Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: Physics Laboratory Design



At 1:30 PM on 10/14/98, Jerry Hester wrote:

How do you deal with student attitudes regarding physics laboratories?

We at Michigan Tech. have over the past year completely redesigned our
introductory labs. We are going to "discovery" labs as a prerequisite
for the regular physics course. We use Pasco Scientific data
acquisition systems, experiment equipment, and sensors. The laboratory
operation is the following:

Students have guide writeups for exercises.

Just doing the activities and answering questions posed in the writeup
is considered minimal and recieves minimal credit.

The expectation is that students will go beyond what is on the
writeup(pose problems and make relevant measurements).

Labs are 1hr. 50min. long. Lab writeups are generally designed so that
most will be done with the minimum within 1hr. 15min. Students are
expected to utilize remaining time to extend, evaluate, and maybe
redo(tweek the system) where deemed desirable.

Students are expected to arrive on time.

Students recieve credit for efforts up to a maximum.

I feel your pain, or rather I used to. 8^)

When I was in the business teaching jrs who were taking the introductory
physics lab, (lots of pre-meds dents and wanna be's) I asked queastions
that couldn't be answered in a very simple way. It sounds like we use
similar equipment and so you can ask basic questions (How does pendulum
period vary with pendulum length) but also more subtle ones such as how
does period vary with amplitude.

In addition, I required lab reports with some specific rules. All
conclusions had to follow from data and analysis of data. I didn't allow
"feel good" conclusions or anything that hadn't been substantiated with
data and analysis. I found lab reports to be much the same as writing
assignments in that it requires clear thinking and reasoning. We went over
examples of lab reports from students of earlier vintage and critiqued thir
work to learn what was good and bad numerical reasoning. It's something
most students don't know.

There are lots of different approaches to the intro physics lab and I don't
know what's best, but anytime the student feels they have a form to fill
out, few will expand on the form.

The problems:

A not insignificant portion of students refuse to accept that we are not
taking anything away in grading, but are rather giving credit. They
can't seem to accept that they don't start out with an A, but must earn
it first.

A large number of students dislike having to stay in lab through the
alotted time. They want to race through the writeup and leave. (We
allow them to leave early but remind them that we will not be able to
give them the maximum credit).



Our students are primarily engineering. When they are done here, they
will go to work at a multitude of engineering companies.

Be thankful for your good fortune. The engineering students I had were the
best mathematical students I had and the most enthusiastic. They are
certainly more open to understanding physics than the majority of pre-meds!
But perhaps they are more task-oriented than those trained in pure
science.

I found that making the "task" to draw meaningful conclusions (x is
proportional to the square of y) and to support it with good data and
analysis provided a good standard that few students would argue with, and I
believe a universal lesson that applies to science, engineering, and even
the liberal arts.

But your task will never be easy. As much effort as I put into it, I still
got lab reports which were filled with graphs that made little sense and
conclusions that the author had found the experience extremely valuable.

Will they start work at a maximum salary and recieve deductions like
points?

Will they be allowed to leave work early because they finished a minimum
task?

Any suggestions, comments, Help?
--
Jerry Hester Email:
jhester@mtu.edu
Dept. of Physics Phone: (906)
487-2273
Michigan Technological University Fax: (906) 487-2933
1400 Townsend Drive
Houghton, Michigan 49931-1295

J. D. (Chip) Sample Lockheed Martin Astronautics
(303) 471-2808 (303) 971-2744
sample@idcomm.com john.d.sample@LMCO.com