Welcome to the Physics 1C Labs!

The Physics 1 series lab curriculum has been developed with the following goals in-mind:

To create labs that are both relevant and useful to non-physics majors.
To concentrate on the fundamental concepts of physics, minimizing the amount of complicated lab-equipment needed to do real physics.
To allow students more room to explore their own ideas about physics and exercise their own creativity.
To make learning physics fun!

We fully expect that you will have some suggestions of your own that will help to make this course better, and we ask that you do not hesitate to let us know what they are. We will listen to you, and we will act on your suggestions. We care about how you learn physics, not how we think you should.

About Your TAs

Your Lab TAs have been carefully selected based on their past teaching performance and enthusiasm for the program. Their Number-One Goal is to help you to learn physics. From them, you can expect:

That they've actually done the lab themselves and are aware of just how to handle things when things go wrong and other subtle issues.
100% of their time in-lab is spent on you.
Their email address will be available to you, and they will be responsive to your questions about the labs.

Format of the Labs

Each of the weekly labs covers a particular topic in physics, coordinated with your lectures, and is composed of two parts: Pre-Lab Questions, and Experiments. You will need to download the lab manual for each week prior to the lab meeting, study it, and complete the Pre-Lab Questions on a separate piece of paper as well as in your lab notebook.

The Pre-Lab Questions have been designed to help you identify the areas that you need to be familiar with and to focus your thoughts on specific skills that you will need when you perform the in-lab Experiments. Your lab grade depends on answering the Pre-Lab Questions, but it does not completely depend on having the "right answer" to the questions (sometimes there are more than one right answer).

The whole point is that we want you to learn. If you don't try, you obviously will not learn anything. If you do honestly try to answer a question, but itís wrong, thatís okay - now you know that you need to have your lab partners or your TA explain it to you. Don't leave the lab until youíve demonstrated to your TA that youíve learned the material. He or she will sign your lab notebook before you leave the lab as your record that youíve learned what you need to.

You will work in groups of four students per lab-table, with students rotating from group-to-group on a weekly basis. Everybody will have some important role to play as part of a team conducting the experiments, collecting data and analyzing results as a group. There is no formal lab write-up. It ís up to you and your group as to how best present your results. This is an environment of open discussion and problem-solving where you are free to explore your own questions as you discover them.

What you will need to bring to each lab (required):

A quad-ruled notebook containing your completed Pre-Lab Questions (See Page 4).

A copy of the lab manual for each weekly experiment.

A scientific calculator, pencil and eraser.

A copy of Hecht (helps to look-up information that you didnít anticipate needing, not required, but often useful.)

Grading

Your lab grade comprises 25% of your total course grade. All lab-grading is done in-lab by the end of each experiment. Your TA will visit each group of students and check their work as the lab progresses. You will generally find that your colleagues have helped to clarify any pre-lab questions that you may have had difficulty with before your TA comes-around. It ís okay to answer a question again (don't erase an answer that you got wrong - wrong answers show us where we need to improve - write your new answer along with it.) And donít just copy something you donít understand - have the TA explain it to you if your colleaguesí answers arenít making things absolutely clear to you. (They wonšt be around when you take your quizzes, midterm and your final, so if you donít truly understand some question, donít let your TA off-the-hook by not asking. Youšll only be sorry later.)

Your lab grade consists of two parts. Students will receive a maximum of five points per lab, with two points allocated to the pre-lab homework and three points allocated to in-lab work.

Your pre-lab homework is to be turned in at the beginning of the lab. Only handwritten homework will be accepted. Full credit will be awarded for students correctly solving the pre-lab homework. Partial credit will be given, so it is in your interest to attempt all pre-lab homework problems.

The in-lab experiments will contain both quantitative and qualitative procedures. Experiments requiring quantitative data and calculations must be clearly presented, including explicit calculations, data tables, and graphs when appropriate. Experiments requiring qualitative observations must show reasoned attempts at explanations of observed phenomena in addition to the observations themselves.

Missing a Lab and Make-up Labs

If you know in advance that you will need to miss your lab section, contact your TA to see if there is space in the other sections that week. Do NOT just show up to a lab section expecting to be let in.

You should avoid missing a lab unless you find yourself in a position with no other options. The reasons are these:

First, the labs have been shown to help on weekly lecture quizzes (miss your lab = miss your advantage, so to speak).
Second, you will miss out on the collaboration of your lab partners.
Third, the only time slot available for a make-up lab in summer session is in finals week, and in fact a make-up of a particular experiment may not be possible.

In the rare event that you absolutely must miss a lab, email your Lab TA or Lab Instructor immediately to make arrangements.

Contacts

Your principal contact for your lab course is your lab TA. They should be able to handle all of your questions regarding your lab course. However, if circumstances arise for which you need other avenues of support, the following outline of contacts is included:

Contact your Lab TA for questions concerning:

Grading of your labs.
Things not clear to you in the lab manuals.
Extra help with the subject matter.

Contact your Lab Instructor for any of the following:

Questions that your TA cannot answer.
Missing a lab and scheduling a make-up lab, if available.
Suggestions for improvements to the curriculum.
Complaints about TA perfomance or behavior.
Anything not satisfactorily handled above.

Lab Schedules

For Summer Session 2001, there will be no labs in weeks 1 or 5, and two labs per week in between. See the Physics 1C lecture syllabus, or the lab manual WWW page for details.

Quadrille-Ruled Lab Notebook?

The term is often unfamiliar. The notebook that you need is like one of those medium-sized composition books with the black-and-white marbled covers. The essential key is that you want a hard-bound notebook which has graph paper pages in it (very helpful for making tables and graphs). Quad-ruled just means that the graph paper is ruled with four squares per inch. You can use five-squares-per-inch, or eight-squares-per-inch, or whatever. These books are available from a variety of places, including the UCSD Bookstore.

Since pre-lab homeworks are collected at the start of each lab, we recommend you buy a lab notebook with "carbon copy" pages, if possible.

However, Feel free to get the least expensive one you can find. You may re-use your lab notebooks from Physics 1A and 1B if you prefer.

Physics 1C experiments

Physics 1C WWW page: http://casswww.ucsd.edu/physics/1c/index.html