PHY251 Lab Practical Exam

• The lab practical exam counts as much as any other lab and can be dropped just like the other labs.
• The lab practical exam will be 50 minutes long, and the experiment will be done by each student individually. You will follow the instructions on the handout. The lab manual will be allowed, but is not necessary.
• Timeline for each lab:
  • Half of the students in each section will do the experiment in the first hour of the lab.
  • This is followed by a quiz in the middle for all students, starting exactly one hour after the beginning of lab.
  • Then the second half of the students will do the experiment in the second hour of the lab.
• You should have signed up for either an early or a 1-hour delayed time slot. If you didn't sign up, you should arrive at the nominal start time of the lab.

Lab Practical

• The lab practical exam will be based on Part I (Hooke's law) of experiment 11 (Spring I). During the 45 minutes in the lab, you will make measurements, fill out a spreadsheet, graph your result, and answer a few questions.
• You will receive the handout for the lab practical exam next week (week of November 26). The handout will also be posted on the course web page.
• You should bring the handout to lab. You are allowed to use your lab manual also, although that won't be needed.
• You will not be allowed to use a USB memory stick or a calculator.
• There will be no talking during the lab practical exam. You should complete the lab by yourself.
• Any calculations that may be required can be done in Excel.
• The lab will count 16 points, just as much as any other lab. It can be dropped just like any other lab.

Quiz

• The quiz will consist of 8 general questions about lab procedures. The questions will not be about the spring lab or any other specific lab. The following topics will be covered:
  • Basic ideas about data taking, repeated measurements, outlier data points.
  • Graphs and fitting to data points.
  • Uncertainty.
  • Mean and standard deviation.
  • How to compare two different measurements with each other.
• It will count 4 points, just as much as any other quiz, and it can be dropped just like any other quiz.
• To prepare for the lab practical exam you should read through the experiments that you have done and in particular the questions for each experiment. You should also review the procedures for mean and uncertainties, checking consistency of two numbers with uncertainty.