PHYS 1105 Laboratory Rules

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• DO NOT EVER reboot or turn off the computers!
• 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, or if you turn in a blank 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 notebook (#77610 or #77620).
• The pages of the notebook must be numbered in pen all the way to the end. This is to ensure that none are removed during the semester.
• Lab reports in the notebook are due at the end of the lab period.
• Anyone caught plagiarizing work in the laboratory notebook, from a current or past student's notebook, will receive an F in the course and will be reported to the University Honor Council.
• 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 abstract is very specific. You may want to write the abstract before coming to lab.

• The data

recorded during the lab in pen 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. The conclusion is very general.

• 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.
• The laboratory manuals are NOT meant to be stand-alone documents; students are expected to use a text book for supplementary reading. Often a topic in Physics will be encountered first in the laboratory, and only later will the theory be explained in the lecture.
• When creating a graph by hand use as much of the sheet of paper (graphing paper on the left pages in the laboratory notebooks) as possible. NEVER play connect-the-dots with data points; it is never correct to draw straight lines between gathered data points. It does make sense to draw a best-fit curve if you know the functional form for the data. For example, if you expect on theoretical grounds that the data should lie along a straight line, you can fit the best possible straight line through your data points.

Axes should be labeled, and the units should be given. For example, a plot of velocity(m/s) versus time(seconds).

• The final exam is held in the lab room during the usual lab meeting time. You have the entire period, although it should not take this long. It is open-book, but you will not have access to the computers. For this reason, your abstract written in your lab notebook should be very clear and detailed. You may print hard copies of anything and bring them to the final exam. Bring a hand-held calculator also. In addition to the written questions, there will also be a short experiment which you perform individually.

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