klishin_how_to_give_an_iypt_talk_14-03-2015.pdf

iypt presentation tips

1. How to give
an IYPT talk
Andrei Klishin, MIT Physics Dept
US IYPT 2015, Phoenixville Area
Middle School, March 14, 2015
1
Today you will learn:
1.What is IYPT and where is it from
2.How US was involved before
3.How to craft physics arguments
4.How to use presentation tricks
5.How to criticize flaws
http://iypt.org
http://archive.iypt.org

2. Historical landmarks
Where are we from
Where are we now
2

3. What you got yourself into
3
Participants
40 nations total
ca. 30 countries every year
dozens of national Tournaments
>100’000 people involved

4. Timeline
4
1979 1988
2013
Evgeny Yunosov invented the
format of “physics fights” and
organized the first YPT in USSR
1
st
IYPT, Moscow, Russia
IYNT established with the
first tournament in Turkey
My active participation
2009-2012
IYNT
IYPT YPT
Evgeny Yunosov,
“The Founding Father”
Chairman of the IYNT
Situation Center

5. Brought to you exclusively by
5
archive.iypt.org
@iyptarchive

6. Force behind the Archive
6
Ilya Martchenko,
Treasurer of IYPT
Founding Researcher of IYPT Archive
sends his greetings from 23
rd
BYPT 2015

7. Why I talk about Twitter
7
~March 2014
President of the European
Physical Society
IYPT 2014
Shrewsbury, UK
@iypt

8. United States at IYPT: Origins
8
Hans Jordens (now IPhO President)
Jack Wilson (now Prof. Emeritus @ UMass) USA
Netherlands
List of participants at 3
rd
IYPT
June 7-14, 1990

9. The dawn of the days

9
3
rd
IYPT 1990
Evgeny Yunosov is young!
Don’t you love
having PowerPoints?

10. US participation
Teamleaders: Hugh Haskell, Don Franklin,
Tengiz Bibilashvili (formerly from Georgia)
1999
2001
2002
2004
2005
2006
10
…
http://archive.iypt.org/factsheets/

11. USAYPT acknowledgement
11
USAYPT acknowledged in 2005
Never revoked
Holds US Invt’l YPT since 2008

12. US breakoff 2008
12
…
…
…

13. Core features since 1979

Physics Fights (физбои)
17 open-ended research-oriented problems
Reporter-Opponent-Reviewer
13

14. The Good Company
14
The IYPT impresses me.
Herwig Schopper
CERN, 10th Director General
I am happy to support the IYPT since I
believe this competition is the best
preparation for a good scientist.
Klaus von Klitzing
1985 Nobel Prize winner in Physics

15. What I learned in IYPT
Giving talks and leading discussions
Designing presentations
Doing prolonged research
Organizing fuzzy projects
Working with people who don't want to work
15
and most projects are fuzzy

16. What about IPhO?
16
IPhO 2010 in Zagreb, Croatia

17. What I learned in IPhO
Giving talks and leading discussions
Designing presentations
Doing prolonged research
Organizing fuzzy projects
Working with people who don't want to work
17
and most projects are fuzzy
Crunching math and schemes
Writing out derivations
Rapid concentrating
Taking exams
Working with… eh…

18. And now the next layer…
18
•Chairman of IYNT Situation Center since Jan 2015
•17 problems in physics + biology, chemistry, math etc.
•Participants aged 12-16
What I learned in IYNT?
•Creating a stable organization out of nothing
•Outreaching to the world and summoning an audience

19. Giving talks
The Right and the Why
19

20. How do people give talks?
1.Problem statement
2.Experimental setup
3.Theoretical model
4.Lots of experiments
5.Theory and experiment comparison
6.Conclusions
7.References
20
TheoreticalMathematical model
Because we start with a given problem
Because we built a really great machine
Because math rules and we know fancy function names
Because there are 4 parameters and we varied them all
Because our plots bend in the same direction
Because my teamlead told me so
Because they will complain if I don’t have this slide

21. What you want to say
21


You gave me a problem.
I solved it.
Here is how.

22. Think about your audience


They want to believe you.
Don’t make them do your work.
Can you be organized and energetic? Be!
22

23. Crafting an argument
Making physics talk
Being proud of right things

23

24. Crafting a physics argument
We see the problem
We think it’s explained with this theory
Argument:
We built the appropriate setup
We suggest this theory
We made a series of experiments
Experiment and theory fit
Conclusion: Effect is indeed explained
with this theory
24

25. What are you proud of?


Doing scientific work is hard, but…

Making good conclusions is REALLY hard
25

26. Which article do you trust?






Let’s be honest. You didn’t invent ALL of it.
But you invented something!




26
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discovery!
innovation!
invention!
invention!
new!
[15]
[4-8]
Kardar et al. 1985
Jeans 1902
new!
new!
new!
innovation!
280mph

27. Explanation tricks
Trick 1: Thin down/skip/gloss over
Trick 2: Walk-through
Trick 3: Dichotomies
27

28. Perception of many objects


You are a performer
Make them see what you want them to see
28

29. One bad plot – what do you see?

29

30. What I wanted you to see

30
I see one line
Graphical collapse of data
I see a number with uncertainty
Numerical collapse of data

31. Trick 1


Gloss over data
Thin down data
Skip analysis
31

32. Muon decay halflife

32
Start signal
Stop signal
~3 ns
pulses
100 ns
pulses
~0.35 counts/s
~3.5×10
−4
% of time
is occupied with pulses

33. 33
??????
1
Δ??????=0.724±0.010Å
Δ??????=0.822±0.012 ??????????????????
Δ??????
????????????��=0.693±0.001 ??????????????????
Background noise
??????
2
Fine structure splitting

34. Trick 2

Show the whole scheme/plot.
Use animations.
Walk through the chain/analysis.
Use colored takeaway points.
Show new information.
34

35. 35
??????
�??????��
??????
����??????�����
~10
3

??????
�??????��
??????
����??????�����
~1.6
3??????→3� 7�→3??????
Detecting hydrogen lines

36. 36
~10 ????????????
Muons born
Muons stop and decay
at
??????
??????
=0.997
�
���≈17??????
�
����≈1.3??????
�
����(??????)=
ℎ
????????????
1−??????
2

Only muons from this region
are observed at ground level
??????
??????=0.9983
Testing SR time dilation

37. Trick 3

Break the slide in two halves.
Each half has few of objects.
Halves complement each other.
37

38. On math
Calculating magnet’s field
1.Bio-Savart law
Use Heaviside step fn
2.Fourier transform
3.Integral in Fourier space
Use Bessel fns
4.Fourier transform back
5.Plot the field
38
Premise
Conclusion
Thin
down/
skip
Proud in a
physics talk

39. On results and uncertainties





Uncertainties tell if your argument
succeeds or fails.
39
??????=(1.21±0.25)∙10
−19
?????? vs ??????
���=1.6∙10
−19
??????
??????=(26.61±0.57)∙10
−23�
�
vs ??????
���=1.3806∙10
−23�
�

40. Conclusions
Don’t surprise me
Your theory is correct and is supported by
experiment.
40

41. How much of it?
In a normal talk, 1-2 minutes per slide.
In IYPT, 1-2 slides per minute.
Use tricks!
41

42. Common courtesies
Section delimiters
Outline
Slide numbers
42

43. How to critique
a presentation
In the end, was it a good talk?
You’d better decide
43

44. Attacking a physics argument
Effect is observed
Suggested explanation
Setup
Theory
Experiments
Correspondence
Conclusion
44
Does it capture all the effects?
Are the assumptions true?
Are uncertainties correct?
This is the Battleship game – you can’t sink the argument
with one shot
Is convergence reasonable?
Are the arguments sufficient to
justify the conclusion?

45. Thanks for your attention!
You know you did cool work. They don’t know. Yet.
45