2011

Instructor: Tobias Marriage (marriage@pha.jhu.edu)

TAs: Arpit Gupta (arpit@pha.jhu.edu)

Recommended Texts

• Bevington & Robinson, Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences
• Melissinos & Napolitano, Experiments in Modern Physics
• Lamport, LaTeX: A Document Preparation System

General Description

In this class you will complete seven experiments. You'll do the experiments in groups. Separately you will analyze data and submit lab reports. The first experiment is short and will be done in the first week. The rest of the experiments are more involved and you will have two weeks to complete each.

Lab Reports

Lab reports constitute the backbone of the course. The reports are to be created on a computer with computer generated graphics, plots, etc. The preferred document preparation system for the reports is LaTeX. The computers in the PUC lab have various installations of LaTeX editors/compilers. You can also download freeware for your personal computers. The lab reports should have an abstract, an introduction, description of the experiment (apparatus and procedure), description of the analysis, discussion of results, a conclusion (including future directions), and a bibliography. Lab reports will be collected on even weeks (see schedule).

The course is fast paced and you'll want to stay ahead of the game. You should begin writing your lab report in the first week of the class. You should plan to have the introduction finished by the end of the first week together with first drafts of all figures. A standard strategy is to create your figures first in order to guide the body of the text.

The first three lab reports will be "refereed" in the sense that we'll return them with comments on an initial draft of the reports after which you will resubmit the final draft of the reports.

Course Schedule

Jan 31

Introductory Lecture; Photoelectric Effect

Feb 7

First Lab

Feb 14

First Lab Presentations, Latex Tutorial

Feb 15

Second Lab Begins, First Report (Draft) Submitted

Feb 21

Second Lab Presentations, First Report (Draft) Returned

Feb 28

Third Lab Begins, Second Report (Draft) Submitted, First Report (Final) Submitted

Mar 7

Third Lab Presentations, Second Report (Draft) Returned

Mar14

Fourth Lab Begins, Third Report (Draft) Submitted, Second Report (Final) Submitted

Mar 21

Spring Break

Mar 28

Fourth Lab Presentations, Third Report (Draft) Returned

Apr 4

Fifth Lab Begins, Third Report (Final) Submitted, Fourth Report (Final) Submitted

Apr 11

Fifth Lab Presentations

Apr 18

Sixth Lab Begins, Fifth Report Submitted

Apr 25

Sixth Lab Presentations

May 2

Sixth Report Submitted

Report Submission and Grading

Reports should be emailed in PDF format to the instructor at marriage@pha.jhu.edu. The reports are due by midnight on the day before the "submitted" date in the schedule above. Late reports will not be accepted.