Summer 2008 Laboratories

PHY131 / PHY132

Welcome!  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.

 

People

 

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 (2-5p.m.)

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 (2-5p.m.)

P5101 (7-10p.m.)

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

Air Table

AT

1

3

Absolute Zero

AZ

4

6

Curved Air Track

CT

1

1

Flywheel

FW

5

4

Gyroscope

G

2

7

Heat Capacity

HC

4

4

Mechanical Equivalent of Heat

MH

2

3

Oscillations of a Sphere on a Concave Surface

OS

2

2

Surface Tension

ST

2

3

Thermal Expansion of a Solid

TE

4

5

Torsion Pendulum

TP

6

9

Vapor Pressure of Water

VP

4

3

Viscosity of Water by Capillary Flow

VW

1

2

Wilberforce Spring

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.