Spring 2018

Spring 2018: Senior Physics Lab (PHYC 493L)

Instructor: Victor Acosta, vmacosta@unm.edu

Office: CHTM, Rm 115A (please make an appointment)

Teaching Assistant: Changhao Yi, yichanghao123@unm.edu

Class meets: Wednesdays and Thursdays 2:00 -- 5:00 pm; P&A Rm 126

Textbook: None.

Final exam: Wednesday, May 9, 3:00 - 6:00 pm in P&A 1131. Pairs of students deliver oral presentations (30 min).

Intro slides: here. Photon statistics talk here.

Class schedule. Contains all deadlines, please check frequently.

Overview: Senior Lab is organized around modules that are expected to last about 4 weeks. The modules are more complicated than 100--300 level undergraduate labs. You will find less specific instruction; independent problem-solving is expected. This is an excellent environment in which to develop laboratory skills.

The course is broken into 4 modules, each lasting ~4 weeks. Students should work in teams of 2 (or, if necessary, 3). Team members will be rotated at the conclusion of each module.No student may have the same teammate more than twice during the semester. Students are required to complete the following, in order, before May 9 (the final):

-3 standard modules from the list below

-One final project module.

Standard Modules:

1) Nuclear Physics. Instructions. Amendments

UCS 30 multi-channel analyzer manual

This 1962 video shows how muon (mu-meson) decay can be used to demonstrate time dilation in special relativity. Although not exactly the same experiment performed in this module, it illustrates the experimental difficulties physicists dealt with more than a half-century ago when trying to measure muon decay.

2) Wavemeter. Instructions. This experiment is shared with Optics Lab.

3) Diffraction of Single Photons. Instructions. Photon number calculation

4) Doppler Velocimetry. Instructions. This experiment is shared with Optics Lab.

5) Lock-in Amplifier. Instructions. This doc replaces Sec 3.0

6) Saturated Absorption spectroscopy. Instructions

Final Project Module: Students will choose any of the above experiments (excluding Nuclear Physics) and:

1) Develop and test their own hypothesis that is different from the standard lab module (but uses the same hardware). (1-page proposal due 4/5).

2) Automate the experiment and acquire data using labview.

3) Present findings in 30 min oral presentation (in place of final exam).

Grading: Students will be graded on:

-participation (including electronic lab notebook), 10%.

-standard module writeup, 20% x3.

-final project oral presentation, 30%.

Each module will be graded 50 percent on the quality of the work and 50 percent on the clarity and professionalism of the writeup/oral presentation. Late modules will be marked down one full letter grade for each week late. The instructors will often be working directly with the student teams and will have plenty of opportunity to assess your progress. Be sure to engage them in discussion and ask plenty of questions. Students must attend each lab session unless explicitly excused by the instructor. Participation is important and unexcused absences will affect the first component of grading.

Lab Notebook: Students are expected to bring a laptop to each class. On every module, each team will be responsible for maintaining a detailed electronic notebook file. Thus in total, each student will have 4 different notebook files and each file will have 2 (or, if necessary, 3) co-authors. We will use Google Docs to record all information; this will make writeups easier and allow for easy collaboration amongst teams. Relevant information should be recorded as the experiment progresses. A useful description (if somewhat outdated) of the lab notebook procedure can be found here. The instructor will periodically look through the lab notebooks unannounced. You will be graded on completeness and clarity of information. This is a case where style is less important and we encourage you to use shorthand, photos, screenshots, etc. to make the note-taking process less time consuming. Please create and share your Google doc with victormarcelacosta@gmail.com at the beginning of every module.

Writeups: Developing technical writing skills is an important component of this course. An accomplished scientist must be adept at properly explaining and documenting his/her work following established conventions. There are many brilliant physicists who have been hampered in their professional careers because of an inability to do this well.

For the standard modules, each student on the team is responsible for producing a separate report no later than 2 weeks after the completion of the module. The writeup should follow the format of a formal technical document that you would see in a physics journal. There should be an abstract that concisely summarizes what you have done. An Introduction orients the reader to the work with background material. There should be a section that clearly describes the experiment with diagrams and details. This is followed by sections for Results (graphs and/or tables are almost mandatory), Analysis/Discussion, and a short Conclusion. References are listed last.

Use a template from a research journal of your choice (eg. APS, OSA). Search online or simply look in the hallways of our physics building for plenty of examples. There is no page requirement, but be sure to write clearly and concisely. The 2-week deadline is in place for two reasons: i) it's best to work on the report while details are fresh in your mind and ii) you should begin organizing your ideas and thoughts for the writeup while the experiment is in progress.

To create the writeups, students may use latex, Google docs, Word, or any other standard processor. In my research, I personally prefer using a cloud-sharing processor such as google docs or Overleaf (for latex).

Oral Presentation:

Each team of students will deliver an oral presentation during our final exam timeslot. Presentations will cover the work done on the final projects. They should be 30 minutes in length, and there will be an additional 10 min for Q/A. The format of the talk should follow that of a standard research talk at, for example, APS March Meeting. There are three great example talks here, and many more on the APS website.