1. Overview

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

a) 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 that you put forth. Unless you put forth original ideas, you will have difficulty advancing professionally.

b) The course 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.

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

d) The technical and communication skills emphasized in this course are of key importance throughout the technical disciplines. Students are expected to use a 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 feedback will be provided by the instructor.

2. Creating sharable, editable materials

We need to have ways of passing work in progress back and forth, electronically. Since much of your learning arises from revision, the materials we pass back and forth ought to be easily editable (which excludes the .pdf format, which is designed for robust sharing without corruption of equations, etc., but is severely restricted in the kinds of editing that is easily allowed).

Software for Electronic Lab Notebooks:
Productivity-enhancing formatting tools made simple: What would you suggest for incorporating all of the elements below, along with text formatted with clear Section Headers and Bullet Points, all cross-referenced to a Table of Contents? -- We'll use OneNote, "because we can type and insert images but also get the mobile app and draw additional images if need be." It is also easy to paste in certain kinds of simulations and, most importantly, to share your notebook (in editable form) with your instructor. You can use this app for many purposes so, for this course, add a notebook named "PHYS399-M21-YourFirstNameLastInitial."

You should check out the built-in Help for a text-based tour, but documentation is poor for using OneNote to write equations. At times, adding spaces may help. At other times, you may throw up your hands and opt to generate equations in Word, and copy it to your notes.

Sketches: Have you ever tried using a touchscreen or tablet or phone to make quick sketches? OneNote allows that. A larger tablet with a stylus provides more natural control, but the key with any system will be to spend time practicing! Of course, when you get around to creating more polished figures, you could go with a full-featured product such as Adobe Illustrator or the open-source equivalent, Inkscape. (On my MacBook Pro, I use OmniGaffle, which makes nice use of the Touch Bar.) But whatever you opt for, it can be a good use of your time to watch a quick instructional video for your setup. -- You'll need to be able to make quick sketches during class on the first day!

Symbolic Manipulation: Our licensing gives you permission to install Mathematica on your device. Be sure to use your IWU email address when you sign in.

Tables & Plots: Our licensing gives you permission to install Igor Pro on your device. You'll need to use it during class on the first day!

Software for Formal Papers:

a) The reason that Piazza is valued as a class discussion platform is that it makes it easy to discuss equations that are formatted using LaTeX, which has been stable and reliable for decades. (TeX was released in 1978, LaTeX in 1984.) The very same equation coding is utilized in Overleaf, a free-to-use online LaTeX editor that you can use in your browser. (You can even, if you wish, use Piazza to generate the encoding, and then copy and paste it into Overleaf.) If you haven't already done so, sign up now for an Overleaf account.

b) At this level, you will also need to keep track of, and cite, materials that will be of use to you, or to those who later take up such work. Zotero was designed to manage those kinds of citations, and you can easily integrate Zotero with Overleaf!

3. Skill Development

Part of the process of learning to do physics involves 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.

4. Format and Class Meetings

Your attendance is expected at all class meetings (Zoom attendance counts!). 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.

The course will meet DAILY from 9:00AM-Noon and 1:00-4:00PM, with groups chats at 9AM and 1PM. Again, you will need to spend additional time reading, analyzing, modeling, and writing. You should plan to allocate the great bulk of your time to this course. (This is also good practice for times when you might be, as an engineer, preparing for a product launch or, as a scientist, preparing for a conference presentation! ; )

5. 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. There may be some quizzes, as needed (e.g., a quiz on uncertainties and error propagation, if needed, would be an open-handouts, open-notes exam.)

d. Together with your lab partners, you will write a substantial paper (e.g., 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 + Quizzes.................................................17%
• First Paper...................................................................10%
• Revision of First Paper...............................................15%
• Lab Notebook Grade..................................................23%
• Final Paper (Group Paper)..........................................25%
• Participation/Contribution to In-Class Discussion.....10%

Online Journals include (but are not limited to):

1) American Journal of Physics

2) Review of Scientific Instruments

General texts worth noting:

1) Building Scientific Apparatus, by John H. Moore, et al.

2) Experimental Physics: Principles and Practice for the Laboratory, edited by Walter Fox Smith (just published!)

3) An Introduction to Error Analysis: The Study of Uncertainties in Physical Measurements, 2nd Edition, by John R. Taylor (ISBN: 093570275X ).

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