April Meeting 2008: Undergraduates' Epitome

What is an Epitome?

 Return to Future Physicists Day.

At the American Physical Society meetings, the Epitome is a brief summary of what is happening at the meeting. The Epitome allows us to quickly look at which sessions are taking place at any given time and where those sessions are being held.

In electronic form, the sessions listed in the Epitome will have links to the detailed abstracts for every session, allowing you to identify which talks you may want to attend in that session. In the paper version, you will need to search through the Bulletin of the American Physical Society (BAPS) book which you receive at the registration desk to find the descriptions of the presentations included in a session..

Meeting Organization

The meeting is organized into Plenary Sessions and parallel sessions.

Plenary Sessions
The Plenary sessions are scheduled as the only events taking place at the time of interest and the speakers design presentations for audiences that, while likely to be physicists, may not be experts in the field of the presenter. These talks are typically 36 minutes in length. The parallel sessions are scheduled such that several presentations are occurring simultaneously in different meeting rooms. The talks in all rooms are scheduled in 12 minute increments so that the audience can move between sessions pretty easily.

By reviewing the BAPS, you can identify which talks in which sessions are of most interest and move throughout the rooms during the sessions. Speakers are used to audience members quietly moving in and out of the room (though most people try to move during the question and answer sessions at the end of the talks).

Undergraduate Epitome
The Undergraduate Epitome, like the regular epitome, is a brief listing of sessions at the APS meeting. However, in this version, we have indicated sessions which are most likely to be aimed at audiences that are not experts in any specific physics discipline. These sessions were identified with the assistance of the session organizers.  Download Epitome .  We hope you enjoy the meeting!