2012

Instructors

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

TAs: Christopher Brust (cbrust@pha.jhu.edu), Sean Cantrell (seancan@pha.jhu.edu)

General Description

Welcome to the Advanced Physics Lab. In this class, you will carry out six experiments, some of which helped form the basis for modern physics. More importantly, you'll learn how to carry out an experiment with special attention to systematic effects, how to analyze data from that experiment, and how to present your work through scientific writing.

In this class you will complete six experiments. You'll do the experiments in groups of two or three. You will have two weeks to complete each lab.

Grading

Grades breakdown as 15% for each 2-week lab (75% report, 25% presentation), 5% for the initial lab, and 5% participation/effort.

Collaboration Policy

Execution of the experiment is a group effort, so is necessarily collaborative. Furthermore, students are encourage to discuss experiments, analysis, and other course related issues with their peers (and, of course, with the instructors). However, each person should carry out their own data analysis (e.g., no code sharing), produce their own plots, and write their own report. Violations of academic ethics (e.g., plagiarism) will be handled according to JHU policy. See http://www.jhu.edu/design/oliver/academic_manual/ethics.html.

Work Submission

We'll utilize Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) for submission of reports: each student will have a private dropbox by which to upload course materials for submission (and by which we can share files with you). If the dropbox fails, work may 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. Each student is allowed one late report, which may be up to one week late.

Recommended Texts

• Bevington & Robinson, Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences
• Press, Teukolsky, Vetterling, Flannery, Numerical Recipes in C (Available online)
• Lamport, LaTeX: A Document Preparation System

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.

Latex References

• Arpit's Presentation on LaTeX.
• Damien's presentation:
  • media:Latex_Tutorial.txt
  • media:Latex_Tutorial.jpg
  • media:Latex_Tutorial.pdf
• 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 29

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

Apr 4

Fourth Lab Presentations, Third Report (Draft) Returned

Apr 12

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

Apr 18

Fifth Lab Presentations

Apr 26

Sixth Lab Begins, Fifth Report Submitted

May 2

Sixth Lab Presentations

May 10

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