PHYS 122L
Introductory Lab
Fall 2007

http://physics.umbc.edu/~reno/PHYS122L/PHYS122L.html



Instructor: Dr. Robert C. Reno

My Office Hours: Tues. 1:00pm-2:00pm, Wednesday 12:00pm - 1:00 pm, Thurs. 12:00pm-1:00pm
Meetings at other times can be scheduled as needed by e-mailing me at least 24 hours in advance.

My Office: PH316
My Phone: 455-2530
My e-mail: reno@umbc.edu

Text: Introduction to the THEORY OF ERROR,  Yardley Beers

Course Information: PHYS 122L is a laboratory course worth two credits. It includes material covered in both PHYS121 and PHYS122. You will attend thirteen four-hour laboratory sessions, spread out over the semester. Your grade in this course will be determined by three components: laboratory reports, homework assignments, and a computer project. You can earn a maximum of 1000 points in this course, distributed as follows:

Class schedule: There are three sections of PHYS122L. In order to ensure uniformity in the number of class meetings during the semester, and to have all sessions grouped in a contiguous 7-day block, the following schedule will be followed:

Meeting #

Tuesday section (0103) meets

Thursday section ( 0101 ) meets

Monday section meets (0102 )

Activity

1

Sept. 4

Sept. 6

Sept. 10

Lecture on error analysis and MATLAB programming

2

Sept. 11

Sept. 13

Sept. 17

Lecture on data display, least squares fitting, MATLAB programming; VERNIER software introduction

3

Sept. 18

Sept. 20

Sept. 24

Experiment 1: Atwood's machine and measurement of "g"
OR
Experiment 2: The Ballistic Pendulum

4

Sept. 25

Sept. 27

Oct. 1

Experiment 1: Atwood's machine and measurement of "g"
OR
Experiment 2: The Ballistic Pendulum

5

Oct. 2

Oct. 4

Oct. 8

Experiment 3: Simple Harmonic Motion
OR
Experiment 4: Rotational Motion and Angular Momentum

6

Oct. 9

Oct. 11

Oct. 15

Experiment 3: Simple Harmonic Motion
OR
Experiment 4: Rotational Motion and Angular Momentum

7

Oct. 16

Oct. 18

Oct. 22

Experiment 5: Velocity of Sound
OR
Experiment 6: Heat Capacity and Latent Heat of Fusion

8

Oct. 23

Oct. 25

Oct. 29

Experiment 5: Velocity of Sound
OR
Experiment 6: Heat Capacity and Latent Heat of Fusion

9

Oct. 30

Nov. 1

Nov. 5

Experiment 7: DC Circuits and Ohm's law
OR
Experiment 8: The Current Balance

10

Nov. 6

Nov. 8

Nov. 12

Experiment 7: DC Circuits and Ohm's law
OR
Experiment 8: The Current Balance

11

Nov. 13

Nov. 15

Nov. 19

Lecture on random numbers and their use in simulations; preparation for your computer project

12

Nov. 27

Nov. 29

Dec. 3

Experiment 9: The Ratio of e/m for the Electron
OR
Experiment 10: AC Circuits and Resonance

13

Dec. 4

Dec. 6

Dec. 10

Experiment 9: The Ratio of e/m for the Electron
OR
Experiment 10: AC Circuits and Resonance

Student Identification and Privacy: During your first week of classes, you will be given a unique four-digit ID number, which is the only way you will be allowed to identify yourself on reports, homeworks, and the computer project. Any submission containing your name or social security number ( whole or part thereof ) will be immediately shredded to protect your privacy. Needless to say it will not be graded.

Homeworks: : The key to understanding laboratory physics is practice in data analysis and display. That is why I assign homework and a computer project, in addition to the required lab reports. Four times during the semester, you will be given such assignments. You should hand these in before lab begins, on the due date. Handing in a homework/project late will reduce its maximum point value as follows:

Value(t)=OriginalValue*exp(-0.5t),


where t is the number of class days late, rounded up to an integer. Homeworks are worth a total of 180 points. The project is worth 100 points.

Partial credit is given for homework, so you should show all the steps that lead you to your final answer. A wrong answer with some part of the method correct will receive some credit. A correct answer that is not supported by sufficient computation to show how you got your answer will receive no credit.

In any assignment that requires use of MATLAB computer code, a listing of the code must be supplied, along with the results of the calculation.

Laboratory reports: To complete a laboratory report you must attend your scheduled lab session, participate actively in the taking of data, and then hand in a written report by the date specified by your lab assistant ( TA ). All lab reports must be typed and/or generated on a word processor and should conform to the format supplied at the beginning of the semester.

If you miss your lab session OR fail to hand in a report on time, you get zero for that lab. Each lab report is worth 80 points but only your best nine out of ten will be used in computing your final grade. Since this is, in effect, a built-in excused absence policy, no makeup lab experiments or late reports will be permitted for any reason.

Statement on the Purpose of Laboratory Experiments in PHYS 122L

In courses in which there are laboratory experiments, it is useful for the student to know how the instructor views the laboratory component. In general, a laboratory experiment can serve several purposes. It can, for instance, serve to supplement material learned in physics classes or aid in an understanding of the concepts discussed there. It can also help students to visualize phenomena that would otherwise remain abstract. The taking of data and the discussion of it in the final report can teach the student organizational skills, neatness, and communication skills. The analysis of data can also teach the student the limitations on what can be deduced from a finite set of data with a finite uncertainty in each measurement. In this course, it is hoped that your laboratory experience will serve many of the purposes listed above. However, one of the primary purposes of the PHYS 122L laboratory, in my view, is to develop in the student an understanding of the uncertainty inherent in any measurement and the propagation of those uncertainties when several types of measurements must be made to deduce a derived quantity. It should come as no surprise to you, then, that a significant fraction of your grade on each lab report will depend on how carefully you consider uncertainties and their propagation. You should NEVER, for example, quote a value for a measured or computed quantity without giving an uncertainty in that value.

Calculators


The computations that you need to do in your laboratory experiments require that you do a lot of repetitive work to calculate means and standard deviations. This drudgery is reduced if you use a calculator that has built-in functions to compute means and standard deviations. I recommend that you use this type of calculator or do all of your computaions in MATLAB.

Computer Project: This will utilize the programming language MATLAB to generate random numbers ( either uniformly distributed over the interval 0 - 1, or normally distributed about a mean value ). These numbers will be used to generate various amounts of "noise" in a signal, and to perform a Monte Carlo simulation of radioactive decay. The computer project is worth 100 points.

Audits: There is no option for an audit in this course.  It is never offered PASS/FAIL.

Letter grades: To determine your final grade, I will add together your nine best lab reports, your homework scores, and your computer project grade, and convert your total to a letter grade as follows:

Incompletes: Please read carefully the catalog statement on acceptable grounds for an incomplete. Since this is a laboratory course with filled sections, there is no option to make up missed labs, either during the week that an experiment is set up or later on in the semester. The only grounds for obtaining an incomplete in this course is failure to complete all of the last three experiments due to illness. Since, according to the catalog, you must be doing "qualitatively satisfactory" work in order to qualify for an incomplete, you must have at least completed the first three homeworks and the first seven laboratory reports, with a grade of 60% or better up to the time you took sick. If you are given an "Incomplete", it can be removed by completing the missed assignments ( labs and project ) in the following semester's PHYS122L course. Note: Do not register for PHYS122L again; just make arrangements with the instructor to attend the appropriate sessions.

Academic Integrity: You should be aware of the University's and my policy on cheating.

The submission of a laboratory report written by someone else or the submission of a laboratory report written by you during a previous semester constitutes cheating.

Working together on homework /projects is NOT cheating and I encourage you to work together. However, copying someone else's solutions or software code without conducting a two-way dialog and contributing some of your own ideas to the solutions or code IS cheating.

I will take appropriate action against anyone who cheats.