1. Overview

This is a complete immersion experience for physics majors and is designed to meet the following objectives

a) Students will have the opportunity to learn a number of modern, advanced instrumentation techniques that belong in the repertoire of a contemporary experimental physicist.

b) Science and engineering involve exploration and model building. You will be expected to develop your own physical intuition, to flesh out and to check out the ideas which you put forth. Unless you put forth original ideas, you will have difficulty advancing professionally.

c) The couse will also explore, in substantial depth, techniques for evaluating the propagation of errors, both random and systematic, across multiple layers of measurement and/or analysis.

d) The technical and communication skills emphasized in this course are of key importance throughout the technical disciplines. Students will begin to learn the writing style that is considered appropriate for professional physics journals. Students will accomplish this by studying many journal articles and writing a couple of fully developed laboratory reports in this style. Critical review, both for content and writing, will be provided by the instructor.

2. Introduction

Part of becoming a capable and self-reliant experimenter can only be learned from doing difficult experiments.

Another part of the process of learning to do experimental physics is skill development; for this reason, we will have a series of classes devoted a few of the most fundamental skills:

We emphasize use of the writing process as the key to developing, organizing, and synthesizing your work. Your professional advancement will depend critically upon your technical writing skills.

Experience shows that you will find your own abilities growing as you struggle to make nature reveal its secrets. Therefore, in this course, you will undertake four experimental projects, none of which will be performed by everyone in the class. After the first round of experiments, each subsequent lab will be performed with the same set of partners. You and your lab partners must establish the parameters of your partnership. This simulates actual research, where most work is done in collaboration. Your professional advancement will depend critically upon your ability to work professionally with others.

Still, in an effort to make you more independent experimentalists, you are responsible for all aspects of each of your projects. Unannounced, individual oral examinations will serve to check that you have fulfilled this responsibility.

The instructor has traditionally provided scantier instructions and less support for the experiments in the latter part of the semester (So take advantage during the first part! : ) For those experiments, knowledge must be gained, in large part, through careful reading of manuals and library sources, and through discussion with experienced colleagues (i.e., other students in the class who have already done those projects).

3. Format and Class Meetings

This is a hands-on course, in which you will mostly learn by doing. Your attendance is expected at all class meetings. However, we realize that unavoidable conflicts may arise once or twice during the term. If you will not be present at a scheduled lab or lecture time, you must let us know in advance (x3004 or x3661). All absences for athletic reasons must scheduled in the first two weeks. In some cases where there is a serious regular conflict with the class meetings, we will allow the student to miss these meetings, provided s/he makes a good faith effort to obtain notes, etc. See us immediately if you fall into this category.

The course will meet DAILY (officially from 9-12 and from 1-4, although additional access to the labs will be made available). Again, this is a complete immersion experience: students are encouraged to make no other time committments during May Term. The amount of money you could make by working nights cannot compare to the value of your professional development, and we consider any effort to maintain outside time committments during this three week period to be most unwise.

You will need to spend additional time reading, planning, writing, and working on your experiments in order to complete them on schedule. You should plan to allocate the great bulk of your time to this course. (This is also good practice for research! ; )

Bear in mind that the you have less than a month for these projects, and that we'll let you work rather independently, to encourage your self-confidence. The success of a project is determined by how much you learn in trying, and by how much it builds your enthusiasm about physics. With that in mind, we do encourage you to come up with your own ideas to pursue while working on these projects: even if your idea is somewhat vague, perhaps together we can suggest something reasonable that you might try to get done in the time allocated. If the idea is good enough, the department may even be willing to purchase a modest amount of new equipment for it. Please see us to discuss your ideas.

4. Course Requirements

(A detailed Schedule of Discussions is available)

a. There will be a number of homework assignments throughout the term, helping you to become comfortable with model building, with basic estimation of uncertainties and error propagation and introducing you to Labs #1 and #2, in order to ensure that you have a good start on each of the first two projects.

b. Each student will write a short report (4-5 pages plus figures and references) about the first project you undertake. Again, you will write this first report on your own. The report should be in the format of scientific papers. You will be evaluated both on the quality of your experimentation, and on the quality of your papers (depth of understanding; writing effectiveness). The first version you turn in will be graded, but you will also have the opportunity to revise your paper and the second version will be weighed more heavily in your final grades.

c. You must buy four lab notebooks (begin using a new one at the start of each new project). Your notebooks should be used not only during lab, but also for taking notes (in the library, etc). Your lab notebooks are intended to be honest "working documents" and not something re-created after the fact. You will need to develop techniques which allow you to produce records of thought and analysis which are clearly of professional quality. Certainly, you should always write with the idea that you are working towards the production of a formal paper. The more you keep this in mind while maintaining your notebook, the easier it will be when it finally comes time to assemble a paper.

A good notebook format uses the right hand pages for permanent records and the left hand pages or the back of the book for scratch. Each time you come to lab a dated entry should be made in the book. The Table of Contents should list dates as well as page numbers.

For any labs that do not result in formal papers, your notebook records will be graded.

[Note: If you fill up one of the notebooks you've purchased, we will pay for any additional notebooks for you]

d. There will be a several one-hour quizzes. The quiz on uncertainties and error propagation will be an open-handouts, open-notes exam. The quizzes on labs will be open notebook only.

e. Together with your lab partners, you will write a substantial paper (12-18 pp.) about either your second, third, or fourth project. Again, the report should be in the format of scientific papers. As before, you will be evaluated both on the quality of your experimentation, and on the quality of your papers (depth of understanding; writing effectiveness). There will be no time for formal revision of this final paper and it will be weighed more heavily than any other single assignment.

Even on those projects for which you produce no formal paper, you must go so far as to produce final, polished figures and captions of a sort that would be included in a formal paper.

Grading:

• Homework Assignments..............................12%
• Quizzes..................................................18%
• (2) Notebook Grades..................................25%
• First Paper................................................10%
• Revision of First Paper................................10%
• Final Paper..............................................15%
• Contribution to In-Class Discussion.................10%

There will be a number of handouts prepared by the instructor. You are required to purchase a workbook,

Writing for Science, by Robert Goldbort

In addition, we will guide you to some excellent resources in the library.

Two general texts are worth noting, and will be on reserve:

1) The Art of Experimental Physics, by Daryl W. Preston and Eric R. Dietz.

This book has often been used as the text for this course. It contains tips on many basic experimental techniques, although you may have to flip around to find the parts most connected to this year's projects. Certainly, it can be quite helpful!

2) Experimentation: An Introduction to Measurement Theory and Experimental Design, by D.C. Baird.

This is a great reference on the statistical analysis of uncertainties.

Online Journals include (but are not limited to):

1) American Journal of Physics

2) Review of Scientific Instruments

(A detailed Schedule of Discussions is available)