Physics 240/242        



Software Links     

  1. ๏LaTeX: THE premier typesetting program: totally free, and used by almost all physics and mathamatics journals.                                                                    

  2.    LaTeX Home Page     Tutorial in 138 Minutes      CTAN

  3.    TemplatePaper.zip    LaTeX Math Symbols

  4.    The PracTEX Journal

  5. ๏Igor Pro: An excellent data analysis package which the Physics Department has a course use license for (i.e. free for you to use in this class)

  6. Wavemetrics Home Page

  7. ๏Mathematica: An excellent tool to learn to use, and “affordable” as a student ($129)

  8. ๏Maple: Similar to Mathematica and even more affordable as a student ($99)

 



Goals of Course

(not necessarily in order of importance)

  1. •To learn to make careful observations of physical systems and cultivate a skeptical and critical attitude toward scientific data.

  2. •To learn how to keep a well--written scientific notebook.

  3. •To gain exposure to experiments and instrumentation in several different fields of

  4. •physics, including at least some that you have not encountered in other courses.

  5. •To learn and experience the typical working methods of a modern research

  6. •laboratory. Most crucially, this means working successfully together in groups towards common goals.

  7. •To learn to make effective oral presentations, and to learn to write in the genre appropriate to a physics journal, and to experience the revision process.

  8. •To improve the quality of your writing.

  9. •To deepen your understanding of data analysis and error propagation, and learn how to use scientific data analysis tools.

 



Syllabus     Right Click to download a printable pdf file; click to open in Safari or Firefox .  Click 240Syllabus.tex

 

Intermediate Physics Laboratory (iLab)

Spring 2009

PHY240_files/240Syllabus.pdf



Assessment    

Written Lab Reports                            600 pts

Final Oral Presentations                     100 pts

Lab Notebook                                     100 pts

Misc. Exercises                                    100 pts

Final Exam (5/14/09: 1:30-3:30 pm)  100 pts

Physics 242 only: Your final exam will be an oral exam

 

Measurement of e/m for an electron



Presentations

There are two main tools people use for presentations: (1) Powerpoint (PC/MAC) or Keynote (MAC) or OpenOffice (PC/MAC/LINUX) and (2) LaTeX. One of the items you’ll need to do for both is include figures and equations. Figures are easy to include in each, and in LaTeX, equations are also simple. Not so for Powerpoint; in fact, for the first option (Powerpoint, Keynote, OpenOffice) equations are best added using a LaTeX aware program to typeset equations; see this page at MIT’s junior lab for more info: Link

LaTeX: There are several packages for presentations in LaTeX, Beamer being one of the more popular. Here are some links that you may find helpful: (the first link is a shamelessly modified version of the MIT junior Lab template.)

  1. a)BEAMER LaTeX Template ilab presentation template

  2. b)Wikipedia Entry: link

  3. c)Quick Beamer Tutorial: link