Physics 231 -- Fall 2008 
 Experimental Physics I 

Greetings and welcome to the home page for Physics 231: Experimental Physics I

Taught by Dr. Don Smith
Office: Frank 234B; 336-316-2162
Course meets: M: 14:30-17:30, Frank 220

The syllabus contains much more information about the course. Please read it carefully.

Class Schedule
DatePresenterTeam Experiment
18 Aug
Introduction and Clean Up
25 Aug
Check in and discussion
DatePresenterPartnerTitle
08 SepMelanieBradCharge to Mass Ratio
08 SepNateMuhanjiMagnetic Force
15 SepLopieRyanMillikan Oil Drop
29 SepMuhanjiNateConservation of Ang Mom
29 SepBradMelanieStefan's Law
29 SepMelanieBradCharge to Mass Ratio (2)
06 OctMuhanjiNateConservation of Ang Mom (2)
Fall Break
20 OctNateMuhanjiMagnetic Force (2)
27 OctLopieRyanMillikan Oil Drop (2)
10 NovRyan--Absolute Zero
10 NovNateMuhanjiLatent Heat of Ice
10 NovMelanieBradWavelength of a Laser
17 NovRyan--Magnetic Torque
17 NovRyan--Speed of Sound

Experiment List
MechanicsThermodynamics E and M Quantum WorldLight
Group Speed of Sound (1) Boyle's Law (1) Magnetic Force (1) q/m ratio of e- (1) Wavelength of Laser (1)
Consv. of Ang. Momentum (1) Absolute Zero (1) Current Into Heat (2) Hydrogen Spectrum (2) Index of Refraction of Prism (2)
Young's Modulus of Steel (2) Heat of Fusion of Ice (2) Magnetic Moment (2) Millikan Oil Drop (2) Index of Refraction of Air (2)
Mechanical Resonance (2) Stefan's Law (3) Mag. Susceptibility of Aluminum (3) Compton Scattering (2) Speed of Light (3)

The numbers represent my best guess as to how much work will be involved in doing the experiment. (1) means a lot of work, (2) means even more work than a lot of work, and (3) means I think you'll find it very challenging. :-) You might want to try to find a balance.

Note that Magnetic Force, Magnetic Moment, and Susceptibility of Aluminum are all fairly similar. You might wish to only do one of these, to have a wider range of experience. Or you might want to delve deeper into a similar topic, in which case start with Magnetic Force and go to one of the other two.

Other ideas:

There are some other experiments we might be able to pull together, if you are interested. That is, I've seen the equipment around, but I'm not sure if it's complete and/or functional. For Brownian Motion, I would need to find out if the biology department has the microscope we would need. If you really want to do one of these, talk to me and we'll see if we can't make it work...

  1. Brownian motion (QW)
  2. Faraday's Law (EM)
  3. B field of a solenoid (EM)
  4. Work into Heat (Th)
  • Newton's Law of Cooling (Th)
  • Zeeman effect (QW)
  • X-ray diffraction (QW)
  • Frank-Hertz experiment (QW)
  • Cavendish experiment (M)
  • Blackbody Spectrum (Th)
  • Photoelectric Effect (QW)
  • Impedance of a Light Bulb (EM)
  • Two-slit interference of microwaves (EM)
  • Ultrasonic interference (M)
  • Global warming in a bottle (Th)
  • Curie temperature of Iron and Nickel (Th)

There are a lot of other experiment ideas in the journal "The Physics Teacher". You can peruse back issues in my office, if you want to see more options. If you want to do an experiment for which we do not have the equipment, you can write a short proposal to the department, and we have several thousand dollars available through alumni donations to support student research ideas. We can make it happen.

Here's my Tips on giving good PowerPoint presentations file. It has a rubric for evaluating talks in it, as well as examples of good and bad slides.

Here are some links to other schools' advanced lab web sites. They may be useful to you, in terms of practical advice, historical background, conceptual support, and/or challenging questions to think about. Many of them may be for more advanced experiments than we will do in this course: keep them in mind for 232 or higher. You could also use google to search for Intermediate lab sites. If you find any useful sites at other schools, please let me know so I can include them here.

If you do use any of these materials, make sure you cite them in your presentation.