Research Methodology

1. Research-Definition
2. Characteristics of Research
3. Forms of Research
4. Nature of Ph.D
5. Basic and Applied Research
6. Research Processes

1. Research Definition

• Def 1: The research is systematic investigation of study of things in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions
• Def 2: The research is systematic study in order to prove a research hypothesis. The research hypothesis is a statement written by a researcher.
• Def 3: (Creswell defined) "Research is a process of steps used to collect and analyze information to increase our understanding of a topic or issue". Three steps are involved in this definition. they are
  1. Pose a question
  2. collect data to answer the question
  3. present an answer to the question
• Origin : The word research is derived from the french word "recherche". The meaning of the word is "to go about seeking".

2. Characteristics of Research

The following are the characteristics of research.

• Empirical
• Logical
• Cyclical
• Analytical
• Critical
• Methodical
• Replicablility

3. Forms of Research

• Scientific
• Humanities
• Artistic
• Economic
• Social
• Business

Scientific Research is

--systematic way of gathering data --provides scientific information to understand the nature and the world --funded by public authorities and private groups --is the measure of the standard of the academic institutions

Research in Humanities

--instead of finding a correct answer for a question, it explores the details surrounding it --Example of this research is historical research

4. Nature of Ph.D

• The aim of education is that preparing a human-being to contribute in positive manner to the society.
• Every phenomenon in the world has some reason behind. The aim of the research is to find the reason behind that phenomenon.
• The person is called philosopher after completion of his/her PhD degree. As the part of the awarding PhD degree, the problem is to be identified and solved in 3 to 4 years.
• Departmental classification is not necessary in the case of PhD
  
  

5. Basic and Applied Research

Basic Research :

• A research scholar do the basic research based on his enthusiam and desire to acquire knowledge.
• Basic research cannot be applied to the real wordl directly. i.e. it doen's have a real world direct application.
• It costs money, time and other precious resources.
• It is also called pure research, fundamental research and discovery research
• Basic research is executed without thought of a goal (without focussing on a particular application)
• Basic research generates new ideas, principles and theories which may not be immediately reused.
• In physics, basic research seeks laws of universal regularity
• In USA, basic research is done by the universites and goverment organizations

Example 1 : Basic Research on black body radiation

A system which absorbs all energy passed through it is called a black body. Black body emits energy as radiation when heated.

Experiment:
Aim: the aim of the experiment is to express the energy density of the black body interms of Temperature(T) and wave length (λ)

E_p(λ) = ? and E_p(T) = ?

Procedure:

• Expose the black body to sun light
• Heat the black body to temperature T₁
• Observe the variation in λ and Energy density
• Repear the same procedure for temperature T₂ and T₃
• Results are tabulated as follows:

The experiment will generate the following graph:

Example 2: Research on specific heat of solids

The heat required to raise the temperature of one kg mass of a substance by 1^oC is known as specific heat of the substance

Relation between the specific heat of substance and its temperature

The experiment result is shown in the following figure

From the above graph C can be expressed interms of temperature

C(T) = f(T)

In this experiment, the therotical result and the experimental result are close to each other. If some other people find the improvement, It is a part of the basic work.

Applied Research :

• It is a type of research to solve a particular problem or to answer a particular question.
• It deals with solving practical problems and generally uses the empirical methods.
• The military is an organizatin that performs a lot of applied research.
• It tries to solve the practical problems rather than acquiring knowledge

Example 1: Micro displacement sensor using optical fibre

The pre-requisites to do this experiment are

1. Light Propagation

2. Fibre Optics

Experimental Setup

The experiment consists of the

1. Light Source
2. Light Detector
3. Fibre Optic Cable
4. Reflector Object

The reflector object is sticked to the object whose displacement need to be measured. The intensity of light received by the detector varies accordingly to the displacement. The intensity pattern will be as in graph

In region from X1 to X2 and X3 to X4, the intensity varies linearly with displacement. This characteristic can be applied in the applied research.

6. Research-processes

The steps involved in doing research process are

Literature Survey Problem Finding Experimental Work Data Collection Results and Discussion Publicatins - conference/journals Thesis preparation Viva-voce

1. Literature Survey: