Physics 407 - Advanced Laboratory

Physics 407 is a laboratory based course in Modern and Classical Physics strongly recommended for students who are going on to do experimental work at the graduate level. It is also suitable for students who desire a stronger background in Modern Physics Experiments beyond the level of Physics 307-308.

The laboratory, at the present time, has 16 experiments. Students who have registered for one credit will usually do four experiments while two credit registrants will typically do eight experiments.  Students keep a professional style notebook and analyze experimental data in the lab using standard laboratory analysis tools available on laboratory work-stations. Most of the experiments are associated with the subject matter of Physics 241, 415, 448 and 449. There is also a Chaos experiment, a Superconductivity experiment, a Scanning-Tunneling Microscope experiment and several advanced Nuclear-Particle Physics experiments. There is a strong emphasis on proper statistical analysis treatment of data.  

Text: "Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences", by P.R. Bevington and D.K. Robinson. A book, no longer in print but available in the library and lab, is "Experiments in Modern Physics", by A.C. Melissinos. This book was based on a similar course at the University of Rochester and describes many of the experiments in our lab. 

 Prerequsites: Physics 307 or 308 or consent of Instructor.

A list of the current laboratory experiments with links to a full pdf version of the lab writeups is available on the Web course page.