Project-based Lab System PHYS 211/212
Department of Physics
Bilkent University
Goal of the Project System
Laboratory practice is an integral part of the learning experience for PHYS 211 and PHYS 212. However, the lab
system is not organised along the traditional lines of students performing a fixed of simple experiments. Rather,
it is designed to simulate important aspects of professional research experience. Here, we explain how it works
along with the timeline of the entire process.
Each student will form a team, nominally comprising 3 individuals, propose and undertake a single project, to be
completed and presented during the final exam period. Ideally, there must be clearly identifiable segments of the
project, to be assigned to each person, each segment must include some physics and there must be significant
advantage (i.e., a much more ambitious project) as a result of combining forces in this manner.
There are two interrelated goals of the project. The first is that, we want to learn how to use knowledge you get
during lectures of these particular courses (which is never enough for a real life project) and figure out how to
add on to it using various sources of information (books, the Internet, experts around you, etc). This way, course
material will not remain as something in the lectures, but you will experience its usage in practice. The second is
that, we want you learn the good practices of doing research and development (R&D) work in a simulated envi-
ronment. Your project will not be original research work, but we are asking you to perform it using the systemat-
ics of how scientists and engineers actually perform R&D. This includes formal aspects like using the literature,
writing well-prepared reports, chalking up and following through a detailed work plan over some 14 weeks,
seeking and finding resources, but also, following the scientific method, analytic thinking, improvising when
plans do not match reality, working with finite resources, just like in real life. It is our hope that this experience will
prepare you well for future R&D work..
Project Topic and Essentials
An essential goal of the project is that you should enjoy this process! For this reason, you are free to choose
your project topic. The only rule is that it must relate to the topics of the course (which is quite broad), meaning
it should require use of knowledge that you will gain within the course, but you should also need to add to your
physics knowledge beyond what is covered within the course. Beyond this, there are no formal requirements,
apart from “common sense” in terms of meeting the goals outlined above.
Your project will typically not be original research and development work, but we are asking you to perform it
using the systematics of how scientists and engineers actually perform R&D. This includes formal aspects like
making use of the literature, writing well-prepared reports, chalking up and following through a detailed work
plan over some 14 weeks, searching and finding resources, but also, following the scientific method, analytic
thinking, improvising when plans do not match reality, and working with finite resources, just like in real life. It is
our hope that this experience will prepare you equally well for future R&D work in an academic setting or an in-
dustrial setting. Furthermore, any real-life research effort necessarily includes making many choices, the results
of which are not clear at the time of the decision. Making bad choices is a natural part of the game and you
should learn to learn from them and adapt your project. Sometimes, you may even want to change direction,
because during your investigations, you have found a scientifically much more interesting lead that you believe
you should follow. There is no sense in insisting on the original idea, if you are truly convinced (and convince us)
that the new one is much better. Ultimately, we would like you to make and rationally defend your choices.
Scope
The purpose of the project is not to do something extremely elaborate and time or resource consuming, al-
though we want it to be interesting. The general guideline is that you should spend 3 hours of fully concentrated
effort every week for it throughout the semester (13 weeks x 3 hours = 39 hours), followed by preparation of
final reports and the experimental demonstration during the final exam period (another 6-10 hours). Therefore, a
2-person project should correspond to roughly 80 hours of technical work, a 3-person project should corre-
Project-based Lab System PHYS 211/212
Department of Physics
Bilkent University
spond to 120 hours. The technical success of your project, of course, has a value, but the most important as-
pect is that you must understand and can explain well what you are doing. In other words, a very nice project,
which fails due to technical difficulties can still get a final grade fairly close to the full grade, but only if very well
explained.
Based on past experience, we can state that the most important factor in determining student success is regu-
larity of the effort. By the nature of a project-based work, you have to work on it regularly throughout the 13
weeks. It is not possible to finish the project successfully by working extremely hard during the last few weeks.
Lab Notebook
As part of good professional practice, you must keep a proper lab notebook for the entire project. In addition to
being simply a good idea followed by researchers worldwide, keeping a lab/research notebook that meets the
following criteria is extremely important for professional R&D work, since in many countries, your notebook
serves as legal proof of any inventions you make for patent purposes: Your lab notebook may one day be worth
a lot in the courtroom! Within this course, this notebook will be proof your activity and progress which you will
present to the assistant during your weekly meetings. This book must be a bound notebook with a hard cover
(can be very thin) with your name written on it. You should write down all of your activities in it. Every day you
make an entry into your book, you must date it. You must write with permanent ink (no pencils) and not skip
pages or tear pages away. If you write something wrong, just cross over it. Any graphs you prepare can be
printed and glued on the page. You can also use it like a diary and write your thoughts, plans about the project
in it. The assistants can show you examples of properly kept notebooks.
Introductory Meetings (During the first 2 Weeks)
An introductory meeting will take place some time during the first 2 weeks during assigned meeting times. The
assistants will answer questions about the project system, discuss examples from previous semesters and
briefly go over certain basics, including report preparation, etc (mostly covered in PHYS 124).
Project Pre-Proposal (3rd Week)
Once you have prepared your draft proposal, do further research on it. Talk to the assistants to get a sanity
check on the suitability and technical feasibility of the project. They cannot and should not give you a definite
and detailed response without details in most cases, but can help eliminate some common pitfalls. Learn the
basics of the topic and plan out how you can do it. Break it down into tasks, and prepare a time line (by which
week you will complete each task) and what resources you will need, how/where you will obtain them.
You will then prepare a pre-proposal and upload to Moodle as a PDF file. The proposal should have a profes-
sional format (title, abstract, main body, figures with captions, numbered equations, references, etc) that is suit-
able for scientific and/or engineering reports. The pre-proposal should include a thorough discussion of your
project topic as well how you plan to execute it. Include a Gantt chart that shows very clearly the individual re-
sponsibilities of the team members. PDF file is being asked from you since it is universal in all operating systems
and looks identical. No other file format will be accepted for the reports. One submission per team is sufficient.
The pre-proposal is possibly the most important part of the entire project: If you research it well, if you plan thor-
oughly, then the rest will most likely go smoothly. Make sure you devote adequate time.
Formal Proposal (4th Week)
Based on your pre-proposal, you will receive feedback from your assigned assistant during your weekly meet-
ings (see below). You will then (if necessary) revise your proposal, which can include minor or major design
changes. By this point, your proposal should be in excellent condition in terms of content, format and level of
detailed planning. The proposed timeline should better be realistic, because you will judge yourself according to
the timeline you have prepared. You will upload it to Moodle as a single PDF file.
Project-based Lab System PHYS 211/212
Department of Physics
Bilkent University
Weekly Monitoring (Every Week Except the First Two)
You will meet with one of the course assistants in the lab every week during a predetermined time. You will
agree on a weekly time slot with your assistant. All members of the team must be present. This slot must be the
same every week, since more than one project may be assigned to the same slot, so choose wisely. During this
time, you will have an opportunity to seek advice from the assistant(s) (this is intended to simulate student-advi-
sor or junior researcher-supervisor relationship for real life research; for this reason, do not expect at all to re-
ceive concrete solutions to your problems, but only “advice”) and report on your progress. Each discussion will
be typically short (about 10 minutes), but must take place. This is the equivalent going to the laboratory sessions
in the traditional system. Each team member will receive a grade for each interview. Furthermore, you must sign
the roster during this discussion as proof of attendance. Similar to the traditional lab system, if you miss more
than two of these meetings without a valid, approved (medical) excuse, you will automatically fail the project,
therefore the course. Your grades during these weekly meetings are one of the important components of your
grade.
Progress Report (mid-semester- 8th-9th Week)
At this stage, you will prepare and upload a report to Moodle. It will include what you have done up to that point
in detail, with figures, schematics, layouts, photos, tables etc. Very importantly, it will include a discussion of how
you have progressed with respect to the timeline you have provided in your proposal. If you are going faster or
slower, you should analyze the reasons and propose solutions. If there is compelling reason, this is also an op-
portunity to propose to revise your project. We expect you write the report in Latex.
Demo Day (or D-Day, During the Finals)
This is the most fun day of the entire course, to be scheduled by the Department during the final exams period.
Many students have tremendously enjoyed demoing their projects and watching those of their colleagues. Every
year, we get a number of extremely interesting, creative projects, which turns the Demo Day into a short festival.
This day will be public and you can expect many others from the Department to attend it. We will try to arrange
a small award ceremony for the top selected project.
On the technical side, you will present your project to the assistants and course instructor. This must be done
live. We will ask you many questions, try to understand how well you understand the principles of what you have
done. This is one of the two most important evaluation components in terms of your project grade. Each team
member will get an individual grade. This means that, in principle, you may fail the project and therefore the
course, while your team members get an award for the project.
Final Report (Day Before the Demo Day)
One day before the Demo Day, you must upload your final report to Moodle, which should be written in Latex
(do not export a pdf file from MS Word) and have content like a detailed, professional engineering project report
(i.e., title, abstract, author name(s), introduction, main part, figures with captions, conclusion part, references,
etc, including theoretical calculations). It should discuss the entire project and the final results, as well as how
the project progressed according to initial expectations. You will also upload a 3 minutes video to youtube.
