Extra Credit for AOS 100
Extra credit in AOS 100 can be earned by researching and writing a 4-6 page double-spaced paper to be turned in no later than noon on Friday, April 24. The topic of the paper will relate to one of the following subject areas:
Weather in History
Describe how the weather or climate influenced a historical event. Your paper should include a thorough description of the event, an analysis of the evolution weather or climate, as well as how the weather or climate affected the event.
Weather in your Personal History
You may choose to describe a personal encounter with a weather phenomenon that affected your life. For this option it is particularly important to include a discussion of the physics of the chosen weather event by relating its occurrence and characteristics to what you've learned about the behavior of the atmosphere in class.
You must reference at least 5 sources, information from unrefereed sources (such as Wikipedia, About.com, ...) can not be used as references in your paper. The paper MUST NOT be only a description of a weather event, or of a historical event, etc. You must incorporate elements of what has been, or will be, covered in class (or some other meteorological/climatological issue) into your report - regardless of topic. This will constitute a major factor in the grading.
The grade earned on this research paper will be used to adjust your lowest in-class exam score by counting as 60% of your lowest exam grade. In other words, if you received a 55% (23 correct answers) on Exam 2 and you receive a 90% on your extra-credit assignment, I will adjust your Exam 2 score by the following formula
In such a case, your Exam 2 letter grade increases by about 20%.
It is important to note that while the extra-credit paper is designed to increase your grade, a poorly written, badly researched, incomplete or plagiarized paper could work against you by the same formula. If you received a 76% on Exam 1 and turn in a paper that I grade as a 65%, your Exam 1 grade actually decreases! Therefore, if you plan to use this extra-credit opportunity, be sure to give me a good, well thought out, effort for your own sake.
If I see plagiarism in ANY degree the paper will be given a grade of ZERO and your exam grade will really suffer! I will check references.