Each term paper should start with an abstract that clearly describes the major approaches and results of the paper. The abstract should be in a single paragraph and should be 100 -- 150 word long. (10 points).
The next section following abstract is the Introduction section. This section usually starts with a "big picture". In this section, results from previous studies related to your work should be reviewed so that the readers will obtain necessary background information. It usually ends up with one or two sentences describing the significance of your work. (20 points).
Depending on the nature of your paper, the next section can be Data if you have a lot to say about the nature of the data and the data processing procedure; if the emphasis of your paper is on methodology, you may want to use Method as the title of this section. On the other hand, if you think that both data and methodology are important, simply use Data and Method as the title. This section should contain detailed description about the origin of the data set that you used, the potential problems in the data, and the procedure that you used to manipulate them. The rule-of-thumb is that a reader will be able to duplicate your entire research based on what you described in this section alone. I'll heavily rely on this rule while scoring this section. (15 points).
The next section should be Results and Discussion , which describes and discusses the results of the study. Generally speaking each paper has a 'key figure' which shows the most significant result of the study, and this figure usually is within this section. This section is where you compare your results with previous results, and with other data sets. You will also need to discuss the significance of your results, their uncertainties, and their theoretical and practical applications. Please note that you can combine some of the above sections together, e.g. Method, Data, and Results . (15 points).
Next is the Conclusions section. It summarizes the major results. (10 points).
The final section of the main text is Acknowledgement where you may want to show your appreciation to those who collected the data, provided help and suggestions. (5 points).
The References section contains
the list of cited references. They
should be arranged alphabetically and should
follow the style of the example below.
(5 points).
Gao, S.S., K.H. Liu, P.M. Davis, and L. Knopoff,
Localized amplification of seismic waves and
correlation with damage due to the Northridge earthquake:
evidence for focusing in Santa Monica,
Bull. Seismo. Soc. Amer., 86 , 209-230, 1996.
The last formal section is Figure Captions . Every figure must be described clearly in this section. (10 points).
The Appendix section contains your f77, GMT, and SAC programs. (10 points).