Re: lab final exam

[James Frysinger <frysingerj@COFC.EDU>]

Aaron,

I don't do this personally, nor as the Physics Lab Manager have I included
anything like this in our lab manuals or lab course syllabus. But I have
given the matter some thought in the past in case we do this at some time.

I would suggest a simple exercise that requires minimal equipment and time, a
bit of experimental design consideration, and a goodly amount of emphasis on
measurement and error analysis.

One such final experiment might be to measure the local acceleration due to
gravity with a pendulum (timed by stopwatch not by photogate timer) or an
Atwood machine. Evaluate the practice and the write up based on precision and
care in measurement (for the pendulum, did the student measure to the center
of mass of the bob?) and on error analysis including statistical analysis.

For a second semester course, I might suggest a circuit analysis, measurement
of RC time constant, or spectroscopic analysis of an unknown gas (using a
manual goniometer with prism or grating).

In any exercise I run, I would bear down hard on measurements and error
analysis.

Jim

On Friday 2003 November 28 16:49, Aaron Titus wrote:
> For the first time, I'm going to give a final exam in the lab that
> assess students' "lab skills". Does anyone have a final exam they use
> or does anyone have good ideas for questions and exercises. I want the
> lab to be "hands-on".
>
> AT

--
James R. Frysinger
Lifetime Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist
Senior Member, IEEE

http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj
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j.frysinger@ieee.org

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