PHYS 454, Spring 2026. Presentation/Project

Due Date: May 20, 9:00 am. (via brightspace)

A final project consisting of:

1. A 3-5 page writeup about a topic of your choosing related to astrophysics. It must have at least 1 original plot that you make, more are welcome. This should be based on real measured^* astrophysical data, possibly from one of the sources we looked at already. Please make it 1 single pdf document with all figures contained within. The bulk of the content should be written exposition about the material. Please get into details. I don't need to read a lot of general overview text, but would rather learn about specifics. Please link to any code you wrote to create the plot or work with the data. Include any references you use and link to code that you created. Make this a nice document! (And please don't recycle the same thing from the PSA graph you did)
2. A 5 (+ some questions) minute presentation about your work to be done in class starting May 20. Three slides will be enough: 1 to explain the general topic, 1 to narrow down to your exact thing, and 1 to show off your original plot. Submit a link to your online slides (google slides is fine) by 9:00 am on the 20th.

Slides and write-up due May 20, 9:00 am via BrightSpace. (Order of presentations will be determined randomly)

Topics can include anything related to astrophysics, except The Drake Equation.

* We can also include theory calculations as data for this case. But, the bar will be a little higher, meaning don't just plot $f(y) = 1/r^2$ and say you are showing the inverse square law. It would need to be more substantial than that.