The Informed Physics Student

Papers

A brief little bit of advice here:
Whenever you get an idea, write it up.

Yeah, sure you're protecting a theoretically valuable piece of intellectual property that one day might become a great invention. Heck, you might even be solving the problem of finding a Grand Unified Theory. That's not the point. The point is, if you have an idea, it's ripe fodder for writing, and therefore, for research, and for sharing with the rest of the scientific community.
Papers are the food of academia, and without published papers, no one would know what was going on. Papers also look excellent on your resume/CV, and are relatively easy to write.
Now before you start thinking that you can't do this, consider this: the average journal paper is 2-5 pages long and revolves mainly around the description of an experiment or theory. Don't you talk at least that much about, say, Physics in a single day? More, right? Well, then you can write a paper.
However, you won't always have the time to write a full paper about every single thing that you come up with, so here's the next best thing: write an abstract. Do as much of the scratchwork for any math that you need to do on some paper, and store that away somewhere safe, them write up a title, as descriptive as possible (i.e. Magnetostrictive Properties of METGLAS Series Amorphous Alloy Films), and put your name and affiliation under it (i.e. Peter Marchetto, Department of Physics, Ramapo College of New Jersey). Now the abstract. In one paragraph, write up as much of the concept as you need to remember what it is at any point in the future.
There you have it. Like a tray of ice cubes in the freezer waiting for a party, you now have an idea in the holding tank, waiting for that next call for papers that will ask you to submit your abstract... Or, more to the point, you have a reminder for the next time you get around to looking for a project.

posted by Pete Marchetto @ 11:32 PM