is described in the following section.”

Spelling

•  “random access memory” •  “proto neutron star”

Spelling

•  “random-access memory” •  “proto-neutron star”

British – American Spelling

•  Analyse – analyze •  Specialise – specialize •  Defence – defense •  Fibre - fiber •  Behaviour – behavior

Principles of Effective Writing •  In addition to attending this lecture, other things you can

do to become a better writer: – Read, pay attention, and imitate – Develop a thesaurus habit. Search for the right

word rather than settling for any old word – Stop waiting for “inspiration” – Accept that writing is hard for everyone – Revise. Nobody gets it perfect on the first try –  Learn how to cut ruthlessly. Never become too

attached to your words

What’s next?

•  19 February midnight: your deadline •  Send it to [email protected] •  26 February midnight: individual comments from me

•  4 March 1-3 p.m. / 3-5 p.m.: feedback sessions

academic writing in english for students of physics...as phase diagrams, adsorption, wetting, and...

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