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8.2: Literature

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    One option for your independent project is to explore a topic from class (lab or lecture) that intrigues you and find its application in modern chemical literature.​ This option would allow you to familiarize yourself with prominent physical chemistry journals, search chemical literature, and apply class concepts to real world applications.​

    This will involve looking at physical chemistry journals, choosing an article, reading the article critically, and summarizing the contents for your peers.​ The article you choose must a full research article (not a communication or a review article) and has been published recently (in the last 5 years) in a reputable physical chemistry journal.​

    Find an article:

    Start by seeing what's out there. Find the table of contents for a journal that focuses on physical chemistry or find the most popular articles for the last 12 months from one of the ACS journals. Links for some of the Journals of Physical Chemistry from ACS are linked below. 

    With one of the lists, do the following.

    1. Spend 10 minutes to scan the titles and abstracts of the articles in the latest issue(s).
      1. What subdisciplines or applications of physical chemistry do you notice?
      2. Are there any applications that surprise you?
      3. Is there anything that piques your interest?
    2. Look at the synopsis figure that accompanies each title.
      1. Do the figures change your assignment of subdiscipline?
      2. Do the figures change your interest in reading the article?
    3. Choose one paper that you would be interesting in learning more about and examine the abstract more closely. Decide if you want to actually read this paper. If not, move on to another, check out the Journal's ASAP articles, or go to a different journal to find something that is interesting to you. Alternatively, you can check out the list of top articles read for a specific year (eg: Top articles for 2021 are here: https://axial.acs.org/2022/01/20/mos...articles-2021/)

    Structure your presentation

    You will present the published research as if you were a researcher in the group of authors. You do not need to present the entire paper with all of its data. Select one or more of the most important points (the most important pieces of data, and conclusions drawn from them) from the paper and let that be the topic of your presentation.

    In structuring your presentation:

    1. Start is with the question the authors sought to answer. Give enough background about the question so that your audience can understand why the question is interesting or important.
    2. ​Describe the methods used to answer the question. You do not need to cover each method in depth, but give your audience enough information that they can understand the meaning of the data you present.
    3. Describe the results. As with the methods, help your audience understand what each piece of data means, but be concise.
    4. Describe what conclusions were made from these results. Your audience should be able to understand how the results add up to the conclusion that were  drawn.​
    5. Finally, you can bring up any limitations, changes you would make to the study, outstanding questions, and new directions. 

     

    This page titled 8.2: Literature is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Kathryn Haas.

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