2014

Welcome to Advanced Physics Lab 2014!

Instructors

Professor: Tobias Marriage (marriage@pha.jhu.edu), Office: Bloomberg 215

TAs: Ian Anderson (ianderso@pha.jhu.edu), Office: Bloomberg 429

Lab Guru: Steve Wonnell (wonnell@pha.jhu.edu), Office: Bloomberg 478

Wiki

This page (https://wiki.pha.jhu.edu/advlab_wiki/index.php/2014) is your source of much course-related knowledge. Useful materials will be distributed here.

Also check out general descriptions of labs and pages for previous years at

https://wiki.pha.jhu.edu/advlab_wiki/index.php

General Description

In this class, you you'll learn

• how to conduct an experiment, collecting data with special attention to estimating systematic and statistical measurement errors,
• how to model the data,
• and how to present your work through scientific writing.

These three aspects essentially define the course. Each lab will be evaluated based on how well the three aspects are realized.

Classes

Times: Monday 10:00-12:50 and 1:30-4:30

Classes will run in a seminar format. They will begin with a lecture followed by discussion and short updates on experimental work from students. A shared online directory (Google drive) will be used to upload update material.

At the beginning of a new experiment, an introduction to the new experiment will also be given in the class.

Experiments

Four experiments will be completed over the course of the semester, each taking three weeks. These experiments will start in the second week of the course. The nominal experiments we will work through are the following.

1. Brownian Motion: The goal of this experiment is to estimate the Boltzmann constant using a measurement of the brownian motion of microscopic spheres.
2. Speed of Light: In this experiment you use the classic Foucault spinning mirror measurement to estimate the speed of light.
3. Single Photon Interference: This experiment explores the interference of quantum wave functions.
4. Radio Astronomy: In this experiment you'll use a 1.4 GHz (21 cm) radio telescope to look out into the galaxy and (possibly) beyond.

The first two experiments are intended to be a good match to the data analysis being taught in lectures and readings during the first half of the course. The second two experiments, to be completed in the second half of the semester, are intended to be matched to the more advanced material presented in lectures and readings during the second half of the course.

Readings

Weekly readings will be assigned from this text:

Bevington & Robinson, Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences, 3rd Edition, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-247227-8, 2003

Schedule

Below is the nominal schedule for the course.

Date	Lecture	Weekly Reading	Other Notes
Jan 27	Class Overview, Measurement & Errors	Bev. Ch1	Work on basic LaTeX and Python examples
Class material to go here.
Feb 03	Probability Distributions, Exp. 1 Introduction	Bev. Ch 2	Start Exp. 1
Feb 10	Propagation of Errors	Bev. Ch 3	Updates on Exp. 1
Feb 17	Estimates of Mean and Errors	Bev. Ch 4	Updates on Exp. 1; Exp. 1 Report Draft Due
Feb 24	Monte Carlo Techniques	Bev. Ch 5	Exp. 1 Report Due, Start Exp. 2
Mar 3	Linear Least Squares 1	Bev. Ch 6	Updates on Exp. 2
Mar 10	Linear Least Squares 2	Bev. Ch 7	Updates on Exp. 2
Mar 17-21 Spring Break
Mar 24	Nonlinear Fitting 1	Bev. Ch 8	Exp. 2 Due, Start Exp. 3
Mar 31	Nonlinear Fitting 2	Bev. Ch 9	Updates on Exp. 3
Apr 7	Propagation of Errors	Bev. Ch 10	Updates on Exp. 3
Apr 14	Propagation of Errors	Bev. Ch 11	Exp. 3 Due, Start Exp. 4
Apr 21	Propagation of Errors	-	Updates on Exp. 4
Apr 28	Propagation of Errors	-	Updates on Exp. 4

Other Useful Texts

Data Analysis

• Press, Teukolsky, Vetterling, Flannery, Numerical Recipes in C (Available online)
• Lupton, "Statistics in Theory and Practice"

LaTeX

• Lamport, LaTeX: A Document Preparation System
• A Not Too Short Introduction to LaTeX: media:not_too_short.pdf

You might also find useful websites from previous years.