Current Catalog Description

A laboratory course to be taken concurrently with Physics 21. One three-hour laboratory period per week.

Textbook

"Lab Manual for Physics 22", Fall 2003.  Prepared by Dieter Folk and Robert Folk

References  

None

Course Outcomes

Students will have:

1. Perform electrical, optical, and atomic experiments that help the students understand the principles and applications taught in Physics 21.
2.  By doing the experiments in the same way as in a research laboratory, the students learn how research is done. We require the students to record what they do, not just the data, in a laboratory notebook in enough detail so that they can redo the experiments later in a lab exam, as described below.
3. Some the experiments are designed to familiarize the students with various techniques and equipment by making measurements in alternate ways. For example, they measure a time-dependent voltage with an oscilloscope and with an analog-to-digital converted fed into a computer in Experiment 2, as described below.
4. With the help of outside resources, many of the experiments are done with research-level equipment.

Relationship between Course Outcomes and Program Outcomes

None

Prerequisites by Topic

1. Mechanics and thermodynamics lab techniques (Physics 12)

2. Electricity and magnetism (Physics 13 0r 21, preferably concurrently)

Major Topics Covered in the Course

(Each laboratory project is one week)

Exp. 1: Measure and draw the equipotential and electric field lines between two conductors that are at different potentials.

Exp. 2: Determine capacitance by measuring the time-dependent voltage in a series RC circuit by two methods described in Course Outcome item 3 above.

Exp. 3: AC circuit (RCL) in steady state.

Exp. 4: Build an operational amplifier and measure its properties.

Exp. 5: First; measure the speed of a wave pulse on a guitar string using Faraday's law to create electrical pulses that are fed through an A/D converter to a computer. Next; Check v = f  for standing waves.

Exp. 6: Measure the charge-to-mass ratio of electrons by accelerating them with a potential measured with a voltmeter and then bending the beam into a specified circle with a magnetic field measured by the induced Faraday voltage that is fed into a computer.

Exp. 7: Measure the frequency-dependent index of refraction of a glass prism using a spectrometer and a mercury-discharge light source.

Exp. 8: Use a spectrometer and a diffraction grating to measure the wavelengths of the visible-part of the hydrogen spectrum and compare the results with the Balmer series formula.

Exp. 9: Geometric optics experiments on converging lens.

Exp. 10: Geometric optics experiments on virtual images and spherical mirrors.

Exp. 11: Geometric optics experiments on two-lens systems including a  telescope.

Exp. 12: Photoelectric effect and measurement of Planck's constant

Exp. 13: Interference and diffration of coherent light. Using a laser light source shown on a double slit and measuring the spacing of the interference pattern on a screen that is two meters away, the wavelength of the light can be determined. The measurement is repeated using a diffraction grating.

Exp 14:  Special Project (see Assessment Plan below)

Assessment Plan for the Course

Every student is required to submit at least thirteen written reports of typically four pages. These are graded and returned. In addition, there is a "special project" assessment at the end of the semester. By random selection, each student is assigned to do one of the thirteen experiments (modified slightly) again without the use of the lab manual. Instead, they must rely on their own lab notebook.  They will do well if they have properly recorded their previous attemtp during the semester. In this way, they learn how to record an experiment.