Projects for A452

Synopsis

The final project for this class will consist of a written project report (10-12 pages), written in the style of a journal article, and a brief (10 minute) oral presentation to the class. The final written reports will be due on April 24; class presentations will occur on April 24 and 26.

The goal of this project is to allow you to investigate one aspect of this course material in more detail than is possible either through lecture or homework. Your final project will either consist of an independent research activity, using real data (observational) or constructing models (theoretical), or be an in depth literature review of any topic from this class that intrigues you. If you decide to pursue a topic not listed below, you must check with Prof. van Zee first to determine if the research topic you have chosen is appropriate for this class.

The Process

Topics will be chosen a few weeks into the semester so that you will have sufficient time to conduct your research (literature or otherwise). Various milestones will be set along the way: choice of specific research question (February 6); first literature references or preliminary results from independent research project (March 22); outline of paper (April 3); and final paper (April 24).

Possible Research Projects

  • Oxygen and Nitrogen Enrichment of the Interstellar Medium
  • Dark Matter in Galaxies
  • Star Formation Activity in Spiral Galaxies
  • Galaxy Morphology
  • Stellar Populations in Galaxies
  • Galaxy Luminosity Functions
  • Galaxy Scaling Relations
  • Model Galaxy Collisions

    Possible Literature Topics

  • Magnetic Fields in the Interstellar Medium
  • Masers
  • The Interstellar Medium in Galaxies
  • AGN Unification Models
  • The Intracluster Medium (Hot gas/X-rays)
  • Galaxies at High Redshift
  • Damped Ly alpha Clouds
  • The Ly alpha Forest
  • QSOs
  • Star Formation History of the Universe
  • Concordance Cosmology
  • Stellar Populations
  • Star Formation Histories of dwarf Spheroidals
  • Extragalactic Distance Ladder
  • Population III Stars
  • Kinematics of the Milky Way Galaxy
  • The Magellanic Stream
  • The Effect of Bars on Galaxy Evolution
  • Warps in Galaxy Disks
  • Gravitational Lensing
  • Dark Matter Candidates