Reading Scientific and Technical Papers
Assignment 5: Hubble
- Apply this method for analyzing a scientific paper to the cosmic expansion paper written by Edwin Hubble in 1929. Bring your response to this assignment typed on a single piece of paper to your next class meeting. Be prepared to discuss your answers at your first small group meeting in October.
Method for Analyzing a Scientific Paper
Write a series of sentences, appropriately grouped into paragraphs, that address the following questions in this exact order …
- What events or objects were studied?
- What records were made of these of events/objects?
- What facts were extracted from these measurements? (How were the records turned into data for later analysis?)
- What transformations were the data put through? (How were the data ordered, classified, or otherwise "cleaned up"?)
- What results were obtained from the data? (In what form was the transformed data represented — tables, charts, graphs, cartoons, etc?)
- What interpretations, explanations, generalizations were made from the results?
- What knowledge claims is the author making? (What new knowledge has the author discovered or generated?)
- What value claims did the author make or did the author's discovery acquire? (Why is this paper important today?)
When you submit the analysis for grading, please observe the following conventions …
- Use one inch margins on all four sides.
- Use only 12 point business fonts for body text.
- Double-space body text paragraphs. Indent the first line of or add space before each paragraph.
- Type the bibliographic information for the paper at the top in APA format. (These lines can be single spaced.)
- Limit the analysis to one page. If you need more than one page for the analysis, then you are probably not doing this assignment correctly.
- Provide an electronic or hard copy of the paper to your supervising teacher according to his/her preference.
- Use only one staple if you need to staple.
- Don't forget to include your name.
