Project

Instructions

The main deliverable for this project will be a presentation on the afternoon on the last day of class. You should work in groups of 2 or 3, with group mates who are interested in similar topics as you. Presentations should be 10 - 15 minutes long for groups of 2, and 15 - 20 minutes long for groups of 3.

In addition to explaining your chosen topic, you should discuss:

    The background information required to understand your presentation
    Why your topic is interesting or important
    How your topic is related to Relativity
    The key findings/results/future prospects

Also, add a bibliography of references you used (on the last slide).


Timeline

    Friday: Form project groups based on interests
    Monday: Finalize topic, get it approved, research on topic
    Tuesday: Research on topic, refine or expand scope of project
    Wednesday: Finalize presentation
    Thursday: Present your work to everyone!

Project examples

Here are some examples of possible topics for your project. Don't limit yourself to this list. Ask yourself what you want to spend a week learning about.

A good way to begin is to do a quick look-up a wide variety of the topics listed below, as well as any of your own ideas, on Google or Wikipedia to see what might be interesting. After choosing a topic, you research will become more in-depth and you will likely use other more specialized sources.

After you form groups and find a topic that interests you, the TAs and instructor can advise you on the scope of the project. You may end up combining multiple topics into one project, or focus on a subset of the original topic if it is too large in scope.

Special Relativity (SR)

    History of SR
    The Michelson-Morley experiment
    The Large Hadron Collider
    Future proposed particle colliders
    Fermi Telescope
    ...

Technologies

    Global Positioning System (GPS)
    Submarine detection using gravitational time dilation
    ...

General Relativity (GR)

    History and development of GR
    Gravity Probe B
    Solar system tests of GR
    Testing GR with atom interferometry
    Testing GR with torsion balances
    Numerical relativity
    ...

Gravitational waves

    LIGO Gravitational Wave Observatory (already seen a talk about this)
    LISA Gravitational Wave Observatory (proposed)
    Pulsar Timing Array
    ...

Cosmology experiments

    The Dark Energy Survey
    Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
    Planck satellite
    ...

Cosmology

    Gravitational lensing
    Redshift
    Cosmic distance ladder
    Supernovae
    Sunyaev–Zeldovich effect
    Ultimate fate of our Universe
    ...

Black holes

    Black hole information paradox (will see a talk about this)
    The Event Horizon Telescope
    Active Galactic Nuclei
    Hawking Radiation
    ...