2011

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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
  • 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.

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.

Course Schedule

Jan 31
Introductory Lecture; Photoelectric Effect
Feb 7
First Lab; Photoelectric report due
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
G1 G2 G3 G4 G5 G6 G7 G8 G9

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Lab 1

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Lab 2

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Lab 3

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Lab 4

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Lab 5

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Lab 6

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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.