Transcription of EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS Notes for Course PHYS2350
1 EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICSN otes for Course PHYS2350 Jim NapolitanoDepartment of PhysicsRensselaer Polytechnic InstituteSpring 1999iPrefaceThese Notes are meant to accompany Course PHYS2350 EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS ,for the Spring 1999 semester. They should make it much easier for you to fol-low the material and to be better prepared for the experiments. The coursewill notcover everything in these Notes , but with some luck the Notes willcontinue to be a useful reference for text is organized into two types of major sections, namelyChaptersandExperiments, so that they follow in a more or less logical order.
2 As muchas possible, the Experiments only rely on material in preceding is no index, but hopefully the table of contents will be good enoughfor the time to helpful comments from many students and faculty, this hasall gone through a number of revisions which I hope have made the materialmore useful and more clearly presented. In the latest version, I've reformattedeverything into LATEX2e, the new LATEX standard. For the time being, I'veremoved the explicit distinction between \Experiments" and \Chapters", butthe references should still be clear.
3 (My apologies for any mistakes I've madewhich I didn't nd in time!) This change allows me to use what I think aremore a more clear postscript thanks to Prof. Peter Persans for his comments, and for addingthe Jarrell{Ash spectrometer to the laboratory for theAtomic Spectroscopymeasurement. I've updated the \Procedure" section of that experiment toinclude a description of this instrument. Credit also goes to Peter for theexpanded appendix giving a quick review give me any comments you might have on these Notes , particularlyif you see ways in which they may be for your Napolitano, January 3, 1999iiValues of Physical ConstantsThe following table of fundamental constants is taken from the \Review ofParticle Properties", published in Physical Review D I, (1994).}
4 Theuncertainties in the values are very small and can be neglected for the exper-iments in this of light in vacuumc299792458 m/secPlanck's 10 34 Jsec h=2 10 22 MeV secElectron 10 19 Coul 10 13 MeV mVacuum permittivity 08:854187817 10 12F/mVacuum permeability 04 10 7N/A2 Electron MeV/c2 Proton MeV/c2 Deuteron MeV/c2 Atomic mass MeV/c2 Rydberg eVBohr magneton 10 11 MeV/T=e h=2meNuclear magneton 10 14 MeV/T=e h=2mpAvogardro 1023atoms/moleBoltzmann 10 23J/KContents1 Data Taking and YourLogBook.
5 CommonSense .. Use Redundancy .. Be Precise, But Don't Go Overboard .. MeasureRatios .. AvoidPersonalBias .. TablesandPlots .. Tables of Data and Results .. MakingPlots .. UsingComputers .. ProgramsforthePC .. FormalLabReports .. 192 Basic Electronic Voltage,Resistance,andCurrent .. TheVoltageDivider .. CapacitorsandACCircuits .. TheGeneralizedVoltageDivider .. Inductors .. DiodesandTransistors .. 383 Common Laboratory BasicConsiderations.
6 DC Power Supplies .. Oscilloscopes .. SweepandTrigger .. Input Voltage Control .. DualTraceOperation .. Digitizers .. ADC' DeadTime .. Digital Oscilloscopes .. The LeCroy 9310 Digital Oscilloscope .. ComputerInterfaces .. 644 Experiment 1: The Voltage 725 Experiment 2: The Ramsauer Transmission past a One Dimensional Well .. ThreeDimensionalScattering .. Procedure .. AdvancedTopics.
7 856 EXPERIMENTAL SystematicandRandomUncertainties .. Propagation of Errors .. DominantUncertainty .. Experiment 3: Gravitational Gravity and the Pendulum .. PrincipleofEquivalence .. MeasurementsandAnalysis ..1108 Experiment 4: Dielectric Constants of ElectrostaticsofGases .. Procedure .. AdvancedTopics ..1269 Statistical CurveFitting .. StraightLineFitting .. FittingtoLinearFunctions .. 2astheGoodnessofFit .. CovarianceandCorrelations.
8 Distributions .. The Binomial Distribution .. Data Analysis Experiment 5: Resistivity of 'sLaw .. ResistanceandResistivity .. TheEddyCurrentTechnique .. Procedure ..17511 Light Production and Thermal Radiation .. Lasers .. PhotographicFilm .. PhotomultiplierTubes .. Experiment 6: Atomic Energy Levels of the Hydrogen Atom .. Corrections .. Procedure: Baird Spectrograph .. Procedure: Jarrell{Ash Spectrometer ..22213 Noise and Noise .. Example: Background Subtraction.}
9 1=fNoise .. Frequency lters .. Negative Feedback and Operational Ampli ers .. TheLock-InAmpli er .. Experiment 7: Johnson Thermal Motion of Electrons .. Procedure .. FrequencySpectrum .. CircuitModi Experiment 8: The Faraday Magnetically Induced Optical Rotation .. Electromagnetic Waves and Polarization .. Light Propagation in a Medium .. TheFaradayE Polarization Calibration ..28516 Experiment 9: Nuclear Magnetic Nuclear Magnetism and Precession .. Equipment Settings and Parameters.
10 Procedure and Analysis .. Elementary Particle .. PhotonsandElectrons .. RadiationSafety .. SolidAngle .. Gaseous Ionization Detectors .. Scintillation Detectors .. Ampli Discriminators and Single Channel Analyzers .. ProcessingLogicSignals .. Experiment 10: ParticleCountingStatistics .. Detecting Radiation .. HalfLifeMeasurements ..34819 Experiment 11: Positron Correlated Pairs of ProcedureandAnalysis .. Angular Correlation in60Co ..37020 Experiment 12: The Compton.
