PHY132

Spring 2009 Practicals

Welcome!  The Practicals part of your PHY132 courses will involve problem solving, hands-on activities and team-work.  The goal is to work on interesting, challenging experiments and activities, deepen your understanding of the underlying Physics, and develop your laboratory skills and analysis techniques.

 

People

 

Jason Harlow, Practicals Coordinator  Office: MP129-A, Phone 416-946-4071,

Vatche Deyirmenjian, Practicals Co-coordinator   Office: MP129-B, Phone 416-946-0336

David Harrison, Author of Practicals Modules  Office: MP121-B, Phone 416-978-2977

April Seeley, Course Administrator  Office: MP129, Phone 416-946-0531,

Larry Avramidis, Lilian Leung, Phil Scolieri, Rob Smidrovskis, Practicals Technologists.  Office: MP127.

 

Practical Schedule

Students attend one 2-hour practical every week.

Weeks begin on a Wednesday and end on a Tuesday.

Practical

Dates

Topics, Activities

 

Jan 5 - 13

NO PRACTICALS

1

Jan 14 - 20

Traveling Waves Week 1 Student Guide

Waves Module 1

  • Activities 1, 4

2

Jan 21 - 27

Standing Waves Experiment  Week 2 Student Guide

Waves Module 1

  • Activities 7, 8
  • IF TIME: Activity 9

3

Jan 28 - Feb 3

Optics  Week 3 Student Guide

Ray Optics Module

  • Activities 3, 4, 6
  • IF TIME: Activity 2

4

Feb 4 - 10

E&M  Week 4 Student Guide

EM Module 1 – Electric Charge and Coulomb’s Law

·      Activity 1, Parts A, B, D

·      Activity 4, Parts A, D, E, F

·      IF TIME: Activity 4, Parts G,H, I, J

 

Feb 11 - 24

NO PRACTICALS – Extra office hours for test prep.

5

Feb 25 - Mar 3

E&M  Week 5 Student Guide

Scrambling teams

EM Module 2 – Simple Circuits

·         Activities 1 to 6

·         IF TIME: Activity 7

6

Mar 4 - 10

E&M  Week 6 Student Guide

EM Module 3 – Electric Fields

·         Activity 9, dipole and plates

·         IF TIME: Activity 6

7

Mar 11 - 17

E&M  Week 7 Student Guide

EM Module 4 – Resistance and Power

·         Activities 1–5

·         Activity 6, Parts A, B, C

·         IF TIME: Activity 11

8

Mar 18 - 24

E&M  Week 8 Student Guide

EM Modules 5 and 6 – Capacitors and Magnets

·         Module 5, Activity 6

·         Module 6, Activities 4, 5

·         IF TIME: Module 6, Activity 9

9

Mar 25 - 31

Special Relativity Week 9 and 10 Guide

·         Activities 1, 2, 3, 4

·         IF TIME: Activity 5

(Measurement Project due Mar.31)

10

Apr 1 - 7

LAST PRACTICAL: Special Relativity

·         Activities 6, 7, 8, 9, 12

·         IF TIME: Activity 10

 

Here are the components and their weights:

  1. Notebook Mark 1 (0 Weights). After the first Practical the lab books will be collected and marked. However, this mark will not count towards your Practical mark. Instead it is intended to make our standards and requirements clear to you.
  2. Notebook Mark 2 (6 Weights). After the last Practical before Test, a selection of Activities from Practical sessions 2-4 will be chosen to be marked. The decision of which Activities will be marked will be chosen more-or-less randomly after the books have been collected. All Teams will have the same Activities marked.
  3. Notebook Mark 3 (6 Weights). At the end of the term a selection of the Mechanics, Oscillations and Fluids Activities you have done since the Test will be chosen to be marked. The decision of which Activities will be marked will be chosen more or less randomly after the books have been collected. All Teams will have the same Activities marked.

 

Measurement Project

is due on March 31.  It is worth 3 Weights (out of 15) for the Practicals mark, or 3% of the course mark.  PDF Format  /  Word Format /  Web Format

 

Marking Scheme

 

 

Graduate Student Instructors

Section

Day

Time

group

Room

TA1

TA2

P0101

M

1-3

M2A

MP125A

Behi Fatholazadeh

Omar Gamel

P0101

M

1-3

M2B

MP125B

Yonggang Liu

Stefan Kissiov

P0201

M

3-5

M3A

MP125A

Ryan Vilim

Roopa Pandharpurkar

P0201

M

3-5

M3B

MP125B

David MacKenzie

Liang Ren

P0301

T

10-12

T1A

MP125A

Ray Gao

Guoying Qin

P0401

T

1-3

T2A

MP125A

Chris Paul

Nathaniel Moore

P0401

T

1-3

T2B

MP125B

Catalina Gomez Sanchez

Jasper Palfree

P0501

T

3-5

T3A

MP125A

Sheetal Saxena

William Witczak-Krempa

P0501

T

3-5

T3B

MP125B

Niall Ryan

Adam Smiarowski

P0601

W

1-3

W2A

MP125A

Amir Feizpour

Shervin Ghafrani Tabari

P0701

W

3-5

W3A

MP125A

Ryan Vilim

Zhe Jiang

P0701

W

3-5

W3B

MP125B

Jean-Michel Delisle Carter

Dongpeng Kang

P0801

R

12-2

R2A

MP125A

Joseph Fitzgerald

Xueping Zhao

P0801

R

12-2

R2B

MP125B

Wenlong Wu

Kiyoshi Masui

P0901

R

2-4

R3A

MP125A

Andre Erler

Kiyoshi Masui

P0901

R

2-4

R3B

MP125B

Chao Zhuang

Stefan Kissiov

P1001

F

10-12

F1A

MP125A

Dylan Jervis

Bijia Pang

P1001

F

10-12

F1B

MP125B

Federico Duque Gomez

Adam Smiarowski

P1101

F

12-2

F2A

MP125A

Luke McKinney

Nathaniel Moore

P1201

F

2-4

F3A

MP125A

Hlynur Gretarsson

Zhe Jiang

P5201

W

6-8

W4A

MP125A

Viacheslav Burenkov

Xueping Zhao

 

 

Notes on Errors

 

Every measurement has two parts: the value and the error.  For example, I have measured my height to be 180 cm +/- 1 cm.   180 cm is the value, and 1 cm is the error.

 

When you make a measurement, you determine the value and you should always report the error.  The error tells the reader how certain you are about your measurement.  Saying my height is 180 cm +/- 1 cm means that I am about 68% certain that my true height falls within the range 179 to 181 cm (one sigma). [That means that if my height was measured 100 times, about 68 of the measurements would be within this range.]  It also means I am about 95% certain that my true height falls within the range 178 to 182 cm (two sigma).

 

The error is never found by comparing it to some number found in a book or web page!!

 

There are many ways of estimating the error in a value.  Here are two examples:

 

Example 1: “Half the last digit”  If repeated digital measurements of the same property give the exact same reading again and again, the error is often estimated to be half the power of ten represented in the last digit.  For example, a repeated voltage measurement of 8.6 volts on a digital multimeter which always displays 8.6 for a certain setup would be reported as 8.60 V +/- 0.05 V. 

 

Example 2: “Standard Deviation”  In most situations, repeated measurements of the exact same quantity give different values.  These values tend to be normally distributed around some mean.  You can use the values themselves and the mean to compute the standard deviation, sigma.  Sigma can then be used as an estimate of the error in any one of the individual measurements.  For example, I ask five friends to measure my height using the same measuring technique.  They each obtain five slightly different values: 178.5 cm, 179.5 cm, 180.5 cm, 181.5 cm and 180 cm.  The standard deviation of these five values (computed from the formulae below) is 1.12 cm.  Normally error is only reported to one or at most two significant digits.  So the error in any of these values is estimated to be 1 cm.  For example, the first measurement can be reported as 179 cm +/- 1 cm. 

 

Mean:

Standard Deviation (sigma):

The following 37-page document, written by David Harrison, is an excellent introduction to errors (why this material is not standard for all introductory physics textbooks I don’t know):

Error Analysis in Experimental Physical Science.