kiki
27 April 2010
How to start a research work?
Posted in Research and education, TipsA list & a form
All of us have many ideas while reading a paper, discussing with supervisors, chatting with friends, having lunch or even sleeping. Those ideas are random and flash across our brains very fast. What will you do for those ideas? I catch the ideas and write them down to my “idea list” immediately. If possible, I’ll make the ideas to feasible actions, such as looking for more detailed references, imaging several possible experiments and characterization methods, etc. However, if there’s no specially strong intention to carry out the relative research, I’ll let them be in the “idea list”.
Sometimes, similar ideas might occur in my mind. I try to find something new and take them down. I check my “idea list” every one or two months. If I find that some ideas repeat more times and have more and more details, I’d like to draw out the related contents and design a working plan using a form. This form is named as working schedule, in which major works for everyday or everyweek will be drafted in a period of time, like one month.
And then, I’ll start my research work in different fields.
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28 Apr 2010 20:24, Ad Lagendijk
Finding good research subjects is indeed very important and a major task for a researcher. Writing them down might be a good idea. But how do you make a choice if you have too many ideas? And after you have made the choice the new research might be so involved and time consuming that you do not have any time left to pursue your other ideas.
1 May 2010 16:25, Otto Muskens
Small scale research lends itself more to ‘hit and run’ type of projects than big science involving years of careful preparation and planning. This ability to pursue crazy ideas which you get during the night is part of what I like the most about table-top experimental physics. However opinions are mixed about doing opportunistic research versus defining big coherent research plans and sticking to them.
14 May 2010 7:22, kiki
@Ad
When I have new ideas, I’d like to discuss them with researchers in different fields, such as theory studying professors and physical scientists specialized in material perporty analysis. After that I can make my ideas and plans much clearer. And so I can choose 2~3 subjects to study.
@Otto
My ideas are episodes while we carry out regular researches. They could support our current studies and find a new research area.
14 Sep 2010 3:07, go green
hi..
actually the idea list can be applied on our daily life also, not only on doing research.but it is a good idea anyway to convert or brilliant thought into writing. but still sometimes we failed to fulfill the content of our idea.I think that’s the most important thing,the “do” process..
8 Jun 2011 10:35, Hans van Leunen
I am a retired physicist. When I left university I entered high tech industry. That is quite a different culture. Since I am retired I lifted my interests that remained since my students time and joined several discussion groups. It presented me with several research ideas and I worked out some of them on my personal website. Now it covers about ten different papers. I have my own e-print site at vixra. I prepared an e-book. I will use the content of some of the papers in order to achieve a PhD. So I settled my own private research institute. A good way to pass time when you are 70.