PHYS 1201 Fall 2012 Instructor TA Dr. Dana Browne Paul Maggi 219B Nicholson 460 Nicholson phowne@lsu.edu pmaggi1@lsu.edu This course will include laboratory experiments from the material presented in PHYS 1201, but will emphasize activities intended to build skill in experimental technique. You will find your text for 1201 to be a useful place to start in understanding some of the experiments we perform. Lab handouts will be posted on Moodle a week before you perform the lab, or provided in hard copy in lab the week before. You are expected to read the handout prior to the lab. To ensure this, we may administer a short quiz on the lab handout at the start of each lab. In addition to the lab handouts, you should keep a binder with paper as a lab notebook to keep informati on about the experiment s you do. In actual laboratory work, you must keep sufficient information about the work so that you could repeat the experiment entirely from your notes. This also means that someone else could repeat your experiment from the notes. Therefore, it is important to record experimental details and results in your lab notebook. You will find it useful to have a ruler, protractor, and a scientific calculator with you. While the computer software we use in lab is quite sophisticated, sometimes that is not to your benefi t beca use it hides what is going on. Y ou should also bring a USB dri ve to download the data recorded by the software. You will need that data for your lab write up. You can also archive your data on TigerBytes. 80% of your grade will be fro m the lab reports. The TA will be grading all the reports and quizz es. You will take the data in lab, and will be expec ted to turn in your compl ete report at the start of the nex t lab, unl ess we instruct you differently. Late lab reports will be subject to a hea vy penalt y. While we wil l not requi re formal labora tory reports at the beginning, we will expect that you provide details (you wrote them in your lab notebook) about detail s on how you did the experiment. You must als o answer every question posed in the body of the lab handout. You will also supply a copy of any data sheets that contain your data. We expect that you and your lab partner will have the same data. Your analysis of that data should be your own work and be expressed in yo ur own words. Y ou may be asked to turn in your lab notebook along with your report, and its state will be part of your grade on the lab. The remaining 20% of your grade will come from quizzes on the lab material, and a final lab practicum. If you miss a lab, you should contact one of us immediately to see if the lab can be made up at anoth er time in the same wee k. No labs will be dropped excep t wi th an appro ved University excuse.
