Experimental Physics Principles and Practice for the Laboratory

The student's companion website and the instructor manual can be accessed here. This textbook provides the knowledge and skills needed for thorough understanding of the most important methods and ways of thinking in experimental physics. The reader learns to design, assemble, and debug apparatus, to use it to take meaningful data, and to think carefully about the story told by the data. Key Features: Efficiently helps students grow into independent experimentalists through a combination of structured yet thought-provoking and challenging exercises, student-designed experiments, and guided but open-ended exploration. Provides solid coverage of fundamental background information, explained clearly for undergraduates, such as ground loops, optical alignment techniques, scientific communication, and data acquisition using LabVIEW, Python, or Arduino. Features carefully designed lab experiences to teach fundamentals, including analog electronics and low noise measurements, digital electronics, microcontrollers, FPGAs, computer interfacing, optics, vacuum techniques, and particle detection methods. Offers a broad range of advanced experiments for each major area of physics, from condensed matter to particle physics. Also provides clear guidance for student development of projects not included here. Provides a detailed Instructor’s Manual for every lab, so that the instructor can confidently teach labs outside their own research area. The manual can be accessed here.

Contents Preface...................................................................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgments...................................................................................................................................... xi Part I Fundamentals 1. Introduction....................................................................................................................................... 3 Walter Fox Smith 2. Planning and Carrying Out Experiments...................................................................................... 7 Walter F. Smith 3. Presenting Your Results................................................................................................................. 19 Walter F. Smith 4. Uncertainty and Statistics.............................................................................................................. 29 Paul Thorman 5. Scientific Ethics............................................................................................................................... 53 Grace McKenzie-Smith Part II Tools of an Experimentalist 6. Analog Electronics.......................................................................................................................... 73 Walter F. Smith 7. Fundamentals of Interfacing Experiments with Computers.................................................... 133 Walter F. Smith 8. Digital Electronics......................................................................................................................... 143 Brian Collett 9. Data Acquisition and Experiment Control with Python........................................................... 195 Paul Freeman and Jami Shepherd 10. Basic Optics Techniques and Hardware..................................................................................... 227 Walter F. Smith 11. Laser Beams, Polarization, and Interference............................................................................. 247 Justin Peatross and Michael Ware 12. Vacuum........................................................................................................................................... 263 Walter F. Smith 13. Particle Detection.......................................................................................................................... 267 Joseph Kozminski Part III Fields of Physics 14. Development and Supervision of Independent Projects............................................................ 289 Melissa Eblen-Zayas 15. Condensed Matter Physics........................................................................................................... 299 Walter F. Smith 16. Biophysics....................................................................................................................................... 307 Mason Klein 17. Non-Linear, Granular, and Fluid Physics................................................................................... 327 Nathan C. Keim 18. Atomic and Molecular Physics..................................................................................................... 341 Robbie Berg and Glenn Stark 19. Photonics and Fiber Optics.......................................................................................................... 371 Jay Sharping and Walter F. Smith 20. Experiments with Entangled Photons......................................................................................... 377 Enrique J. Galvez 21. Nuclear and Particle Physics........................................................................................................ 403 Brett Fadem Index........................................................................................................................................................431

Walter F. Smith is the Paul and Sally Bolgiano Professor of Physics at Haverford College, where he has taught the advanced lab course more than twenty times. He earned his PhD from Harvard University. He is co-author of more than 30 peer-reviewed research articles, six of which specifically focus on new experimental apparati or techniques, and maintains an active research group centered on the photoelectronic properties of organic nanowires. He is author of the textbook "Waves and Oscillations: A Prelude to Quantum Mechanics".