PH1100H Labs Lab# Week Lab Name: 1 Week 1 Intro. to Measurement and Error Analysis 2 Week 2 Motion and Velocity 3 Week 3 Changing Motion (Acceleration) 4 Week 4 Newton's Second Law 5 Week 5 Energy 6 Week 6 Momentum 7 Week 8 Newton's Second Law for Rotational Motion 8 Week 9 Angular Momentum 9 Week 7 Springs and Pendula (Harmonic Motion) 10 Week 10 Waves 11 Week 11 Speed of Sound In Air 12 Week 12 Speed of Transverse Waves on a String 13 Week 13 Heat Capacity and Specific Heat 14 Week 14 Ideal Gas Law 15 Week 15 Makeups
Students work in small groups of three, with collaboration between groups in the lab to encourage peer learning. Students in lab observe and describe phenomena in their own words, decide what variables might affect phenomena, measure the effect of those variables and develop a functional relationship between variables which describes the phenomenon. Students then test their functional relationship for accuracy, and perform error analysis to examine and improve the functional relationship.
Tools utilized by students in the physics laboratory consist of Windows based Pentium computers with data acquisition and data analysis software, data acquisition hardware including a variety of sensors such as motion detectors, force, temperature, light, current, and voltage probes. These data acquisition systems are coupled with a variety of traditional physics laboratory apparatus to allow students to look at and analyze numerous types of physical phenomena, including a second semester look at several modern physics concepts.
Course Rationale:
The physics department has recently implemented a complete
renovation and redesign of the physics laboratories. This
design of the physics labs is a mixture based on current
research in physics education performed at the Universities
of Oregon, Washington, Tufts, Kansas State, and at Dickinson
College. The redesign has included upgrading all equipment
to create highly technologically advanced labs. The labs
use a discovery format, which is not only pedagogically more
sound, but is also designed to insure students have a common
experience base when they enter the more formal introductory
physics classes the following semester.
The primary goals of the physics laboratories are to extend the student's skills at observation, error analysis, data acquisition, data analysis, drawing conclusions based on observation and analysis, group work and collaboration, and to gain familiarity with physics concepts and phenomena prior to the more theoretical and mathematical presentation in the introductory physics lecture/recitation sections.