General Physics Laboratory II: Introduction to Experimental Methods Spring 2025 Instructor: Dr. Skelton Office Hours: TBA Time: Monday and Thursday OR Tuesday and Friday 1:15 - 4:15; you may well be out early some weeks, and you will be out late on others - this is the nature of experimental science. The lab is in Martin 208-N

Please note that the second semester lab is fundamentally different than the first semester lab. While it is meant to continue to strengthen your understanding of basic physics and meant for you to experience the difference between the ideal and the real, the intention is to learn additional related concepts. Many of the things we will look at will not be the lecture-class focus, so learning this material within the lab is paramount. Due to this, we will have a LAB QUIZ in week 5, covering the basic topics learned in the eight labs: fluids/buiyancy, waves, refraction/optics, DC circuits, AC circuits. We will discuss the format of the quiz later in the semester. 

Structure of the Laboratory:

The physics laboratory is a mixture of pre-laboratory exercises, in-class experiments, computer simulations, and lab reports. I am always upgrading and updating lab equipment, computers, software and the web site, so changes may occur.  Announcements of changes in laboratories will be made during the previous lab.

Laboratory sessions will usually be preceded with class discussion or demonstration explaining specific procedures to be followed.  We are trying to reinforce the abstract concepts learned in class with some real everyday phenomena in order to make the physics meaningful. Often you will discover enough disagreement that you can make some intelligent observations as to the cause of the discrepancy. This is where you can and should add your ideas as to what caused the discrepancy, how you would improve the experiment, or how you would modify the theory to give better agreement.

We will continue to use computers extensively. Computers have become a part of professional practice in the sciences and you need to be exposed to their use. There are pitfalls however that will need to overcome; lost data due to bad disks, bugs in programs or programmers, and a general computer-phobia among the uninitiated.  Don't be afraid of the computers.  I will be happy to show you everything you need to know.

Objectives:

• Students will understand the function of research design and experimentation.
• Students will understand the role and nature of theory explaining and predicting events and phenomena.
• Students will be able to implement classroom and laboratory safety rules and procedures and will take appropriate safety precautions.
• Students will engage in research projects and experiments that include the applications of the design process and technology.
• Students will engage in problem-solving, and will apply physics to solve practical problems.
• Students will understand the contributions of physics to society, including its social, cultural, and economic significance.
• Students will understand the relationship of physics and other sciences to mathematics, the design process, and technology
• In some of the labs, and as part of the final project, students will conduct systematic field investigations using the school grounds, the community, and regional resources
• Each section of the text introduces another step or discovery in the historical development of physics, so the student will understand the historical development of scientific concepts and scientific reasoning

Pre-Laboratory Assignments:

Each week before you get to lab, you will need to prepare for lab: you should read the relevant section from the textbook and read the lab from the web - you will need to spend time studying the material in order to do the pre-lab exercise. The pre-lab exercises can be found by going to the appropriate lab on the lab web page.  All pre-laboratory exercises need to be submitted via Moodle at least 30 minutes prior to lab on lab day and will be averaged as part of your laboratory grade for the course. Strict adherence to this rule is necessary in order to ensure that you are as prepared as your lab partners, late pre-labs are not accepted.

Experiments:

You will be assigned lab partners, switching each two weeks You may choose your own partners for the research project. The laboratory listing on the syllabus is tentative and subject to change; you must check the website one week prior to lab to determine the correct lab that will be done that week.

Reports:

We will have formal and informal lab reports. The informal reports are to be completed satisfactorily before you leave the lab, in your lab notebook. Your lab notebook will be checked each week for a complete infomrmal lab, or you should leave it with your instructor before you leave; either way, it must be completed before you leave lab. It will include purpose, all analysis of data, results, and conclusions. You must have your lab notebook checked before you leave lab on informal lab days. The formal reports are noted on the schedule of labs for the semester. Your formal lab reports may come in different forms, such as oral reports, individual reports, or group reports that consist of proper write-ups which are done outside of class. These reports do not need to be extensive, but should be all-inclusive and concise. Written write-ups are due in one week, on the next lab day. If it is a formal write-up, each person in the lab group must submit the lab electronically as a word-processed document in Moodle before the next lab meeting.

Formal report details: can be found here.
Grading rubric can be found here.

Notebook:

It would be most ideal to use your lab notebook from last semester for this second semester of lab if it is the right type. In any case, you should have a dedicated lab notebook that you can use to keep lab information and record data. The lab notebook must include a bound paper notebook, from which you will not tear any pages, and somewhere to keep handouts and graded work (pockets, 3-ring notebook). This notebook is checked each informal lab week, and must be brought to lab every week. Your lab notes should also be kept in these notebooks. Your informal reports will be written legibly in these notebooks.  You can and should write anything you like in it - notes, data, analysis. This is meant to be a real lab notebook - in scientific labs, everything must be kept in one notebook, easy to follow chronologically, and you should never erase text or tear out pages. The formal labs will be written up from the information contained in these notebooks. All lab handouts and graded formal reports must be kept in these notebooks.

Research:

During the last four weeks of the semester, you will work on a research project of your own design that will culminate in a group presentation on the last day of lab. Details of this project will be explained after mid-semester.

Computers:

We will not use computers to take data every time, although I expect that you will use the computer to analyze data and write lab reports.  As we did in the first semester, we use the Vernier computer interfaces to take data, and Excel to analyze it. If you know and have access to any other scientific analysis software, please feel free to use that instead of Excel. We will talk about them in lab, but hints for how to use the hardware, software and how to present the write-up can be found on the menu bar at the left.

Attendance Policy:

You must attend lab! It is almost impossible to make-up a lab without your lab partners, and there is so much going on in the physics lab that we cannot leave the equipment out all the time. If you are going to miss ANY labs, you should consider taking this lab another time, but ff you know that you will have more than two labs missed, you should definitely not take this lab right now and should take it another time when you can guarantee attendance.

• For any misses, you are still responsible to do the prelab by the original due date and time.
• If you have an undocumented miss (you skip, oversleep, have a meeting that you have scheduled during lab, or work hours that you have scheduled during lab, for example), you receive a zero for that lab.
• If you have one documented miss (because you are on a sports team and have a game, or you have a note from a doctor, associate provost, or equivalent), you must get the data from your lab partners and write up the lab as an informal lab, due the next lab period. If It was meant to be a formal lab, you must instead writeup the next informal lab as a formal lab, due the following lab period.
• If you have a second documented miss, you will need to make up the lab by doing it on your own, and the writeup will be due the next lab period.
• Any further misses will receive zero whether documented or not.

Grading:

Each lab will be on the web ahead of time, and you must read it and do any pre-lab exercise before arriving in lab.   Formal write-ups are graded on a ten point scale. Pre/Post-lab problems are graded on a three point scale.  Late labs will be penalized ten percent per day.

Pre-Labs - 1 point each, about 8
Lab Notebooks/Informal Labs - 5 points each, about 4 informal labs
Formal Write-Ups - 10 points each, about 4
Research Project and Final Presentation - 25 points
Lab Quiz - 12 points
--This adds to 110 points, but if the number of things varies, might be a different total, but regardless, grades will be assigned as the percentage of total points you receive