Summer
2008 Laboratories
PHY131 / PHY132Welcome! The Practicals part of your PHY131 / PHY132
courses (also known as “labs”) will involve 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. |
Jason
Harlow, Practicals
Coordinator, Office: MP129-A, Phone
416-946-4071, Office hours: 3:00 to 4:00
PM, Tuesdays during lab weeks. “I am an astronomer, working in the Physics
Department since 2004 as a Lecturer. I
enjoy working with students and hope to choose and develop courseware and
materials that enhance the student experience.”
April Seeley, Course Administrator Office: MP129, Phone 416-946-0531,
Larry Avramidis, Phil Scolieri, Rob
Smidrovskis, Practicals
Technologists. Office: MP127.
PHY132, P5201 afternoons, 6 groups working simultaneously in MP126:
2A: Gigi Wong, 2B: Sergei Dyda, 2C: Rockson Chang, 2D: Lei Huang, 2E: Shawn Stapleton, 2F: Andrei Swidinsky
PHY132, P5201 evenings, 5 groups working simultaneously in MP126:
1A: Viacheslav Burenkov, 1B: Chris Charles, 1C: Chris Paul, 1D: Ryan Vilim, 1E: Aaron Sutton
Documents
Documents
available here are also available on the course Portal Site. Here is how to reach them:
Log on to
the portal at http://portal.utoronto.ca .
In your My
Courses, find and click on Summer-2008-PHY132H1-S-LEC5201.LEC5101:
Intro Physics II .
In the little left-hand menu window, click on Course Documents .
Click on Practicals Documents .
PHY132
Summer Practicals Guide: phy132labsummer08ne.pdf Measurement
Project, due July 31, is assigned in
the Summer Practicals Guide.
Error Analysis Assignment - write-up on 3-page “Answer Sheet” due on Thursday July 10, 2008. Every student must do this individually and
hand it to their demonstrator at the beginning of the first lab.
July
10,17 Practicals write-up on Equilibrium
and Oscillations: Oscillations.pdf
July
24,31 Practicals write-up on DC
Circuits: DCCircuits.pdf
PHY132 Schedule
DATE |
LAB HOURS |
LAB SESSION/ EXPERIMENT |
LAB SECTION |
Thu July 3 |
- |
NO LABS (Individual
Study: Error Analysis Assignment) |
- |
Thu July 10 |
3 |
Error Analysis Assignment Due! 1 – Oscillation of Hoop Pendulum I |
P5201 ( P5101 (7-10p.m.) |
Thu July 17 |
2.5 |
2 – Oscillation of Hoop Pendulum II |
P5201 (2-4:40p.m.) P5101 (7:30-10p.m.) |
Thu July 24 |
3 |
3 – DC Circuits I |
P5201 ( P5101 ( |
Thu July 31 |
3 |
Measurement Project Due! 4 – DC Circuits II |
P5201 (2-5p.m.) P5101 (7-10p.m.) |
PHY131
PHY131, P5201 afternoons, 7 groups working simultaneously in MP126:
2A: Gigi Wong, 2B: Sergei Dyda, 2C: Rockson Chang, 2D: Lei Huang, 2E: Shawn Stapleton, 2F: Cristen Adams, 2G: Hanif Bayat
PHY131, P5101 evenings, 6 groups working simultaneously in MP126:
1A: Viacheslav Burenkov, 1B: Chris Charles, 1C: Chris Paul, 1D: Ryan Vilim, 1E: Aaron Sutton, 1F: Cristen Adams
Documents
available here are also available on the course Portal Site. Here is how to reach them:
Log on to
the portal at http://portal.utoronto.ca .
In your My
Courses, find and click on Summer-2008-PHY131H1-F-LEC5201.LEC5101:
Intro Physics I/Intro Physics I .
In the
little left-hand menu window, click on Course
Documents .
Click on Practicals Documents .
All material from the Scaling and Motion Diagrams Module is testable on the PHY131 test on May 29. All material from both the Scaling and Motion Diagrams Module and the Forces and Acceleration Module write-ups are testable material on the PHY131 final exam. These write-ups are available on the lab web-site and for download from the course Portal site, under Course Documents / Practicals Documents. We understand that you may NOT remove your notebook from MP126, and therefore it cannot be used as a study aid. However, you should have some familiarity with what happened during the labs.
PHY131
Summer Practicals Guide: phy131labsummer08.pdf
May 15
Practicals write-up on Scaling and Motion Diagrams: Scaling.pdf
May 22,27
Practicals write-up on Force and Acceleration: Force.pdf
Write-ups
for Free Choice Experiments (part of the practicals, but not testable
material). Your team will do ONE of
these experiments:
Name |
code |
# of
setups |
pages |
AT |
1 |
3 |
|
AZ |
4 |
6 |
|
CT |
1 |
1 |
|
FW |
5 |
4 |
|
G |
2 |
7 |
|
HC |
4 |
4 |
|
MH |
2 |
3 |
|
OS |
2 |
2 |
|
ST |
2 |
3 |
|
TE |
4 |
5 |
|
TP |
6 |
9 |
|
VP |
4 |
3 |
|
VW |
1 |
2 |
|
WS |
2 |
5 |
A Note 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.