Term II formal reports are due at 5pm on April 5th. Please turn in your report, along with all of your lab books to the boxes in the hallway outside the lab.
The lab will be open on M, Th and F from 2-5 until March 30.
Labs will start on January 15. In term II you select four two-week long labs. Please have a look at the experiments available on the Lab Manual page to the right. Also look at the information on term II on the About the Course link
A sign-up sheet for the Monday session is available outside the lab now, and sign-up sheets for the Thursday and Friday sessions will be posted on Thursday and Friday.
Formal reports and your lab notebooks should be turned in on Monday, December 4. Please place them in the marked boxes in the hallway outside the lab.
A number of you have asked about the level of background material appropriate for the introduction. Please assume that the reader has taken a course similar to PHYS 209, and so knows what inverters, op-amps, nand gates etc. are, so you don't need to go into detail about the individual components. The 74HC14 inverter we use in the oscillator circuits is an exception though, as the hysteresis is a little unusual and should be mentioned. You should explain and analyze the operation of your circuit in detail. It should be possible to predict frequencies for the oscillators for example, and this kind of calculation should be explained.
There is a second homework assignment available on the schedule page. This assignment is due on Nov. 17. There is also a partial solution set for the first assignment on the schedule page.
I have been asked a number of times lately about the possibility of turning formal reports in late. The policy is this: 10% penalty per day (Monday is just one day later than Friday). Due to end of term constraints, any report not turned in by 5 pm Wednesday April 12 will not be marked and will be worth 0.
You should be finishing your fourth and final experiment this week. You have one week to complete the analysis and should come to the lab at 2 pm next week (March 13-17) to turn in your book. You can pick it up at 2pm the following week (March 20-24). If you haven't been able to complete four labs due to illness or some other reason you've spoken to me about, please get in touch with me about a make-up lab session.
Formal reports will be due on April 7. You have lots of time between now and then. Late formals will be docked 10% per day. You can choose which of the four labs you've completed to do the formal on.
The instructions for this formal report are essentially the same as for term I. To clarify a couple of things: your write-up should be aimed so that if you were to give it to a student coming in to Phys 209 from first year that they would be able to understand what you've done. Style-wise it should aim towards that of a scientific journal article. In the first term, many of you included a point-form list of the equipment used. What would be much better is a diagram of the experimental apparatus that included model numbers where appropriate, and a description in the text of how the equipment is organized.
There are notes on the formal report here.
There will be tutorials this week. The room for the Wednesday tutorial has changed to the room next door.
No tutorials this week. We'll have a tutorial next week.
In general you will need to turn in your prelab assignments on the first day of a new experiment. For this first experiment, you can turn it in at the start of the second week.
You will turn in your lab book one week after completing the experiment.
There are some helpful notes posted on the 'Notes' page to the left, and also on the lab manual page. There are some notes on semiconductor physics that are useful for the diodes and transistors lab, and some notes on useing Mathematica to solve differential equations numerically.
Updated lab write-ups have now been posted on the Lab Manual page (link on the left). Some of the set-ups have changed a fair bit from last year, so do make sure you have a current write-up. You may need to hit the refresh button in your web browser.
Please point out typos or ambiguities in the write-ups!
Notice that each experiment has PRE-LAB questions. You must have answers for these questions before you come to the lab.
Assignment #2 has been posted on the schedule page. Its due on Friday Oct 28.
Assignment #1 has been posted on the schedule page.
A gnuplot fitting tutorial that you will do in the computer lab during the week of Sept. 26 or Oct. 3 has been posted on the Course Schedule page.
There have been a few changes to the tutorial schedule - it should be firm now till the end of October. Note that the room for most of the Thursday tutorials has changed to Henn 202.
Assignment 1 will be available early in the week of October 3rd, and will be due on October 14th.
The website is presently under heavy construction for the upcoming term. The final version of many files will not be posted until late in the first week of classes, but feel free to browse the current (last year's) version.
In the first week of classes it is important to come to an introductory tutorial held in Hebb 13. Please come either Wed. Sept. 7 10:00 AM or Thursday Sept. 8 9:00 AM.
Also in the first week, it is important that you obtain computer access to "physics" and pay for a printer quota. Just click on the computer lab link (and then follow the 'overview' link) to the left for instructions.