Labs
- Lab one, Tuesday 14
September, 2011.
- Failing to attend labs will negatively affect your course grade
and evaluation. Labs are an important (and I hope fun) part of the
course. We will learn skills here that you won't get a chance to
practice in homework or discuss much in class.
- The lab participation portion of your evaluation will be based
on the
degree with which you engage the
material and the level of cooperation with your lab partners. I'm
not that interested in "right" answers. In fact, my aim will be to
sometime give you puzzles that you hopefully won't get right
away. You can learn from mistakes.
- You won't always be following a strict recipe. Instead, you'll
be led through some exercises, demonstrate some physical
principles for yourself, and be asked to draw conclusions. I think
this lab set-up is better than the more standard "cookbook"
approach. However, it probably requires more active participation
on the part of students.
- Additionally, labs will give us an opportunity to try out some
of the situations discussed in the textbook.
- After completing the lab, your group should check in with me
or one of the TAs. We will quickly look over your work and may
ask you a few questions. There usually will not be anything to
hand in.
- Typical labs will be around 1.5 hours.
- Sometime around week 7 there may be a "micro project" instead of
a lab. This will be a group investigation of one of several
energy-related things.