|

Benchmark #04: Annotated Bibliography

due 2/26–27

The first thing a researcher must do is track down her research sources: the books, articles, and documents that she will closely study in becoming an expert on her topic. Throughout the research process, a researcher maintains what is called an “Annotated Bibliography,” which is the list of sources that she will use or may use for her final paper with a brief description about why and how this may be an important resource for the research paper.

Your fourth Bill Nye benchmark is to complete an Annotated Bibliography of at least three sources. One of these will be your Bill Nye book, the point of origin for your research topic. The other two must be other books or magazine/journal articles. Encyclopedia sources are not valid for this project. Internet sources are fine, but they must be electronic journal articles; Wikipedia articles do not qualify.

Each listing of your bibliography must have two parts:

  1. A citation of the source in precise APA format. (Go to the link for instructions on APA format.)
  2. Four to five sentences of annotation describing the source’s potential usefulness to your research. For your Bill Nye book, describe the part that you will be focusing on for your paper.

You must observe proper formatting technique. The bibliographic listing should be double-spaced with a hanging indent. The annotation should be single-spaced as a block quote.

Here are two examples of a proper listing:

Roach, J. (2006). Dark matter proof found, scientists say. National Geographic. Retrieved February 11, 2006, from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060822-dark matter.html

For over 70 years scientist have speculated that the universe is composed of dark matter, however since dark matter neither emits or absorbs light it has been nearly impossible to detect until now. Before researchers speculated that there must be dark matter because of the unexplainable movement of galaxies. “Something must be providing extra gravity, or the galaxies would quickly fly apart.”

Scientist believe they have seen the signature of dark matter by observing the collision of two large clusters of galaxies. Scientist believe that dark matter makes up 25% of the universe, ordinary matter makes up only 5% and dark energy makes up the other 70%. “The other 70 percent of the universe, scientists believe, is made of dark energy, an even more elusive force that is pushing the universe apart at an ever increasing rate.”

Scientist have speculated that there was dark matter since the turn of the century because galaxies go behave move according to the law of gravity if they only consist of the matter we can see. “Most of the visible mass in clusters of galaxies is in the form of hot gas or stars. But the mass of hot gas found between individual galaxies is far greater than the mass of stars found within those galaxies” During the collision the visible hot gas was slowed due to a force similar to air resistance. However since dark matter is not effected by the same force since it doesn’t interact with itself. The dark matter was detected using a technique derived from Einstein’s theory of relativity which states that gravity distorts the direction of light. During this collision scientist observed this distortion in places where no visible matter was present.

Caldwell, R. (2006). What are dark matter and dark energy, and how are they affecting the universe? Scientific American. Retrieved August 28, 2006, from http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=what-are-dark-matter-and