2011
Instructor: Tobias Marriage (marriage@pha.jhu.edu)
TAs: Arpit Gupta (arpit@pha.jhu.edu), Damien Benveniste (dbenveni@pha.jhu.edu)
Recommended Texts
- Bevington & Robinson, Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences
- Press, Teukolsky, Vetterling, Flannery, "Numerical Recipes in C"
- 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 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 schedule. 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.
Latex References
- Arpit's Presentation on LaTeX.
- Damien's presentation:
- A Not Too Short Introduction to LaTeX: media:not_too_short.pdf
Lab Presentations
Lab presentations will be given on odd weeks (See schedule.). These consist in a few slides (saved as PDF) describing the experiment and a reduction of the corresponding data with preliminary conclusions and/or questions. Presentations should be sent to the instructor (marriage@pha.jhu.edu) the night before for efficient projector setup. Presentations are 10 minutes with 5 minutes for questions/comments. Participation in discussion is an important component of the presentations.
Sample presentation: media:Marriage_h_e_experiment.pdf
Course Schedule
- Jan 31
- Introductory Lecture; Photoelectric Effect
- Feb 7
- First Lab; Photoelectric report due
- Feb 14
- First Lab Presentations, Latex Tutorial
- Feb 21
- Second Lab Begins, First Report (Draft) Submitted
- Feb 28
- Second Lab Presentations, First Report (Draft) Returned
- Mar 7
- Third Lab Begins, Second Report (Draft) Submitted, First Report (Final) Submitted
- Mar 14
- Third Lab Presentations, Second Report (Draft) Returned
- Mar 21
- Spring Break
- Mar 28
- Fourth Lab Begins, Third Report (Draft) Submitted, Second Report (Final) Submitted
- Apr 4
- Fourth Lab Presentations, Third Report (Draft) Returned
- Apr 11
- Fifth Lab Begins, Third Report (Final) Submitted, Fourth Report (Final) Submitted
- Apr 18
- Fifth Lab Presentations
- Apr 25
- Sixth Lab Begins, Fifth Report Submitted
- May 2
- Sixth Lab Presentations
- May 9
- Sixth Report Submitted
Labs
Responsibility for assistance and grading of labs will be split between the professor and TAs in the following manner:
- Marriage
- Brownian Motion (BM), Nuclear Spectroscopy (NS), Franck-Hertz (FH)
- Benveniste
- Rutherford Scattering (RS), Millikan Oil Drop (MOD), Hall Effect (HE)
- Gupta
- NMR, Muon Lifetime (ML), Zeeman Effect (ZE)
The labs are done in groups according to the following schedule:
| Lab 1 | Lab 2 | Lab 3 | Lab 4 | Lab 5 | Lab 6 | |
| G1 | NMR | NS | ML | MOD | BM | HE |
| G2 | NS | RS | ZE | HE | NMR | MOD |
| G3 | ML | MOD | BM | FH | ZE | RS |
| G4 | ZE | HE | NMR | RS | ML | NS |
| G5 | HE | FH | MOD | ML | RS | ZE |
| G6 | FH | NMR | HE | BM | MOD | ML |
| G7 | MOD | ML | FH | NMR | NS | BM |
| G8 | RS | BM | NS | ZE | FH | NMR |
| G9 | BM | ZE | RS | NS | HE | FH |
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.
Grades breakdown as 15% for each 2-week lab (75% report, 25% presentation), 5% for the initial lab, and 5% participation.