The goal of the Experimental Physics X-athlon is to provide you with the opportunity for laboratory experiences in up to twelve major areas of physics. You will learn key ideas that shape specific topics of physics and find ways to construct experiments that build your own knowledge around these ideas. You will use unique types of instrumentation with insight into how they work and how specific technical innovations have gone hand in hand with advancing our fundamental knowledge of physics. Finally, you will devise and experience a variety of methods for analyzing and presenting data, exercising critical judgment about how well you believe measurement has advanced understanding.
The ultimate aim is for you to immerse yourself and find out how each major area of physics is connected to ongoing research and to applications of physics to technology. Thus you will gain both breadth and depth in understanding the practical application of fundamental physics in and beyond the laboratory. You will see physics as it is actually practiced in experimental research and you will build confidence that you can attend and learn from research sessions at professional physics meetings. Importantly, you will also prepare for job interviews and/or grad school applications through your personal summaries of the insights that you have learned.
Your specific goal is to complete, over two semesters, one experiment each in eight of the twelve major topic areas of physics, allotting three lab sessions per experiment. You can then do four more independently if you have caught the experimental physics “bug” and want to complete a whole dodecathlon (X=12). You may also wish to branch out into the topical explorations that provide experiments in areas of overlap between physics and other disciplines (X>12). And finally, you may wish to return to some areas and do additional experiments in specialties that particularly interest you (specialized XS = 3 – 7 ?) .