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Ground Rules for PHY 212/213 lab
1.
Your Instructor:
Mr. Kent Dristle
Telephone 312-2878 email: kent.dristle@oswego.edu
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:45 p.m. to 2:05 p.m. in
Room 120A Snygg Hall.
Web site: www.oswego.edu/~dristle
2.
Laboratory Requirement: You must pass the lab in order to pass the PHY 212 course.
3.
Attendance Requirement: Attendance is not optional. No provisions will be made for missed
labs, exams, or any other laboratory work except in the event of a documented medical or family
emergency or other extenuating circumstances. You must see me and make your case for why you
should be allowed to make up the work. Bring your documentation (note from health center,
health care provider, a note from the student advisement center, etc.). In the event you are allowed
to make up the lab in another instructor’s lab section, you must obtain that instructor’s signature
and the date on your data page. Do not delay. The needed lab equipment is often unavailable after
a week’s time.
4.
Students who have a disabling condition which might interfere with their ability to successfully
complete the lab are encouraged to speak confidentially to the lab instructor and/or to contact the
Office of Disability Services (phone 3358, at 155 Campus Center).
5.
Required Materials:
Bring to the first lab session (and each session thereafter) the following:
• A copy of the PHY 212/213 Lab Manual for Spring 2011 session, purchased from the College
Store.
• A laboratory notebook for recording data and taking notes, purchased from the College Store.
The required lab notebook is a quad-ruled, carbonless copy notebook (such as THE
HAYDEN-McNEIL STUDENT LAB NOTEBOOK). If you have space in the lab
notebook from the 111/112 lab, it can be used for the 212/213 lab.
• Ink or ball point pen to record data during the lab.
• Calculator.
6.
Prepare in advance of the lab by reading the lab write-up in the manual carefully. Look at the
prelab questions in the manual and the related textbook sections referenced. You are expected to
have a grasp of the phenomena that you will be studying before you arrive in the lab. If you come
to the lab un-prepared, you are not being fair to the other members of your team or yourself.
7.
Recording Data: There are no data tables or places to record data provided in the lab manual.
Instead, you are to use the quad-ruled laboratory notebook for data collection. Every person in
your lab group must copy the data into their own lab notebook before you leave. The bottom copy
from your lab book tears out. Give that copy of the data to your lab instructor BEFORE you leave
the lab. No exceptions. Again, each person must do this. It is not acceptable for a representative
to give one copy of your group's data to the instructor.
8.
Lab Reports: Your experimental work in the lab will be reported in two forms: Informal and
formal reports. Although most of your lab reports will be of the informal kind, at least one will be
required to be formal. Your instructor will decide which one.
Click here for the informal lab report requirements
Click here for the formal lab report requirements.
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9.
Lab Partners: You will be working with one or two other people as lab partners while doing the
experiment. It is to your advantage to change lab partners from one week to the next. When lab
partners change, group dynamics change. Your responsibilities in the group will be different.
These varied experiences are good for you. You learn more that way. In any event, each
individual person is responsible for writing their own lab reports. Don't depend on you lab
partners to interpret the lab data for you.
10.
Each lab is due at the beginning of the next lab session. Late labs are not accepted, unless in the
rare case of a well-documented illness or family emergency. (See item 3 above.)
11.
Exams: There will be an exam given at the end of the semester during the last regularly scheduled
lab period.
12.
Your final lab grade will be determined with the following emphasis:
• Lab reports: (both informal and formal)85%
• Exam
10%
• Participation:
5%
The “participation” category would include your instructor’s general observations as to your
preparedness and teamwork. Your final lab grade will be submitted to your lecture instructor.
Your lecture instructor is free to assign whatever weight they want to your final lab grade in the
determination of your overall grade for PHY 212, but one thing you must always keep in mind is
that you cannot pass the PHY 212 course without passing the lab.
13.
Personal Responsibility: Remember that you are a member of a team and that each member is
responsible for the quality of the data taken. It is never an acceptable excuse to say that your lab
partner messed things up. Do not blindly trust your partner to get it right. Always double check
what you are recording for measurements. Scientists are never offended when their work is
checked by others.
14.
Changes to the lab manual: At times the lab instructor may direct you to make changes to what
is in the manual. You may be required to answer some additional questions, a procedure may have
to be modified (because of changes in available lab equipment), or you may even be given an
entirely different lab to do that is not in the manual. Please pay close attention to these directions
so there is no confusion over what you are required to do.
15.
If there is ever an issue of safety or possible damage to the apparatus, you should see your
instructor immediately.
16.
Try to do your best, no matter how hard the challenge may be. If you have questions, you may
see me in person during office hours or at other times by appointment. You may also email your
questions to me. I’d rather have you tell me that you don’t understand something before the lab is
due than to find out when I’m grading your paper. May you have a productive semester.
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Requirements for the Informal Lab Report
• Cover sheet – Include title of experiment, your name, your partner’s names, and the date of
the experiment.
• Abstract stating briefly what was done, how it was done, and your results.
• Data including all spreadsheets and graphs generated for the experiment.
• All calculations requested neatly displayed so the instructor can follow them. Include percent
difference calculations between predicted and experimental values
.
• If any comments on results or answers to questions are requested, include them. Be precise
and concise.
These informal reports are to be written individually and
submitted one week after the completion of the experiment.
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Requirements for the Formal Lab Report
Experimental work is often reported to one’s peers in the form of a written formal report. One
experiment carried out this semester (your instructor will decide which one) will require a formal
report that has all the elements of a paper that might be submitted to a conference or for
publication. The due date for the formal report is one week after the completion of the experiment.
1.
Cover Sheet – Include the title of the experiment reported on, your name, your partner’s name,
and the date of the experiment and the date submitted. Also include on the coversheet the abstract.
2.
Abstract – In 3-5 sentences, summarize what you did, how you did it, the main results, and what
conclusions you have drawn. Avoid references to the main body of the report. Write the abstract
after you have finished the rest of the report.
3.
Introduction and background – Introduce your report by stating the significance of the
experiment and what it is trying to show. Use this first paragraph to grab hold of the reader and
motivate the reader to look further for details.
Follow the opening paragraph with a short summary of the main theoretical knowledge about the
subject of the experiment, including relevant equations. You may wish to impress your reader
with some derivations of the equations that you will use later on in your calculations.
4.
Experimental Methods and Details – Here you should provide an overview of the methods and
procedures used to get your results. This does not mean that you list in “cookbook” fashion the
steps followed, but instead you should give a diagram of the set-up, and enough discussion to let
the reader know that you know what you are doing. You should write this section so that if you
read the paper ten years later you would know what you did and could repeat it. One page or less
should be sufficient.
5.
Data and Analysis – Present your data and calculations based on the data. Include spreadsheets
and graphs generated. On spreadsheets, it should be clear what each column represents and how
each successive column is generated. Graphs should be labeled (title and axes) and linear trend
lines displayed along with slope values to at least 3 digits. Include R-squared values for all linear
fits.
When showing a calculation of a final result using an equation developed earlier, make reference
to it. For example, “Using Equation (number), the value for ____ can be calculated.” Do not
include simple math or repetitive calculations.
6.
Results and Conclusions – Present and discuss your final results. Then state whether your
calculated results and the predicted values are consistent and reasonable. If the experimental value
for a parameter is measured more than once, are they in reasonable agreement? One of the most
difficult things for somebody in the physics lab for the first time to do is to know if their results
are reasonable. In some cases 5-10% is reasonable. If you are “wildly off the mark,” it is usually
because you have made mistakes in the analysis of the data (using equations incorrectly etc.) If
you can't figure out what went wrong, go back and check with your instructor.
Some discussion of error (uncertainty) is expected. “Human error” is not an acceptable term when
one is striving to be precise and concise. Look for sources of statistical (random) error and
systematic error (tending to make values all high or all low).