Laboratory Rules

• No food. No drinks. No smoking.
• No stupidity -- if you break anything, you replace it.
• You must attend the lab section for which you are registered.
• Pre-labs are due when you enter the room -- no extensions.
• If you do not hand in a prelab, you will not be permitted to perform the lab.
• No one is admitted to the lab room 10 minutes after the lab begins.
• Each student must have his/her own lab manual and a lab notebook.
• Lab reports in the notebook are due at the end of the lab period.
• Labs must be written in pen, not pencil. Do not erase; put a single line through unwanted data. Neatness counts.
• Labs will be graded on a scale from 0 to 5 as follows:
  5 = Complete and excellent work
  4 = Satisfactory, but with some minor errors
  3 = Significant errors or omissions
  2 = Very little correct or useful work
  1 = Lab report handed in, but with minimal work
  0 = Missed lab
• Every lab report must include:
  • The names of all the people in your lab group
  • Your lab station number (0-9)
  • An abstract
    This is a brief summary of the experiment about to be performed. You should explain what data you will gather, the procedure for gathering the data, and the reason for gathering the data. You can (and should) write this ahead of time.
  • The data
    recorded during the lab with units and error estimates, arranged neatly on the page.
  • Error analysis
    In this section, you will identify the source of the error and state the effect of the error on the analysis and the conclusion. Was the error random (statistical) or systematic? Was it caused by the equipment or by the use of the equipment? Propagate the errors in your data to any quantities calculated from your data.
  • A conclusion
    This is a brief answer to the following question: "What did I learn from the experiment, from my data, and from my analysis?" You will not be required to prove the theory, in fact you must not even try to prove the theory. If the data that you collected and the subsequent error analysis do not support the physical theory, do not force it.
• Students will pair-up differently for each experiment.
• When writing a lab report, it will be helpful to imagine as your audience (1) another student with a Physics background who has not taken the lab but who wants to understand what you have done and (2) yourself ten years from now -- you should be able to reconstruct the lab from your own report. Include sufficient detail so that you will know why you did things and how you did them.

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