PHYS2320 Computing 2 Example Report
1 Part 1
Your report should have three things in it:
1. The plots as produced by ypur code, complete with title, annotations and fits.
2. Numerical data - it is not necessary to include the numerical data as annotations on the plot, but you should include a one or more tables of numerical results.
3. Flow diagram. The flow diagram is how you demonstrate that you understand how your code works.
Your report must be submitted as a pdf file, not a Microsoft Word, Mac Pages, or LibreOffice
format file. All of these packages can generate pdf files easily.
Your report must be entirely your own work.
Your report just needs to include the three elements specified above, it does not need to have any abstract, introduction, background theory, experimental methods, discussion or conclusions section.
1.1 Plots
You should have one plot of the 2D diffraction data and two plots of sections of the diffraction data with one or more fits.
The first slice is vertically through the middle of the diffraction pattern. The code used for this report worked with randomly chosen aperture shapes and so the data is fitted with all three fitting models, and the one that fits better is marked with an asterisk. Code that works with a fixed aperture shape will only have a single fit.
The second slice in his case is horizontally to get the second dimension of the aperture. The best fit is again marked by an asterisk. Code that works with only a single shape of aperture will only have a single fit. You should indicate which slice of data is being shown in the second plot in the figure title or in a caption.
1.2 Numerical Data
You should make a short table of the results from your fitting code, along with the uncertain- ties. Although your code does not have to work out how to correctly round the results, you should do so manually yourself when including them in this table.
Figure 1: Plot of diffraction data used for the analysis. You should decide the best way to show the data, choose a colour scheme etc.
Figure 2: The first cross-section of the diffraction data, also showing the results of fitting with appropriate functions for each aperture. The legend also shows which fit is best. You do need to include the fitting paraters on the plot.
Figure 3: The second cross-section of the diffraction data, also showing the results of fitting with appropriate functions for each aperture. The legend also shows which fit is best. The cross section chosen for this fitting will depend on which function fitted best on the first coress-section.
Table 1: Final results for each parameter returned by the code after they have been manually rounded as appropriate for the uncertainty.
2 The flow diagram
This example of a partial flow diagram for a different coursework task was made in yEd https: //www.yworks.com/products/yed but you can use anything you like to prepare the flow dia-gram. There is no particular requirement to use these shapes or colours, but whatever you use it should be clear:
❼ The order in which code runs (as opposed to the order in which it appears in the file)
❼ how the code works to undertake each part of the program - what information is read or created when
❼ how the code is structured - are the functions, loops and branches obvious?