Filename: S'00 Project Information
Date Modified: 3/9/2016 6:21:00 AM
PHYSICS 132 PROJECT INFORMATION (SPRING 2000)
Schedule
Mon
Mar 20
Project Information Distributed
Tue
Mar 21
5pm Project Preferences due
Wed
Mar 22
Project Teams formed
Mon
Mar 24 Team Project proposals due
Mon
Mar 27
Proposals Returned/Projects Begin
Fri
Apr 14
Formal Project Report Due Before Class (Version 1)
Wed
Apr 19
Project Report Returned for revision
Tues
Apr 25
Formal Project Report Due by 5 pm (Version 2)
Wed/Fri
April 26/28
Team Oral Reports (10 min ea. +5 min Q&A)
Fri
April 28 Group Assessment Summary Forms Due at 5pm
(No credit for project until form from each team member received)
Physics Project
The goals of your project are to: (1) help you extend your understanding of a topic in physics of special interest to
you and one or two partners; (2) give you experience with teamwork; (3) help you learn more about the processes of
scientific investigation and library research, and (4) enhance your ability to give an oral presentation and to write a
well organized and lucid scientific report using contemporary computer tools.
Because your project is a collaborative effort with 2 or 3 investigators it should be a substantial report backed by
both data your team has obtained and by library research on theoretical aspects of the topic you are studying. An
appropriate report length is about 20 pages. The 20 pages is a guideline and not an exact requirement, so don't
bother padding the report with unorganized ramblings, irrelevant data or wide margins and big spaces.
You are encouraged to choose a team of 2 or 3 to investigate one of the following areas: electricity, circuits,
magnetism, or thermodynamics. Each project must involve both theoretical and experimental research which can be
done collaboratively. The intended audience for your report is a classmate with a similar physics background to
yours who has not done your specific project. You and your partners can work together to prepare data tables,
graphs, and apparatus drawings. The formal requirements for each project will inlcude: (1) a written team report in
which the details of organization and the actual writing, derivation of needed equations are worked out by your
team and (2) an oral presentation for your class.
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For Theoretical Background
A required component of every project is to learn about your topic and speak and write about it in an organized way
in your project report citing important references. References to books and journal articles will be essential to help
you with historical background, qualitative discussions of phenomena, and the derivation of key equations used for
data analysis. In fact, you are required to cite relevant references in your report.
In addition to the introductory physics textbooks available in Room 104 there are a number of other books and
journals in the Physics Reading Room (Room 15) in the basement of Tome. If you are curious about something, ask
your instructor to suggest some references. Students working in interdisciplinary areas may find references in the
main library or in other departmental libraries. There is one book in particular that is full of project ideas: Jearl
Walker, The Flying Circus of Physics (Wiley, New York). This book is in the Physics Reading Room.
For Data Collection and Analysis
The major experimental analysis tools available for projects will be computer-based laboratory systems (including
the ULI and sensors such as those for temperature, pressure, current, voltage, and magnetic field), the video analysis
system (including a video camera, VCR, and the VideoPoint software), electrical meters and thermometers (ordinary
and/or digital).
Requirements for the Written and Oral Project Report
The process of doing research, data analysis, writing, more research, and rewriting is one that scientists at universities,
colleges, and industrial and government laboratories engage in on a regular basis. We ask you to work with your team
and do only one project each semester so that it can receive special attention. We would like you to have the time to
engage in the real world process of doing science and give you a chance to communicate the outcome of research
effectively to peers both orally and in the form of a formal written report. Your audience for these reports is not your
instructor but rather students who are taking Physics 132.
Preparing the First Version of the Formal Written Report (Version 1)
As you write your group reports, imagine that the audience consists of fellow students in your class who have not seen the
apparatus or done the project you have undertaken. Would such a reader be able to understand what you did and what the
significance of your results is?
Each formal report must be word processed with data and graphs included in appropriate places in the main body
of the text rather than tacked on at the end. Each project report will be graded and returned for revision. After it is
revised by you, it will be resubmitted and the instructor will assign a second grade to it. The project and due dates
for the laboratory reports a listed at the beginning of this document. The Formal Reports should be completed with
careful attention to the eight items listed in Table 1 on the next page.
A set of reports written in previous years by groups are available in Room 104. They show how prose, apparatus
drawings using SuperPaint, the equation editor, spreadsheet data tables, and graphs can all be incorporated into your
group’s project report. You can learn to make apparatus drawings with a program called “SuperPaint” which is on
the network.
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TABLE 1: ELEMENTS OF AN EXPERIMENTAL PROJECT REPORT
1. The date, course name and number, and your section;
2. Your name, the name of your partner(s), and the project title;
3. An Abstract that tell concisely and clearly what your paper is all about. I.e.: What is interesting - Why should
someone read it? What is new? What is it that is the essence of the paper that follows?
or alternatively:
A statement of the purpose of the project or experiment. Ideally the purpose of your project will be to test a general
hypothesis you have formulated about the nature of motion. This hypothesis should be developed on the basis of
specific observations that you or members of your group have made. See the chart appended to this document for
more details.
4. A summary of relevant theory and equations that would support your hypothesis. If the key equations used in
calculations are not derived in your text, they should be derived in this section of the report. If possible, you must
look up and cite other references that provide you with added theoretical grounding for the project.
5. A description of the experiment your group designed to test your hypothesis. This should include a summary of
your procedures and a list of the equipment used. You should also include an apparatus drawing with appropriate
labels attached.
6. A summary of relevant data (in tabular form) and graphs showing key relationships. If you have collected a lot of
data remember that the reader will not want to see huge tables that run on forever. If you have a large body of data
that you think is important summarize it in the main part of your report and append the rest.
7. Calculations and data analysis. Explain clearly how you processed your data. How did you arrive at your results?
What intermediate steps did you take? You might want to display a sample calculation of each kind of calculation
you made in order to obtain your final result. (Note: This means, for example, that the equations used to calculate
each column in a spread sheet should be presented);
8. Results displayed usually in the form of graphs showing essential relationships. Graph axes must be clearly
labeled and have units;
9. A discussion of results and conclusions. This discussion must include an assessment of whether or not your
hypothesis was verified by your specific investigations and a summary of the most significant things your group
learned from the project. Also you should summarize sources of uncertainty and offer suggestions for improvement
of the experiment.
Writing the Final Report (Version 2)
Your instructors will read and critique the first version of your report. Next your team should rewrite the report
based on comments you receive on your written and oral reports. In most cases the revisions will involve such
activities as re-analysis of data, rewriting to improve clarity, and reformatting your report to improve its appearance.
However, in cases where the data your team obtained is poor or not very complete your team may want to get
together to retake and re-analyze the data. On the due date of the final report, you and your team must submit:
1. The final printed version of your team report (Version 2)
2. Version 1 of your team's report
WARNING! Your report grade cannot be assigned until the instructors have both items.
Preparing an Oral Presentation and Commenting on Other Presentations
Once Version 2 of your formal report is completed, you should work with members of your team to prepare for an
oral presentation of your project. You should use the Microsoft PowerPoint software to project computer images of
your key points, data, and diagrams. Each team will be allotted 10 minutes to report and 5 minutes to answer
questions. Every class member who is not in your team will be asked to comment on your oral report and make
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recommendations for its improvement. These comments will be passed along to you shortly after the presentations
are completed. You in turn will be asked to write brief comments on the oral reports of other teams with
suggestions for improvement as you listen to the other presentations. The quality of your comments on the other
presentations will count as 10% of your individual project grade.
Grading Criteria for the Project:
Thirty five percent of the grade is based on the quality of Version 1 of your formal project broken down as follows:
 Twenty five percent on the scientific merit of your team's final written project report including the clarity of the
writing, the accuracy and completeness of the data and its analysis, and the quality of the conclusions.
 Ten percent on the appearance of your team's final written report. How well is your group using word
processing and other software to create a well formatted, attractive final report with drawings, data tables, and
graphs integrated smoothly into the report?
Thirty five percent of the grade is based on the quality of Version 2 of your formal project broken down as per
Version 1 (scientific merit 25% and appearance 10%
Twenty percent of the grade on your project is based on the quality of your team's oral report. Did each member
participate equally? Was the talk well organized and instructive? Could your classmates hear and understand you?
Were the graphs and data presented clear and easy to understand. Did the group finish in its allotted time of 10
minutes?
Ten percent of your project grade is based on the quality of your comments on each team's oral presentation (10%).
Individual grades on the project report will be based on a combination of the team's grade on the project report and
the quality of your contribution to the project as reported by fellow team members. Thus, you will be required to
estimate the relative % that each member, including yourself, has contributed to the overall quality of the project. We
will distribute a form for this purpose shortly before Version II of the project report is due.
Grading Summary
Formal Report (Version 1)
Formal Report (Version 2)
Oral Report
Oral Report Critique
35%*
35%*
20%*
10%
*These grades are adjusted to take the quality of the individual contribution to your team effort into account as detailed above.
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Physics 132 Project Ideas
ELECTRICITY, MAGNETISM, AND CIRCUITS:
1. Coulomb's Law:
In Unit 19 (Section 19.6) you will use video analysis to study the electrostatic interaction between two point charges. This study
can be extended to allow you to study the electric field created by extended charge distributions such as the charged rod and
charged disk, and use spreadsheet modeling to compare experimental results with those obtained theoretically from the
application of Coulomb's Law. Those choosing this project should be prepared to videotape interactions between a "test" charge
and a charge distribution early some morning when the weather is unusually cold and dry and people with humid breath haven’t
been walking around in the room.
2. Exponential Growth and Decay :
In Unit 24 you studied the exponential decay of electrical charge in capacitors. The decay of charge from a capacitor which is
placed in a simple circuit with a resistor is exponential and has a characteristic half-life. There are several other exponential
decay processes in physics such as radioactive decay and the cooling of a hot object. In biology and chemistry there are a number
of exponential growth and decay processes. In this project, other examples of exponential processes can be studied and can lead
to a deeper understanding of why systems that seem to be entirely different also undergo exponential processes. What do such
systems have in common?
3. Electronic Design:
If you enjoy the wiring of the amplifier or digital stopwatch in Unit 25, you might want to do a library research project in which
you learn more about how integrated circuits are constructed and what other integrated circuit elements can do, and then attempt
to design of your own simple electronic device. This type of project would be appropriate for those interested in electrical or
computer engineering.
4. The e/m Experiment:
Although the mass and charge and an electron are incredibly tiny by everyday standards, in Unit 26 did an experiment to
determine the charge to mass ratio by bending a beam of electrons in a magnetic field. By doing more careful measurements
under different circumstances, how close can you come to the accepted value of the e/m ratio? This is a good project for those
who would like to do a careful repeat of a historically significant experiment.
5. Faraday's Law
In Unit 27 you will do a Faraday's Law experiment. Faraday’s Law is one of the most significant discoveries in electricity and
magnetism. The projects you will do in Activity 27.11 deserves to be expanded and done with much more care. For example,
how does the wave form in the pickup coil differ when the wave form in the field coil changes? Is the amplitude of the wave form
detected in the pickup coil really proportional to the frequency of the wave form delivered to the field coil? How good are the
data. Does the flux through the pickup coil really vary as the cosine of the angle between the plane of the pickup coil and the
plane of the field coil? By using a magnetic field that varies sinusoidally in the experiment to can explore some important
properties of alternating current circuits.
6. RLC Circuits:
You can combine in class experience with both capacitor decay and Faraday’s Law to study the behavior of alternating current
circuits. Just as any pair of conductors separated by an insulator can be a capacitor (C), any coil of wire can be an inductor (L).
An RLC circuit consisting of a resistor, inductor and capacitor can be made to behave like a mechanical harmonic oscillator that
is driven sinusoidally. It is interesting to study the behavior of RLC circuits.
7. Constructing an Electric Generator:
You can construct a generator that turns mechanical energy into electrical energy. All you need is some PVC pipe, a magnet and
some wire. The design, construction and analysis of the performance of a generator can give you first hand experience with the
physical principles that apply to the generation of hydroelectric power.
8. Constructing an electrochemical cell
This is a good project for chemists. The challenge is construct a cell using chemicals and electrodes that can act as a battery.
Then the properties of the battery can be then explored--what is the potential difference, its internal resistances, its ampere-hours
and so on. This would have to be done in one of the chemistry labes.
HEAT AND TEMPERATURE:
1. Melting Ice
When ice is thrown into a liquid that has a higher temperature it melts. However, the time it takes the ice to melt can depend on
many factors such as the shape of the ice, the mass of ice, the amount of the liquid, its temperature, the type of liquid whether or
not you stir the liquid while the ice is melting and so on. Can you design an experiment to test one or more of these factors?
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2. Expanding Objects
It is well known that rod shaped objects can expand or contract as temperature changes. How does the change in the length of a
rod depend on its change in temperature? Do all types of materials change length by the same amount? Can you find an equation
that describes the length change of a rod as a function of the temperature change. How can your equation be used to predict the
expansion of rods of other lengths?
3. Controlling Freezing and Boiling Temperatures
Rock salt is often used on roads in the winter so they won't ice up as easily. Certain substances, such as salt, the are soluble in
water can melt ice. This is because the mixture of salt and water has a lower freezing temperature than water does. Can you think
of some other substances that might change the freezing or boiling temperature of water? Can you measure the effect of some
substances on freezing and boiling temperatures? How might the amount of the substance added affect these temperatures?
4. When Does Coffee Cool the Fastest?
You group is consulting at an upscale coffee bar that specializes in gourmet coffee to go. The coffee is poured ahead of time and
it takes an average of 5 minutes for a server at the takeout window to hand the coffee to a customer. The manager of the coffee
bar wants to deliver piping hot coffee and wants to know if the cream should be added when the coffee is first poured or just
before the server hands the coffee to the customer. What does your consulting team predict as the best approach. How can you
test your predictions?
5. Heat of Fusion/Vaporization
You are part of a team of engineers at a candle factory assigned to reduce production costs. A new supplier sends samples of
candle wax to your team, and it is important to determine which type of wax takes the least energy to melt. Your team is trying to
devise a way to measure how much heat energy is given off when melted wax solidifies in water. This would enable you to test
each type of wax and see which one has the lowest heat of fusion.
6. Determining the composition of an object
A queen wants to know if her crown is made mostly of aluminum or brass. As a member of a team of consultants, you have
information on the specific heat of both brass and aluminum. How can your team use this knowledge to determine the percentage
of each material in the alloy?
8. How Objects Cool
Suppose you are asked along with others in your engineering group to determine how best to reduce the cooling rate of water in
an open and in a closed container? What factors do cooling rates depend on? How can you determine the relative influence of
each of these factors?
9. Heating/Cooling:
In Unit 16 Section 16.7 you will study cooling rates. The actual law of cooling used to analyze this experiment is believed to
represent a combination of different cooling processes. An extension of the Activities in Section 16.7 could include studying the
cooling processes that might come into play in different situations. You could study the cooling of a light bulb filament or of the
air on a cold night, or of different liquids.
10. Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Rubber Bands:
Rubber behaves very differently than metals when stretched and when heated. How and why rubber behaves so differently can be
the subject of a fascinating open ended investigation.
11. A Rubber Band Heat Engine:
In Unit 19 you will be studying heat engines. In general, a heat engine is a device that extracts thermal energy from a hot body,
does useful work, and deposits some waste thermal energy into a cold body. Like gases, rubber bands can change their size when
heated and cooled and do mechanical work in the process. Using a simple design and making careful adjustments of the engine
components, it is possible to construct an ultra low power working heat engine out of rubber bands, cardboard, a heat lamp, a
wooden dowel and small ball bearings and also to study the properties of rubber bands as they are heated and cooled. This
project is a good one for budding mechanical engineers.
12. Heat Engine: Efficiency:
In Unit 19 you will be studying heat engines. In general, a heat engine is a device that extracts thermal energy from a hot body,
does useful work, and deposits some waste thermal energy into a cold body. You can do a more complete study of the thermal
efficiency of the mass lifting heat engine described in Unit 18 or one of the other miniature engines we have available. (See P.
Laws for details).
13. Solar Heating:
There are three ways that heat energy can be transferred. Conduction, convection, and radiation. In this project you can be
challenged to use cardboard panels cut out of cartons, saran wrap, and a heat lamp, and other materials to see if you can design a
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solar house which is efficient in the collection and storage of solar energy from a "heat lamp sun" that cycles on and off. By
doing some basic measurements you can construct a computer model of the behavior of your house.
14. The pop-pop Boat:
There is a small "steam engine" driven toy boat that has a narrow metal tube inside each end of which extends into the water. A
small flame boils water in the tube rapidly. The expansion of the steam pushes the steam out of the ends of the tube so the boat
moves forward. After expansion, the steam cools enough to create a partial vacuum which refills the tube with water, and the
cycle begins again. A group might try to analyze the thermodynamics of this engine. For more information on the Internet see:
http://www.nmia.com/~vrbass/pop-pop/
15. Diurnal Changes in Temperature
In general temperatures change diurnally. That is, they go down at night and up in the daytime. What are some typical patterns of
temperature rise and fall on clear days? On cloudy days. Monitor outside temperatures for a couple of days (you can use a
computer system to do this automatically). Can you fit the curves with well known functions. Can you relate the functional
relationships to theory?
NOTE: The projects described are meant to be suggestions only. If you and your partners think of a project that interests you more, feel free to
describe it in your porposal and discuss it with your instructor.