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What am I doing
here?
The main objective of this course is to give you some first-hand
experience with some of the ideas you are wrestling with in Analytical
Physics III. At the end of this course, you will have directly examined
some of the fundamental behaviors of light and matter, including wave
propagation speeds, interference & diffraction, polarization, the
photoelectric effect, black-body radiation, quantization of energy
levels in the Hydrogen atom, radioactive decay, and chaos. Some of the
labs will be simulations. In addition, you will gain proficiency in the
use of various symbolic and computational methods for performing
analysis and uncertainty analysis. You will also gain proficiency in
good laboratory practice, in data organization, and in presenting your
work in a neat and coherent manner.
In
this course, emphasis will be placed on good laboratory practice in: (1)
carrying out experiments successfully, (2) recording and analyzing data,
and (3) organizing and presenting your work in a neat and coherent manner.
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Where
is the lab manual?
The lab manual for this course will be distributed incrementally throughout
the semester. You will be given the necessary pages of the manual one week
prior to each lab experiment, and you will be required to maintain the
manual in a 3-ring binder as the course progresses. Also, you will maintain
a hard cover experimental journal in which you will record your lab
progress. Various rules for the maintenance of these journals can be found
at the beginning of the lab manual.
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- How
will I be graded? Your
grade will be determined by:
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A pre-lab assignment will be distributed (with the relevant lab manual
pages) one week in advance of each experiment. Pre-lab must be completed
before coming to lab. Each week, there will be a quiz based on the pre-lab
assignment and/or the previous week’s experiment. Your Lab Journals may be
graded at any time without prior warning.
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- You will often be required to write a one-page (double spaced)
abstract of the experiment, written independently from your lab partner
(or anyone else). As a reminder, abstracts must define the purpose of
the experiment, the methodology of the experiment and the analysis, a
discussion of possible sources of error, and numerical results. Be sure
to also include a final interpretation of the results (i.e., a
conclusion). A copy of the abstract should also be typed and stapled or
taped into your lab notebook.
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- Finally, at the end of the semester, you will be required to make an
oral presentation based on one of your experiments. This presentation
will be graded on physics (doing the experiment correctly and
understanding it), content (correctly identifying the most important
elements of the experiment), visual support (showing graphics that are
helpful, clear, and not distracting), oral quality (speaking loudly
enough without mumbling, making eye contact), and your ability to ask
relevant questions of the other speakers.
What is
the lab schedule?
Labs will meet on the following days:
Who is
my lab partner, and what presentation am I making?
For section 1:
Note that you’ll have a different partner each week. To determine your
lab partner(s) for any experiment, find the row corresponding to your name,
and then scan across until you find the number of the lab you are performing
(as listed above). The name above this number is your partner. If an
experiment number is colored pink, then you will make an oral presentation
on your work for that experiment on December 17.
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