Official Physics Department Policies Regarding Labs – this is not up to the instructor:
Attendance: To pass the laboratory course, all laboratory exercises must be completed. Failure to complete a lab results in a failing laboratory grade. A failing lab grade results in a failing PHYS 133 course grade (regardless of your scores on quizzes or exams in the lecture).
Safety: You are adults and this is a laboratory. Please use good judgement. Ask me if you’re not sure of something.
Food: If someone from our department sees you with food in the laboratory, I will get into trouble. There is a table outside the door, please put your food and drinks there and feel free to go out there when you like.
Rescheduling: If you know you cannot make it to lab prior to your scheduled section, completing the lab in another section is possible if and only if you can get permission to do the lab ahead of time from the other instructor. Be careful because instructors may not have room or for any reason not allow you to join their labs.
Your grade will be determined according to two things:
1) The lab book that you keep. You will turn it in at the end of the quarter. However, more importantly, I will see it every lab. The lab book is a process, not a final product, and will be graded as such.
2) Your participation in lab. This is your punctuality, effort, and attitude. Please don’t be late to lab.
Lab Notebook –
1) Must be a “comp” book with a sewn binding and graph paper. They are sold in the bookstore and have a marble cover.
2) Get names and numbers of your lab partner.
3) Date each entry.
4) Collect data and do calculations in your notebook so that everything is together. All graphs and data go into your book. You can tape or staple computer printouts into the lab book. Graph your data as you collect it (whenever possible) so you can see how the results are coming out.
5) Outline your conclusions and any discussion of your results in your notebook.
6) Your lab book is what I’ll be looking at when I “check you out” at the end of each experiment. This means that you will not take the results home to enter into your notebook – you will do it during the lab.
7) Each person must have ALL the information from each lab in their notebook.
Preparation – Please come prepared for lab. This means that you should know what lab is being done, and will hopefully have some questions regarding the lab and/or class work. If you don’t understand the lab description, you may need to consult the appropriate part of your textbook.
I’ll provide you with the lab instructions before lab from our website.