Course Goals

This is a complete immersion experience for physics majors designed to meet the following goals:

1. You will gain insights and hands-on experience in the design and construction of experiments.  You will use knowledge gained (previously or in this course) on sources of error/noise, clever techniques for minimizing those, machining, and electronics, to design and build measurement setups on your own.  In the process you will be exposed to several advanced instrumentation techniques.
2. In most of the projects, you will automate both data acquisition and instrument control using LabVIEW.
3. You will spend a significant amount of time on analysis of data, with an emphasis on computing uncertainties and "fitting" models to your data.  Coming up with your own models, based on you intuition will be a key part of this process.
4. Effectively communicating your ideas and results is a key part of being successful in the sciences.  With this in mind you will be required to make presentations of two kinds: first, orally, during class discussions;  second, you will write papers about your experiments and results, following a writing style appropriate for professional physics journals.

Course Policies

We will meet every weekday (except May 27---memorial day) from 9:15-noon and 1-4:15.  Attendance is mandatory.  If you are unable to attend a particular session due to an emergency or illness, you must contact the instructor immediately.  Potential absences due to scheduled sports events should be discussed with the instructor before the term begins.   

Course Organization

• The course is divided into four rounds, each round roughly corresponding to a separate experiment
• During the first round, you will be assigned a few homework sets to get you up to speed on the concepts behind the experiment, and to get you familiar with essential course components such as error analysis and curve fitting.  In later rounds, you will be expected to do your own research.
• The first paper you write will be based on the Round 1 experiment.  You will submit a first (but complete) draft of this paper very early in the course and then receive feedback on it soon after.  Then you will submit a revised version, based on feedback.  The first draft will have a smaller weight than the final version toward your grade.
• Toward the end of the term, you will submit a final paper, based on Rounds 2 or 3 (you can pick).
• You will use electronic lab notebooks for this course.  You will be given some advice on good lab notebook practices on the first day of class
• There will be 2 LabVIEW tests and 2 midterms during the term.  The midterms will be on specific experiments as well as general skills and techniques (error analysis etc.)

Grade Breakdown

• Homework: 10%
• Midterms and LabVIEW tests: 35%
• Electronic Notebooks: 15%
• Draft 1 of paper 1: 8%
• Final version of paper 1: 12%
• Final paper: 10%
• Contributions to class discussion: 10%

General Advice

1. During the term, plan to spend the bulk of the time you are awake, working on this course.  You will be reading, planning, building, working on experiments, and writing outside of the scheduled class meeting times.  It would be very unwise to take on any other time commitments during this month, such as a job.
2. The only way to become a self reliant experimenter is to do difficult experiments by yourself.  To add to this, you will deliberately be given scant instructions, especially in Rounds 2 through 4.  You will have to read manuals and do your own research on certain apparatus.  In this environment, it is important not to be discouraged by initial failures. Often, the key to a successful experiment is perseverance and a positive attitude.
3. Take this course as an opportunity to develop critical skills that will be important throughout the rest of your career.  We will spend much time developing skills such as experimental design, machining, soldering, data/error analysis, and library/internet research.  In addition to these technical skills, you will also gain skills in communicating your results and ideas, both in written and oral form.  Be prepared to speak up and put forward your own ideas during class discussions.  This is an essential ingredient for success in any career. 
4. You will have one or more partners for all rounds of the term.  This simulates a true research environment where collaborations are the norm.  Therefore, being successful in a collaborative setting is another skill that you can work on.  A key for good collaborative work is discussing and defining, with your group members, the parameters of your partnership.  It is better to do this sooner rather than later in the term.  
5. Even though you will work in groups, you will be held individually responsible for each and every aspect of the experiment you are part of.  Therefore, make sure that you understand each part of an experiment, even if one of your partners led the work on that part.  Testing this is the purpose of the midterms.