Miscellaneous topics and advice

• Never ever ever ever ……… EVER ….. What you should never ever ever ever ever do

• Light bulbs, planters, tough experiemts, hard maths, and physics

• Giving talks – How to do them – the 4 minute test

• Writing papers– the “1 minute and 20 second rules” – the physics point vs the garbage approach– the reader and what students almost always do wrong

Never ever ever EVER* do a 2 fit of a collective model to the data

• What uncertainties to put? Certainly not the experimental ones !!!!

• How good do you expect the theory to be?

• Not all observables are equal

* Almost never, until you are so experienced that you are ready to retire.

0+2+4+

6+

8+

Rotational states

Vibrational excitations

Rotational states built on (superposed on)

vibrational modes

Ground or equilibrium

state

Miscellaneous topics and advice

• Never ever ever ever ……… EVER ….. What you should never ever ever ever ever do

• Light bulbs, planters, hard maths, and physics

• Giving talks – How to do them – the 4 minute test

• Writing papers– the “1 minute and 20 second rules” – the physics point vs the garbage approach– the reader and what students almost always do wrong

Typical Student-Advisor Discussion

Miscellaneous topics and advice

• Never ever ever ever ……… EVER ….. What you should never ever ever ever ever do

• Light bulbs, planters, hard maths, and physics

• Giving talks – How to do them – the 4 minute test

• Writing papers– the “1 minute and 20 second rules” – the physics point vs the garbage approach– the reader and what students almost always do wrong

Talks• What is the issue?• Why is it important?• What did (will) you do to help – data, theory, whatever?• What did you find?• How does this revolutionize our understanding of the universe and

everything in it?

• A great way to see if your talk is good is to give a 4 minute version to a colleague, or, better yet, someone who does NOT know the subject. If you can’t get the ideas across in that time, you probably don’t understand them well enough yourself. Re-group and try again.

• 98.73647 % of all talks are at too high a level, use too much jargon, and lose the audience within 10 minutes. This is especially true of students’ talk because they tend to assume that, if they know something, everyone else will and they launch into much too much jargon withOUT defining it. Assume your audience knows much less than you think they know.

• Pay attention to the time. Once the time is up and the Chair gets up, NO ONE WILL HEAR ANOTHER WORD YOU SAY !!! All they will be interested in is whether you and the Chair get into a fight.

Miscellaneous topics and advice

• Never ever ever ever ……… EVER ….. What you should never ever ever ever ever do

• Light bulbs, planters, hard maths, and physics

• Giving talks – How to do them – the 4 minute test

• Writing papers– the “1 minute and 20 second rules” – the physics point vs the garbage approach– the reader and what students almost always do wrong

Papers• The 1 minute and 20 second rules

– A typical reader will spend about 1 minute (or less!) deciding if your paper is worth reading or not. They will look at the abstract and the final paragraph, and if you are very lucky, the first paragraph of text. Get someone in your general field but who does not know the subject to read your draft.

– A typical reader will spend about 20 seconds looking at a figure. If it isn’t clear by then (without reading the caption), you will never get them to look seriously at it. So, show your figures to a friend and ask what the figure is telling them. Keep things simple.

• Physics and garbage: If you have something important to say, don’t say all the other things you can think of. FOCUS on that one thing. You will be extremely lucky if a reader can go away from your paper (or talk) and be able to say 3 coherent sentences about it. So, there is no advantage to piling on “stuff” --- unless you really can’t think of what to say – then show everything and hope something sticks.

• Remember, the vast majority of readers do NOT know the subject. Introduce ideas and jargon carefully and step-by-step.

Now go off into the world

and WOW everyone !!!!!