Re: Course Suggestions, if you please...

["Gordon P. Smith" <smtgp@APPSTATE.EDU>]

They'll have already had a two-semester course in modern physics proper.  I
get the feeling this is a "neat things you can do" sort of class to give
them some practical experience outside of what their modern lab had.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: phys-l@lists.nau.edu: Forum for Physics Educators
> [mailto:PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu]On Behalf Of Ivan Rouse
> Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 11:26 AM
> To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
> Subject: Re: Course Suggestions, if you please...
>
> Greetings Gordon:
> I do have a question or two about the course.  Is this the only Modern
> Physics course where they will hear about quantum mechanics etc or is it a
> course that comes after a traditional Modern Physics course?  If it is the
> first then some of the topics you choose may need a significant amount of
> preparatory theory.
>
> (1) One suggestion would be to do some spectroscopy.
>         We recently purchased a miniature Ocean Optics
> (www.oceanoptics.com) spectrometer that uses a USB cable and optical fibers
> to connect to the computer and light sources.  I can send any interested
> parties a WORD document with with a brief description and an image of the
> spectrometer.

Sounds interesting.  Please send along the document offlist.

> (2) You could do some x-ray diffraction experiments if you can stretch
> optics that far.
>
> (3) You could do electron diffraction experiments with one of the available
> electron diffraction tubes.

Maybe...I have yet to raid the pantry to see what sort of stuff I can drag
out.  I thought it'd be better to go in looking for specific things I could
tailor to the suggestions.

> (4) I have made holograms with students and it is great fun but can be a
> bit challenging.

True...I had this wild idea for a holographic stop-action animation, but I
think that'd be beyond what we could pull off.

> (5) For the wave packets, and Fourier decomposition I would strongly
> suggest using one of the excellent mathematical packages such as
> Mathcad.  You can do some neat things in this area.  For the fourier
> applications how about recording a digital image and then doing some
> fourier signal processing on it to remove high or low frequencies
> etc.  Mathcad can import images into a matrix where you have access to each
> pixel for processing.  I have played with images in Mathcad but still want
> to to the fourier processing of an image.

I'll look into it.  The department likes Mathematica (I'm good either way),
and I'll see if I can pull the same sort of thing off with that package.

> (6) If students haven't recorded interference or diffraction patterns and
> matched the theory to them this would be a good experiment.  On a related
> topic if they haven't had the chance to do some sophisticated experiments
> with a variety of interferometers that would be useful.  We do a neat
> experiment where the students use a gas cell in one arm of the spectrometer
> to measure very precisely the index of refraction of a gas.

Oooooo....

-G-