Christian Brothers University
Physics 251 Laboratory Departmental Syllabus
Physics II Lab

Catalog Data Laboratory to accompany PHYS 251.
Corequisite: Physics 251.
One semester; one credit.
Textbooks Lab Manual for Physics II, written by CBU Physics faculty, published by the department.
Calculator Policy You must bring a calculator to each lab meeting.
Prerequisites You should have the basic prerequisite skills described for Physics 251. You should also have some basic laboratory skills which should have been acquired in Physics 150 laboratory.
Goals 1. To investigate in more detail the topics discussed in lecture by direct, hands-on observation.

2. To test the models developed in Physics 251 in the real-world environment of the laboratory. To see how well the models work and to find their limitations.

3. To increase the qualitative understanding of physical phenomena by directly seeing how physical quantities affect each other, particularly how electric and magnetic fields affect charged particles.

4. To see how the process of measurement affects experimental results through measurement uncertainty.


Syllabus
There is one laboratory meeting scheduled per week. Each meeting is two hours long. Nine experiments are usually performed over the semester in eleven meetings. Typically, three written lab reports are required over the semester for three different experiments. The other experiments require brief oral reports from each group at the end of each laboratory meeting.
List of Experiments
Final Exam There is no final exam for the laboratory course.
Performance Evaluation Student performance is rated by a final letter grade which is determined by a combination of written and/or oral lab reports.
Resources The course instructor is available outside of the classroom a minimum of 10 hours per week for individual help.
Other students in the laboratory can be resources. Students usually perform experiments in pairs and discussion of results with lab partners and other students is expected. The exchange of ideas and information is encouraged in the lab meetings.
Attendance You must attend the lab meetings and perform all of the required experiments.
Coordinators Dr. Johnny Holmes, Professor of Physics
Br. John Monzyk, C.P., Assistant Professor of Physics
Dr. John Varriano, Associate Professor of Physics
Computer Usage Computers are used by students to plot electric field line distributions in two dimensions. The resulting distributions are analyzed and discussed.
Computers are used to analyze data in the RLC series circuit experiment. The different components of the circuit can be varied on the computer to get the best match between measured and theoretical results.
The use of word processing and graphing software is required for the written lab reports.
Estimated ABET Category Content Physics 100% or 1 Credit


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