NSF Award
9950235
With our departmental success in implementing experiments into our introductory physics labs that incorporate a "hands-on, minds-on" approach, this project extends this approach into several upper division physics courses. By adding experiments to illustrate the principles of the courses, students examine experimental methods and techniques. The experiments adapted and implemented into these courses are in the areas of high temperature superconductors, video capture and analysis, temperature distribution across a flat metal plate, simulations of charge and current distributions, particle behavior of light, the uncertainty principle, particle in a box, Fabry-Perot interferometer, and diffraction patterns from coherent sources. These experiments, adapted and implemented from the American Journal of Physics and from similar efforts in other physics departments, are conducted outside of class as extended homework exercises. Dissemination occurs through presentations at professional meetings and via our website.
