Science Swarm
-Organizing Your Argument-

By now, you should have completed the research component of your paper and be moving on to processing the information into a coherent argument and writing it up into an engaging research paper.

You can see examples from successful papers here: http://worldhistoryofscience2008.pbwiki.com/Research+Paper

One challenge facing you at this point might be the organization of your material.

Please be assured that you can use subtitle headings.

There are many ways to breakdown your work.

One possibility rests on the style of typical scientific experiment papers:

• Introduction: Introduction to your experimental topic. State the problem, issue or behavior you are studying. Why was it selected? Why is it important? Are you aware of any previous work in this area? Make sure to present the specific question you are researching within the larger issue. Also include your hypothesis: the results you expected when you began your research.
• Methods: How did you go about researching the topic. Where did you look for information? How did you select an interview subject, etc.
• Results: What did you find out? What is the history of the topic. Where there any surprises for you?
• Discussion: Analyze the meaning of what you have discovered. Relate these results to the problem or issue you presented in the introduction. Discuss the relation of the findings to your hypothesis. Can you account for any discrepancies? What surprised you? Raise questions for future research in this area. Present limiting factors to your research and how you might restructure your method to avoid ambiguity or error and to explore new facets of your topic.
• Conclusion: Close your research paper by summing up your results. Relate your study to larger principles, and raise questions for the larger debate.

Of course, this is only one of many possibilities and should serve only as a guide.

Any of these sections could be broken down further or replaced all together.

Overall, have fun with it!