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