Junior Lab PHYS313
Senior Lab PHYS413
This is the course page for the advanced lab physics courses at RIC.
Tentative Schedule (v2022.10.05)
Here’s a link to the manual for these courses:
Advanced Labs Manual pdf (v.2022.09.18)
or in notebook form
It is in progress of course, but the syllabus and formats for the lab notebook and written reports are in there. The notebook version may be expanded and contracted as you see fit and is always current (even if I forget to replace the pdf).
Edit: 2018.04.18 – minor formatting fixes and photo adds
Edit: 2018.04.30 – minor changes to peer review sheets
Edit: 2018.05.01 – added an example manuscript
Edit: 2019.01.01 – added experiments and expanded all sections
Edit: 2019.02.01 – added hyperlinks
Edit: 2020.02.22 – just admin stuff since last update
Edit: 2022.09.18 – minor admin stuff, typos
Here’s a link to the Lyons book (should also be available in the bookstore). It is a little terse on one of the more useful tools for error treatment. Here’s a more accessible propagation of errors discussion with example. It ought to help with the problems from chapter 1. Here’s a data fitting exercise from chapter 2. Excel has all the necessary tools (you’ll need to hit Google or your chosen MS helper to figure out how to make uniquely sized uncertainty bars for individual points – it’s not obvious from just kicking around the menus).
Example Papers
You needn’t worry too much about the physics being presented in the first three papers if it is totally unfamiliar. In fact, this is intended. I want you to focus on what is the same or different between these from an organizational point of view.
General “being a scientist” Resources
This book’s title says it all: On Being A Scientist. Click the links at right on that page to read it online or you can download it as a .pdf for free.
This one is more of a career path book. You’ll have to buy this one but it’s well worth ten bucks. You would do well to read it before you get to graduate school if you plan to pursue an advanced degree (and before you apply if you are at all on the fence). It’s a fantastic crystal ball for where you’re going and a pretty solid map of pitfalls to avoid on the way. It’s pretty short too.
And this is a nice guide to academic writing.
Ethics Resources
Lying, cheating, and stealing are pretty easy to diagnose, but what is appropriate to do if you know, absolutely without question, that a point in a data set is an outlier? We’ll cover some of the ethical considerations that scientists face in the lab this semester. The APS site has some guidance and some case studies we will consider.
Here’s an article from the Washington Post, take a look – we’ll discuss ways to repair the bio-medical (and probably more widespread) problem discussed herein.
And here are some more interactive things:
Ethics CORE: Responsible Conduct of Research
Office of Research Integrity: The Lab and The Research Clinic
An oldie/goodie: Do Scientists Cheat? (Part 1 of 7, the rest are easily searchable and I didn’t think I needed to provide links)
Labs
I have been in the process of moving info from this site into the Course Manual for sometime. As the semester progresses, I’ll expand and contract sections of the manual in the pdf rendering to make it easier to download. All of what’s been uploaded is always available if you download the Mathematica notebook version of it. If you haven’t purchased the software, either download the free cdf player or access the manual in the Computational Lab (across from my office).
Cavendish Experiment Lab
Cavendish and the determination of the gravitational constant.
Here’s the simulation (v2018.03.19)- you need Mathematica to run it.
Here’s the same thing (v2018.03.19) in a version the CDF player can run.
Speed of Light I Lab
This has migrated totally into the Course Manual.
Standing Waves Lab
This has migrated totally into the Course Manual.
Wheatstone Bridge Lab
This has migrated totally into the Course Manual.
B-Field Generation and e/m Ratio Determination Lab
This lab has migrated into the course manual already. Here’s the “canned info” referred to therein:
Mathematica helper for plotting, fitting, error bars in notebook format, cdf format, and in pdf format.
Stress and Strain – Mechanics of Materials
We’ll work from a writeup that Dr. Del Vecchio made for the Pasco equipment. I’ll link the folder – there is also a manual and some DataStudio files in there.
Folder: here
Transmission Electron Diffraction Lab
This has migrated totally into the Course Manual.
Photometry Lab
This has migrated totally into the Course Manual.
Photoelectric Effect Lab
P-E_Effect with prelab questions
Chaos Lab
hyperphysics background
here’s a helpful simulation to visualize parameter dependence
and here’s a folder with various resources you may find helpful.
Millikan Oil Drop Experiment
The video here has been aged to perfection. It is longer than need be, but fantastic to get an idea of what to look for and how one might fiddle with the controls in order to develop a test of the things we desire to determine. This page has a concise theoretical development with which to familiarize yourselves.
The simulation-in-progress is here (needs Mathematica).
Franck-Hertz Experiment
This is our next stop, the classic Franck-Hertz.
LabVIEW
Here are a few videos to introduce LabVIEW. Watch them at your leisure, we’ll start from an assumption that you’ve digested these.
Introduction:
Basic Data Acquisition:
Loops, etc:
RINSC labs
Late in the semester, we will travel to the Rhode Island Nuclear Science Center, located at the Bay Campus of URI. Parking is available in the surrounding lots, and the campus is bus accessible. Invite your friends, please carpool, and ensure you read and adhere to the information in the RINSCInfo memo for visitors. Admission depends on it.
google map of the bay campus. You can’t miss the reactor (big cube).
Jeff Davis has been kind enough to share with us the presentation he will give as part of the reactor tour. You can access it here. You should look through it before we go. Please also familiarize yourself with the way isotopes are represented (Chapter 31, for instance, in the OpenStax College Physics book does an admirable introductory treatment).
Neutron Activation / Half-Life
Here’s the Half-Life Lab activity we’ll be doing, and a link to the database referenced therein.
Positron Annihilation
Here’s the background for the positron annihilation setup and a couple of measurements that are within reach.
Nothing to see here. I’m just working on a thing.
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.wolfram.com/cdf-player/plugin/v2.1/cdfplugin.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var cdf = new cdfplugin();
cdf.embed(‘https://emailric-my.sharepoint.com/:u:/g/personal/byoung_0367_ric_edu/EQLVj2ik651DjKRU9VwSj9sBD9XTSoJSckgFNf3zY_gm4A?e=aOX3sT/Untitled.cdf’, 1331, 5059);
</script>