Course Syllabus for Senior Physics Lab, PHY 4821L

Class Meets in CP251/CP259 on TuTh 1:00pm - 3:20pm U01

Professor: Jorge L. Rodriguez

Phone 305.348.0259

Office hours: MF 3:00pm -5:00pm or by appointment

Introduction:

This course is likely the last laboratory course you will take as an undergraduate at FIU. The course is intended to complement and extend what you've learned in intro and modern physics labs to prepare you for graduate studies in physics or employment in industry or government. In contrast to prior lab course work in this class you are expected to work much more independently in both the preparation of your experiments and analysis of your results. The lab instructor while always willing and available to help he will not provide you with a detailed set of instructions to perform the experiment. The primary goal and emphasize of the course is the production of research quality work; the final product being a paper suitable for submission to a physics journal.

The course is organized around the production of publication quality research papers on a variety of physics experiments that emphasize different aspects of data taking and analysis. Each students, working in small two person teams, is presented with a series of experiments (listed below) over the 16 week semester. You are encouraged to collaborate closely within your lab partner, other members of the class or even your lab instructor; however, you are responsible for your own research papers. PLEASE DO NOT TURN IN THE SAME PAPER as your lab partner. Research papers should be written to the standards of a typical modern physics journal. This includes conforming to the a specific set of style and formatting requirements that are adhered to strictly. You can choose from among the various styles of publications in use today.The particular type-setting or word processing application used is up to you. There are many good solutions among them are: latex or tex which provide the "best looking" papers since they are designed to produce extremely consistent manuscripts. These though are somewhat difficult to use and have a steep learning curve. You can also use Microsoft Word or Openoffice's word processing software both are perfectly suitable products and produce excellent results. Most journals today access word documents as well as latex and tex. You may check the numerous journals located above the cabinets on the eastern wall as a guide or just read the pdf of a couple papers of recent interest, attached below. You are also welcome to try the the latex and word templates linked below on this page.

Please note that this is a three credit UPPER LEVEL class and you will be expected to put in the corresponding amount of effort.

Grading Scale

Your final grade is based on the number of points you scores throughout the semester. Most of the points come from the research papers you will turn in, typically four or five papers. On the last week before finals all students are required to do a presentation on a topic of interest, related to physics, or on one of the labs. The presentation is graded and equal weight to the research papers. On finals week all students are also required to take the Physics "Major Field Test" from ETS. The exams are multiple choice exams given to asses your overall mastery of the material you learned as an undergraduate students at FIU. Your overall course grade is not greatly affected by your score, in fact, everyone gets 5 additional points if you take the test and take it seriously. Your total points, scaled so that each assignment is 100% is compared to the table below to compute your final letter grade.

Letter Grade	Course Grade
A	90 or more
A-	85-89
B+	80-84
B	75-79
B-	70-74
C+	65-69
C	60-64
C-	55-59
D+	50-54
D	45-49
D-	40-44
F	39 or below

Course Textbook and Recommended Reference Material

In this course none of the text below are specifically required but you are strongly encouraged to purchase at least a copy of Bevington and Robinson. The other two are recommended.

1. "Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences 3rd Edition" (ISBN: 0072472278) by Philp R. Bevington and D. Keith Robinson This is a classic and every experimentalist should have a copy of their own. The latest edition of this book is well worth the cost. It even describes in detail some of the experiments we'll do in class, particularly the MC experiment. While Amazon.com sells this for ~ 100 dollars you can get it from a UK site for about 30-40 bucks. Not sure how much it would cost to ship to the US.
2. "Experiments in Modern Physics 2nd Edition" (ISBN: 0124898513) by A.C. Melissinos and J. Napolitano. This is another classic and is highly recommended. The book describes in details some of the more challenging experiments in the course including the Millikan Oil Drop experiment. It also has a nice section that summarizes the theory of probability and statistics as applied to measurement.
3. "Measurements and their Uncertainties" (ISBN: 019956633X) by Ifan G. Hughes & Thomas P.A. Hase. Another excellent reference on experimental techniques and measurements.

Lab Notebooks

You should purchase a bound notebook to keep detailed notes about the experiments that you are working on. You should include data that you obtained, notes about the techniques, lists of references, etc. Notes should be dated so that you can cross reference things in the notebook with other materials you may get or produce during you experiments. A good researcher usually has five times as much information in the notebook than needed--but you never can be sure what you are going to need once you sit down to analyze your data.

To encourage this practice, lab notebooks will be collected from time to time and inspected for completeness.

Lab Reports

After you complete taking data on a given project you will have about one week to complete the report for the lab. The reports should resemble a journal paper. Each report should have an introduction, a description of the procedures and equipment used, a description of analysis procedures, tables and/or graphs of the data collected, and a discussion of the results. Proper use of significant figures and statistical analysis is expected. All graphs and tables should be well labeled and properly displayed. You should cite all references used in a bibliography. I've attached below a couple of recent paper examples from Journals: A Physical Review Letters (PRL) paper on yet another discrepancy between the recent faster than light neutrino results and known physics PhysRevLett.107.251801.pdf and a recent paper on Upsilon resonance production at the LHC by the CMS collaboration PhysRevD.83.112004.pdf. Look to these as samples of what I expect. In addition, the arxiv.org website also has many tex templates most of which I will accept. You may also search the APS site for word templates if you so desire or create your own based on the sample paper attached below. I will add templates as I find them to this twiki. There is some freedom in how you layout your paper but please consult the PRL or PR(A-Z) guideline for proper formatting and rules regarding the layout. Your report should include these sections:

• Abstract: A single paragraph statement with a short description of what it is you are doing, how you are doing it and a summary of the results. The idea is to provide the reader with enough information to make him/her want to read the paper and to determine whether it is worthwhile to do so.
• Introduction: Here you will introduce the paper, described what is being measured in detail and why it is interesting. Background information should be included in this section and any theoretical motivation for the work. This section will likely be the most heavily referenced so make sure you cite your sources.
• Experimental Procedure: Describe the experimental setup in detail and, the function of the equipment used and the procedure used to make the measurements. Include figures, drawing or refer to manuals if used. Also summarize any difficulties experienced during the process of performing the measurements. In this section you can describe the steps taken to minimize experimental uncertainties.
• Results: Describe completely the result obtained from the measurements. Included a summary of important final calculations, include tables, plots and and statistical analysis including parameter estimates, goodness of fits and other relevant statistical information. A description of your uncertainties; ie., the source of the uncertainty and how they were estimated or computed can be summarized in this section.
• Conclusion and Discussion: Here you state the meaning of your results and relate them to theoretical predictions or other accepted measurements. You should also discuss possible improvements to the experimental procedure especially if your results are inconsistent or are significantly different than expected. Also you can discuss the precision of your result particularly if its poor, that is the uncertainty your estimated is large.
• References: See sample paper for format. You may use source you pulled from the web however, not everything you read on the web is correct, unlike the commercial. So I would advise you to keep these to a minimum and be sure the source is reliable.
• Appendix: This is where you would include detailed calculations or programs you write.

A grading rubric GradingRubric will be applied to each lab using the criteria above to asses your performance. Your lab reports (papers) grade will constitute 80% of your final grade for the course. Reports will generally be due one week after you have completed the experiment. Reports that are late will have their grade reduced by one letter grade if not turned in on the due date and one letter grade for each week beyond that: An "A" turns into an "F" after four weeks.

You can use the Journal of Physics: Conference Series guidelines to format you paper in. But if you prefer to use some other physics journal guidelines you are more than welcomed to do that instead. We provide below zip files with the guideline/templates from the JPC for your convenience.

Presentation

At the end of the semester, you will be required to give a 20 minute presentation on one of the experiments you did or a topic of your choosing related to some physics of interest to you. In the past students have presented work they've participated in during Summer research projects at FIU or elsewhere. For example: at Jefferson Lab, with the Biophysics group etc.,. Last semester someone presented a talk on the Physics of Fighting which I found rather interesting. In any case and to avoid conflicts all students need to have their topics approved by me before you present. The presentation will be graded and will constitute 15% of your course grade. The ability to convey and communicate your topic through oral presentations is a critical part of work as a physicist.

The presentation schedule and topic PresentationSchedule

Exit Exam

To comply with state-mandated requirements, all students will be required to take an "exit exam". This exam covers everything in the FIU undergraduate physics curriculum: Modern Physics, Mechanics, E&M, Thermodynamics, and Quantum Mechanics. The exam is worth 5% of your final grade.

Schedule

You will be rotating through the various labs on a schedule to be determined by your interests and the availability of equipment. The number of labs you complete will depend on the difficulty level of the labs, so it may be that you will not be required to do every lab on the list. Some of the labs are required for all students. I will discuss with each of you individually which labs you will do. Once we have determined what you will be working on, we will fill in the schedule. In a rare case, you might work in one of the other professors' research lab. In such cases, I will schedule meeting times between you and the professor.

List of Available Labs (Lab due dates are posted in the PHY4821LSchedule topic. Late lab grades will decrease over time)

Field	Topic	References and Links		Laboratory Instructions	Students
Computational Physics	Monte Carlo Methods, Binomial Statistics, Errors, Uncertainties and fittin	There are sections in both recommended texts related to this lab. Mellesino has a nice section on probability and statistics, distributions, fitting functions and so does Bevington and Robinson. Other sources and links: Helpful information on how to gain access and use the physics server medianoche HowToAccessComputing, A recommend data analysis package which incorperate the cernlib minuit fitter (one of many precursers to root): The MN_FIT data analysis package, The full blown root data analysis pacakge The root data analysis framework , and Dr. Boeglin's, collection of python scripts and libraries (Labtools) http://wanda.fiu.edu/boeglinw/LabTools/doc/		MonteCarloLab
Statistics and Probability Distributions	Uncertainties, Poisson and Gaussian statistics	"Experiments in Modern Physics" 2nd ed. by Melissinos & Napolitano. Other sources, Poisson Statistics,Poisson fitter, Counting Statistics,[XYZ of Oscilloscopes (Tektronix intro manual)]]		CountingLab
Fundemental Constants	Millikan Oil Drop Experiment	A nice description of this lab is available from Meliesino & Napolitao 2nd ed. Millikan's orignal paper		MillikanLab
E&M	Magnetic Torque & Gyromagnetic ratio	Teachspin website: Magnetic Torque		MagneticTorqueLab
E&M	Magnetic Force	Teachspin website: Magnetic Force		MagneticForceLab
NMR	Pulsed NMR, finding FID	Teachspin website: Pulsed NMR		NMagneticResonanceLab
Astro/particle physics	Cosmic Ray Flux distribution			CosmicRayLab

-- JorgeRodriguez - 2012-01-02

• PhysRevLett.107.251801.pdf: A recent PRL paper on the faster than light neutrino results obtained last September by the OPERA collaboration.

• PhysRevD.83.112004.pdf: A recent PRD paper from the CMS collaboration on Upsilon production at the LHC. This longer paper includes lots of figures, tables and equations.

• LaTeXTemplates.zip: Lab paper template/guidelines for latex

• wordguidelines.zip: Lab paper template/guidelines for word