FIRST YEAR LABORATORY
THE SHORT EXPERIMENTS
In weeks 6 to 11 of this term you and a partner will be doing a variety of Short Experiments. Each
experiment is designed to take you up to two sessions and you are expected to attempt six in total.
There are eleven experiments on offer, mostly with six sets of equipment for each. This means
most experiments will be in use most of the time and you will have to chose from those available as
you move from one to the other but you should be able nonetheless to do those that you find most
appealing.
There will be two demonstrators assigned to each experiment and they will all be able to help you
as required. One of them will be assigned to you specifically and he/she will be assessing you.
A rack of cards for each set of equipment is kept in the laboratory. ‘Signing up’ for an experiment
is done by taking one of the cards. [Note there are separate racks for Monday/Tuesday sessions and
Thursday/Friday sessions]. If there are no cards left on a particular experiment then it is fully
booked and not available. Forward booking (i.e. taking cards for use later) is not allowed and
will result in your being excluded from the experiment! Once you have taken a card you should
give it to Robert Whisker or Harish Dawda who will record your choice. The scripts are in the
yellow trays just inside the door to the workshop area, and a map of the lab above the racks will
show you where the equipment for your experiment is located.
Once you are signed up for an experiment you will be assigned a demonstrator who will be given
your assessment form. You don't have to write a report for short experiments but to complete the
assessment you write a one page summary of each experiment you complete in your lab book and
meet with your demonstrator for a short interview to discuss it. This one page summary and short
interview will be assessed by your demonstrator and will count towards your final mark for that
experiment. You are encouraged to try and complete the one page summary within the lab time
but this isn't compulsory. If you haven't completed the summary in lab, then it is your
responsibility to complete it as soon as possible and then to arrange a time to meet with your
demonstrator to have your interview and lab book assessed. If you fail to do this before the end of
week 11 then the experiment will not be accredited to you. Your demonstrator will return the
completed assessment sheet back to the office (Robert or Harish).
When you have finished an experiment Robert or Harish will return the experiment card to the rack
and you can select your next experiment from those whose cards are available in the rack.
THE EXPERIMENTS:
Newton’s Constant: Use a torsion balance to measure G, the gravitational constant.
Helmholtz Coil: Measure the horizontal component, BH , of the Earth’s magnetic field.
Cosmic Rays: Measure the cosmic ray flux and study its relationship to muon decay and
absorption in the atmosphere.
Forced and Coupled Oscillators: Examine resonant system using analogue electronic circuits.
Vibrations of a 2-D Plate: Learn more about waves by examining Chladni figures.
LabView: An introduction to computer control and data acquisition in experimental physics.
Relativistic Kinematics: Interpret and identify the decay properties of high energy particles.
Coulomb Balance: Investigate the interaction of electric charges. Measure the constants in
Coulomb’s law.
The Not So Simple Pendulum: Use a simple pendulum to test the equivalence principle and
explore the physics of coupled oscillators.
Michelson Interferometer: A classic interferometer which is still used for both fundamental
experiments and numerous applications.
Single Photon Interference: Can a single photon pass through two slits to make an interference
pattern?
Dr. Ben Sauer
Head of First Year Laboratory
January 2009