INSTRUMENTSPhysics 3330 - Electronics for the Physical Sciences INTRODUCTION Modern physical measurements, communication, and computation rely on electronic hardware and instrumentation. Electronic instrumentation is used in all sub-fields of physics -- condensed matter, elementary particles, nuclear physics, and atomic/molecular/optical physics. Electronic measurements are no less common in the other physical sciences, and are essential in many modern interdisciplinary areas such as satellite-based environmental monitoring, the experimental study of chaos, nanotechnology, and the search for extraterrestrial life. Electronics for the Physical Sciences provides an introduction to electronic design through hands-on experimental experience. You will be building electronic systems from scratch, and then demonstrating that you understand how they work. You are encouraged to exercise initiative in the laboratory; all of the experiments are intended to be open-ended. ORGANIZATION There are eight student workstations, each consisting of a set of electronic measuring instruments. You will work in groups of two, using the same workstation throughout the semester but sharing it with groups belonging to the other lab sections. Individual experiments, on the other hand, are built up on circuit boards that your team keeps for the entire semester. This allows you to continue to work on your circuit for as long as you need to complete the work. A course calendar showing the lab and lecture plan for the semester is posted on the course web page, along other information for course (http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phys3330). During the semester, announcements will be posted on the course web page and, if needed, sent to you by e-mail. In accordance with University policy, you are required to maintain and regularly check an e-mail account. You are also encouraged to use e-mail to communicate with the instructors. LAB SESSIONS Each section has one 3-hour instructional lab per week in room G-230, supervised by your lab instructor. You must attend your scheduled lab. The course will go much more smoothly for you if you are well prepared for each lab session so you can get most of the work done while your instructor is there to help. The lab is open for unsupervised work any time the building wing is open, and when no other section is meeting. The building hours will be identical to those of the library on the 1st floor immediately below our lab – access will be via the eastern stairwell. These times are available for you to complete unfinished experiments or to explore your own ideas. Your Buff OneCard will open the lab door. Please do not prop the door open after unlocking it. LECTURES There will be a series of lectures on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:00 to 1:50 in Duane G-2B47. The material includes both theoretical background for the experiments and adiscussion of practical problems you may encounter. The schedule for the lectures is posted on the web site. The Midterm Exam will cover material from the lectures and from the labs. OFFICE HOURS The office hours are for help with pre-lab problems and for hands-on help in the lab. You may seek help from any of the instructors. Office hours are posted on the course web site. WEEKLY WORK SCHEDULE Before your lab section: • Write report on the previous week's experiment. • Read the lab manual for the next experiment, and any other required reading. Work through the theory with a paper and pencil. • Do the pre-lab problems. During scheduled lab: • Turn in the report on last week's experiment when you arrive. • Turn in the pre-lab problems when you arrive. • Start the experiment and go as far as you can. Analyze data as you take it whenever you can. During open lab periods: • Complete the experiment. PRE-LAB PROBLEMS The lab manual for each experiment includes problems to help you design your experiment and learn the theory. The problems are due in the lab before you begin work on the experiment. It is essential that you do the pre-lab problems and read the write-up before your lab section. Otherwise you will not be able to make good use of your time in the lab, which is your main opportunity to get help from your instructor. We recommend that you solve the pre-lab problems in your lab notebook and then hand in a copy. This way you will have your calculations available while you work on the experiment. You will work with a partner in the lab, but you should do the pre-lab problems independently. Solutions to the pre-lab problems will be posted on the web site after all lab sections have met. LAB REPORTS Your reports should give a brief and clear account of what you observed in the lab, and what conclusions you can draw from your measurements. The report should be of a quality and style comparable to what you might imagine sending to a supervisor or project coworkers if you were working in a lab in a local high-tech company. A typical report will be three to six pages long. It will contain an introduction which describes theexperiment in a few sentences, one or more figures depicting the circuit or other apparatus, a summary of the data or other observations, analysis of the data, and conclusions. It should be self-contained in that one should not have to be a student or instructor in this course to understand it. If the overall goal of an experiment is to measure some quantity, then an account of the important random and systematic errors will be necessary. Always strive to make simple estimates of errors, to avoid wasting time estimating errors that will not contribute to the final result, and to avoid elaborate propagation-of-errors calculations unless they are really necessary. Data plots are one aspect of the lab report that merits special attention. Each plot should be of a size and quality to enable a clear understanding of the data, and provided with appropriate axis labels and units. Before you take data on a particular circuit’s characteristics, think about what data you should take to make an informative plot. For example, if you are measuring characteristics of a low-pass filter, it has an expected “roll off” frequency that you can calculate, or find experimentally. The characteristics of a low-pass filter are best illustrated using a logarithmic scale, so choose your x-axis as logarithmic with the roll-off frequency near the center of the x-axis scale. When you take the data in the