Formal Papers

Communicating scientific results is a critical aspect to any scientific work. The style and tone of writing is different than that in other disciplines. Careful attention to details in figures, tables, and text in both format and content is very important. During the semester, two investigations of your choice will be written in a formalized manner that will include a detailed discussion involving the chemical literature that relates to your investigation. These papers will be written as if they were being submitted to a scientific journal for publication. For the first of these reports, you will turn in a draft, due October 24, which will be revised for the final draft.

Format

The paper should include well formatted figures, tables, and endnotes. Each figure should have a caption and be referred to at the appropriate point in the text. The paper should be divided into four sections.

Abstract

A concise paragraph which describes the area of inquiry, the motivation, and some key conclusions. Enough information for someone just reading your abstract to decide if it is an important paper for them to examine in its full text version.

Introduction

This section will outline the area of inquiry and the context in terms of why this is an important investigation as well as providing a context in terms of research presented in the literature which give background to the current study.

Experiment

In this section you describe the procedure you carried out with justification of the appropriateness of your technique. This will include references to specific equipment (models, etc) you used as well as literature references which highlight the validity of your approach.

Results

In this section you will present a detailed description of your data. Tables and figures will be referred to and discussed at this point.

Discussion

In the discussion you will frame your results in the context of the physical models you are using to describe this phenomena. Your results should be discussed in the context of the literature.

References

You will follow the Journal of Physical Chemistry format for references and they will appear as footnotes in the text and as an ordered list of references at the end of the paper.

Resources

ACS Electronic Journals: Searching and Web Editions
Journal of Chemical Education Online
Gustavus Library Resources Databases
SIGMA-Aldrich Online Catalog