Part 1: Research Paper Overview

Preamble

The primary goal of the research paper is an objective and scientific evaluation of the properties and/or performance of a material. Over the semester, you will select a material (any material! be creative!) for which you perform several tests. It is your responsibility to research the material’s characteristics, design an experiment for testing the material, test the material, and report on the material’s properties.

Summary: pick a material, research the material, test the material, report your findings.

The paper will consist of six submittals: a proposal, four draft sections and a final paper. Each submittal will be reviewed and graded by a professional grader. Submitting partial draft sections will improve the final product, and will ensure that your approach is sound and the paper requirements are fulfilled.

Outline

There are many ways to structure a technical report, but scientific papers generally follow a conventional format that includes a title, an abstract, references and the components of the IMRAD structure: Introduction, Methods, Results And Discussion.

While all scientific research reports somewhat share this common organizational setup, there are multiple variations. The common structure of the report is to ensure ease of reading, and essentially follows the research process (literature review, followed by experimental design and testing, then analysis). You are basically telling a story of your experimental investigation. The discrete sections of a report also force the researcher to carefully distinguish the various aspects of the experiment.

To guide you through the writing process and help with grading, we provide a standard outline that must be followed for this project. This outline is a variation of the IMRAD structure. The project consists of an initial proposal to be approved by the professor, and a main report. The sections of the main report are as follows:

1. Abstract

2. Introduction

3. Literature Review

4. Methods and Theory

5. Experimental Design

6. Analysis and Results

7. Conclusions and Recommendations 

Part 2: Required Sections

Proposal

This submission presents an over-arching question that you want answered. It should be broad enough to ensure flexibility in experimentation, yet focused enough to make sure that there is a clear path for research. Questions to answer in the proposal include:

1) What material is being researched, and what is its typical use?

2) What is a current shortcoming of the material?

3) What hypothesis will you test?

4) How will you test the hypothesis?

In effect, the proposal will include prose identifying your question with a brief overview of how you plan to conduct your experiment to answer the question. This section must include a hypothesis.

Abstract

Introduction

Literature Review

Experimental Design

Methods and Theory

Analysis and Results

Conclusions and Recommendations