Lab Manual

Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

Fullerton College

www.lightandmatter.com
 Copyright (c) 1999-2002 by B. Crowell and V. Roundy. This lab manual is subject to the Open Publication
License on page 166. If you do not agree to the license, then you do not have permission to copy the
manual. The lab manual is available for downloading from www.lightandmatter.com, and a copy of the
Open Publication License is also available at opencontent.org.

2
 Contents
1 Kinematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2 Interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3 Free Fall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4 Newton’s Second Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5 Air Friction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6 Acceleration In Two Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
7 Vector Addition of Forces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
8 Vector Addition of Forces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
9 Conservation Laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
10 Conservation of Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
11 Conservation of Momentum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
12 Conservation of Momentum in Two Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
13 Torque . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
14 The Moment of Inertia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
15 Absolute Zero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
16 The Pendulum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
17 Resonance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
18 Resonance (short version) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
19 Standing Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
20 Resonances of Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
21 Static Electricity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
22 The Oscilloscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
23 The Speed of Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
24 Electrical Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
25 Kirchoff’s Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
26 Electric Fields and Voltages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
27 The Dipole Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
28 Magnetism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
29 Relativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
30 The Charge to Mass Ratio of the Electron. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
31 RC Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
32 Energy in Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
33 LRC Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
34 Faraday’s Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
35 Electromagnetism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
36 Impedance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
37 Refraction and Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
38 Geometric Optics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
39 Two-Source Interference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
40 Wave Optics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
41 Polarization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
42 The Photoelectric Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
43 Electron Diffraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
44 The Hydrogen Atom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Appendix 1: Format of Lab Writeups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Appendix 2: Basic Error Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Appendix 3: Propagation of Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Appendix 4: Graphing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

Contents 3
 Appendix 5: Finding Power Laws from Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Appendix 6: Using the Photogate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Appendix 7: Using a Multimeter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Appendix 8: High Voltage Safety Checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Appendix 9: Laser Safety Checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Appendix 10: The Open Publication License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

4 Contents
Contents 5
1 Kinematics
Apparatus
computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
dynamics cart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
fan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
AA batteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/group
aluminum slugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/group
motion detector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
protractor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
Goal
Learn how to relate the motion of an object to its
position-versus-time graph.
Introduction
Analyzing motion is the most fundamental thing we
do in physics. The most versatile way of representing
motion is with a graph that has the object’s position
on the upright axis and time on the horizontal axis.
It takes some practice to be able to sketch and in-
terpret these graphs, but once you get used to them,
they become very intuitive.
Apparatus
The object whose motion you’ll study is a cart that
rolls on a track. You can either push the cart by
hand, start it moving with a shove, or clamp a fan on
top of it to make it speed up or slow down steadily.
To measure the cart’s motion, you’ll use a little sonar
gun that sends out clicks. When it hears the echo
from the cart, it figures out how far away the cart
was based on the time delay and the known speed of
sound. The sonar gun is connected to a computer,
which produces a position-versus-time graph.
6 Lab 1 Kinematics
Setup
Set the cart on the track without the fan. Prop
the motion detector (sonar gun) at one end of the
track so that it is aimed slightly upward. This angle
is critical — measure 86 ◦ above horizontal with the
protractor, and tape it to the backrest.
With the computer turned off, plug the motion de-
tector into the PORT2 plug on the interface box.
Start up the computer. For compactness, I’ll use no-
tation like this to describe the computer commands:
Start>Programs>Vernier Software>Logger Pro
This is the command to start the computer software
running. “Start” means to click on the start menu
at the bottom left corner of the screen, “Programs”
means to select that from the menu, and so on.
Make sure that the interface box is plugged into
COM1 (the first COM port) at the back of the com-
puter, not COM2. If the computer presents you
with a dialog box saying “Set Up Interface,” choose
COM1.
Once the program is running, do File>Open, then
go into Probes and Sensors and then into Motion
Detector. At this point, you may get the following
error message, which you can ignore: “This file can-
not run properly with this hardware interface.”
You’ll get three graphs on the screen, but you only
want one, the x − t graph. Click on the x − t graph,
and then do View>Graph Layout>One Pane, and
the other two graphs will go away.
If you now click the button to tell it to collect data,
the motion detector should start clicking rapidly,
and it you move the cart back and forth you should
see a graph of its motion. Make sure it is able to
sense the cart’s motion correctly for distances from
50 cm to the full length of the track. If it doesn’t
work when the cart is at the far end of the track,
play with the angle of motion detector a little.
Observations
In parts Athrough E,you don’t need to take detailed
numerical data — just sketch the graphs in your lab
notebook. All of your graphs will have garbage data
at the beginning and the end, and you need to make
sure you understand what’s what.
A Fast and slow motion
Moving the cart by hand, make a graph for slow
motion and another for fast motion. Make sure the
motion is steady, and don’t get confused by the parts
of the graph that come before and after your period
of steady pushing. Sketch the graphs and make sure
you understand them.
Any time you want a close-up view of part of a
graph, do View>Graph Options>Axis Options to
select ranges of time and position values that you
want. (Note that if you take different data later, you
may need to fiddle with this again because you’ll be
zoomed in on the wrong part of the new graph.)
B Motion in two different directions
Now try comparing the graphs you get for the two
different directions of motion. Again, record what
they look like and figure out what you’re seeing.
C Reproducing a graph
Now see if you can produce a graph that looks like
this:
x WordPad to delete the header from the file. Save it
t
D Accelerating away from the sensor
Suppose the fan is mounted on the cart as shown
in the figure, so that if the cart is released from a
position close to the motion detector, it will begin
moving away from it. Predict what you think the
cart’s position-time graph will look like, and show
your prediction to your instructor before getting a
fan.
Before putting the batteries in the fan, make sure the
fan’s switch is off (to the right). Put the batteries in
and clamp the fan on the cart.
Set up the situation described above, and compare
the results with what you predicted.
E Slow or Rapid Acceleration
The aluminum slugs can be used to replace two of
the batteries so that the fan will exert about half as
much force. Discuss with your partners what you
think will happen if you repeat your previous run
with a weakened fan. Now try it.
F Changing the direction of motion
Change the fan back to full strength.
Now suppose instead of releasing the cart from rest
close to the motion detector, you started it moving
with a push toward the motion sensor, from the far
end of the track. It will of course slow down and
eventually come back. Discuss with your partners
what the position-time graph would look like. Now
try it.
G Rate of changing speed
The goal of this part of the lab is to determine
whether the speed of the cart in part F was changing
at a constant rate, i.e., by the same amount every
second.
Zoom in on the relevant part of your graph from part
F, and print out a big copy. If the printer in room
418 is working, you can do this simply by choosing
File>Print in Logger Pro.
If that printer isn’t working, here’s what you need to
do instead. Do File>Export Data, and select “.txt”
for the type of the file. Use a text editor such as
in your FC student directory, and also on a floppy
disk if you intend to work on it at home. Get into
OpenOffice or Excel, and open the file. Appendix 4
describes how to use OpenOffice. Whatever method
you use, make sure the whole group will end up with
copies.
If you’re using Excel or OpenOffice to make your
graph, you can make the grid overlaid on the graph
have a very short spacing both horizontally and ver-
tically, to give the best possible accuracy when you
measure the slopes of the tangent lines. If you’re us-
ing Logger Pro, there doesn’t seem to be any way to
control the grid’s spacing, so the simplest thing to
do is simply to use a ruler to measure vertical and
horizontal distances, and determine the slopes from
these; although the resulting slopes won’t be in any
standard units, that won’t affect your conclusion.
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Make a prediction of the four graphs you’ll ob-
tain in parts A and B.
7
Self-Check
Do the analysis in lab.

Analysis
At one-second intervals, draw nice long tangent lines
on the curve from part G and determine their slope.
Some slopes will be negative, and some positive.
Summarize this series of changing speeds in a table.
Did the velocity increase by about the same amount
with every second?

8 Lab 1 Kinematics
9
2 Interactions
Apparatus
single neodymium magnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
triple neodymium magnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
compass
triple-arm balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/group
clamp and 50-cm vertical rod for holding balance up
string
tape
scissors
heavy-duty spring scales
rubber stoppers
Goal
Form hypotheses about interactions and test them.
Introduction
Why does a rock fall if you drop it? The ancient
Greek philosopher Aristotle theorized that it was be-
cause the rock was trying to get to its natural place,
in contact with the earth. Why does a ball roll if you
push it? Aristotle would say that only living things
have the ability to move of their own volition, so the
ball can only move if you give motion to it. Aristo-
tle’s explanations were accepted by Arabs and Euro-
peans for two thousand years, but beginning in the
Renaissance, his ideas began to be modified drasti-
cally. Today, Aristotelian physics is discussed mainly
by physics teachers, who often find that their stu-
dents intuitively believe the Aristotelian world-view
and strongly resist the completely different version
of physics that is now considered correct. It is not
uncommon for a student to begin a physics exam
and then pause to ask the instructor, “Do you want
us to answer these questions the way you told us was
true, or the way we really think it works?” The idea
of this lab is to make observations of objects, mostly
magnets, pushing and pulling on each other, and to
figure out some of the corrections that need to be
made to Aristotelian physics.
Some people might say that it’s just a matter of
definitions or semantics whether Aristotle is correct
or not. Is Aristotle’s theory even testable? One
testable feature of the theory is its asymmetry. The
Aristotelian description of the rock falling and the
10 Lab 2 Interactions
ball being pushed outlines two relationships involv-
ing four objects:
The earth is the rock's natural place.
earth rock
The hand gives motion to the ball.
hand ball
According to Aristotle, there are asymmetries in-
volved in both situations.
(1) The earth’s role is not interchangeable with that
of the rock. The earth functions only as a place
where the rock tends to go, while the rock is an
object that moves from one place to another.
(2) The hand’s role is not analogous to the ball’s.
The hand is capable of motion all by itself, but the
ball can’t move without receiving the ability to move
from the hand.
If we do an experiment that shows these types of
asymmetries, then Aristotle’s theory is supported.
If we find a more symmetric situation, then there’s
something wrong with Aristotle’s theory.
Observations
The following important rules serve to keep facts
separate from opinions and reduce the chances of
getting a garbled copy of the data:
(1) Take your raw data in pen, directly into your lab
notebook. This is what real scientists do. The point
is to make sure that what you’re writing down is
a first-hand record, without mistakes introduced by
recopying it. (If you don’t have your two lab note-
books yet, staple today’s raw data into your note-
book when you get it.)
(2) Everybody should record their own copy of the
raw data. Do not depend on a “group secretary.”
(3) If you do calculations during lab, keep them on
a separate page or draw a line down the page and
keep calculations on one side of the line and raw
data on the other. This is to distinguish facts from
inferences.
Because this is the first meeting of the lab class,
there is no prelab writeup due at the beginning of
the class. Instead, you will discuss your results with
your instructor at various points.
A Comparing magnets’ strengths
To make an interesting hypothesis about what will
happen in part C, the main event of the lab, you’ll
need to know how the top (single) and bottom (triple)
magnets’ strengths compare. It would seem logical
that the triple magnet would be three times stronger
than the single, but in this part of the lab you’re go-
ing to find out for sure.
compass
Orient your magnet this way, as if it’s rolling toward the
compass from the north. With no magnet nearby, the
compass points to magnetic north (dashed arrow). The
magnet deflects the compass to a new direction.
One way of measuring the strength of a magnet is
to place the magnet to the north or south of the
compass and see how much it deflects (twists) the
needle of a compass. You need to test the magnets
at equal distances from the compass, which will pro-
duce two different angles.1 It’s also important to get
everything oriented properly, as in the figure.2
Make sure to take your data with the magnets far
enough from the compass that the deflection angle
is fairly small (say 5 to 30 ◦ ). If the magnet is close
enough to the compass to deflect it by a large an-
gle, then the ratio of the angles does not accurately
represent the ratio of the magnets’ strengths. After
all, just about any magnet is capable of deflecting
the compass in any direction if you bring it close
enough, but that doesn’t mean that all magnets are
equally strong.
1 There are two reasons why it wouldn’t make sense to find
different distances that produced the same angle. First, you
don’t know how the strengths of the effect falls off with dis-
tance; it’s not necessarily true, for instance, that the magnetic
field is half as strong at twice the distance. Second, the point
of this is to help you interpret part C, and in part C, the triple
magnet’s distance from the single magnet is the same as the
single magnet’s distance from the first magnet.
2 Although you don’t yet know enough about magnetism
to be able to see from first principles why it should be this
way, you can easily convince yourself empirically that other
setups (e.g. rotating the magnet 90 degrees) give results that
are inaccurate and hard to reproduce, because the compass
acts “fidgety.”
B Qualitative observations of the interaction of
two magnets
Play around with the two magnets and see how they
interact with each other. Can one attract the other?
Can one repel the other? Can they act on each other
simultaneously? Do they need to be touching in or-
der to do anything to each other? Can A act on B
while at the same time B does not act on A at all?
Can A pull B toward itself at the same time that
B pushes A away? When holding one of the heavier
magnets, it may be difficult to feel when there is any
push or pull on it; you may wish to have one person
hold the magnet with her eyes closed while the other
person moves the other magnet closer and farther.
C Measurement of interactions between two mag-
nets
Once you have your data from parts A and B, you
are ready to form a hypothesis about the following
situation. Suppose we set up two balances as shown
in the figure. The magnets are not touching. The
top magnet is hanging from a hook underneath the
pan, giving the same result as if it was on top of the
pan. Make sure it is hanging under the center of the
pan. You will want to make sure the magnets are
pulling on each other, not pushing each other away,
so that the top magnet will stay in one place.
pencil
single disk magnet
taped to pencil
three disk magnets
taped to a
rubber stopper
The balances will not show the magnets’ true masses,
because the magnets are exerting forces on each other.
The top balance will read a higher number than it
would without any magnetic forces, and the bot-
tom balance will have a lower than normal reading.
The difference between each magnet’s true mass and
the reading on the balance gives a measure of how
11
strongly the magnet is being pushed or pulled by the
other magnet.
How do you think the amount of pushing or pulling
experienced by the two magnets will compare? In
other words, which reading will change more, or will
they change by the same amount? Write down a hy-
pothesis; you’ll test this hypothesis in part C of the
lab. If you think the forces will be unequal predict
their ratio.
Discuss with your instructor your results from parts
A and B, and your hypothesis about what will hap-
pen with the two balances.
Now set up the experiment described above with two
balances. Since we are interested in the changes in
the scale readings caused by the magnetic forces, you
will need to take a total of four scale readings: one
pair with the balances separated and one pair with
the magnets close together as shown in the figure
above.
When the balances are together and the magnetic
forces are acting, it is not possible to get both bal-
ances to reach equilibrium at the same time, because
sliding the weights on one balance can cause its mag-
net to move up or down, tipping the other balance.
Therefore, while you take a reading from one bal-
ance, you need to immobilize the other in the hori-
zontal position by taping its tip so it points exactly
at the zero mark.
You will also probably find that as you slide the
weights, the pointer swings suddenly to the oppo-
site side, but you can never get it to be stable in
the middle (zero) position. Try bringing the pointer
manually to the zero position and then releasing it.
If it swings up, you’re too low, and if it swings down,
you’re too high. Search for the dividing line between
the too-low region and the too-high region.
If the changes in the scale readings are very small
(say a few grams or less), you need to get the mag-
nets closer together. It should be possible to get the
scale readings to change by large amounts (up to 10
or 20 g).
Part C is the only part of the experiment where you
will be required to analyze random errors using the
techniques outlined in Appendices 2 and 3 at the
back of the lab manual. Think about how you can
get an estimate of the random errors in your mea-
surements. Do you need to do multiple measure-
ments? Discuss this with your instructor if you’re
uncertain.
Don’t take apart your setup until lab is over, and
12 Lab 2 Interactions
you’re completely done with your analysis — it’s no
fun to have to rebuild it from scratch because you
made a mistake!
D Measurement of interactions involving ob-
jects in contact
You’ll recall that Aristotle gave completely different
interpretations for situations where one object was
in contact with another, like the hand pushing the
ball, and situations involving objects not in contact
with each other, such as the rock falling down to
the earth. Your magnets were not in contact with
each other. Now suppose we try the situation shown
above, with one person’s hand exerting a force on the
other’s. All the forces involved are forces between
objects in contact, although the two people’s hands
cannot be in direct contact because the spring scales
have to be inserted to measure how strongly each
person is pulling. Suppose the two people do not
make any special arrangement in advance about how
hard to pull. How do you think the readings on the
two scales will compare? Write down a hypothesis,
and discuss it with your instructor before continuing.
Now carry out the measurement shown in the figure.
Self-Check
Do all your analysis in lab, including error analysis
for part C. Error analysis is discussed in Appendices
2 and 3; get help from your instructor if necessary.
Analysis
In your writeup, present your results from all four
parts of the experiment, including error analysis for
part C. The most common mistake is to fail to ad-
dress the point of the lab. If you feel like you don’t
understand why you were doing any of this, then
you were missing out on your educational experi-
ence! See the back of the lab manual for the format
of lab writeups.
Notes For Next Week
(1) Next week, when you turn in your writeup for
this lab, you also need to turn in a prelab writeup for
the next lab in the same notebook. The prelab ques-
tions are listed at the end of the description of that
lab in the lab manual. Never start a lab without un-
derstanding the answers to all the prelab questions;
if you turn in partial answers or answers you’re un-
sure of, discuss the questions with your instructor
or with other students to make sure you understand
what’s going on.
(2) You should exchange phone numbers with your
lab partners for general convenience throughout the
semester. You can also get each other’s e-mail ad-
dresses by logging in to Spotter and clicking on “e-
mail.”
(3) Check the schedule to see what lab you need to
prepare for next week — it probably isn’t the next
one in numerical order.

13
3 Free Fall
Apparatus make settle the issue because he figured out how to
use a pendulum to measure time accurately, and also
Part A (two stations): came up with the idea of effectively slowing down the
Behr free-fall column and weight motion by studying objects rolling down an inclined
plumb bob plane, rather than objects falling vertically. He then
spark generator (CENCO) found how to extrapolate from the case of an object
paper tape rolling down an inclined plane at an angle θ to the
switch for electromagnet ideal case of θ=90 ◦ , which would be the same as free
Part B (two stations): fall. Galileo’s task would have been a lot simpler
vertical plank with electromagnets if he’d had accurate enough devices for measuring
steel balls (2/station) time, because then he could have simply carried out
Macintosh measurements for objects falling vertically. That’s
microphone (in Ben Crowell’s office) what you’ll do today.

Goals
Find out whether it is ∆v/∆x or ∆v/∆t that
is constant for an object accelerating under the
influence of gravity.

Whichever of those quantities turns out to be

constant, measure it accurately.

Introduction
A fundamental and difficult problem in pre-Newton-
ian physics was the motion of falling bodies. Aristo-
tle had various incorrect but influential ideas on the
subject, including the assertions that heavier objects
fell faster than lighter ones and that the object only
sped up for a short while after it was dropped and
then continued on at a constant speed. Even among
Renaissance scientists who disagreed with Aristotle’s
claim that the object no longer sped up after a while,
there was a great deal of confusion about whether it
was ∆v/∆x or ∆v/∆t that was constant. It seems
obvious to modern physicists that they could not
both be constant, but it was not at all obvious to
authorities such as Domingo de Soto and Albert of wire
Saxony. Galileo started out thinking they were both wire paper tape
constant, then realized this was mathematically im-
possible, and finally determined from experiments
that it was ∆v/∆t, now called acceleration, that was A What’s constant?
constant.
Setup
The main reason why the confusion persisted for two
thousand years was that the methods for measuring
time were inaccurate, and the time required for an The apparatus consists of a 2-meter tall column with
object to fall was very short. Galileo was able to a paper tape running down it. A weight is held at the

14 Lab 3 Free Fall

top with an electromagnet and then released, falling
right next to the paper tape. (An electromagnet
is an artificial magnet that works when you put an
electric current through it, unlike a permanent mag-
net, which does not require power.) A spark gener-
ator is hooked up to the two vertical wires, and as
the weight falls, sparks cross the gap from the first
wire to the metal flange on the weight, then from
the flange to the other wire. Sparks are produced
only briefly, at regular intervals of 1/60 of a sec-
ond. On their way, the sparks go through the paper
tape, making dots on it that show the location of the
weight at 1/60-s intervals.
First, unplug the spark generator so you don’t get
shocked while you’re getting things ready. Use the
switch made from a regular light switch to turn on
the magnet at the top of the column, which operates
on 7 volts from the lab’s DC power circuits. Insert
the plumb bob, hanging from the magnet. Use the
three screws on the feet of the column to level the
apparatus so the plumb bob’s string is parallel to
the wire.
Replace the plumb bob with the weight. Pull fresh
tape up from the roll at the bottom, and get the
tape straight and centered on the wire.
Plug in the spark generator, and put the function
knob on “line,” which means it will base its cycle
of sparks on the AC power from the wall, which
switches directions once every sixtieth of a second.
The red LED should light up. From now on, do not
press the thumb switch to activate the sparks unless
you are sure nobody is near the vertical wires. Try
it out, and see if you get a spot at the top of the
tape, where the weight currently is.
Observations
Hold down the thumb switch to make the sparks
start, flip the switch to release the weight, and wait
until the weight has fallen in the cup at the bottom
before releasing the thumb switch. You want a nice
straight line of dots on the tape, going all the way
from the top to the bottom — you may have to make
adjustments and try a few times before getting a
good tape. Take your tape off, and measure the
locations of the dots accurately with a two-meter
stick.
B Measuring g precisely
In this part of the lab, you will measure g, the accel-
eration of an object in free fall, using electronic tim-
ing techniques. The idea of the method is that you’ll
have two steel balls hanging underneath electromag-
nets at different heights. You’ll simultaneously turn
off the two magnets using the same switch, causing
the balls to drop at the same moment. The ball
dropped from the lower height (h1 ) takes a smaller
time (∆t1 ) to reach the floor, and the ball released
from the greater height (h2 ) takes a longer time
(∆t2 ). The time intervals involved are short enough
that due to the limitations of your reflexes it is im-
possible to make good enough measurements with
stopwatch. Instead, you will record the sounds of
the two balls’ impacts on the floor using the Macin-
tosh. The computer shows a graph in which the x
axis is time and the y axis shows the vibration of the
sound wave hitting the microphone. You can mea-
sure the time between the two visible “blips” on the
screen. You will measure three things: h1 , h2 , and
the time interval ∆t2 − ∆t1 between the impact of
the second ball and the first. From these data, with
a little algebra, you can find g.
The experiment would have been easier to analyze if
we could simply drop a single ball and measure the
time from when it was released to when it hit the
floor. But since our timing technique is based on
sound, and no sound is produced when the balls are
released, we need to have two balls. If h1 , the height
of the lower ball, could be made very small, then it
would hit the floor at essentially the same moment
the two balls were released (∆t1 would equal 0), and
∆t2 −∆t1 would be essentially the same as ∆t2 . But
we can’t make h1 too small or the sound would not
be loud enough to detect on the computer.
Using the computer software
First let’s see how to record yourself on the computer
saying “hello.” If you have never used a Macintosh
before, ask your instructor for help getting started
with using the mouse and the menus. Use the mouse
to select Sound Editor from the apple menu (at the
left end of the menu bar). The program gives you an
introductory window — click on OK. It then gives
you an opportunity to open a file containing a pre-
viously recorded sound, which you don’t want to do
— click on Cancel. Choose Record from the Sound
menu. You are now presented with a set of controls
mimicking those of a tape recorder. Click the record
button, say “hello,” or some other profound state-
ment, and then click the record button again. Click
the save button. The controls go away, and your
sound is displayed graphically as a function of time.
Choose Play from the Sound menu to play back the
sound. If you’re using the mac on the big cart and
15
you don’t hear anything, it may be because the knob
on the speaker is turned down. If that doesn’t help,
ask your instructor for help with changing the vol-
ume of the speaker in software, from the Sound con-
trol panel under the apple menu.
Two thumps, as recorded on the computer through the
microphone.
sound before
trimming
correctly trimmed sound
incorrectly
trimmed
Trimming the sound.
Sometimes you are not sure which wiggles in the vi-
sual representation of the sound correspond to which
parts of the recorded sound. To find out, you can
select part of the sound and listen to only that part.
Position the mouse in the window on one side of the
time interval you wish to hear, then hold the mouse
button and move the mouse to the right to select the
part you want to hear. Do Play Selection from the
Sound menu.
Now you need to cut out silence at the beginning and
end. To cut out the silent segment at the beginning,
you first must select the segment. To select it, posi-
tion the mouse at one end of the segment, hold down
the mouse button, slide the mouse across to the other
end of the segment while keeping the mouse button
held down, then release the mouse button. Now that
16 Lab 3 Free Fall
it is selected, press the delete key on the keyboard
to get rid of it. Repeat the whole process for the
silence at the end.
Finding the interval between two sounds
When you record the sound of the two consecutive
impacts of the balls, they will look like vertical spikes
on the screen. You can practice using hand claps. If
you cut out everything up to the onset of the first
spike, and everything after the onset of the second
spike, you can then get the time difference. Try clap-
ping your hands five seconds apart, and then trim-
ming the sound as shown in the figure below. At
the upper right corner of the window, the program
should display something like “Size: 42240 bytes,
Sampling Rate: 22050 Hz, Playing Time: 1:55 s.”
Warning: The program uses a stupid format for dis-
playing the time numerically. In the example, that’s
not a decimal point after the 1 but a colon, signify-
ing that the following fractional part is in units of
sixtieths of a second! In other words, the time in the
example is not 1.55 s but 1+55/60 s = 1.92 s.
You are better off simply taking the number given as
“size in bytes” (in our example, 42240) and dividing
by the equally obscurely labeled “sampling rate” to
get a time in units of seconds. This allows you to
get precision of better than 1/60 of a second.
Before you get down to serious science, you may en-
joy listening to your own voice reversed in time —
use the Reverse command from the Edit menu. A
fun diversion is to write a sentence down backwards,
read it out loud, and then electronically reverse it
so it’s forward again. It sounds sort of like someone
with a thick Hungarian accent.
Observations
Measure h1 , h2 , and the time interval ∆t2 − ∆t1 .
Analysis
Part A
Since the sparks start before you release the electro-
magnet, the first dot at the very top of the tape will
give the starting position of the weight.
If you consider any adjacent pair of dots (avoiding
the top and bottom ones), then measuring the dis-
tance between them allows you to calculate an ap- Derive an equation for g in terms of the quantities
proximation to the speed of the weight, which you you’ll measure in part B, which are h1 , h2 , and the
can think of as being its speed at the point half-way time interval ∆t2 − ∆t1 . The point of the lab is
between the two dots. to measure g, so don’t just say “well of course g
is 9.8 m/s2 .” Numerical check: If h1 = 0.100 m,
Make one plot of speed versus time and another of
h2 = 1.500 m, and ∆t2 − ∆t1 = 0.411 s, then your
speed versus distance, preferably using a computer,
equation should give g = 9.77 m/s2 .
since you will have about thirty data points, and it
would be tedious to plot them all by hand. P2 How will you tell from your graphs in part A
whether it is ∆v/∆x or ∆v/∆t that is constant, or
Determine whether your data are consistent with
neither of them?
constant ∆v/∆x or ∆v/∆t or neither. Whichever
one it is that is constant, call it the acceleration of
gravity, g. If you wish, you can extract a rough
seat-of-the-pants value of g from the slope of the ap-
propriate graph.
Due to the limited accuracy of the technique used in
part A, your value for g may be off by as much as
10% compared to the one you get in part B. Part B
is much more accurate (better than 1%). No error
analysis is required for part A.

Part B
Extract a value of g from your data, with error bars.
If you found in part A that ∆v/∆t was constant,
then you’ll define g = ∆v/∆t, and you’ll use the
equation you derived as part of your prelab. If you
found in part A that ∆v/∆x was constant, then g
should be defined as ∆v/∆x, and the relevant equa-
tion (derived using calculus) is g = (1/∆t) ln(h2 /h1 ).
Make sure your value of g is roughly consistent with
the less accurate value from part A.

Self-Check
Analyze both parts in lab. The graphing is time-
consuming without a computer; since we have a lim-
ited number of computers in lab, you may want to
go to one of the other campus computer labs for this.
Read Appendix 3 for information on how to do er-
ror analysis with propagation of errors; get help from
your instructor if necessary.

Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Suppose you find in part A that ∆v/∆t is con-
stant, in which case g should be defined as ∆v/∆t.

17
4 Newton’s Second Law
Apparatus also m. They were initially just hanging there at
rest, and then the monkey began climbing up the
pulley rope. The students were supposed to predict what
string would happen. The vast majority of the students
weight holders, not tied to string got stuck at the very beginning, because my draw-
two-meter stick ing showed the monkey initially being lower than the
slotted weights other mass. They thought that the only way their
stopwatch equal masses could be at rest was if they were “bal-
foam rubber cushions anced” at the same height, and they expected that
if they were initially positioned as shown, and the
monkey just held on, the monkey would go up and
the other mass would go down, until they were side
Goal by side. Drawing them at rest at unequal heights im-
Test Newton’s second law for unequal weights hang- plied to them that the masses were “unbalanced,” so
ing from a pulley. they thought they were faced with given information
that was inconsistent.
Here’s your chance to thoroughly explore this type
of situation, and get one step closer to thoroughly
understanding Newton’s second law.

Observations

(c) Eric Mazur

Introduction
We physics teachers tend to assume too often that a
single, generally correct statement such as Newton’s
second law, Ftotal = ma, is capable of wiping out
with one blow a huge number incorrect expectations
held by our students about physical phenomena. In
reality, students need to compare their expectations Set up unequal masses on the two sides of the pulley,
with reality in a variety of situations before the full and determine the resulting acceleration by measur-
implications of a general law of nature start to sink ing how long it takes for the masses to move a certain
in. I encountered such a situation when I gave an distance. Use relatively large masses (several hun-
exam question about a monkey hanging from one dred grams on each side) so that friction is not such
side of a pulley. The monkey’s mass, I said, was a big force in comparison to the other forces. Do sev-
m, and the mass on the other end of the string was eral different combinations of masses, but keep the

18 Lab 4 Newton’s Second Law

total amount of mass constant and just divide it dif- each mass. As a numerical check on your result, if
ferently between the two holders. Remember to take M = 1500 g and m = 500 g, your equation should
the masses of the holders themselves into account. give a = 4.9 m/s2 .
Make sure to perform your measurements with the
longest possible distance of travel, because you can-
not use a stopwatch to get an accurate measurement
of very short time intervals. The best results are ob-
tained with combinations of weights that give times
of about 2 to 10 seconds. Also, make sure that the
masses are at least a few hundred grams or so on
each side.

Self-Check
Compare theoretical and experimental values of ac-
celeration for one of your mass combinations. Check
whether they come out fairly consistent.

Analysis
Use your measured times and distances to find the
actual acceleration, and make a graph of this versus
M − m. Show these experimentally determined ac-
celerations as small circles. Overlaid on the same
graph, show the theoretical equation as a line or
curve.

Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Criticize the following reasoning: The weight
fell 1.0 m in 1 s, so v = 1 m/s, and a = v/t = 1 m/s2 .
P2 Since that won’t work, plan how you really will
determine your experimental accelerations based on
your measured distance and times.
P3 If the greater mass is M , and the lesser mass is
m, apply Newton’s second law to predict their the-
oretical accelerations. Hints: (1) their accelerations
must be equal in magnitude but in opposite direc-
tions, because whatever amount of string is “eaten”
on one side is paid out on the other; (2) choose a
coordinate system and keep your plus and minus
signs straight; (3) there are two forces acting on each
mass, weight and the string’s upward force; (4) the
string exerts the same upward force on each mass;
(5) you need to apply Newton’s second law once to

19
5 Air Friction
Apparatus
coffee filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10/group
stopwatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
Goal
Determine how the force of air friction depends on
the velocity of a moving object.
As an alternative, you may create your own tech-
nique for doing the same sort of experiment for fric-
tion between two surfaces wetted with a liquid such
as water, vegetable oil, or machine oil — the result
might be more interesting, since it is not to be found
in textbooks. If you are interested in doing this, dis-
cuss it in advance with your instructor.
Introduction
Friction between solid objects occurs all the time in
our daily lives. The frictional force exerted by the air
on a solid object is not as often evident, but it is re-
sponsible for the wind blowing our hair, for the slow
dropping of a feather, and for our cars’ poorer gas
mileage at freeway speeds compared to more mod-
erate speeds.
The latter effect suggests that air friction might in-
crease with speed, unlike solid-solid friction, which is
nearly independent of speed. By Newton’s first law,
a car or a jet plane cruising at constant speed must
have zero total force on it, so if the air friction force
gets stronger with speed, that would explain why
a greater forward-pushing force would be needed to
travel at high speeds. For instance, a car traveling
at low speed might have a -10 kN air friction force
pushing backward on it, so in order to have zero to-
tal force on it the road must be making a forward
force of +10 kN. At a higher speed, air friction might
increase to -30 kN, so the road would need to make a
forward force of +30 kN. The car convinces the road
to make the stronger force by pushing backward on
the road more strongly: by Newton’s third law, the
car’s force on the road and the road’s force on the
car must be equal in magnitude and opposite in di-
rection. The car burns more gas because it must
push harder against the road.
20 Lab 5 Air Friction
Your goal in this lab is to find a proportionality re-
lating the force of air friction to the velocity at which
the air rushes over the object. For instance, you may
find the rule
F ∝v ,
which is a shorthand for
F = (some number)(v) .
The numerical value of “some number” is not very
interesting, because we would expect it to be dif-
ferent for different objects, which is why you would
write your result as F ∝ v. This proportionality
would tell you for instance that anytime the speed
was doubled, the result would be twice as much air
friction.
Suppose instead you find that doubling the speed
makes the force eight times greater, multiplying the
speed by 10 makes the force 1000 times greater, and
so on. In each case, the force is being multiplied
by the third power of the increase in the speed, i.e.
F ∝ v3 .
Observations
The method is shown in the figure below. We use
coffee filters because they don’t tumble or sway very
much as they fall, and because they allow us to easily
change the mass of our falling object by nesting more
coffee filters inside the bottom one, without chang-
ing its aerodynamic properties. The filters will start
speeding up when you release them near the ceiling,
but as they speed up, the upward force of air friction
on them increases, until they reach a speed at which
the total force on them is zero. Once at this speed,
they obey Newton’s first law and continue at con-
stant speed. If the number of coffee filters is small,
they will have reached their maximum speed within
the first half a meter or so. By the time they are
even with the edge of the lab bench, they are mov-
ing at essentially their full speed. You can then use
the stopwatch to determine how long it takes them
to cover the distance to the floor, which will allow
you to find their speed. During this final part of the
fall, you know the upward force of air friction must
be as great as the downward force of gravity, so you
can determine what it was.
Note that if the coffee filters get too flattened out,
they’ll flutter, giving lousy results.
 release ceiling Analysis
Filters speed up at first. Use your raw data to compile a list of F and v values.
Use the methods explained in Appendix 5 to see if
you can find a power-law relationship between F and
Filters reach maximum v. This will require fitting a line to a set of data, as
speed, where total force explained in appendix 4. Both fitting a line to data
is zero. and finding power laws are techniques you will use
start several more times in this course, so it is worth your
stopwatch while to get help now if necessary in order to get
confident with them.

stop
stopwatch

Take data with stacks of various numbers of coffee

filters. You will get the most clearcut determination
of the power law relationship if your data cover the
largest possible range of values. It’s a good idea to
take some data with a large number of filters, drop-
ping them from the balcony outside so they have
time to get up to their final speed. This is also the
only way you can tell for sure whether you’re tak-
ing data at terminal velocity: the results at the two
different heights (inside and outside) should be con-
sistent.

Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Suppose you tried to do this lab with stacks of
coins instead of coffee filters. Assuming you had a
sufficiently accurate timing device, would it work?
P2 Criticize the following statement:
“We found that bigger velocities gave bigger air drag
forces, which demonstrates the proportionality F ∝
v.”
P3 Criticize the following statement:
“We found F ∝ v 7 , which shows that you need more
force to make things go faster.”

21
6 Acceleration In Two Dimensions
Apparatus
air track (small)
cart
photogate (PASCO) (under lab benches in rm. 418)
computer
air blowers
vernier calipers
Goal
Test whether the acceleration of gravity acts like a
vector.
Introduction
As noted in lab 2, one of the tricky techniques Galileo
had to come up with to study acceleration was to
use objects rolling down an inclined plane rather
than falling straight down. That slowed things down
enough so that he could measure the time intervals
using a pendulum clock. Even though you were able
in the previous lab to use modern electronic timing
techniques to measure the short times involved in a
vertical fall, there is still some intrinsic interest in
the idea of motion on an inclined plane. The rea-
son it’s worth studying is that it reveals the vector
nature of acceleration.
Vectors rule the universe. Entomologists say that
God must have had an inordinate fondness for bee-
tles, because there are so many species of them.
Well, God must also have had a special place in her
heart for vectors, because practically every natural
phenomenon she invented is a vector: gravitational
acceleration, electric fields, nuclear forces, magnetic
fields, all the things that tie our universe together
are vectors.
Setup
The idea of the lab is that if acceleration really acts
like a vector, then the cart’s acceleration should equal
the component of the earth’s gravitational accelera-
tion vector that is parallel to the track, because the
cart is only free to accelerate in the direction along
the track. There is almost no friction, since the cart
rides on a cushion of air coming through holes in the
22 Lab 6 Acceleration In Two Dimensions
vane
cart photogate
air track
θ
a=component of
g parallel
to track
g
θ
track.
The speed of the cart at any given point can be mea-
sured as follows. The photogate consists of a light
and a sensor on opposite sides of the track. When
the cart passes by, the cardboard vane on top blocks
the light momentarily, keeping light from getting to
the sensor. The computer detects the electrical sig-
nal from the sensor, and records the amount of time,
tb , for which the photogate was blocked. Given tb ,
you can determine the approximate speed that cart
had when it passed through the photogate. The use
of the computer software is explained in Appendix 6;
of the three modes described there, you want to use
the software in the mode in which it measures the
time interval over which the photogate was blocked.
Observations
The basic idea is to release the cart at a distance x
away from the photogate. The cart accelerates, and
you can determine its approximate speed, v, when it
passes through the photogate. (See prelab question
P1. Make sure to use Vernier calipers to measure the
width of the vane, w.) From v and x, you can find
the acceleration. You will take data with the track
tilted at several different angles, to see whether the
cart’s acceleration always equals the component of g
parallel to the track.
You can level the track to start with by adjusting
the screws until the cart will sit on the track without
accelerating in either direction.
The distance x can be measured from the starting
position of the cart to half-way between the point the distance between the feet of the air track and
where it first blocks the photogate and the point the height of the wood block?
where it unblocks the photogate. You can determine
P4 Based on v and x, how can you find a?
where these positions are by sliding the cart into the
photogate and watching the red LED on the top of P5 Explain why the following method for finding
the photogate, which lights up when it is blocked. the cart’s acceleration is incorrect. “The time I got
off the computer was 0.0237 s. My vane was 2.2 cm
Hints:
wide, so v = 2.2 cm/.0237 s = 93 cm/s. That means
the acceleration was 93 cm/s divided by .0237 s, or
Keep in mind that if the cart rebounds at the 3900 cm/s2 .”
bottom of the track and comes back up through
the gate, you will get a second, bogus time
reading. Analysis
Note that you have no way to measure accu- Extract the acceleration for each angle at which you
rately to the total amount of time over which took data. Make a graph with θ on the x axis and
the cart picked up speed (which would be sev- acceleration on the y axis. Show your measured ac-
eral seconds) — what you measure is the very celerations as points, and the theoretically expected
short time required for the cart to pass through dependence of a on θ as a smooth curve.
the photogate.
Error analysis is not required for this lab, because
If you’re using one of the gray air pumps, which the random errors are small compared to systematic
has a knob to adjust the flow, make sure it’s on errors such as the imperfect leveling of the track,
the highest speed, or the cart will drag on the friction, and warping of the track.
track, giving bogus data. To turn the pump
on and off, just plug it in and unplug it.
Release the cart by hand after starting up the
air pump. If you leave the cart on the track
and then turn on the pump, there will be a
period of time when the pump is first starting
up, and the cart will drag.

Self-Check
Find the theoretical and experimental accelerations
for one of your angles, and see if they are roughly
consistent.

Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 If w is the width of the vane, and tb is defined
as suggested above, what is the speed of the cart
when it passes through the photogate?
P2 Should x be measured horizontally, or along
the slope of the track?
P3 It is not possible to measure θ accurately with
a protractor. How can θ be determined based on

23
7 Vector Addition of Forces
Apparatus
force table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
ring
spirit level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
weights
string

Goal
Test whether the vector sum of the forces acting on
an object at rest is equal to zero.
Introduction
Modern physics claims that when a bridge, an earth-
quake fault, or an oak tree doesn’t move, it is be-
cause the forces acting on it, which combine accord-
ing to vector addition, add up to zero. Although
this may seem like a reasonable statement, it was
far from obvious to premodern scientists. Aristotle,
for instance, said that it was the nature of each of
the four elements, earth, fire, water and air, to re-
turn to its natural location. Rain would fall from
the sky because it was trying to return to its natu-
ral location in the lakes and oceans, and once it got
to its natural location it would stop moving because
that was its nature.
When a modern scientist considers a book resting on
a table, she says that it holds still because the force
of gravity pulling the book down is exactly canceled
by the normal force of the table pushing up on the
book. Aristotle would have denied that this was pos-
sible, because he believed that at any one moment an
object could have only one of two mutually exclusive
types of motion: natural motion (the tendency of the
book to fall to the ground, and resume its natural
place), and forced motion (the ability of another ob-
ject, such as the table, to move the book). According
to his theory, there could be nothing like the addi-
tion of forces, because the object being acted on was
only capable of “following orders” from one source at
a time. The incorrect Aristotelian point of view has
great intuitive appeal, and beginning physics stu-
dents tend to make Aristotelian statements such as,
“The table’s force overcomes the force of gravity,”
as if the forces were having a contest, in which the
victor annihilated the loser.
Observations
The apparatus consists of a small circular table, with
a small metal ring held in the middle by the tension
in four strings. Each string goes over a pulley at the
edge of the table, so that a weight can be hung on it
to control the tension. The angles can be recorded
either graphically, by sliding a piece of paper un-
derneath, or by reading angles numerically off of an
angular scale around the circumference of the table.
Use the spirit level to level the table completely us-
ing the screws on the feet. Set up four strings with
weights, using the small pin to hold the ring in place.
Adjust the angles or the amounts of weight or both,
until the ring is in equilibrium without the pin, and
is positioned right over the center of the table. Avoid
a symmetric arrangement of the strings (e.g. don’t
space them all 90 degrees apart). The ring is an ex-
tended object, so in order to treat it mathematically
as a pointlike object you should make sure that all
the strings are lined up with the center of the ring,
as shown in the figure.
yes no
Because of friction, it is possible to change any one
of the weights slightly without causing the ring to
move. This is a potential source of systematic er-
rors, but you can eliminate the error completely by
the following method. Find out how much you can
increase or decrease each weight without causing the
ring to move. Within the range of values that don’t
cause slipping, use the center of the range as your

24 Lab 7 Vector Addition of Forces

best value; with this amount of weight, there is no Analysis
friction at all in the pulley. The point here is not
to redo the entire experiment with a completely dif- Calculate the magnitude of vector sum of the forces
ferent combination of weights — that would not tell on the ring, first graphically and then analytically.
you anything about friction as a source of error, since Make sure the two methods give the same result. If
even if there was no friction at all, it would be pos- they do not, try measuring the x and y components
sible for example to double all the weights and get off of your drawing and comparing them with the x
an equilibrium. and y components you calculated analytically.
Estimate the possible random error in your final
sum.
Prelab
Are your results consistent with theory, taking into
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you account the random errors involved?
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 The weights go on weight holders that hang
from the string, and the weight holders are each 50
g. Criticize the following reasoning: “We don’t need
to count the mass of the weight holders, because it’s
the same on all four strings, so it cancels out.”
P2 Describe a typical scale that you might use for
drawing force vectors on a piece of paper, e.g. how
long might you choose to make a 1-N force? Assume
your masses are from 500 to 1500 grams.
P3 Graphically calculate the vector sums of the
two pairs of vectors shown below. As a check on
your results, you should find that the magnitudes of
the two sums are equal.

Self-Check
Do both a graphical calculation and an analytic cal-
culation in lab, without error analysis. Make sure
they give the same result. Do a rough check that
the magnitude of the sum of the forces is small com-
pared to the magnitudes of the individual forces.

25
8 Vector Addition of Forces
Based on a lab created by Fream Minton. dents tend to make Aristotelian statements such as,
“The table’s force overcomes the force of gravity,”
as if the forces were in a contest, in which the victor
Apparatus annihilated the loser.
unknown weight hung from three
pulleys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
meter sticks
protractors
digital balance

Goal
Use vector addition of forces in three dimensions
to determine the mass of an unknown suspended
weight.

Introduction
Modern physics claims that when a bridge, an earth-
quake fault, or an oak tree doesn’t move, it is be-
cause the forces acting on it, which combine accord-
ing to vector addition, add up to zero. Although
this may seem like a reasonable statement, it was
far from obvious to premodern scientists. Aristotle,
for instance, said that it was the nature of each of
the four elements, earth, fire, water and air, to re-
turn to its natural location. Rain would fall from
the sky because it was trying to return to its natu-
ral location in the lakes and oceans, and once it got
to its natural location it would stop moving because
that was its nature.
When a modern scientist considers a book resting on
a table, she says that it holds still because the force
of gravity pulling the book down is exactly canceled
by the normal force of the table pushing up on the
book. Aristotle would have denied that this was pos- Observations
sible, because he believed that at any one moment an The setup is shown above. The tension in the string
object could have only one of two mutually exclusive is very nearly the same on both sides of a good-
types of motion: natural motion (the tendency of the quality pulley, i.e. one with low friction. Your task
book to fall to the ground, and resume its natural is to use geometrical measurements and measure-
place), and forced motion (the ability of another ob- ments of the three hanging weights to determine
ject, such as the table, to move the book). According the unknown mass of the ball hanging in the mid-
to his theory, there could be nothing like the addi- dle. This will require vector addition in three di-
tion of forces, because the object being acted on was mensions. Once you have determined the weight of
only capable of “following orders” from one source at the unknown, show it to your instructor. Once your
a time. The incorrect Aristotelian point of view has instructor checks your work for mistakes, you can
great intuitive appeal, and beginning physics stu- weigh the ball for comparison with your prediction.

26 Lab 8 Vector Addition of Forces

Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 The weights go on weight holders that hang
from the string, and the weight holders are each 50
g. Criticize the following reasoning: “We don’t need
to count the mass of the weight holders, because it’s
the same on all three strings, so it cancels out.”
P2 Suppose the pulleys have nonnegligible friction.
Discuss the effect on the results. Would this be a
random error or a systematic error?

Analysis
Carry out a propagation of errors for your predicted
mass (see Appendix 3), and discuss whether it is
consistent with your direct measurement.

27
9 Conservation Laws
Apparatus
Part A: vacuum pump (Lapine) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
electronic balance (large capacity) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
plastic-coated flask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
Part B: propyl alcohol 200 mL/group
canola oil 200 mL/group
funnels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/group
100-mL volumetric flask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
rubber stopper, fitting in
volumetric flask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
1-ml pipette and bulb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
magnetic stirrer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
triple-beam balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1/group
Goal
People believe that objects cannot be made to disap-
pear or appear. If you start with a certain amount
of matter, there is no way to increase or decrease
that amount. This type of rule is called a conser-
vation law in physics, and this specific law states
that the amount of matter is conserved, i.e. must
stay the same. In order to make this law scientifi-
cally useful, we must define more carefully how the
“amount” of a substance is to be defined and mea-
sured numerically. Specifically, there are two issues
that scientifically untrained people would probably
not agree on:
Should air count as matter? If it has weight,
then it probably should count. In this lab, you
will find out if air has weight, and, if so, mea-
sure its density.
Should the amount of a substance be defined in
terms of volume, or is mass more appropriate?
In this lab, you will determine whether mass
and/or volume is conserved when water and
alcohol are mixed.
Introduction
Styles in physics come and go, and once-hallowed
principles get modified as more accurate data come
along, but some of the most durable features of the
science are its conservation laws. A conservation law
is a statement that something always remains con-
28 Lab 9 Conservation Laws
stant when you add it all up. Most people have a
general intuitive idea that the amount of a substance
is conserved. That objects do not simply appear
or disappear is a conceptual achievement of babies
around the age of 9-12 months. Beginning at this
age, they will for instance try to retrieve a toy that
they have seen being placed under a blanket, rather
than just assuming that it no longer exists. Con-
servation laws in physics have the following general
features:
Physicists trying to find new conservation laws
will try to find a measurable, numerical quan-
tity, so that they can check quantitatively whether
it is conserved. One needs an operational def-
inition of the quantity, meaning a definition
that spells out the operations required to mea-
sure it.
Conservation laws are only true for closed sys-
tems. For instance, the amount of water in a
bottle will remain constant as long as no wa-
ter is poured in or out. But if water can get in
or out, we say that the bottle is not a closed
system, and conservation of matter cannot be
applied to it.
The quantity should be additive. For instance,
the amount of energy contained in two gallons
of gasoline is twice as much as the amount of
energy contained in one gallon; energy is addi-
tive. An example of a non-additive quantity is
temperature. Two cups of coffee do not have
twice as high a temperature as one cup.
Conservation laws always refer to the total amount
of the quantity when you add it all up. If you
add it all up at one point in time, and then
come back at a later point in time and add it
all up, it will be the same.
How can we pin down more accurately the concept
of the “amount of a substance”? Should a gallon
of shaving cream be considered “more substantial”
than a brick? At least two possible quantities come
to mind: mass and volume. Is either conserved?
Both? Neither? To find out, we will have to make
measurements.
We can measure mass by the “see-saw method” —
when two children are sitting on the opposite sides
of a see-saw, the less massive one has to move far-
ther out from the fulcrum to make it balance. If
we enslave some particular child as our permanent
mass standard, then any other child’s mass can sim-
ply be measured by balancing them on the other side
and measuring their distance from the fulcrum. A
more practical version of the same basic principle
that does not involve human rights violations is the
familiar pan balance with sliding weights.
Volume is not necessarily so easy to measure. For
instance, shaving cream is mostly air, so should we
find a way to measure just the volume of the bub-
bly film itself? Precise measurements of volume can
most easily be done with liquids and gases, which
conform to a vessel in which they are placed.
Should a gas, such as air, be counted as having any
substance at all? Empedocles of Acragas (born ca.
492 BC) was the originator of the doctrine that all
material substances are composed of mixtures of four
elements: earth, fire, water and air. The idea seems
amusingly naive now that we know about the chem-
ical elements and the periodic table, but it was ac-
cepted in Europe for two thousand years, and the
inclusion of air as a material substance was actu-
ally a nontrivial concept. Air, after all, was invis-
ible, seemed weightless, and had no definite shape.
Empedocles decided air was a form of matter based
on experimental evidence: air could be trapped un-
der water in an inverted cup, and bubbles would be
released if the cup was tilted. It is interesting to
note that in China around 300 BC, Zou Yan came
up with a similar theory, and his five elements did
not include air.
Does air have weight? Most people would probably
say no, since they do not feel any physical sensation
of the atmosphere pushing down on them. A delicate
house of cards remains standing, and is not crushed
to the floor by the weight of the atmosphere.
Compare that to the experience of a dolphin, though.
A dolphin might contemplate a tasty herring sus-
pended in front of it and conjecture that water had
no weight, because the herring did not involuntarily
shoot down to the sea floor because of the weight of
the water overhead. Water does have weight, how-
ever, which a sufficiently skeptical dolphin physicist
might be able to prove with a simple experiment.
One could weigh a 1-liter metal box full of water and
then replace the water with air and weigh it again.
The difference in weight would be the difference in
weight between 1 liter of water of and 1 liter of air.
Since air is much less dense than water, this would
approximately equal the weight of 1 liter of water.
Our situation is similar to the dolphin’s, as was first
appreciated by Torricelli, whose experiments led him
to conclude that “we live immersed at the bottom
of a sea of...air.” A human physicist, living her life
immersed in air, could do a similar experiment to
find out whether air has weight. She could weigh
a container full of air, then pump all the air out
and weigh it again. When all the matter in a con-
tainer has been removed, including the air, we say
that there is a vacuum in the container. (In Amer-
ican English, there is a linguistic difficulty because
the word “vacuum” is also used as shorthand for
“vacuum cleaner.” In British English, no such con-
fusion exists because the appliance is referred to as
a “Hoover.”) In reality, a perfect vacuum is very dif-
ficult to create. A small fraction of the air is likely
to remain in the container even after it has been
pumped on with a vacuum pump. The amount of
remaining air will depend on how good the pump
is and on the rate at which air leaks back in to the
container through holes or cracks.
Galileo gave the first experimental proof that air had
weight by the opposite method of compressing the
air in a glass bulb to stuff more air than normal into
it, and comparing its weight to what it had been
when ordinary, uncompressed air was in it.
Cautions
Please do not break the glassware! The vacuum
flasks and volumetric flasks are expensive.
The alcohol you will be using in this lab is chemically
different from the alcohol in alcoholic beverages. It
is poisonous, and can cause blindness or death if you
drink it. It is not hazardous as long as you do not
drink it.
Observations
A Density of air
You can remove the air from the flask by attach-
ing the vacuum pump to the vacuum flask with the
rubber and glass tubing, then turning on the pump.
You can use the scale to determine how much mass
was lost when the air was evacuated.
Make any other observations you need in order to
find out the density of air and to estimate error bars
for your result.
29
B Is volume and/or mass conserved when two
fluids are mixed?
The idea here is to find out whether volume and/or
mass is conserved when water and alcohol are mixed.
The obvious way to attempt this would be to mea-
sure the volume and mass of a sample of water, the
volume and mass of a sample of alcohol, and their
volume and mass when mixed. There are two prob-
lems with the obvious method: (1) when you pour
one of the liquids into the other, droplets of liquid
will be left inside the original vessel; and (2) the
most accurate way to measure the volume of a liq-
uid is with a volumetric flask, which only allows one
specific, calibrated volume to be measured.
alcohol
oil
water
Here’s a way to get around those problems. Put the
magnetic stirrer inside the flask. Pour water through
a funnel into a volumetric flask, filling it less than
half-way. (Do not use the pipette to transfer the
water.) A common mistake is to fill the flask more
than half-way. Now pour a thin layer of cooking
oil on top. Cooking oil does not mix with water,
so it forms a layer on top of the water. (Set aside
one funnel that you will use only for the oil, since
the oil tends to form a film on the sides.) Finally,
gently pour the alcohol on top. Alcohol does not mix
with cooking oil either, so it forms a third layer. By
making the alcohol come exactly up to the mark on
the calibrated flask, you can make the total volume
very accurately equal to 100 mL. In practice, it is
hard to avoid putting in too much alcohol through
the funnel, so if necessary you can take some back
out with the pipette.
30 Lab 9 Conservation Laws
If you put the whole thing on the balance now, you
know both the volume (100 mL) and the mass of
the whole thing when the alcohol and water have
been kept separate. Now, mix everything up with
the magnetic stirrer. The water and alcohol form a
mixture. You can now test whether the volume or
mass has changed.
If the mixture does not turn out to have a volume
that looks like exactly 100 mL, you can use the fol-
lowing tricks to measure accurately the excess or
deficit with respect to 100 mL. If it is less than 100
mL, weigh the flask, pipette in enough water to bring
it up to 100 mL, weigh it again, and then figure out
what mass and volume of water you added based on
the change in mass. If it is more than 100 mL, weigh
the flask, pipette out enough of the mixture to bring
the volume down to 100 mL, weigh it again, and
make a similar calculation using the change in mass
and the density of the oil. If you need to pipette out
some oil, make sure to wash and rinse the pipette
thoroughly afterwards.
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Give an example of two things having the same
mass and different densities.
P2 Give an example of two things having the same
density and different masses.
P3 Why can the density of water be given in a
book as a standard value under conditions of stan-
dard temperature and pressure, while the mass of
water cannot?
P4 What would your experimental results in part
A be like if air had no weight? What would they be
like if air did have weight?
P5 Referring to the section of the lab manual on
error analysis, plan how you will estimate your ran-
dom errors.
P6 In part B, pick either mass or volume, and de-
scribe what your observations would be like if that
quantity was not conserved.
Self-Check
Do a quick analysis of both parts without error anal-
ysis. Plan how you will do your error analysis.

Analysis
A. If your results show that air has weight, determine
the (nonzero) density of air, with an estimate of your
random errors.
B. Decide whether volume and/or mass is conserved
when alcohol and water are mixed, taking into ac-
count your estimates of random errors.

31
10 Conservation of Energy
Apparatus
air track
cart
springs (steel, 1.5 cm diameter)
photogate (PASCO)
computer
stopwatches
air blowers
alligator clips
Goal
Test conservation of energy for an object oscillating
around an equilibrium position.
Introduction
One of the most impressive aspects of the physical
world is the apparent permanence of so many of its
parts. Objects such as the sun or rocks on earth
have remained unchanged for billions of years, so it
might seem that they are in perfect equilibrium, with
zero net force on each part of the whole. In reality,
the atoms in a rock do not sit perfectly still at an
equilibrium point — they are constantly in vibration
about their equilibrium positions. The unchanging
oblate shape of the sun is also an illusion. The sun
is continually vibrating like a bell or a jiggling water
balloon, as shown in the (exaggerated) figure. The
nuclei of atoms also jiggle spontaneously like little
water balloons. The fact that these types of motion
continue indefinitely without dying out or building
up relates to conservation of energy, which forbids
them to get bigger or smaller without transferring
energy in or out.
This could be a vibration of the sun, a water balloon, or a
nucleus.
32 Lab 10 Conservation of Energy
x
PE = -area
F
Our model of this type of oscillation about equilib-
rium will be the motion of a cart on an air track be-
tween two springs. The sum of the forces exerted by
the two springs should at least approximately obey
Hooke’s law,
F = −kx ,
where the equilibrium point is at x = 0. The nega-
tive sign means that if the object is displaced in the
positive direction, the force tends to bring it back
in the negative direction, towards equilibrium, and
vice versa. Of course, there are no actual springs
involved in the sun or between a rock’s atoms, but
we can still learn about this type of situation in a
lab experiment with a mass attached to a spring. In
this lab, you will study how the changing velocity of
the object, in this case a cart on an air track, can
be understood using conservation of energy. Recall
that for a constant force, the potential energy is sim-
ply −F x, but for a force that is different at different
locations, the potential energy is minus the area un-
der the curve on a graph of F vs. x. In the present
case, the area formed is a triangle with base = x,
height = kx, and
area = base · height
1
= − kx2
2
(counted as negative area because it lies below the
x axis), so the potential energy is
1 2
PE = kx .
2
Conservation of energy, P E + KE = constant, gives
1 2 1
kx + mv 2 = constant .
2 2
 photogate vane
spring
cart
air track
Observations
The technique is essentially the same as in lab 6.
Instructions for use of the Vernier Timer software
are given in Appendix 6; you want the mode for
measuring how long the photogate was blocked. The
two springs are attached to the cart by sticking them
directly through the holes in the cart (not through
the bumper, which would cause the springs to drag
on the track). At the ends of the track, the springs
can be attached using alligator clips, again taking
care to attach them high enough so they don’t drag.
The springs are long, so you will want to use only
part of their length, letting the rest dangle at the
ends of the track.
Throughout the lab, you should only leave the air
blower turned on when you are actually using the
air track. In the past, we have burned out motors
or even melted hoses by leaving the air blowers on
continuously.
Before you start taking actual data, check whether
you have excessive friction by letting the computer
record data while the cart vibrates back and forth
a few times through the photogate. If the air track
is working right, all the time measurements should
be nearly the same, but if the data show the cart
slowing down a lot from one vibration to the next,
then you have a problem with friction. The most
common causes of excessive friction are springs that
are dragging on the track or springs that are not
horizontal, and thus tipping the cart and causing
one of its edges to drag.
Measure the velocity of the cart for many different
values of x by moving the photogate to various po-
sitions. Make sure you always release the cart from
rest at the same point, and when you are initially
choosing this release point, make sure that it is not
so far from the center that the springs are completely
bunched up or dragging on the track. Don’t forget
that the x you use in the potential energy should
be the distance from the equilibrium position to the
position where the vane is centered on the photogate
— if you don’t think about it carefully, it’s easy to
make a mistake in x equal to half the width of the
card.
Determining the spring constant: method 1
Pull the cart to the side with a spring scale, and
make a graph of F versus x, like the one on page 32.
Find k from the slope of the graph.
Determining the spring constant: method 2
The second technique for determining k is to pull the
cart to one side, release it, and measure the period of
its side-to-side motion, i.e. the time required for each
complete repetition of its vibration. As we’ll discuss
later in the course, the period is nearly independent
of the amount of travel, and the spring constant is
related to the period and the mass of the cart by the
equation k = m(2π/T )2 . A small period indicates a
large spring constant, since a powerful spring would
be required to whip the cart back and forth rapidly.
The period, T , can be found very accurately by using
a stopwatch to time many oscillations in a row with-
out stopping. This method therefore gives a very
accurate value for k, which you should use in your
analysis of the conservation of energy. Your k value
from method 1 is still useful as a check, however.
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 What measurements besides those mentioned
above will you need to do in lab in order to check
conservation of energy?
P2 Find the value of x from the figure. (I’ve made
the centimeter scale unrealistic for readability — the
real track is more than a meter long, not 14 centime-
ters.)
ium
te
ga
e
ibr
s
oto
ea
uil
ph
eq
rel
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 121314
33
Self-Check
Calculate the energies and see whether they are re-
maining roughly constant.

Analysis
Graph P E, KE, and E as functions of x, with error
bars (see appendices 1, 2, and 3), all overlaid on the
same plot. Discuss whether you think conservation
of energy has been verified.

34 Lab 10 Conservation of Energy

35
11 Conservation of Momentum
Apparatus cart is one unit. Does it look like conservation of
momentum was satisfied?
computer with Logger Pro software
track and 2 carts B Mirror symmetry
1-kg weight Now reenact the collision from part A, but do every-
masking tape thing as a mirror image. The roles of the target cart
2 force sensors with rubber corks and incoming cart are reversed, and the direction of
motion is also reversed.
M × +M ×
Qualitative Observations =? M × +M × ,

First you’re going to observe some collisions between What happens now? Note that mathematically, we
two carts and see how conservation of momentum use positive and negative signs to indicate the direc-
plays out. If you really wanted to take numerical tion of a velocity in one dimension.
data, it would be a hassle, because momentum de- C An explosion
pends on mass and velocity, and there would be four
different velocity numbers you’d have to measure: Now start with the carts held together, with their
cart 1 before the collision, cart 1 after the collision, magnets repelling. As soon as you release them,
cart 2 before, and cart 2 after. To avoid all this com- they’ll break contact and fly apart due to the re-
plication, the first part of the lab will use only visual pulsion of the magnets.
observations. M × +M ×
Try gently pressing the two carts together on the =? M × +M × ,
track. As they come close to each other, you’ll feel Does momentum appear to have been conserved?
them repelling each other! That’s because they have
magnets built into the ends. The magnets act like D Head-on collision
perfect springs. For instance, if you hold one cart Now try a collision in which the two carts head to-
firmly in place and let the other one roll at it, the wards each other at equal speeds (meaning that one
incoming cart will bounce back at almost exactly the cart’s initial velocity is positive, while the other’s is
same speed. It’s like a perfect superball. negative).
A Equal masses, target at rest, elastic collision M × +M ×
Roll one cart toward the other. The target cart is =? M × +M × ,
initially at rest. Conservation of momentum reads
E Sticking
like this,
Arrange a collision in which the carts will stick to-
M × +M × gether rather than rebounding. You can do this by
=? M × +M × , letting the velcro ends hit each other instead of the
where the two blanks on the left stand for the two magnet ends. Make a collision in which the target is
carts’ velocities before the collision, and the two initially stationary.
blanks on the right are for their velocities after the M × +M ×
collision. All conservation laws work like this: the =? M × +M × ,
total amount of something remains the same. You
don’t have any real numbers, but just from eye- The collision is no longer perfectly springy. Did it
balling the collision, what seems to have happened? seem to matter, or was conservation of momentum
Let’s just arbitrarily say that the mass of a cart is still valid?
one unit, so that wherever it says “M x” in the equa-
F Hitting the end of the track
tion, you’re just multiplying by one. You also don’t
have any numerical values for the velocities, but sup- One end of the track has magnets in it. Take one
pose we say that the initial velocity of the incoming cart off the track entirely, and let the other cart roll

36 Lab 11 Conservation of Momentum

all the way to the end of the track, where it will it’s triggered by a sufficiently strong force; squeeze
experience a repulsion from the fixed magnets built on one of the sensors to trigger the computer, and
into the track. Was momentum conserved? Discuss then go ahead and do the real experiment with the
this with your instructor. steady, gently force.

G Unequal masses What does the graph on the computer look like?
Now put a one kilogram mass on one of the carts, I. Now repeat H, but use a more rapid acceleration
but leave the other cart the way it was. Attach the to bring the cart up to the same momentum. Sketch
mass to it securely using masking tape. A bare cart a comparison of the graphs from parts H and I.
has a mass of half a kilogram, so you’ve now tripled Discuss with your instructor how this relates to mo-
the mass of one cart. In terms of our silly (but con- mentum.
venient) mass units, we now have masses of one unit
and three units for the two carts. Make the triple- J. You are now going to reenact collision A, but don’t
mass cart hit the initially stationary one-mass-unit do it yet! You’ll let the carts’ rubber corks bump into
cart. each other, and record the forces on the sensors. The
carts will have equal mass, and both forces will be
3M × +M × recorded simultaneously. Before you do it, predict
=? 3M × +M × , what you think the graphs will look like, and show
These velocities are harder to estimate by eye, but if your sketch to your instructor.
you estimate numbers roughly, does it seem possible Switch both sensors to the +50 N position, and open
that momentum was conserved? the corresponding file on the computer.
Now try it. You will notice by eye that the mo-
Quantitative Observations tion after the collision is a tiny bit different than it
was with the magnets, but it’s still pretty similar.
Now we’re going to explore the reasons why momen- Looking at the graphs, how do you explain the fact
tum always seems to be conserved. that one cart lost exactly as much momentum as the
Attach the force sensors to the carts, and put on the other one gained? Discuss this with your instructor
rubber stoppers. Make sure that the rubber stoppers before going on.
are positioned sufficiently far out from the body of K. Now imagine – but don’t do it yet – that you
the cart so that they will not rub against the edge are going to reenact part G, with unequal masses.
of the cart. Put the switch on the sensor in the Sketch your prediction for the two graphs, and show
+10 N position. Plug the sensors into the DIN1 your sketch to your instructor before you go on.
and DIN2 ports on the interface box. Start up the
Logger Pro software, and do File>Open>Probes and Now try it, and discuss the results with your instruc-
Sensors>Force Sensors>Dual Range Forrce>2-10 N tor.
Dual Range. Tell the computer to zero the sensors.
Try collecting data and pushing and pulling on the
rubber stopper. You should get a graph showing how
the force went up and down over time. The sensor
uses negative numbers (bottom half of the graph) for
forces that squish the sensor, and positive numbers
(top half) for forces that stretch it. Try both sensors,
and make sure you understand what the red and blue
traces on the graph are showing you.
H. Put the extra 1-kilogram weight on one of the
carts. Put it on the cart by itself, without the other
cart . Try accelerating it from rest with a gentle,
steady force from your finger. You’ll want to set the
collection time to a longer period than the default.
Position the track so that you can walk all the way
along its length (not diagonally across the bench).
Even after you hit the Collect button in Logger Pro,
the software won’t actually start collecting data until

37
12 Conservation of Momentum in Two Di-
mensions
Apparatus before
photogate (PASCO) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group p1,before
small steel and plastic balls of various masses 2/group p2,before=0
plastic rulers
protractor
scotch tape

after p1,after
Goal θ1
Test whether momentum is conserved in a collision
of two balls.

Introduction
θ2
Pool players have an intuitive feeling for conserva-
p2,after
tion of momentum: they can visualize the results of
a collision of two pool balls in advance. They also
know that certain shots are impossible. For instance,
there is no way to make the cue ball bounce back di- balls using the photogate and the computer. The
rectly from a collision with another ball (except by use of the photogate and the computer software that
putting spin on it, which creates an external friction works with it is explained in Appendix 6. Since on
force with the felt). They understand that the angles any given trial you can only use the photogate to
are important, so without knowing it, they are doing measure the speed of a single ball, you will have to
mental estimates involving momentum as a vector: reproduce the collision at least three times to mea-
a quantity that has both magnitude and direction. sure the three speeds involved. Actually, you will
want to measure each of the three speeds several
In this lab, you will be studying collisions similar to times in order to get a good estimate of your ran-
the collision of the cue ball with an initially station- dom errors.
ary ball. One of the basic principles involved is the
conservation of momentum:
The Principle of Conservation of Momentum
No matter how a set of objects interact with each
other, as long as no external force is present, the
vector sum of their momenta is conserved. That is,
p1i + p2i + . . . = p1f + p2f + . . ., where the “. . . ”
means that if there are more than two objects in-
volved, all their momenta should be added like vec-
tors.

The technique
The idea is to set up an off-center collision, as shown
below, and measure the initial and final speeds of the
To reproduce the same initial speed for the projectile
(ball 1), you can build a little ramp out of two plastic
rulers taped together at a 90-degree angle. A block
of wood can be taped in the ramp at the top to keep

38 Lab 12 Conservation of Momentum in Two Dimensions

them braced. The block of wood also serves as a from the collision should you place it? It should
convenient reference point: you can release the ball be as close as possible to the collision, because the
from the point where it touches the block. balls do gradually slow down as they roll, and you
want to know the speeds immediately before and
You should choose a completely asymmetrical setup:
after the collision. However, the balls bounce a little
two balls of different masses, and a collision in which
immediately after the collision, so don’t put the it
the projectile does not hit the target head-on.
so close to the collision that they are still bouncing
It is critical that you position the target ball at ex- when they go through it.
actly the same place every time. Marking the table
and placing the ball on the mark is not good enough.
The best technique is to put a piece of scotch tape Prelab
on the table and use a ball-point pen to make a tiny
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
impression in it for the target ball to sit in.
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
Tips don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
You want to avoid conditions for which any of the setting yourself up for failure in lab.
speeds involved are too slow, because then the balls P1 Draw an example of a collision, showing the
tend to be accelerated, decelerated, or deflected by balls before and after it happens, in which |p1i | =
tiny bumps in the tabletop. If you notice the balls 0.020 kg · m/s, |p1f | = 0.010 kg · m/s, and |p2f | =
wandering and wavering as they roll, they are go- 0.010 kg · m/s, but momentum was not conserved.
ing too slow. Generally speaking, sufficiently high (As in the actual lab, the target ball starts at rest.)
speeds are achieved if the ramp is at least 7 cm high. Explain.
Using the heavier ball as the projectile helps to keep
the final speeds high. P2 If the magnitude of the initial momentum is the
same as the magnitude of the total final momentum,
A good way to test whether your speeds are sufficient does that mean momentum was conserved?
is to measure the angles at which the balls emerge
from the collision, and see if they are the same every
time, to within a tolerance of 5-10 degrees. If the Self-Check
angles are not reproducible to this level of variation,
then the balls are not going fast enough. Analyze your data without error analysis, and make
sure your graphical and analytical results are the
You will want to use vernier calipers to measure the same. Check whether momentum appeared to be at
diameters of the balls. Ask your instructor for help least approximately conserved.
if you don’t know how to read a vernier scale.
Note that at the instant of collision, the balls are
touching, but their centers are not at the same point. Analysis
This means you have to be careful about how you Test whether momentum was conserved, doing your
measure the angles. vector addition once using the analytic method and
If you did not position the photogate at the height of once using the graphical method. Take into account
the center of the ball whose speed you wanted to de- the random errors in your measurements.
termine, then the computation of the ball’s speed be-
comes complicated — don’t just divide the diameter
of the ball by the time from the computer. Discuss
this with your instructor once you have a working
setup.
You should have opposite signs for the components
of the balls’ final momenta in the direction perpen-
dicular to the projectile’s original direction of mo-
tion.
You will be putting the photogate in three different
positions to measure the three velocities. How far

39
13 Torque
Apparatus forces acting on the meter stick:

meter stick with holes drilled in it . . . . . . . . 1/group FH = the weight hanging underneath
spring scales, 250, 500, and 2000 g
FM = Earth’s gravity on the meter stick itself
weights
string FL = tension in the string on the left
protractors FR = tension in the string on the right
hooks
Each of these forces also produces a torque.
In order to determine whether the total force is zero,
Goal you will need enough raw data so that for each torque
you can extract (1) the magnitude of the force vec-
Test whether the total force and torque on an object
tor, and (2) the direction of the force vector. In order
at rest both equal zero.
to add up all the torques, you will have to choose an
axis of rotation, and collect enough raw data to be
able to determine for each force (3) the distance from
Introduction the axis to the point at which the force is applied to
It is not enough for a boat not to sink. It also must the ruler, and (4) the angle between the force vector
not capsize. This is an example of a general fact and the line connecting the axis with the point where
about physics, which is also well known to people the force is applied. Note that the meter stick’s own
who overindulge in alcohol: if an object is to be in weight can be though of as being applied at its center
a stable equilibrium at rest, it must not only have of mass.
zero net force on it, to keep from picking up momen-
Note that the plastic spring scales have a tab on
tum, but also zero net torque, to keep from acquiring
top that allows you to calibrate them by hanging
angular momentum.
a known weight from them. You have a selection of
spring scales, so use the right one for the job — don’t
use a 2000 g scale to measure 80 grams, because it
will not be possible to read it accurately.
spring scale
Since the analysis requires you to compute the to-
spring scale tal torque a second time using a different choice of
axis, you cannot neglect to measure any of the angles
involved.
meter stick
When you’re done, carefully unhook each spring scale,
and reproduce its reading by hanging known weights
from it. This will eliminate the systematic error in-
volved in calibrating the scale.
weight

Observations
Weigh your meter stick before you do anything else;
they don’t all weigh the same amount.
Construct a setup like the one shown above. Avoid
any symmetry in your arrangement. There are four
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 You have complete freedom in defining the axis
of rotation — if one choice of axis causes the total

40 Lab 13 Torque
torque to be zero, then any other choice of axis will
also cause the total torque to be zero. It is possible
to simplify the analysis by choosing the axis so that
one of the four torques is zero. Plan how you will do
this.
P2 All the torques will be tending to cause rota-
tion in the same plane. You can therefore use plus
and minus signs to represent clockwise and counter-
clockwise torques. Choose which one you’ll call pos-
itive. Using your choice of axis, which of the four
torques, τH , τM , τL , and τR , will be negative, which
will be positive, and which will be zero?
P3 Suppose that in the figure above, the angle be-
tween the meter stick and the hanging weight is 80 ◦ ,
the mass of the hanging weight is 1 kg, and the mass
of the meter stick is 0.1 kg. If a student is then try-
ing to calculate the x components of the forces FM
and FH , why is it incorrect to say

FM ,x = (0.1 kg)(9.8 m/s2 )

and

FH,x = (1 kg)(9.8 m/s2 )(cos 80 ◦ )?

Self-Check
Analyze the lab without error analysis. Check whether
the torques seem to add up to about zero and whether
the forces seem to add up to about zero.

Analysis
Determine the total force and total torque on the
meter stick. For the forces, I think a graphical cal-
culation will be easier than a numerical one. Error
analysis is only required for the total torque.
Finally, repeat your calculation of the total torque
using a different point as your axis. Don’t do error
analysis for this part.

41
14 The Moment of Inertia
Apparatus
meter stick with hole in center . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
nail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1/group
fulcrum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1/group
slottedmass set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
duct tape
sliding bracket to go on
meter stick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
U-shaped hook for hanging
weights from bracket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
computer Vernier software
1/group photogate and adapter box . . . . . . .1/group
triple-beam balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1/group
Goal
Test the equation τtotal = Iα, which relates an ob-
ject’s angular acceleration to its own moment of in-
ertia and to the total torque applied to it.
Introduction
Newton’s first law, which states that motion in a
straight line goes on forever in the absence of a force,
was especially difficult for scientists to work out be-
cause long-lasting circular motion seemed much more
prevalent in the universe than long-lasting linear mo-
tion. The sun, moon and stars appeared to move
in never-ending circular paths around the sky. A
spinning top could continue its motion for a much
longer time than a book sliding across a table. Ren
Descartes (b. 1596) came close to stating a law of in-
ertia like Newton’s, but he thought that matter was
made out of tiny spinning vortices, like whirlwinds
of dust. Galileo, who among Newton’s predecessors
came closest to stating a law of inertia, was also con-
fused by the issue of circular versus linear inertia. An
advocate of the Copernican system, in which the ap-
parent rotation of the sun, stars and moon was due
to the Earth’s rotation, he knew that the apparently
motionless ground, trees, and mountains around him
must be moving in circles as the Earth turned. Was
this because inertia naturally caused things to move
in circles?
Newton, like other giants of science, saw how to focus
on the simple rather than the complex. His law of
42 Lab 14 The Moment of Inertia
inertia was completely linear. In his view, all the
common examples of circular motion really involved
a force, which kept things from going straight. In
the case of a spinning top, for instance, Newton (a
confirmed atomist) would have visualized an atoms
in the top as being acted on by some kind of sticky
force from the other atoms, which would keep it from
flying off straight. Linear motion was the simplest
type, needing no forces to keep it going. Circular
motion was more complex, requiring a force to bend
the atoms’ trajectories into circles.
Even though circular motion is inherently more com-
plicated than linear motion, some very close analo-
gies can be made between the two in the case where
an object is spinning rigidly. (An examples of non-
rigid rotation would be a hurricane, in which the
inner parts complete a rotation more rapidly than
the outer parts.) In analogy to Newton’s first law,
Ftotal = ma, we have
τtotal = Iα ,
where the angular acceleration α replaces the linear
acceleration a, the total torque plays the role given
to the total force, and the moment of inertia I is
used instead of the mass. In this lab, you are going
to release an unbalanced rotating system — a meter
stick on an axle with weights attached to it — and
measure its angular acceleration in response to the
nonzero gravitational torque on it.
Every equation you learned for constant acceleration
can also be adapted to the case of rotation with con-
stant angular acceleration, simply by translating all
the variables. For instance, the equation vf2 = 2ax
for an object accelerating from rest can be translated
into the valid rotational formula ωf2 = 2aθ.
mr2 ,
P
The moment of inertia is defined as I =
where m can be thought of as the mass of an indi-
vidual atom comprising the rotating body, and r is
the distance of that atom from the axis of rotation.
The word “moment” in “moment of inertia” does
not refer to a moment in time, but is used instead
in a more old-fashioned sense of “importance” or
“weight,” as in “matters of great moment.” The
idea is that the factor of r2 gives more importance
to the an atom that is far from the axis of rotation.
Because the symbol I is used, there is a tendency
for students to refer to it as “inertia,” but inertia
is a different and nonquantitative concept, referring
to the tendency of objects to stay at rest or stay in
motion.
In practice, it is not practical to carry out a sum over
all the atoms. The object whose rotation you will
study in this lab will consist of a meter stick pivot-
ing at its center, with various weights hanging from
it in various places. Both the hanging weights and
the meter stick itself will contribute to the moment
of inertia. To a good approximation, each hanging
weight can be treated as if all its atoms were con-
centrated at its center. Calculus can also be used
to derive formulae for the moments of inertia of ob-
jects of various shapes, such as a sphere, a cylinder
rotating along its axis, etc. One such formula is
I = (1/12)M L2 for the moment of inertia of a rigid
rod rotating about an axis passing perpendicularly
through its center. You can use this formula as a
good approximation for the meter stick’s contribu-
tion to the moment of inertia, with L = 1 m.
(a) initial, balanced configuration
(b) final setup, unbalanced by the added weight
Preliminaries
The meter stick is supported on the fulcrum via a
nail through the hole in its center. You want to start
by producing a balanced arrangement of weights at-
tached to the meter stick, as in figure (a) below. The
idea is that if you first balance this configuration
carefully, then you know that the net gravitational
torque on it is zero. If you then hang another weight
from the previously empty hanger, as in (b), then
you know that the total torque simply equals the
torque produced by the earth’s gravitational force
on the added weight.
For ease of adjustment, you can use duct tape, wrapped
sticky-side-out, to attach the slotted weights to the
meter stick. You can then balance your initial config-
uration simply by sliding the weights around. Do not
choose a symmetric setup, i.e. use unequal weights.
The masses need to be slid to the left and right in or-
der to achieve equilibrium, but it is less obvious that
it also makes a difference how high the weights are
(d)
(e)
(f)
placed. That is, the center of mass of the whole bal-
anced setup must coincide both vertically and hori-
zontally with the nail. The concept is shown in the
figure above using a rectangle in place of the actual
apparatus. In (d), there will always be a clockwise
torque on the rectangle, because the center of mass
is to the right of the nail.
In (e), there is zero torque if the rectangle is ini-
tially released from this horizontal position, but the
equilibrium is unstable, because its center of mass is
above the axis of rotation. Our experiment depends
on the cancellation of the gravitational torques on
everything but the extra weight, but in a case like
(e), this assumption would only be valid when the
apparatus was initially released from horizontal. Later
in the motion, there would be an undesired and un-
known extra torque. Although it is visually obvious
in this figure that the rectangle’s center of mass is
too high, you can’t tell visually with the actual ap-
paratus. The way to tell if the center of mass is too
high is that if you tilt the meter stick a little bit
to the right, it immediately accelerates clockwise,
whereas if you tilt it a little to the left, it accelerates
counterclockwise.
In (f), we have a stable equilibrium. Again, there is
an unknown, undesired torque unless the rectangle
just happens to be horizontal. You can tell if you
have this situation because the apparatus can swing
back and forth about its stable equilibrium position.
You want a neutral equilibrium, i.e. no matter what
angle you release it from, the meter stick just stays
there.
43
Observations
Now add the extra weight so that the meter stick
is slightly unbalanced. The idea of this lab is to
release the meter stick and use the photogate to find
how quickly it is moving once it has rotated through
some angle, using the photogate to find the amount
of time required for the tip of the meter stick to pass
through the photogate. From your measurement of
∆t using the photogate, you can find ω = ∆θ/∆t,
which is an approximation to the meter stick’s final
angular velocity. Instructions for using the computer
software are given in appendix 6; you want the mode
for measuring how long the photogate was blocked.
Once you know the meter stick’s final value of ω,
you can extract the angular acceleration. This can
then be compared with the theoretical value of the
angular acceleration from τtotal = Iα.
Tips:
You may want to put something under the ful-
crum base to raise everything up higher.
Although the balanced configuration, with τtotal
0, still has τtotal = 0 no matter what angle it
is at, the torque exerted by the extra weight
does depend a little on what angle the meter
stick is at. This is because of the factor of
sin θ in the definition τ = rF sin θ. Since the
torque is not constant, the angular accelera-
tion is not constant, leading to complications.
You can avoid this problem by confining all
your measurements to a fairly small range of
positions near horizontal. As long as θ is fairly
close to 90 ◦ , sin θ is extremely close to 1, and
it is a good enough approximation to assume a
constant torque rF producing a constant an-
gular acceleration. For instance, as long as θ
is within 20 ◦ above or below horizontal, sin θ
changes by no more than 0.06.
Although you want to work only with nearly
horizontal positions of the meter stick so that
the torque is approximately constant, you also
need to make sure that the total angle tra-
versed by the meter stick is still reasonably
large compared to the angle traversed while the
meter stick is blocking the photogate. Other-
wise your measurement of ω = ∆θ/∆t will not
be a good approximation to the final instanta-
neous angular velocity.
As you will find in your prelab, the angular ac-
celeration depends on the square of the angle
44 Lab 14 The Moment of Inertia
∆θ. Measuring this angle accurately is there-
fore vital in order to get a good result. A
protractor cannot measure an angle this small
with sufficient accuracy. Use trigonometry to
determine this angle.
It’s easiest if you use radian measure through-
out. The equation τtotal = Iα is only true if a
is measured in radians/s2 .
The sliding bracket and hook contribute both
to the total torque and the moment of inertia,
so you’ll have to weigh them.
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Derive an equation for the experimental value
of the angular acceleration, expressed in terms of
= quantities you will actually measure directly, includ-
ing the quantities θ and ∆θ defined in the figure be-
low. Note that this lab is exactly analogous to the
previous lab where you found a linear acceleration
using a similar setup.
∆θ
photogate
θ
P2 Why would it not be meaningful to try to deal
with the meter stick’s velocity, rather than its angu-
lar velocity?
Self-Check
Do all your analysis in lab.
Analysis
Extract theoretical and experimental values of the
angular acceleration from your data, and compare
them.
No analysis of random errors is required, because the
main source of error is the systematic errors arising
from friction and the various approximations, such
as the assumption that sin θ is approximately equal
to 1.

45
15 Absolute Zero
Note to the lab technician: The dessicant needs to
be dry before the experiment. If it’s blue, it’s dry. If
it’s pink, it needs to be pumped on for a few hours
with a vacuum pump while heating it with a hair
dryer.
Apparatus
gas capillary tube
large test tube
mercury thermometer
gas syringe
Bunsen burner
plastic tubing
ice
string
Introduction
If heat is a form of random molecular motion, then
it makes sense that there is some minimum temper-
ature at which the molecules aren’t moving at all.
With fancy equipment, physicists have gotten sam-
ples of matter to within a fraction of a degree above
absolute zero, but they have never actually reached
absolute zero (and the laws of thermodynamics ac-
tually imply that they never can). Nevertheless, we
can determine how cold absolute zero is without even
getting very close to it. Kinetic theory tells us that
the volume of an ideal gas is proportional to how
high it is above absolute zero. In this lab, you’ll
measure the volume of a sample of air at tempera-
tures between 0 and 100 degrees C, and determine
where absolute zero lies by extrapolating to the tem-
perature at which it would have had zero volume.
Observations
Tie a short piece of string to the thermometer so
that you’ll be able to pull it back out of the beaker
when you want to without dipping your hands in hot
water. The string should be short so that it doesn’t
hang into the flame of the Bunsen burner. Light the
Bunsen burner, and start heating the water up to
the boiling point. (If you leave the thermometer in
the water while it’s heating, you’ll be able to observe
later the interesting fact that the water stops heating
46 Lab 15 Absolute Zero
up once it reaches the boiling point.) If the water
starts boiling before you’re ready, just turn off the
flame and reheat it later – it doesn’t cool off very
fast.
The capillary tube is sealed at the bottom and open
at the top, with a large bulb full of dessicant just
below the top to keep the air inside dry. There is
a small amount of mercury inside the tube. Right
now, the mercury is probably “floured,” i.e. broken
up into small pieces sticking on the sides of the tube.
The idea is to collect the mercury into a single drop,
with a sample of air trapped in the capillary tube
under it. The mercury simply acts as a seal. As the
air is heated and cooled, it expands and contracts,
and you can measure its volume by watching the
mercury seal rise and drop. By the way, don’t be
scared of the mercury; mercury vapor is a deadly
poison, but liquid mercury is entirely harmless unless
you ingest it or get it in an open cut. There is a small
filter made of glass wool at the bottom end of the
bulb, which will keep the mercury from getting out.
Remove the gas syringe from the box, being care-
ful not to let the glass plunger drop out and break.
Connect it to the capillary tube with a piece of tub-
ing.
First you need to get the mercury into a single blob
in the cavity at the top of the capillary, where it
widens out just below the bulb. If it’s already form-
ing a seal across the capillary tube, you won’t be
able to get it to move, because it’s trapped between
the pressures of the inside air and the outside air.
You can break the seal by opening the stopcock and
drawing some air out with the syringe. (Note that
the stopcock has three holes; two are lined up with
the knob, and the third one is on the side marked
with a dot on the knob.) If this doesn’t break the
seal, you can very gently tap the capillary tube with
your little finger; a student recently broke a tube by
tapping it too hard, although he thought he was be-
ing fairly gentle. Now disconnect the tube from the
syringe, and, if necessary, shake it extremely gen-
tly upside-down to get all the mercury droplets to
collect in the cavity.
At this point, if you put the tube upright again, the
mercury drop will sit at the very top of the capil-
lary, with a sample of air trapped below it filling the
entire tube. This won’t work, because most of the
temperatures you’ll be using in this lab are hotter
than room temperature, so you need room for the Make sure you don’t get ice in the flask, which makes
air sample to expand without forcing the mercury it impossible to insert the capillary tube and ther-
out into the cavity. Here’s how to get a smaller vol- mometer.
ume of air trapped under the mercury. Push the
plunger all the way into the syringe, open the stop-
cock, and connect the syringe to the tube, leaving Analysis
the tube horizontal with the mercury in the cavity.
Graph the temperature and volume against each other.
Now pull the plunger out until you’ve created a 40%
Does the graph appear to be linear? If so, extrap-
vacuum. If you have the stopcock in the correct po-
olate to find the temperature at which the volume
sition, it should take quite a strong force to pull the
would be zero. Compare with the accepted value of
plunger out this far. Now bring the tube upright
-273 degrees C.
again, and gently allow the plunger to slide back in.
At this point, the mercury should be about 40% be- If your data are nice and linear, then your main
low the top of the capillary, and you can disconnect source of error will be random errors, and you should
the syringe. then determine error bars for your value of absolute
zero using the techniques discussed in Appendix 4.
Detach the syringe and tubing, so from now on, ev-
erything is always at constant pressure! We want
temperature and volume to be the only variables
that change in this experiment. By leaving every-
Prelab
thing open to the air in the room, we guarantee that The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
the pressure will equal the air pressure in the room. understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
If necessary, bring the water back to a boil, and then
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
turn off the gas again. Move the Bunsen burner
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
aside, and, being careful not to burn yourself, lower
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
the clamp so the test tube is almost touching the
tabletop; this way, if it slips out of the clamp, it P1 Should you measure the volume from the top,
won’t fall far enough to break. (I broke one of the the middle, or the bottom of the mercury? Explain.
test tubes myself by letting it slip this way.) Insert
the thermometer and the capillary tube, and give
them a minute or so to come to equilibrium with
the water.
You can now start taking a series of temperature and
volume measurements as the water in the test tube
gradually cools down towards room temperature.
The cooling process is rapid at first, but starts to
slow down a lot once you get closer to room tem-
perature. If you get impatient, you can gently pour
a small amount of cool water in the top, making
sure to let it equilibrate for a few minutes afterward
before taking data. Don’t try to swirl the test tube
around in order to speed up the equilibration – that’s
what I was trying to do the time the test tube slipped
out of the clamp and broke.
When the water gets close to room temperature, the
cooling process slows down. At some point, you may
wish to fill a beaker with lukewarm water and im-
merse the end of the flask in it in order to speed up
the cooling.
Once you have data at temperatures down to near
room temperature, pour some water off of the ice
water, and use it to replace the water in the flask.

47
16 The Pendulum
Apparatus Notation and Terminology
string When a moving thing, such as a wave, an orbit-
cylindrical pendulum bobs ing planet, a wheel, or a pendulum, goes through
hooked masses a repetitive cycle of motion, the time required for
protractor one complete cycle is called the period, T . Note
stopwatch that a pendulum visits any given point once while
computer with photogate and Vernier Timer soft- traveling in one direction and once while traveling
ware in the opposite direction. The period is defined as
clamps (not hooks) for holding the string how long it takes to come back to the same point,
tape measures traveling in the same direction.
meter sticks
stopwatches

Goal c f
a b d e g
Find out how the period of a pendulum depends on
its length and mass, and on the amplitude of its From a to g is one full period of the pendulum. From a
swing. to e is not a full period. Even though the pendulum has
returned at e to its original position in a, it is moving in the
opposite direction, and has not performed every type of
Introduction motion it will ever perform.

Until the industrial revolution, the interest of the

world’s cultures in the measurement of time was al-
most entirely concentrated on the construction of
calendars, so that agricultural cycles could be an-
ticipated. Although the Egyptians were the first to L
divide the day and night into 12 hours, there was no
technology for measuring time units smaller than a
A
day with great accuracy until four thousand years
later.
Galileo was the first to realize that a pendulum could m
be used to measure time accurately — previously, he
had been using his own pulse to measure the time re-
quired for objects to roll down inclined planes. The
The amplitude of a repetitive motion is a way of
legend is that the idea came to him while he watched
describing the amount of motion. We can define
a chandelier swinging during a church service. Sen-
the amplitude, A, of the pendulum’s motion as the
tenced to house arrest for suspicion of heresy, he
maximum angle to which it rises, i.e. half the total
spent the last years of his life trying to build a more
angle swept out. Let us denote the mass of the bob,
practical pendulum clock that would run for long
or weight at the end of the pendulum, by m, and
periods of time without tending. This technical feat
the length of the pendulum, from the pivot to the
was only achieved later by Christian Huygens. Along
middle of the weight, as L.
with the Chinese invention of the compass, accurate
clocks were vital for European exploration by sea,
because longitude can only be determined by astro- Observations
nomical observations combined with accurate mea-
surements of time. Make observations to determine how the period, T ,
depends on A, L, and m. You will want to use the

48 Lab 16 The Pendulum

technique of isolation of variables. That means that
rather than trying many random combinations of
A, L, and m, you should keep two of them constant
while measuring T for various values of the third
variable. Then you should shift your attention to
the next variable, changing it while keeping the other
two constant, and so on. Be sure to try quite a few
values of the variable you are changing, so you can
see in detail how T depends on each variable.
The period can be measured using the photogate.
See appendix 6 for how to use the computer soft-
ware; you want the mode that’s meant specifically
for measuring the period of a pendulum. Note that
the bob is what is blocking the photogate, so if your
bob is irregularly shaped, your measurements could
be messed up if it changed orientation between one
pass through the photogate and the next. The eas-
iest way to make sure this problem doesn’t occur is
to use a bob with a circular cross-section, so it has
the same width no matter which way the photogate
cuts through it.
One of the notable differences between the way stu-
dents and professional scientists approach experi-
ments is that students tend to be timid about explor-
ing extreme conditions. In this experiment, there is
a big advantage to taking measurements over wide
ranges of each of the three parameters, because it
may be impossible to ascertain how the period de-
pends on a parameter if you only explore a small
range. When changing L, you can go up to four
meters if you hang the pendulum from the balcony;
however, you should avoid lengths so short that they
are comparable to the size of the bob itself, since
such short lengths would have anomalous behavior.
Warning: Since L is measured to the middle of the
weight, you must change the length of the string
if you want to vary m while keeping L constant,
compensating for the different physical size of the
new weight.
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 What is the maximum possible amplitude for
a pendulum of the type you’ll use, whose bob hangs
from a string? If you were using a pendulum with a
stiff rod instead of a string, you could release it from
straight up. What would its period be if you could
release it from exactly straight up?
P2 How will you tell from your log-log plot whether
the data follow a power law, i.e. whether it is even
appropriate to try to extract p? (Remember, this is
the same technique you’ve already used in lab 5.)
Self-Check
Figure out which variable T depends on most strongly,
and extract p (see below).
Analysis
Graph your data and state your conclusions about
whether T depends on A ,L and m. Remember
that on a graph of experimental data, the horizontal
axis should always be the quantity you controlled di-
rectly, and the vertical axis should be the quantity
you measured but did not directly select. The pho-
togate is so accurate that there is not much point
in putting error bars on your graph — they would
be too small to see. Remember, however, that there
are some fairly significant systematic errors, e.g. it is
hard to accurately keep L the same when switching
masses.
Of the three variables, find the one on which the
period depends the most strongly, and use the tech-
niques outlined in appendix 5 to see if you can find
an equation describing the relationship between the
period and that variable. Assume that the equation
is of the form
T = kxp ,
where x would actually be A, L or m, and k and
p are constants. The constant p is important, and
is expected to be the same for all pendula. For in-
stance, if you find that the mass is the variable that
has the greatest effect on the period, and that the
relationship is of the form T = km3 , then you have
discovered something that is probably generally true
for all pendula: that the period is proportional to the
cube of the mass. The constant k is not worth ex-
tracting from your graphs, since it will be different
for different pendula.
It may happen that when you change one of the vari-
ables, there are only small, insignificant changes in
the period, but depending on how you graph the
data, it may look like these are real changes in the
period. Most computer graphing software has a de-
fault which is to make the y axis stretch only across
49
the range of actual y data. E.g. if your periods
were all between 0.567 and 0.574 s, then the soft-
ware makes an extremely magnified graph, with the
y axis running only over the short range from 0.567
to 0.574 s. On such a scale, it may seem at first
glance that there are some major changes in the pe-
riod. To help yourself interpret your graphs, you
should make them all with the same y scale, going
from zero all the way up to the highest period you
ever measured. Then you’ll be comparing all three
graphs on the same footing.

50 Lab 16 The Pendulum

51
17 Resonance
Apparatus Thornton
power supply multimeter Instek
vibrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group power supply
HP 6206B or Instek power supply . . . . . . . . .1/group A set on 24 V
stopwatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
multimeter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group + - + -
banana plug cables A COM

Goals red
blue
Observe the phenomenon of resonance.
Motor-
Investigate how the width of a resonance de-
anschluβ
pends on the amount of damping.
vibrator

Introduction
To break a wine glass, an opera singer has to sing
the right note. To hear a radio signal, you have to
be tuned to the right frequency. These are examples
of the phenomenon of resonance: a vibrating system
will respond most strongly to a force that varies with
a particular frequency.
variable-speed
electric motor
Electrical setup, top view.
disk will result in vibrations that persist for quite
a while before the internal friction in the spring re-
duces their amplitude to an imperceptible level. This
would be an example of a free vibration, in which
energy is steadily lost in the form of heat, but no
external force pumps in energy to replace it.
Suppose instead that you initially stop the disk, but
then turn on the electric motor. There is no rigid
mechanical link to the disk, since the motor and disk
are only connected through the very flexible spiral
spring. But the motor will gently tighten and loosen
the spring, resulting in the gradual building up of a
vibration in the disk.

Simplified mechanical drawing of the vibrator, front view. Observations

A Period of Free Vibrations

Apparatus Start without any of the electrical stuff hooked up.

In this lab you will investigate the phenomenon of
resonance using the apparatus shown in the figure.
If the motor is stopped so that the arms are locked in
place, the metal disk can still swing clockwise and
counterclockwise because it is attached to the up-
right rod with a flexible spiral spring. A push on the
Twist the disk to one side, release it, and determine
its period of vibration. (Both here and at points
later in the lab, you can improve your accuracy by
timing ten periods and dividing the result by ten.)
This is the natural period of the vibrations, i.e. the
period with which they occur in the absence of any
driving force.

52 Lab 17 Resonance
B Damping
Note the coils of wire at the bottom of the disk.
These are electromagnets. Their purpose is not to
attract the disk magnetically (in fact the disk is
made of a nonmagnetic metal) but rather to increase
the amount of damping in the system. Whenever a
metal is moved through a magnetic field, the elec-
trons in the metal are made to swirl around. As
they eddy like this, they undergo random collisions
with atoms, causing the atoms to vibrate. Vibration
of atoms is heat, so where did this heat energy come
from ultimately? In our system, the only source of
energy is the energy of the vibrating disk. The net
effect is thus to suck energy out of the vibration and
convert it into heat. Although this magnetic and
electrical effect is entirely different from mechanical
friction, the result is the same. Creating damping in
this manner has the advantage that it can be made
stronger or weaker simply by increasing or decreas-
ing the strength of the magnetic field.
Turn off all the electrical equipment and leave it un-
plugged. Connect the circuit shown in the top left
of the electrical diagram, consisting of a power sup-
ply to run the electromagnet plus a meter . You do
not yet need the power supply for driving the motor.
The meter will tell you how much electrical current
is flowing through the electromagnet, which will give
you a numerical measure of how strong your damp-
ing is. It reads out in units of amperes (A), the
metric unit of electrical current. Although this does
not directly tell you the amount of damping force in
units of newtons (the force depends on velocity), the
force is proportional to the current.
Once you have everything hooked up, check with
your instructor before plugging things in and turn-
ing them on. If you do the setup wrong, you could
blow a fuse, which is no big deal, but a more seri-
ous goof would be to put too much current through
the electromagnet, which could burn it up, perma-
nently ruining it. Once your instructor has checked
this part of the electrical setup she/he will show you
how to monitor the current on the meter to make
sure that you never have too much.
The Q of an oscillator is defined as the number of
oscillations required for damping to reduce the en-
ergy of the vibrations by a factor of 535 (a definition
originating from the quantity e2π ). As planned in
your prelab, measure the Q of the system with the
electromagnet turned off, then with a current of 300
mA through the electromagnet, and then 600 mA.
You will be using these two current values through-
out the lab.
C Frequency of Driven Vibration
Now connect the Instek power supply to the termi-
nals on the motor labeled “motoranschluβ.” and set
it to 24 V. The coarse and fine adjustments to the
speed of the motor are marked “groβ” (gross) and
“fein” (fine).
Three of the vibrators have broken “motoranschluβ”
connections; they are marked. If you have one of
these, you need to connect the power supply to the
other plugs, and control the motor’s frequency from
the power supply knob. Since this makes it difficult
to control the frequency accurately, you should do
the low-Q setup in part F.
Set the damping current to the higher of the two
values. Turn on the motor and drive the system at a
frequency very different from its natural frequency.
You will notice that it takes a certain amount of
time, perhaps a minute or two, for the system to
settle into a steady pattern of vibration. This is
called the steady-state response to the driving force
of the motor.
Does the system respond by vibrating at its natural
frequency, at the same frequency as the motor, or at
some frequency in between?
D Resonance
With your damping current still set to the higher
value, try different motor frequencies, and observe
how strong the steady-state response is. At what
motor frequency do you obtain the strongest response?
You can save yourself some time if you think of this
part and part F as one unit, and plan ahead so that
the data you take now is also the data you need for
part F.
E Resonance Strength
Set the motor to the resonant frequency, i.e. the
frequency at which you have found you obtain the
strongest response. Now measure the amplitude of
the vibrations you obtain with each of the two damp-
ing currents. How does the strength of the resonance
depend on damping?
With low amounts of damping, I have sometimes en-
countered a problem where the system, when driven
near resonance, never really settles down into a steady
state. The amplitude varies dramatically from one
minute to the next, perhaps because the power sup-
ply is not stable enough to control the driving fre-
quency consistently enough. If this happens to you,
check with your instructor.
53
F Width of the Resonance the peak is only as wide as a pencil on the graph —
Now measure the response of the system for a large make an appropriate choice of the range of frequen-
number of driving frequencies, so that you can graph cies on the x axis.
the resonance curve and determine the width of the
resonance. Concentrate on the area near the top
and sides of the peak, which is what’s important for
finding the FWHM.
To make this part less time-consuming, your instruc-
tor will assign your group to do only one of the two
graphs, low-Q or high-Q. Each group will have their
own data for one Q and another group’s data for
another Q.

Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Plan how you will determine the Q of your os-
cillator in part B. [Hint: Note that the energy of a
vibration is proportional to the square of the ampli-
tude.]

Self-Check
Make your graphs for part F (see below), and see if
they make sense. Make sure to make the frequency
axis expanded enough to get an accurate FWHM
from the graph,

Analysis
Compare your observations in parts C, D, and E
with theory.
For part F, construct graphs with the square of the
amplitude on the y axis and the frequency on the
x axis. The reason for using the square of the am-
plitude is that the standard way of specifying the
width of a resonance peak is to give its full width at
half resonance (FWHM), which is measured between
the two points where the energy of the steady-state
vibration equals half its maximum value. Energy is
proportional to the square of the amplitude. Deter-
mine the FWHM of the resonance for each value of
the damping current, and find whether the expected
relationship exists between Q and FWHM; make a
numerical test, not just a qualitative one. Obviously
there is no way you can get an accurate FWHM if

54 Lab 17 Resonance
55
18 Resonance (short version)
This is a simplified version of lab 17, meant to intro- Thornton
duce some concepts related to mechanical resonance, power supply multimeter Instek
power supply
without any detailed data-taking.
A set on 24 V
Apparatus + - + -
A COM
500-g weight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
string
post and hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
vibrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group red
Thornton power supply . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group blue
Instek PC-3030D power supply . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
stopwatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group Motor-
multimeter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group anschluβ
banana plug cables
vibrator

Goals Electrical setup, top view.

Observe the phenomenon of resonance.

Learn how to visualize phases and amplitudes Apparatus

in a plane.
Introduction
To break a wine glass, an opera singer has to sing
the right note. To hear a radio signal, you have to
be tuned to the right frequency. These are examples
of the phenomenon of resonance: a vibrating system
will respond most strongly to a force that varies with
a particular frequency.
In this lab you will investigate the phenomenon of
resonance using the apparatus shown in the figure.
If the motor is stopped so that the arms are locked in
place, the metal disk can still swing clockwise and
counterclockwise because it is attached to the up-
right rod with a flexible spiral spring. A push on the
disk will result in vibrations that persist for quite
a while before the internal friction in the spring re-
duces their amplitude to an imperceptible level. This
would be an example of a free vibration, in which
energy is steadily lost in the form of heat, but no
external force pumps in energy to replace it.
Suppose instead that you initially stop the disk, but
then turn on the electric motor. There is no rigid
mechanical link to the disk, since the motor and disk
are only connected through the very flexible spiral
spring. But the motor will gently tighten and loosen
the spring, resulting in the gradual building up of a
vibration in the disk.

variable-speed
electric motor Observations
A Period of Free Vibrations
Start without any of the electrical stuff hooked up.
Simplified mechanical drawing of the vibrator, front view. Twist the disk to one side, release it, and use the
stopwatch to determine its natural period of vibra-

56 Lab 18 Resonance (short version)

tion. (Both here and at points later in the lab, you
can improve your accuracy by timing ten periods
and dividing the result by ten.)
B Damping
Note the coils of wire at the bottom of the disk.
These are electromagnets. Their purpose is not to
attract the disk magnetically (in fact the disk is
made of a nonmagnetic metal) but rather to increase
the amount of damping in the system. Whenever a
metal is moved through a magnetic field, the elec-
trons in the metal are made to swirl around. As
they eddy like this, they undergo random collisions
with atoms, causing the atoms to vibrate. Vibration
of atoms is heat, so where did this heat energy come
from ultimately? In our system, the only source of
energy is the energy of the vibrating disk. The net
effect is thus to suck energy out of the vibration and
convert it into heat. Although this magnetic and
electrical effect is entirely different from mechanical
friction, the result is the same. Creating damping in
this manner has the advantage that it can be made
stronger or weaker simply by increasing or decreas-
ing the strength of the magnetic field.
Turn off all the electrical equipment and leave it un-
plugged. Connect the circuit shown in the top left
of the electrical diagram, consisting of a power sup-
ply to run the electromagnet plus a meter . You do
not yet need the power supply for driving the motor.
The meter will tell you how much electrical current
is flowing through the electromagnet, which will give
you a numerical measure of how strong your damp-
ing is. It reads out in units of amperes (A), the
metric unit of electrical current. Although this does
not directly tell you the amount of damping force in
units of newtons (the force depends on velocity), the
force is proportional to the current.
Once you have everything hooked up, check with
your instructor before plugging things in and turn-
ing them on. If you do the setup wrong, you could
blow a fuse, which is no big deal, but a more seri-
ous goof would be to put too much current through
the electromagnet, which could burn it up, perma-
nently ruining it. Once your instructor has checked
this part of the electrical setup she/he will show you
how to monitor the current on the meter to make
sure that you never have too much.
The Q of an oscillator is defined as the number of
oscillations required for damping to reduce the en-
ergy of the vibrations by a factor of 535 (a definition
originating from the quantity e2π ). As planned in
your prelab, measure the Q of the system with the
electromagnet turned off, then with a current of 0.25
A through the electromagnet, and then 0.50 A. You
will be using these two current values throughout
the lab.
C Frequency of Driven Vibration
Now connect the Instek power supply to the termi-
nals on the motor labeled “motorpanschluβ.” and
set it to 24 V . The coarse and fine adjustments to
the speed of the motor are marked “groβ” (gross)
and “fein” (fine).
Set the damping current to the higher of the two
values. Turn on the motor and drive the system at a
frequency very different from its natural frequency.
You will notice that it takes a certain amount of
time, perhaps a minute or two, for the system to
settle into a steady pattern of vibration. This is
called the steady-state response to the driving force
of the motor.
Does the system respond by vibrating at its natural
frequency, at the same frequency as the motor, or at
some frequency in between?
D Resonance
With your damping current still set to the higher
value, try different motor frequencies, and observe
how strong the steady-state response is. At what
motor frequency do you obtain the strongest response?
E Resonance Strength
Set the motor to the resonant frequency, i.e. the
frequency at which you have found you obtain the
strongest response. Now measure the amplitude of
the vibrations you obtain with each of the two damp-
ing currents. How does the strength of the resonance
depend on damping?
F Phase Response
If the disk and the vertical arm were connected rigidly,
rather than through a spring, then they would al-
ways be in phase. For instance, the disk would reach
its most extreme clockwise angle at the some mo-
ment when the vertical arm was also all the way
clockwise. But since the connection is not rigid,
this need not be the case. Find a frequency sig-
nificantly below the resonant frequency, at which
the amplitude of the steady-state response is per-
haps one tenth of the value it would have at res-
onance. What do you observe about the relative
phase of the disk and the vertical arm? Are they in
phase or out of phase? You can describe the phase
by assigning positive phase angles to oscillations in
which the disk is ahead of the arm, and negative
phases when the disk is behind. These phase angles
57
can range from -180 ◦ to 180 ◦ . Actually +180 ◦ and
-180 ◦ would represent the same thing: the oscilla-
tions have phases that are exactly the opposite. Try
to estimate roughly what the phase angle is. You
don’t have any way to measure it accurately, but you
should be able to estimate it to the nearest multiple
of 45 ◦ . Measure the amplitude of the steady-state
response as well.
Now measure the phase and amplitude of the re-
sponse when the driving force is at the resonant fre-
quency.
Finally, do the same measurements when the driving
force is significantly above resonance.
There is a good way to visualize measurements such
as these. The amplitude is a number that is greater
than or equal to zero, and the phase is an angle
that lies within a 360 ◦ range, and “wraps around” at
+180 ◦ . Thus it makes sense to assign an amplitude-
phase measurement pair to a particular point in the
plane using polar coordinates. The amplitude gives
the distance from the origin, and the phase is repre-
sented by the point’s angle with respect to the x axis,
measured counterclockwise for + and clockwise for
—. Make a sketch of your three measurement pairs
in this representation:

58 Lab 18 Resonance (short version)

59
19 Standing Waves
Apparatus
string
weights, including 1-gram weights
pulley
vibrator
Goals
Observe the resonant modes of vibration of a
string.
Find how the speed of waves on a string de-
pends on the tension in the string.
Introduction
The Greek philosopher Pythagoras is said to have
been the first to observe that two plucked strings
sounded good together when their lengths were in
the proportion of two small integers. (This is assum-
ing the strings are of the same material and under
the same tension.) For instance, he thought a pleas-
ant combination of notes was produced when one
string was twice the length of the other, but that the
combination was unpleasant when the ratio was, say,
1.4 to 1 (like the notes B and F). Although different
combinations of notes are used in different cultures
and different styles of music, there is at least some
scientific justification for Pythagoras’ statement. We
now know that a plucked string does not just vibrate
at a single frequency but simultaneously at a whole
series of frequencies f1 , 2f1 , 3f1 ,... These frequen-
cies are called the harmonics. If one string is twice
the length of the other, then its lowest harmonic is at
half the frequency of the other string’s, and its har-
monics coincide with the odd-numbered harmonics
of the other string. If the ratio is 1.4 to 1, however,
then there is essentially no regular relationship be-
tween the two sets of frequencies, and many of the
harmonics lie close enough in frequency to produce
unpleasant beats.
pulley vibrator
weight
60 Lab 19 Standing Waves
Setup
The apparatus allows you to excite vibrations at a
fixed frequency of 120 Hz (twice the frequency of
the alternating current that runs the vibrator). The
tension in the string can be controlled by varying the
weight.
Observations
Observe as many modes of vibration as you can. You
will probably not be able to observe the fundamental
(one antinode) because it would require too much
weight. In each case, you will want to fine-tune the
weight to get as close as possible to the middle of
the resonance, where the amplitude of vibration is
at a maximum. When you’re close to the peak of
a resonance, an easy way to tell whether to add or
remove weight is by gently pressing down or lifting
up on the weights with your finger to see whether
the amplitude increases or decreases.
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Should the whole length of the string be counted
in L, or just part of it?
P2 How is the tension in the string, T , related to
the mass of the hanging weight?
P3 How can the velocity of the waves be deter-
mined if you know the frequency, f , the length of
the string, L, and the number of antinodes, N ?
Self-Check
Do your analysis in lab.
Analysis
Use the techniques given in appendix 5 to see if you
can find a power-law relationship between the veloc-
ity of the waves in the string and the tension in the
string. (Do not just try to find the correct power
law in the textbook, because besides observing the
phenomenon of resonance, the point of the lab is to
prove experimentally what the power-law relation-
ship is.)

61
20 Resonances of Sound
Apparatus
wave generator (HP 200) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
speaker (Thornton) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
100 mL graduated cylinder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
Macintosh with microphone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
flexible whistling tube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
tuning fork marked with frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
aluminum rod, 3/4-inch dia, about 1 m long
2 Although Helmholtz thought the relative strengths
Goals
Determine the highest and lowest frequencies
of sound that you can hear.
Find the resonant frequencies of the air inside
a cylinder by two methods.
Measure the speeds of sound in air and in alu-
minum.
Introduction
In the womb, your first sensory experiences were of
your mother’s voice, and soon after birth you learned
to distinguish the particular sounds of your parents’
voices from those of strangers. The human ear-brain
system is amazingly sophisticated in its ability to
classify vowels and consonants, recognize people’s
voices, and analyze musical sound. Until the 19th-
century investigations of Helmholtz, the whole pro-
cess was completely mysterious. How could we so
easily tell a cello from a violin playing the same note?
A radio station in Chicago has a weekly contest in
which jazz fanatics are asked to identify instrumen-
talists simply by their distinctly individual timbres
— how is this possible?
Helmholtz found (using incredibly primitive nonelec-
tronic equipment) that part of the answer lay in the
relative strengths of the overtones. The psychologi-
cal sensation of pitch is related to frequency, e.g. 440
Hz is the note “A.” But a saxophonist playing the
note “A” is actually producing a rich spectrum of
frequencies, including 440 Hz, 880 Hz, 1320 Hz, and
many other multiples of the lowest frequency, known
as the fundamental. The ear-brain system perceives
all these overtones as a single sound because they are
all multiples of the fundamental frequency. (The Ja-
62 Lab 20 Resonances of Sound
vanese orchestra called the gamelan sounds strange
to westerners partly because the various gongs and
cymbals have overtones that are not integer multi-
ples of the fundamental.)
One of the things that would make “A” on a clarinet
sound different from “A” on a saxophone is that the
880 Hz overtone would be quite strong for the sax-
ophone, but almost entirely missing for the clarinet.
of the overtones was the whole story when it came
to musical timbre, actually it is more complex than
that, which is why electronic synthesizers still do not
sound as good as acoustic instruments. The timbre
depends not just on the general strength of the over-
tones but on the details of how they first build up
(the attack) and how the various overtones fade in
and out slightly as the note continues.
Why do different instruments have different sound
spectra, and why, for instance, does a saxophone
have an overtone that the clarinet lacks? Many mu-
sical instruments can be analyzed physically as tubes
that have either two open ends, two closed ends, or
one open end and one closed end. The overtones
correspond to specific resonances of the air column
inside the tube. A complete treatment of the subject
is given in your textbook, but the basic principle is
that the resonant standing waves in the tube must
have an antinode at any closed end of the tube, and
a node at any open end.
Using the Wave Generator
The wave generator works like the amplifier of your
stereo, but instead of playing a CD, it produces a
sine wave whose frequency and amplitude you can
control. By connecting it to a speaker, you can con-
vert its electrical currents to sound waves, making
a pure tone. The frequency of the sine wave corre-
sponds to musical pitch, and the amplitude corre-
sponds to loudness.
The gigantic knob is the fine adjustment of the fre-
quency.
The knob labeled x1, x10, etc. is the coarse adjust-
ment of the frequency.
The frequency emitted by the wave generator (in
Hz) equals the number on the fine adjustment knob
multiplied by the number shown on the coarse ad-
justment knob.
For very fine adjustments to the frequency, you can
use the small knob immediately underneath the huge
one.
The wave generator can create enough voltage to
give a mildly unpleasant tingling sensation in your
hand if you touch the leads. None of the electri-
cal apparatus used in this lab, however, is any more
dangerous than a home TV or stereo.
Setup
Unplug the wave generator. Check the fuse in the
back of the wave generator to make sure it is not
blown, then put it back in. Plug in the wave gener-
ator and turn off the on/off switch at the top right.
Turn the “amplitude” knob of the wave generator to
zero, and then turn on the on/off switch.
Plug the speaker into the wave generator. The ba-
nana plugs go in the two holes on the right. Set the
frequency to something audible. Wait 30 seconds
for the wave generator to warm up, then turn the
amplitude knob up until you hear a sound.
The wave generator and the speaker are not really
designed to work together, so if you leave the volume
up very high for a long time, it is possible to blow
the speaker or damage the wave generator. Also, the
sine waves are annoying when played continuously at
loud volumes!
Preliminary Observations
Determine the highest frequency that each person in
your group can hear.
Observations
This lab has three parts, A, B, and C. It is not really
possible for more than one group to do part A in the
same room, both because their sounds interfere with
one another and because the noise becomes annoy-
ing for everyone. Your instructor will probably have
three groups working on part A at one time, one
group in the main room, one in the small side room,
and one in the physics stockroom. Meanwhile, the
other groups will be doing parts B and C.
A Direct Measurement of Resonances by Lis-
tening
Set up the graduated cylinder so its mouth is cover-
ing the center of the speaker. Find as many frequen-
cies as possible at which the cylinder resonates. At
those frequencies, the sound becomes louder. (You
may also be able to detect the lowest resonance by
feeling the vibrations of the walls of the cylinder with
your hand.) For each resonance, take several mea-
surements of its frequency — if you are careful, you
can pin it down to within +10 Hz or so. You can
probably speed up your search significantly by cal-
culating approximately where you expect the reso-
nances to be, then looking for them.
B Electronic Measurement of Resonances of
an Air Column
The resonances of the air column in a cylinder can
also be excited by a stream of air flowing over an
opening, as with a flute. In this part of the lab, you
will excite resonances of a long, flexible plastic tube
by grabbing it at one end and swinging it in a cir-
cle. The frequency of the sound will be determined
electronically. Note that your analysis for these res-
onances will be somewhat different, since the tube
is open at both ends, and it therefore has different
patterns of resonances from the graduated cylinder,
which was only open at one end.
To measure the frequency, you will use a computer to
record the sound. As a warmup before attempting
the actual measurements with the whistling tube,
try the following. First, start up the program if
nobody else has already done so. It is called Mac
Fourier, and is available from the apple menu. This
is not the same program you used in the bounc-
ing ball lab, but it is similar in some ways. Click
on the Record button. A control panel pops up,
just like in the software you used in the free fall
lab. Start whistling about 30 cm from the micro-
phone, click the smaller Record button in the control
panel, let it record for 1 second or so while you con-
tinue whistling, then click the Record button again
to stop. Click on Save. The control panel disappears
and the program’s big window is uncovered again.
Click on Play to hear what you recorded and make
sure it’s what you wanted. If you’re using the mac on
the big cart and you don’t hear anything, it may be
because the knob on the speaker is turned down. If
turning it up a little doesn’t help, ask your instructor
for help with changing the volume of the speaker in
software, from the Sound control panel under the
apple menu.
Look in the box at the lower right corner of the win-
dow, and make sure your sound is no longer than 1
or 2 seconds in duration. If you recorded more than
that, go back and try again — it will take a very
long time for the computer to analyze your sound if
63
its duration is too great.
Now click on the Analyze button. The computer
software works for 10 or 20 seconds or so, and then
makes a plot where the x axis is frequency and the y
axis is loudness. The frequency at which you whis-
tled should show up as a prominent peak. You can
read off its frequency more accurately by using the
Narrower Range button under the x axis to narrow
down the range of frequencies plotted. You can then
use the buttons labeled << and >> to look at higher
or lower frequency ranges.
Now try the whole procedure with the tuning fork
instead of whistling, and make sure you can use the
computer to obtain the frequency inscribed on the
fork. Note that if the tuning fork’s frequency falls
outside the range you’d selected, you will need to
click on Wider Range to find it.
Once you have done these warmups, you are ready
to analyze the sound from the whistling tube. Make
sure to start recording a moment before you start
whirling the tube, and stop recording less than a
second later.
C The Speed of Sound in Aluminum
The speed of sound in dense solid is much faster
than its speed in air. In this part of the lab, you
will extract the speed of sound in aluminum from
a measurement of the lowest resonant frequency of
a solid aluminum rod. You will use the computer
for an electronic measurement of the frequency, as
in part B.
Grab the rod exactly in the middle and hold it ver-
tically, then tap it on the floor. You will hear two
different notes sounding simultaneously. The higher
note is the lowest resonance produced with longitu-
dinal compression waves, which means that an in-
dividual atom of aluminum is moving up and down
the length of the rod. This type of wave is analo-
gous to sound waves in air, which are also longitudi-
nal compression waves. The lower note comes from
transverse vibrations, like a vibrating guitar string.
In the transverse vibrations, atoms are moving from
side to side, and the rod as a whole is bending.
If you listen carefully, you can tell that the trans-
verse vibration (the lower note) dies out quickly, but
the longitudinal mode keeps going for a long time.
That gives you an easy way to isolate the longitudi-
nal mode, which is the one we’re interested in; just
wait for the transverse wave to die out before you
begin recording on the computer.
64 Lab 20 Resonances of Sound
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Find an equation to predict the frequencies of
the resonances in parts A and B. Note that they
will not be the same equations, since one tube is
symmetric and the other is asymmetric.
Self-Check
Extract the speed of sound from either part A or
part B, without error analysis, and make sure you
get something close to the accepted value.
Analysis
Make a graph of wavelength versus period for the
resonances of the graduated cylinder, check whether
it looks like it theoretically should, and if so, find
the speed of sound from its slope, with error bars.
Use the data from part B to find a second value of
the speed of sound, also with error bars.
The effective length of the cylinder in part A should
be increased by 0.4 times its diameter to account for
the small amount of air beyond the end that also vi-
brates. For part B, where the whistling tube is open
at both ends, you should add 0.8 times its diameter.
When estimating error bars from part B, you may
be tempted to say that it must be perfectly accurate,
since its being done by a computer. Not so! You will
see that the peak is a little ragged, and that means
you cannot find the frequency with perfect accuracy.
Extract the speed of sound in aluminum from your
data in part C, including error bars.
65
21 Static Electricity
Apparatus
scotch tape
rubber rod
heat lamp
fur
bits of paper
Goal
Determine the qualitative rules governing electrical
charge and forces.
Introduction
Newton’s law of gravity gave a mathematical for-
mula for the gravitational force, but his theory also
made several important non-mathematical statements
about gravity:
Every mass in the universe attracts every other
mass in the universe.
Gravity works the same for earthly objects as
for heavenly bodies.
The force acts at a distance, without any need
for physical contact.
Mass is always positive, and gravity is always
attractive, not repulsive.
The last statement is interesting, especially because
it would be fun and useful to have access to some
negative mass, which would fall up instead of down
(like the “upsydaisium” of Rocky and Bullwinkle
fame).
Although it has never been found, there is no theo-
retical reason why a second, negative type of mass
can’t exist. Indeed, it is believed that the nuclear
force, which holds quarks together to form protons
and neutrons, involves three qualities analogous to
mass. These are facetiously referred to as “red,”
“green,” and “blue,” although they have nothing to
do with the actual colors. The force between two of
the same “colors” is repulsive: red repels red, green
repels green, and blue repels blue. The force be-
tween two different “colors” is attractive: red and
66 Lab 21 Static Electricity
green attract each other, as do green and blue, and
red and blue.
When your freshly laundered socks cling together,
that is an example of an electrical force. If the grav-
itational force involves one type of mass, and the
nuclear force involves three colors, how many types
of electrical “stuff” are there? In the days of Ben-
jamin Franklin, some scientists thought there were
two types of electrical “charge” or “fluid,” while oth-
ers thought there was only a single type. In this lab,
you will try to find out experimentally how many
types of electrical charge there are.
Observations
Stick a piece of scotch tape on a table, and then lay
another piece on top of it. Pull both pieces off the
table, and then separate them. If you now bring
them close together, you will observe them exerting
a force on each other. Electrical effects can also be
created by rubbing the fur against the rubber rod.
Your job in this lab is to use these techniques to
test various hypotheses about electric charge. The
most common difficulty students encounter is that
the charge tends to leak off, especially if the weather
is humid. If you have charged an object up, you
should not wait any longer than necessary before
making your measurements. It helps if you keep your
hands dry.
A Repulsion and/or attraction
Test the following hypotheses. Note that they are
mutually exclusive, i.e. only one of them can be
true.
A1) Electrical forces are always attractive.
A2) Electrical forces are always repulsive.
A3) Electrical forces are sometimes attractive and
sometimes repulsive.
Interpretation: Once you think you have tested these
hypotheses fairly well, discuss with your instructor
what this implies about how many different types of
charge there might be.
B Are there forces on objects that have not been
specially prepared?
So far, special preparations have been necessary in
order to get objects to exhibit electrical forces. These
preparations involved either rubbing objects against
each other (against resistance from friction) or pulling
objects apart (e.g. overcoming the sticky force that
holds the tape together). In everyday life, we do not
seem to notice electrical forces in objects that have
not been prepared this way.
Now try to test the following hypotheses. Bits of pa-
per are a good thing to use as unprepared objects,
since they are light and therefore would be easily
moved by any force. Do not use tape as an un-
charged object, since it can become charged a little
bit just by pulling off the roll.
B1) Objects that have not been specially prepared
are immune to electrical forces.
B2) Unprepared objects can participate in electrical
forces with prepared objects, and the forces involved
are always attractive.
B3) Unprepared objects can participate in electrical
forces with prepared objects, and the forces involved
are always repulsive.
B4) Unprepared objects can participate in electrical
forces with prepared objects, and the forces involved
can be either repulsive of attractive.
Hypotheses B1 through B4 are mutually exclusive.
Interpretation: If you think your observations sup-
port a hypothesis other than B1, discuss with your
instructor whether the forces seem to obey Newton’s
third law, and discuss why an unprepared object
might participate in electrical forces.
C Rules of repulsion and/or attraction and the
number of types of charge
Test the following mutually exclusive hypotheses:
C1) There is only one type of electric charge, and
the force is always attractive.
C2) There is only one type of electric charge, and
the force is always repulsive.
C3) There are two types of electric charge, call them
X and Y. Like charges repel (X repels X and Y repels
Y) and opposite charges attract (X and Y attract
each other).
C4) There are two types of electric charge. Like
charges attract and opposite charges repel.
C5) There are three types of electric charge, X, Y
and Z. Like charges repel and unlike charges attract.
Discuss your conclusions with your instructor.
D Creation, transfer, and/or conservation of charge
Test the following mutually exclusive hypotheses:
D1) Charge can be created, destroyed, or transferred
without any particular restrictions.
D2) Putting a certain type of charge on one object
always involves putting equal amounts of the other
type(s) of charge on some other object.
Discuss with your instructor whether your conclu-
sion can be put in the form of a conservation law.
Conservation laws in physics state that if you add up
how much there is of something in a closed system,
then that total amount can’t change as long as the
system stays closed.
Self-Check
The following are examples of incorrect reasoning
about this lab. As a self-check, it would be a very
good idea to figure out for yourself in each case why
the reasoning is logically incorrect or inconsistent
with Newton’s laws. You do not need to do this in
writing — it is just to help you understand what’s
going on. If you can’t figure some of them out, ask
your instructor before leaving lab.
(1) “The first piece of tape exerted a force on the
second, but the second did not exert a force on the
first.”
(2) “The first piece of tape repelled the second, and
the second attracted the first.”
(3) “We observed three types of charge: two that
exert forces, and a third, neutral type.”
(4) “The piece of tape that came from the top was
positive, and the piece from the bottom was nega-
tive.”
(5) “One piece of tape had electrons on it, and the
other had protons on it.”
(6) “We know there were two types of charge, not
three, because we observed two types of interactions,
attraction and repulsion.”
Writeup
Explain what you have concluded about electrical
charge and forces. Base your conclusions on your
data!
67
22 The Oscilloscope
Apparatus
oscilloscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
microphone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
sine wave generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
amplifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
various tuning forks
Goals
Learn to use an oscilloscope.
Observe sound waves on an oscilloscope.
Introduction
One of the main differences you will notice between
your second semester of physics and the first is that
many of the phenomena you will learn about are
not directly accessible to your senses. For example,
electric fields, the flow of electrons in wires, and the
inner workings of the atom are all invisible. The
oscilloscope is a versatile laboratory instrument that
can indirectly help you to see what’s going on.
The Cathode Ray Tube
The essential part of an oscilloscope is a cathode ray
tube (CRT), a glass tube with a vacuum inside. The
picture tube of your television is a more familiar type
of CRT. A beam of electrons is created and steered
to the desired location on the screen. The vacuum
is necessary because air inside the tube would stop
the electrons within a few centimeters. The screen
is coated on the inside with a fluorescent material so
that it glows when the beam hits it. The term “cath-
ode ray tube” originated before subatomic particles
such as electrons were known to exist — the tube was
invented by trial and error, without understanding
the nature of the mysterious “ray” that came from
the cathode. “Cathode ray” is simply an archaic
synonym for “beam of electrons.” Until the 1960’s,
all electrical devices contained many small vacuum
tubes, but now the CRT is probably the only type
of vacuum tube left in your home that has not been
replaced by transistors.
The heater is simply a coil of wire like that in a
68 Lab 22 The Oscilloscope
light bulb or an electric stove. It heats the cathode,
causing a small fraction of the electrons in it to be
ejected from the surface of the metal by thermal vi-
bration. These freed electrons are then accelerated
by the strong electric field existing between the cath-
ode and anode, which together form a parallel plate
capacitor. The anode has a small hole in it, which
lets the electrons through without having much ef-
fect on the electric field between the plates. Two
more capacitors, the deflection plates, serve to steer
the beam. For clarity, the electrical connections of
the capacitors to the outside of the tube are omit-
ted, as are several other capacitor plates that serve
to make the beam narrower.
In your television, the beam is swept over the screen
in a repetitive pattern, moving across the screen,
then stepping down one line, and so on. To the hu-
man eye-brain system, it is not usually evident that
the picture is being continually created and recre-
ated, although if you wave your hand in front of a
TV screen, you will see a stroboscopic pattern be-
cause it is only at certain specific moments that your
hand blocks the same part of the screen that is be-
ing illuminated. In a color television, tiny red, green
and blue fluorescent dots are arranged in a repeat-
ing pattern — there is only one electron beam, not
three.
The Oscilloscope
An oscilloscope is not meant to fill the whole screen
with a picture like a TV picture tube but rather to
produce a graph on the screen showing how an elec-
trical signal varies over time. A 1-cm grid is perma-
nently drawn on the front of the CRT, and the elec-
tron beam creates a glowing green curve or “trace”
behind it for the graph itself. In this lab, you will
be using the signal from a microphone as an input,
allowing you to see sound waves. The input signal
is supplied in the form of a voltage, usually through
a cable known as a BNC cable.
A BNC cable is a specific example of coaxial cable
(“coax”), which is also used in cable TV, radio, and
computer networks. The current flows in one direc-
tion through the central conductor, and returns in
the opposite direction through the outside conduc-
tor, completing the circuit. The outside conductor is
normally kept at ground, and also serves as shielding
 horizontal
vertical deflection
deflection plates
spot of
plates light
fluorescent
screen
anode
cathode
heater
against radio interference. The advantage of coax-
ial cable is that it is capable of transmitting rapidly
varying signals without distortion.
insulators
central
conductor
outside
conductor
You are already familiar with the term “voltage”
from common speech, but you may not have learned
the formal definition yet in the lecture course. Volt-
age, measured in metric units of volts (V), is defined
as the electrical potential energy per unit charge.
For instance if 2 nC of charge flows from one ter-
minal of a 9-volt battery to the other terminal, the
potential energy consumed equals 18 nJ. To use a
mechanical analogy, when you blow air out between
your lips, the flowing air is like an electrical current,
and the difference in pressure between your mouth
and the room is like the difference in voltage. For
the purposes of this lab, it is not really necessary
for you to work with the fundamental definition of
voltage.
Most of the voltages we wish to measure are not big
enough to use directly for the vertical deflection volt-
age, so the oscilloscope actually amplifies the input
voltage, i.e. the small input voltage is used to con-
trol a much large voltage generated internally. The
amount of amplification is controlled with a knob on
the front of the scope. For instance, setting the knob
on 1 mV selects an amplification such that 1 mV at
the input deflects the electron beam by one square
of the 1-cm grid. Each 1-cm division is referred to
as a “division.”
The Time Base and Triggering
Since the X axis represents time, the voltage across
the horizontal deflection plates is simply changed
trigger level set with knob
(not visible on screen)
smoothly by an internal circuit so as to sweep the
beam across the screen in the desired amount of
time. For instance, setting the knob on 10 ms causes
the beam to sweep across one square in 10 ms. This
is known as the time base.
In the figure, suppose the time base is 10 ms. The
scope has 10 divisions, so the total time required
for the beam to sweep from left to right would be
100 ms. This is far too short a time to allow the
user to examine the graph. There are two commonly
used ways of solving the problem. In one method, a
“snapshot” would be taken of the voltage as a func-
tion of time for a period sufficient to stretch across
the screen, in this case 100 ms. The image would
then be frozen on the screen until the user pushes a
button to take another sample.
The other method, which is the one built into the
scopes you will use in this lab, is especially useful for
periodic signals, signals that repeat over and over.
The amount of time required for a periodic signal to
perform its pattern once is called the period. With
a periodic signal, all you really care about seeing
what one period or a few periods in a row look like
— once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. This
type of scope displays one screenfull of the signal,
and then keeps on overlaying more and more copies
of the wave on top of the original one. Each phos-
phorescent trace dies out fairly quickly, but is being
reinforced continually by later, identical copies of the
wave form. You simply see one persistent trace.
How does the scope know when to start a new trace?
If the time for one sweep across the screen just hap-
pened to be exactly equal to, say, four periods of the
signal, there would be no problem. But this is un-
likely to happen in real life — normally the second
trace would start from a different point in the wave-
form, producing an offset copy of the wave. Thou-
sands of traces per second would be superimposed
69
on the screen, each shifted horizontally by a differ-
ent amount, and you would only see a blurry band
of light.
To make sure that each trace starts from the same
point in the waveform, the scope has a triggering cir-
cuit. You use a knob to set a certain voltage level,
the trigger level, at which you want to start each
trace. The scope waits for the input to move across
the trigger level, and then begins a trace. Once that
trace is complete, it pauses until the input crosses
the trigger level again. To make extra sure that it is
really starting over again from the same point in the
waveform, you can also specify whether you want to
start on an increasing voltage or a decreasing volt-
age — otherwise there would always be at least two
points in a period where the voltage crossed your
trigger level.
Setup
To start with, we’ll use a sine wave generator, which
makes a voltage that varies sinusoidally with time.
This gives you a convenient signal to work with while
you get the scope working.
Preliminaries:
Put the time base on something reasonable
compared to the period of the signal you’re
looking at.
Put the voltage scale (Y axis) on a reasonable
scale compared to the amplitude of the signal
you’re looking at.
The scope has two channels, i.e. it can ac-
cept input through two BNC connectors and
display both or either. Make sure you’re dis-
playing the same one you’ve hooked up the ca-
ble to, and make sure you’re triggering on that
channel as well.
Make sure the triggering is set to “normal”
mode, which means that it will act as I’ve de-
scribed above.
Set the trigger to positive triggering (triggering
on an increasing voltage that passes through
the trigger level).
Select AC, not DC or GND, on the channel
you’re using. You are looking at a voltage
70 Lab 22 The Oscilloscope
that is alternating, creating an alternating cur-
rent, “AC.” The “DC” setting is only neces-
sary when dealing with constant or very slowly
varying voltages. The “GND” simply draws a
graph using y = 0, which is only useful in cer-
tain situations, such as when you can’t find the
trace.
Make sure the beam intensity is not all the way
down.
Now try adjusting the trigger level until you see a
steady trace. If you still can’t find a signal, check
with your instructor.
Observe the effect of changing the voltage scale and
time base on the scope. Try changing the frequency
and amplitude on the sine wave generator.
Preliminary Observations
Now try observing signals from the microphone. By
feeding the mic’s signal through the amplifier and
then to the scope, you can make the signals easier
to see.
Once you have your setup working, try measuring
the period and frequency of the sound from a tuning
fork, and make sure your result for the frequency is
the same as what’s written on the tuning fork.
Don’t crank the gain on the amplifier all the way
up. If you do, the amplifier will put out a distorted
waveform. Use the highest gain you can use without
causing distortion.
Observations
A Periodic and nonperiodic speech sounds
Try making various speech sounds that you can sus-
tain continuously: vowels or certain consonants such
as “sh,” “r,” “f” and so on. Which are periodic and
which are not?
Note that the names we give to the letters of the
alphabet in English are not the same as the speech
sounds represented by the letter. For instance, the
English name for “f” is “ef,” which contains a vowel,
“e,” and a consonant, “f.” We are interested in the
basic speech sounds, not the names of the letters.
Also, a single letter is often used in the English writ-
ing system to represent two sounds. For example,
the word “I” really has two vowels in it, “aaah” plus
“eee.”
B Loud and soft
What differentiates a loud “aaah” sound from a soft
one?

C High and low pitch

Try singing a vowel, and then singing a higher note
with the same vowel. What changes?

D Differences among vowel sounds

What differentiates the different vowel sounds?

E Lowest and highest notes you can sing

What is the lowest frequency you can sing, and what
is the highest?

Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 In the sample oscilloscope trace shown above,
what is the period of the waveform? What is its
frequency? The time base is 10 ms.
P2 In the same example, again assume the time
base is 10 ms/division. The voltage scale is 2 mV/division.
Assume the zero voltage level is at the middle of
the vertical scale. (The whole graph can actually be
shifted up and down using a knob called “position.”)
What is the trigger level currently set to? If the trig-
ger level was changed to 2 mV, what would happen
to the trace?
P3 Referring to the chapter of your textbook on
sound, which of the following would be a reasonable
time base to use for an audio-frequency signal? 10
ns, 1µ s, 1 ms, 1 s
P4 Does the oscilloscope show you the period or
the wavelength of the signal? Explain.

Analysis
The format of the lab writeup can be informal. Just
describe clearly what you observed and concluded.

71
23 The Speed of Sound
Based on a lab by Hans Rau.
Apparatus
oscilloscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
optical bench . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
HP function generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
transducers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/group
Goal
Measure the speed of sound.
Introduction
There are several simple methods for getting a rough
estimate of the speed of sound, for instance tim-
ing an echo, or watching the kettledrum player at
a symphony and seeing how long the sound takes to
arrive after you see the mallet strike the drumhead.
The latter method, comparing vision against hear-
ing, assumes that the speed of light is much greater
than the speed of sound, the same assumption that
is used when estimating the distance to a lightning
strike based on the interval between the flash and
the thunder. The assumption is a good one, since
light travels about a million times faster than sound.
Military jets routinely exceed the speed of sound,
but no human has ever traveled at speeds even re-
motely comparable to that of light. (The electrons
in your television set are moving at a few percent of
the speed of light, and velocities of 0.999999999999
times the speed of light can be attained in particle
accelerators. According to Einstein’s theory of rela-
tivity, motion faster than light is impossible.)
In this lab, you will make an accurate measurement
of the speed of sound by measuring the wavelength
and frequency of a pure tone (sine wave) and com-
puting
v = λf .
We will be using sound with a frequency of about
35-40 kHz, which is too high to be audible. This has
the advantage of eliminating the annoying din of six
lab groups producing sine waves at once. Such high-
frequency, inaudible sound is known as ultrasound.
Ultrasound at even higher frequencies, in the MHz
72 Lab 23 The Speed of Sound
range, is used for imaging fetuses in the womb.
oscilloscope
transducers
function
generator ch 1 ch 2
optical bench
Setup
The setup is shown below. A transducer is a de-
vice capable of acting as either a speaker or a micro-
phone. The function generator is used to create a
voltage that varies sinusoidally over time. This volt-
age is connected through two coax cables, to the os-
cilloscope and the first transducer, used as a speaker.
The sound waves travel from the first transducer to
the second transducer, used as a microphone. You
will be using both channels of the scope to display
graphs of two waveforms at the same time on the
oscilloscope. As you slide one transducer along the
optical bench, changing the distance between them,
you will change the phase of one wave relative to the
other. Thus, you can determine the distance corre-
sponding to a given number of wavelengths and ex-
tract the wavelength of the sound waves accurately.
The wavelength of the sound will be roughly a few
cm. The frequency can be read from the knob on
the function generator. (The time scale of an os-
cilloscope typically has a systematic error of about
2-5%, so you should not use a measurement of the
period from the scope for this purpose.)
When setting up the scope, you will need to select
one channel or the other to trigger on. You can
select the voltage scales for the two channels inde-
pendently, but they always have the same time base.
The most common problem in this lab is that some
electrical current gets through the metal optical bench,
causing the receiving transducer to pick up the orig-
inal input signal directly, rather than by receiving
the sound waves. A precaution that usually works
is to connect the optical bench to the ground con-
tact of the scope (use an alligator clip to attach to
the body of the bench). It is easy to check whether
the problem exists: put your hand between the two transducer from the position shown in the first draw-
transducers to absorb the sound, and you should see ing to the position shown in the second drawing, the
the amplitude of the signal from the receiver become student swept one trace past five complete cycles
much smaller. The receiving transducer will receive of the other trace. (The actual optical benches are
sound best at frequencies in the range of 35-40 kHz, about a meter long, not 8 or 9 cm as shown.) What
so keep the frequency in that range. is the wavelength of the ultrasound? [Self-check: you
should get 0.6 cm]
When you connect the function generator to both
the scope and the transmitting transducer, you’ll P2 Does it matter which transducer you move?
probably end up connecting a BNC-to-banana con-
P3 You can choose through how many wavelengths
nector to the function generator, and then putting a
you will move the transducer. What effect will this
second banana connector into the back of the first.
have on the accuracy of your determination of the
It’s important to make sure that the little tabs marked
speed of sound?
“GND” are on the same side of both connectors.
P4 What is a reasonable value for the speed of
If you are still having problems after taking the above
sound?
steps, try replacing one of the transducers — some
of the transducers are unreliable.
Self-Check
Observations Do an analysis without error bars before leaving lab,
and check that your speed of sound is reasonable.
Determine the wavelength and frequency of the sound
waves using the oscilloscope. Find out the tempera-
ture in the lab. Analysis
Do a quick analysis, without error analysis, during
Determine the speed of sound from your data, and
lab, to see if your result is reasonable.
use the techniques discussed in appendix 3 to derive
error bars.
Prelab Compare your result with the previously determined
value of √
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
v = (20.1) T ,
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
where v is in m/s and T is the absolute temperature,
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
found by adding 273 to the Celsius temperature. Is
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
it statistically consistent with your value?
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 The drawings show two different configurations
of the transducers on the optical bench.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The scales are in cm. By sliding the right-hand

73
24 Electrical Resistance
Apparatus
DC power supply (Thornton) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
digital multimeters (Fluke and HP) . . . . . . . 2/group
resistors, various values
unknown electrical components
electrode paste
alligator clips
spare fuses for multimeters — Let students replace
fuses themselves.
Goals
Measure curves of voltage versus current for
three objects: your body and two unknown
electrical components.
Determine whether they are Ohmic, and if so,
determine their resistances.
Introduction
Your nervous system depends on electrical currents,
and every day you use many devices based on elec-
trical currents without even thinking about it. De-
spite its ordinariness, the phenomenon of electric
currents passing through liquids (e.g. cellular flu-
ids) and solids (e.g. copper wires) is a subtle one.
For example, we now know that atoms are composed
of smaller, subatomic particles called electrons and
nuclei, and that the electrons and nuclei are elec-
trically charged, i.e. matter is electrical. Thus, we
now have a picture of these electrically charged par-
ticles sitting around in matter, ready to create an
electric current by moving in response to an exter-
nally applied voltage. Electricity had been used for
practical purposes for a hundred years, however, be-
fore the electrical nature of matter was proven at the
turn of the 20th century.
Another subtle issue involves Ohm’s law,
∆V
I= , less the length is so great that the resistance of the
R wire becomes non-negligible), and the schematic is
where ∆V is the voltage difference applied across an
object (e.g. a wire), and I is the current that flows
in response. A piece of copper wire, for instance,
has a constant value of over a wide range of volt-
ages. Such materials are called Ohmic. Materials
74 Lab 24 Electrical Resistance
with non-constant are called non-Ohmic. The inter-
esting question is why so many materials are Ohmic.
Since we know that electrons and nuclei are bound
together to form atoms, it would be more reasonable
to expect that small voltages, creating small electric
fields, would be unable to break the electrons and
nuclei away from each other, and no current would
flow at all — only with fairly large voltages should
the atoms be split up, allowing current to flow. Thus
we would expect R to be infinite for small voltages,
and small for large voltages, which would not be
Ohmic behavior. It is only within the last 50 years
that a good explanation has been achieved for the
strange observation that nearly all solids and liquids
are Ohmic.
Terminology, Schematics, and Re-
sistor Color Codes
The word “resistor” usually implies a specific type
of electrical component, which is a piece of Ohmic
material with its shape and composition chosen to
give a desired value of R. Any piece of an Ohmic
substance, however, has a constant value of R, and
therefore in some sense constitutes a “resistor.” The
wires in a circuit have electrical resistance, but the
resistance is usually negligible (a small fraction of an
Ohm for several centimeters of wire).
The usual symbol for a resistor in an electrical schematic
is this , but some recent schematics use
this . The symbol represents a fixed
source of voltage such as a battery, while repre-
sents an adjustable voltage source, such as the power
supply you will use in this lab.
In a schematic, the lengths and shapes of the lines
representing wires are completely irrelevant, and are
usually unrelated to the physical lengths and shapes
of the wires. The physical behavior of the circuit
does not depend on the lengths of the wires (un-
not meant to give any information other than that
needed to understand the circuit’s behavior. All that
really matters is what is connected to what.
For instance, the schematics (a) and (b) above are
 silver

blue
(a) parallel (b) parallel (c) series
brown

completely equivalent, but (c) is different. In the red

first two circuits, current heading out from the bat-
tery can “choose” which resistor to enter. Later on,
2 1 6 +10%
the two currents join back up. Such an arrangement
is called a parallel circuit. In the bottom circuit, a
21x106 Ω +10%
series circuit, the current has no “choice” — it must
first flow through one resistor and then the other.
Resistors are usually too small to make it convenient the objects you are using are not necessarily resis-
to print numerical resistance values on them, so they tors, or even Ohmic.
are labeled with a color code, as shown in the table
and example below.

color meaning
black 0
Here is the actual circuit, with the meters included.
brown 1 In addition to the unknown resistance RU , a known
resistor RK (∼ 1kΩ is fine) is included to limit the
red 2 possible current that will flow and keep from blow-
ing fuses or burning out the unknown resistance with
orange 3 too much current. This type of current-limiting ap-
yellow 4 plication is one of the main uses of resistors.

green 5 RK

blue 6
Ru
violet 7 A
gray 8
V
white 9
silver +10%
Observations
gold +5%
A Unknown component A
Set up the circuit shown above with unknown com-
ponent A. Most of your equipment accepts the ba-
Setup nana plugs that your cables have on each end, but
to connect to RU and RK you need to stick alligator
Obtain your two unknowns from your instructor.
clips on the banana plugs. See Appendix 7 for in-
Group 1 will use unknowns 1A and 1B, group 2 will
formation about how to set up and use the two mul-
use 2A and 2B, and so on.
timeters. Do not use the pointy probes that come
Here is a simplified version of the basic circuit you with the multimeters, because there is no convenient
will use for your measurements of I as a function of way to attach them to the circuit — just use the ba-
∆V . Although I’ve used the symbol for a resistor, nana plug cables. Note when you need three wires to

75
come together at one point, you can plug a banana
plug into the back of another banana plug.
Measure I as a function of ∆V . Make sure to take
measurements for both positive and negative volt-
ages.
B Unknown component B
Repeat for unknown component B.
C The human body
Now do the same with the body of one member of
your group. This is not dangerous — the maxi-
mum voltage available from your power supply is
not enough to hurt you. (Children usually figure
out at some point that touching the terminals of a 9
V battery to their tongue gives an interesting sensa-
tion. The currents you will use in this lab are ten to
a hundred times smaller.) You may wish to keep the
voltage below about 5 V or so. At voltages much
higher than that (10 to 12 V), a few subjects get
irritated skin.
You will not want to use the alligator clips. With
the power supply turned off, put small dabs of the
electrode paste on the subject’s left wrist and just
below the elbow, and simply lay the banana plug
connectors in the paste. The subject should avoid
moving. The paste is necessary because without it,
most of the resistance would come from the connec-
tion through the dry epidermal skin layer, and the
resistance would change erratically. The paste is a
relatively good conductor, and makes a better elec-
trical connection.
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Check that you understand the interpretations
of the following color-coded resistor labels:
blue gray orange silver = 68 kΩ ± 10%
blue gray orange gold = 68 kΩ ± 5%
blue gray red silver = 6.8 kΩ ± 10%
black brown blue silver = 1 MΩ ± 10%
Now interpret the following color code:
green orange yellow silver =?
P2 Fit a line to the following sample data and use
76 Lab 24 Electrical Resistance
the slope to extract the resistance (see Appendix 4).
10
5
current (µA)
0
-5
-10
-4 -2 0 2 4
voltage (V)
Your result should be consistent with a resistor color
code of green-violet-yellow.
P3 Plan how you will measure I versus ∆V for
both positive and negative values of ∆V , since the
power supply only supplies positive voltages.
P4 Would data like these indicate a negative resis-
tance, or did the experimenter just hook something
up wrong? If the latter, explain how to fix it.
current
voltage
P5 Explain why the following statements about
the resistor RK are incorrect:
a) “You have to make RK small compared to RU , so
it won’t affect things too much.”
b) “RK doesn’t affect the measurement of RU , be-
cause the meters just measure the total amount the
power supply is putting out.”
c) “RK doesn’t affect the measurement of RU , be-
cause the current and voltage only go through RK
after they’ve already gone through RU .”
Analysis
Graph I versus ∆V for all three unknowns. Decide
which ones are Ohmic and which are non-Ohmic.
For the ones that are Ohmic, extract a value for the
resistance (see page appendix 4). Don’t bother with
analysis of random errors, because the main source
of error in this lab is the systematic error in the
calibration of the multimeters (and in part C the
systematic error from the subject’s fidgeting).

Programmed Introduction to Prac-

tical Electrical Circuits
Physics courses in general are compromises between
the fundamental and the practical, between explor-
ing the basic principles of the physical universe and
developing certain useful technical skills. Although
the electricity and magnetism labs in this manual
are structured around the sequence of abstract the-
oretical concepts that make up the backbone of the
lecture course, it’s important that you develop cer-
tain practical skills as you go along. Not only will
they come in handy in real life, but the later parts
of this lab manual are written with the assumption
that you will have developed them.
As you progress in the lab course, you will find that
the instructions on how to construct and use circuits
become less and less explicit. The goal is not to
make you into an electronics technician, but neither
should you emerge from this course able only to flip
the switches and push the buttons on prepackaged
consumer electronics. To use a mechanical analogy,
the level of electrical sophistication you’re intended
to reach is not like the ability to rebuild a car engine
but more like being able to check your own oil.
In addition to the physics-based goals stated at the
beginning of this section, you should also be devel-
oping the following skills in lab this week:
(1) Be able to translate back and forth between schemat-
ics and actual circuits.
(2) Use a multimeter (discussed in Appendix 7),
given an explicit schematic showing how to connect
it to a circuit.
Further practical skills will be developed in the fol-
lowing lab.

77
25 Kirchoff’s Rules
Apparatus
DC power supply (Thornton) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
multimeter (Fluke) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
resistors
Goal
Test Kirchoff’s rules in two electrical circuits.
Introduction
If you ask physicists what are the most fundamen-
tally important principles of their science, almost all
of them will start talking to you about conserva-
tion laws. A conservation law is a statement that a
certain measurable quantity cannot be changed. A
conservation law that is easy to understand is the
conservation of mass. No matter what you do, you
cannot create or destroy mass.
The two conservation laws with which we will be
concerned in this lab are conservation of energy and
conservation of charge. Energy is related to voltage,
because voltage is defined as V = P E/q. Charge
is related to current, because current is defined as
I = ∆q/∆t.
Conservation of charge has an important consequence
for electrical circuits:
When two or more wires come together at a point in
a DC circuit, the total current entering that point
equals the total current leaving it.
Such a coming-together of wires in a circuit is called
a junction. If the current leaving a junction was,
say, greater than the current entering, then the junc-
tion would have to be creating electric charge out
of nowhere. (Of course, charge could have been
stored up at that point and released later, but then
it wouldn’t be a DC circuit — the flow of current
would change over time as the stored charge was
used up.)
Conservation of energy can also be applied to an
electrical circuit. The charge carriers are typically
electrons in copper wires, and an electron has a po-
tential energy equal to −eV . Suppose the electron
sets off on a journey through a circuit made of re-
sistors. Passing through the first resistor, our sub-
78 Lab 25 Kirchoff’s Rules
atomic protagonist passes through a voltage differ-
ence of ∆V1 , so its potential energy changes by −e∆V1 .
To use a human analogy, this would be like going up
a hill of a certain height and gaining some gravi-
tational potential energy. Continuing on, it passes
through more voltage differences, −e∆V2 , −e∆V3 ,
and so on. Finally, in a moment of religious tran-
scendence, the electron realizes that life is one big
circuit — you always end up coming back where you
started from. If it passed through N resistors be-
fore getting back to its starting point, then the total
change in its potential energy was
−e (∆V1 + . . . + ∆VN ) .
But just as there is no such thing as a round-trip
hike that is all downhill, it is not possible for the
electron to have any net change in potential energy
after passing through this loop — if so, we would
have created some energy out of nothing. Since the
total change in the electron’s potential energy must
be zero, it must be true that ∆V1 + . . . + ∆VN = 0.
This is Kirchoff’s loop rule:
The sum of the voltage differences around any closed
loop in a circuit must equal zero.
When you are hiking, there is an important distinc-
tion between uphill and downhill, which depends en-
tirely on which direction you happen to be traveling
on the trail. Similarly, it is important when apply-
ing the loop rule to be consistent about the signs
you give to the voltage differences, say positive if
the electron sees an increase in voltage and negative
if it sees a decrease along its direction of motion.
Observations
A The junction rule
Construct a circuit like the one in the figure, using
the Thornton power supply as your voltage source.
To make things more interesting, don’t use equal
resistors. Use nice big resistors (say 100 kΩ to 1
MΩ) — this will ensure that you don’t burn up the
resistors, and that the multimeter’s small internal
resistance when used as an ammeter is negligible in
comparison. Insert your multimeter in the circuit to
measure all three currents that you need in order to
test the junction rule.
 Analysis
Discuss whether you think your observations agree
with Kirchoff’s rules, taking into account systematic
R2
and random errors.
R1
Programmed Introduction to Prac-
tical Electrical Circuits
B The loop rule The following practical skills are developed in this
Now come up with a circuit to test the loop rule. lab:
Since the loop rule is always supposed to be true,
(1) Use a multimeter without being given an explicit
it’s hard to go wrong here! Make sure you have at
schematic showing how to connect it to your circuit.
least three resistors in a loop, and make sure you
This means connecting it in parallel in order to mea-
hook in the power supply in a way that creates non-
sure voltages and in series in order to measure cur-
zero voltage differences across all the resistors. Mea-
rents.
sure the voltage differences you need to measure to
test the loop rule. Here it is best to use fairly small (2) Use your understanding of Kirchoff’s rules to
resistances, so that the multimeter’s large internal simplify electrical measurements. Kirchoff’s rules
resistance when used in parallel as a voltmeter will often guarantee that you can get the same current
not significantly reduce the resistance of the circuit. or voltage reading by measuring in more than one
Do not use resistances of less than about 100 Ω, how- place in a circuit. In real life, it is often much easier
ever, or you may blow a fuse or burn up a resistor. to connect a meter to one place than another, and
you can therefore save yourself a lot of trouble using
Kirchoff’s rules.
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Draw a schematic showing where you will in-
sert the multimeter in the circuit to measure the
currents in part A.
P2 Invent a circuit for part B, and draw a schematic.
You need not indicate actual resistor values, since
you will have to choose from among the values actu-
ally available in lab.
P3 Draw a schematic showing how you will attach
the multimeter in the circuit to measure the voltage
differences in part B.
P4 Explain why the following statement is incor-
rect: “We found that the loop rule was not quite
true, but the small error could have been because
the resistor’s value was off by a few percent com-
pared to the color-code value.”

Self-Check
Do the analysis in lab.

79
26 Electric Fields and Voltages
Apparatus
board and U-shaped probe ruler
DC power supply (Thornton)
multimeter
scissors
stencils for drawing electrode shapes on paper
Goals
To be better able to visualize electric fields and
understand their meaning.
To examine the electric fields around certain
charge distributions.
Note: If your textbook is edition 2.0 of Crowell,
Electricity and Magnetism, you should download the
most recent edition and read the new version of sec-
tions 5.4 and 5.5, which have an improved and ex-
panded treatment of this topic.
Introduction
By definition, the electric field, E, at a particular
point equals the force on a test charge at that point
divided by the amount of charge, E = F/q. We can
plot the electric field around any charge distribution
by placing a test charge at different locations and
making note of the direction and magnitude of the
force on it. The direction of the electric field at
any point P is the same as the direction of the force
on a positive test charge at P. The result would be
a page covered with arrows of various lengths and
directions, known as a “sea of arrows” diagram..
In practice, Radio Shack does not sell equipment for
preparing a known test charge and measuring the
force on it, so there is no easy way to measure elec-
tric fields. What really is practical to measure at any
given point is the voltage, V , defined as the elec-
trical energy (potential energy) that a test charge
would have at that point, divided by the amount
of charge (E/Q). This quantity would have units
of J/C (Joules per Coulomb), but for convenience
we normally abbreviate this combination of units as
volts. Just as many mechanical phenomena can be
described using either the language of force or the
language of energy, it may be equally useful to de-
80 Lab 26 Electric Fields and Voltages
scribe electrical phenomena either by their electric
fields or by the voltages involved.
Since it is only ever the difference in potential en-
ergy (interaction energy) between two points that
can be defined unambiguously, the same is true for
voltages. Every voltmeter has two probes, and the
meter tells you the difference in voltage between the
two places at which you connect them. Two points
have a nonzero voltage difference between them if
it takes work (either positive or negative) to move
a charge from one place to another. If there is a
voltage difference between two points in a conduct-
ing substance, charges will move between them just
like water will flow if there is a difference in levels.
The charge will always flow in the direction of lower
potential energy (just like water flows downhill).
All of this can be visualized most easily in terms
of maps of constant-voltage curves (also known as
equipotentials); you may be familiar with topograph-
ical maps, which are very similar. On a topograph-
ical map, curves are drawn to connect points hav-
ing the same height above sea level. For instance, a
cone-shaped volcano would be represented by con-
centric circles. The outermost circle might connect
all the points at an altitude of 500 m, and inside it
you might have concentric circles showing higher lev-
els such as 600, 700, 800, and 900 m. Now imagine
a similar representation of the voltage surrounding
an isolated point charge. There is no “sea level”
here, so we might just imagine connecting one probe
of the voltmeter to a point within the region to
be mapped, and the other probe to a fixed refer-
ence point very far away. The outermost circle on
your map might connect all the points having a volt-
age of 0.3 V relative to the distant reference point,
and within that would lie a 0.4-V circle, a 0.5-V
circle, and so on. These curves are referred to as
constant-voltage curves, because they connect points
of equal voltage. In this lab, you are going to map
out constant-voltage curves, but not just for an iso-
lated point charge, which is just a simple example
like the idealized example of a conical volcano.
You could move a charge along a constant-voltage
curve in either direction without doing any work,
because you are not moving it to a place of higher
potential energy. If you do not do any work when
moving along a constant-voltage curve, there must
not be a component of electric force along the surface
(or you would be doing work). A metal wire is a
constant-voltage curve. We know that electrons in a
metal are free to move. If there were a force along
the wire, electrons would move because of it. In fact
the electrons would move until they were distributed
in such a way that there is no longer any force on
them. At that point they would all stay put and
then there would be no force along the wire and it
would be a constant-voltage curve. (More generally,
any flat piece of conductor or any three-dimensional
volume consisting of conducting material will be a
constant-voltage region.)
There are geometrical and numerical relationships
between the electric field and the voltage, so even
though the voltage is what you’ll measure directly
in this lab, you can also relate your data to electric
fields. Since there is not any component of elec-
tric force parallel to a constant-voltage curve, elec-
tric field lines always pass through constant-voltage
curves at right angles. (Analogously, a stream flow-
ing straight downhill will cross the lines on a topo-
graphical map at right angles.) Also, if you divide
the work equation (∆energy) = F d by q, you get
(∆energy)/q = (F/q)d, which translates into ∆V =
−Ed. (The minus sign is because V goes down when
some other form of energy is released.) This means
that you can find the electric field strength at a point
P by dividing the voltage difference between the two
constant-voltage curves on either side of P by the
distance between them. You can see that units of
V/m can be used for the E field as an alternative to
the units of N/C suggested by its definition — the
units are completely equivalent.
Method
Turn your equipotential board upside down. Find
the board with the parallel-plate capacitor pattern
on it, and screw it to the underside of the equipo-
tential board, with the black side facing outward.
Now connect the voltage source (using the provided
wires) to the two large screws on either side of the
board. Referring to Appendix 7 on how to use a
multimeter, connect the multimeter so that you can
measure the voltage difference across the terminals
of the voltage source. Adjust the voltage source to
give 8 volts.
Once you turn this voltage on, charges flow between
the connections on the field plate under the equipo-
tential board. Two of the conductors in your pattern
are connected directly to the voltage source, so these
will be two of your constant-voltage curves, differing
from each other by 8 volts. You can select one of
1 2
3 4
these as your reference voltage level, so it is by def-
inition at V = 0 V, and other is at V = 8 V. One
of the probes of your voltmeter can be connected to
the 0-V conductor indirectly, simply by connecting
it to the appropriate terminal of the voltage supply.
Now look at your U-probe. It has a conductor at
the end of the bottom part and a wire going through
the bottom part that connects to the screw at the
back end of it. It also has a hole in the end of the
top part that is directly above the end conductor on
the bottom. You will be connecting one side of the
voltmeter to the screw on the U-probe and the other
to a fixed reference point of your choice.
You can place a sheet of paper on the equipotential
board. Everyone in your group will need one copy
of each of the two patterns you do, so you will need
to photocopy them or simply trace them by hand.
If you press down on the board, you can slip the
paper between the board and the four buttons you
see at the corners of the board. Now put the U-probe
in place so that the top is above the equipotential
board and the bottom of it is below the board. You
will first be looking for places on the pattern board
where the voltage is one volt — look for places where
the meter reads 1.0 and mark them through the hole
on the top of your U-probe with a pencil or pen.
You should find a whole bunch of places there the
voltage equals one volt, so that you can draw a nice
constant-voltage curve connecting them. (If the line
goes very far or curves strangely, you may have to do
more.) You can then repeat the procedure for 2 V,
3 V, and so on. Label each constant-voltage curve.
Repeat this procedure with another pattern.
81
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Looking at a plot of constant-voltage curves,
how could you tell where the strongest electric fields
would be? (Don’t just say that the field is strongest
when you’re close to “the charge,” because you may
have a complex charge distribution, and we don’t
have any way to see or measure the charge distribu-
tion.)
P2 What would the constant-voltage curves look
like in a region of uniform electric field (i.e., one in
which the E vectors are all the same strength, and
all in the same direction)?

Self-Check
Calculate at least one numerical electric field value
to make sure you understand how to do it.
You have probably found some constant-voltage curves
that form closed loops. Do the electric field patterns
ever seem to close back on themselves? Make sure
you understand why or why not.
Make sure the people in your group all have a copy
of each pattern.

Analysis
A. After you have completed the plots for two pat-
terns, you should try to draw in electric field vectors.
You will then have two different representations of
the field superimposed on one another. Remember
that electric field vectors are always perpendicular
to constant-voltage curves. The electric field lines
point from high voltage to low voltage, just as the
force on a rolling ball points downhill.
B. Select at least five places on each plot and deter-
mine the electric field strength (E) at each of them.
Make sure to include the two points that appear to
have the strongest and weakest fields.
C. For the parallel-plate capacitor, in what region
was the electric field relatively uniform?
D. What do you observe about the constant-voltage
curves near conducting surfaces? How do you ex-
plain this?

82 Lab 26 Electric Fields and Voltages

83
27 The Dipole Field
Apparatus
bar magnet
compass
graph paper, with 1 cm squares
Goal
Find how the magnetic field of a bar magnet changes
with distance along one of the magnet’s lines of sym-
metry.
Introduction
This lab is designed to be used along with the sec-
tion of Simple Nature about the superposition (i.e.
addition) of fields. That chapter is about electric
fields, and the basic principle is that if we have two
sets of sources (charges) that would individually cre-
ate fields E1 and E2 , then their combined field is the
vector sum E1 + E2 . Static electric fields, however,
are difficult to control and measure. Magnetic fields
are much easier to work with, and the same vector
addition principle applies to them. In this lab, you’ll
expose a magnetic compass to the superposed mag-
netic fields of the earth and a bar magnet.
Preliminary Observations
You will use a compass to map out part of the mag-
netic field of a bar magnet. It turns out that the
bar magnet is the magnetic equivalent of an electric
dipole. The compass is affected by both the earth’s
field and the bar magnet’s field, and points in the
direction of their vector sum, but if you put the com-
pass within a few cm of the bar magnet, you’re seeing
mostly its field, not the earth’s. Investigate the bar
magnet’s field, and sketch in your lab notebook. You
should see that it looks like the field a dipole.
Observations
Magnetic fields are actually measured in units of
Tesla (T), but for the purposes of this lab, we’ll just
measure all the fields in units of the earth’s magnetic
field. That is, we define the earth’s magnetic field
84 Lab 27 The Dipole Field
to have a strength of exactly 1.0 in Fullerton.1 You
can infer the strength of the bar magnet’s field at a
given point by putting the compass there and seeing
how much it is deflected.
The task can be simplified quite a bit if you restrict
yourself to measuring the magnetic field at points
along one of the magnet’s two lines of symmetry,
shown in the figure.
b
N
a
S
If the magnet is flipped across the vertical axis, the
north and south poles remain just where they were,
and the field is unchanged. That means the entire
magnetic field is also unchanged, and the field at a
point such as point b, along the line of symmetry,
must therefore point straight up.
If the magnet is flipped across the horizontal axis,
then the north and south poles are swapped, and the
field everywhere has to reverse its direction. Thus,
the field at points along this axis, e.g. point a, must
point straight up or down.
Line up your magnet so it is pointing east-west.
Choose one of the two symmetry axes of your mag-
net, and measure the deflection of the compass at
a variety of points along that axis, as shown in the
second figure.
Note that the measurements are very sensitive to the
relative position and orientation of the bar magnet
and compass. You can position them accurately by
laying them both on top of a piece of graph paper.
1 Actually we’re defining its horizontal component to be
one unit — the compass can’t respond to vertical fields. The
dip angle of the magnetic field in Fullerton is fairly steep.
Self-Check
Analyze one data point to make sure you know how
to do it. Does it look like the trend of the magnetic
field values will make sense?

Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Suppose that one of your data points is as fol-
lows: when the compass is 11.0 cm from the mag-
net, it is 45 degrees away from north. What is the
strength of the bar magnet’s field at this location in
space, in units of the Earth’s field?

Analysis
Determine the magnetic field of the bar magnet as
a function of distance, and make a graph. No error
analysis is required. Look for a power-law relation-
ship using the technique described in appendix 5.
Does the power law hold for all the distances you in-
vestigated, or only at large distances? Compare this
power law result with the result given in the book
for the variation of an electric dipole’s field with dis-
tance.

85
 bar magnet
(two possible
positions)
N
Earth's field
N

N
bar magnet's
N

field
S

N
total field
N

experienced
S by compass

Measuring the variation of the bar magnet’s field with respect to distance

86 Lab 27 The Dipole Field

87
28 Magnetism
Apparatus
solenoid (Heath)
DC power supply (Thornton)
digital multimeter (HP)
bar magnet
compass
graph paper, with 1 cm squares
resistors
rulers
Goals
Determine the horizontal and vertical compo-
nents and the total magnitude of the Earth’s
magnetic field in Fullerton.
Find how the magnetic field of a bar magnet
changes with distance along one of the mag-
net’s lines of symmetry.
Introduction
The magnetic compass, invented by the Olmec civ-
ilization in Mexico around 1000 B.C., and indepen-
dently by the Chinese in the first century AD, was
an important technology for world exploration. The
ability of naturally occurring magnetic minerals to
attract and repel each other at a distance fascinated
generations of scientists. In the seventeenth century,
the Englishmen Hooke and Horrocks even speculated
that it was magnetism that held the planets in their
orbits around the sun, but Newton soon showed that
the force involved was gravity.
It remained a mystery until two centuries after New-
ton how magnetic fields were caused and what math-
ematical relationships existed between the field and
its source. Not until 1820 did Hans Oersted acciden-
tally discover that an electric current could deflect a
nearby compass, and it took most of the rest of the
century before it was well established that all mag-
netic fields were created by currents. Even without
discussing the details of the mathematical relation-
ship between the current and the magnetic field, we
can gain a great deal of insight from two simple and
powerful statements:
The strength of the magnetic field is directly
88 Lab 28 Magnetism
proportional to the amount of current.
The magnetic field is a vector, and when vari-
ous patterns of current are simultaneously present,
their magnetic fields add like vectors.
Observations
A The Earth’s magnetic field
The idea here is to put a compass inside the solenoid,
put current through the solenoid to generate a mag-
netic field, and determine the horizontal component
of the earth’s magnetic field from the deflection of
the compass. The Thornton power supply can be
used to create an adjustable voltage.
Determine the horizontal component, Beh , of the
earth’s magnetic field, and check your value with
your instructor.
Hints:
The Earth’s magnetic field is not very strong,
so any significant amount of current in the
solenoid will tend to force the compass so close
to the solenoid’s axis that you cannot see any
effect from the Earth’s field. The power sup-
ply cannot be accurately controlled when the
knob is in the bottom 1/3 or so of its voltage
range. An easy solution is to insert a resistor
in the circuit to increase the total resistance
beyond that of the solenoid.
The Fluke multimeters have a quirk that some-
times makes it impossible to measure currents
in the milliamp range. Use the HP multimeter
to measure the current.
B Variation with distance of the magnetic field
of a bar magnet
The idea is to use a compass to map out part of the
magnetic field of a bar magnet. Since you have al-
ready found the horizontal component of the Earth’s
magnetic field in this lab, you can infer the strength
of the magnet’s field at a given point by putting the
compass there and seeing how much it is deflected.
The task can be simplified quite a bit if you restrict
yourself to measuring the magnetic field at points
along one of the magnet’s two lines of symmetry,
shown in the figure.

b
N P1 Suppose that in part B, one of your data points
a
S
If the magnet is flipped across the vertical axis, the
north and south poles remain just where they were,
and the field is unchanged. That means the entire
magnetic field is also unchanged, and the field at a
point such as point b, along the line of symmetry,
must therefore point straight up.
If the magnet is flipped across the horizontal axis,
then the north and south poles are swapped, and the
field everywhere has to reverse its direction. Thus,
the field at points along this axis, e.g. point a, must
point straight up or down.
Line up your magnet so it is pointing east-west.
Choose one of the two symmetry axes of your mag-
net, and measure the deflection of the compass at
a variety of points along that axis, as shown in the
figure on page 88.
Note that the measurements are very sensitive to the
relative position and orientation of the bar magnet
and compass. You can position them accurately by
laying them both on top of a piece of graph paper.
Self-Check
You were already requested to extract the horizon-
tal component of the earth’s magnetic field before
proceeding to part B.
Analyze one data point from part B to make sure
you know how to do it. Does it look like the trend
of the magnetic field values will make sense?
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
The week before you are to do the lab, briefly famil-
iarize yourself visually with the apparatus.
is as follows: when the compass is 11.0 cm from the
magnet, it is 45 degrees away from north. Also, sup-
pose that in part A, you find out that the Earth’s
field is 50 µT. What is the strength of the bar mag-
net’s field at this location in space?
P2 In your textbook, find the equation you will
need for calculating the field inside the solenoid.
P3 The figure shows four possible positions for the
compass in the determination of the Earth’s mag-
netic field: (1) inside at the center, (2) inside, off
center, but on-axis, (3) inside and resting on the bot-
tom of the cavity, and (4) partially inside the mouth
of the solenoid. For which of these positions would
the equation you looked up for the previous question
give an accurate value for the field of the solenoid?
1 2 4
3
Analysis
Calculate the horizontal component of the Earth’s
magnetic field here in Fullerton. Use standard tech-
niques for propagation of errors to derive error bars
for this quantity (see appendices 2 and 3).
Analyze your data from part B to determine the
magnetic field of the bar magnet as a function of
distance, and make a graph. No error analysis is
required. For extra credit, find a power-law rela-
tionship using the technique described in appendix
5. (Please do not ask for a verbal check-off if you’re
doing the extra credit.)
89
 bar magnet
(two possible
positions)
N
Earth's field
N

N
bar magnet's
N

field
S

N
total field
N

experienced
S by compass

Measuring the variation of the bar magnet’s field with respect to distance

90 Lab 28 Magnetism
91
29 Relativity
Apparatus
meter stick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
multimeter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
aluminum foil (standard thickness, about 0.6 mils)
balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Goal
Measure the speed of light.
Introduction
Oersted discovered that magnetism is an interac-
tion of moving charges with moving charges, but
it wasn’t until almost a hundred years later that
Einstein showed why such an interaction must exist:
magnetism occurs as a direct result of his theory of
relativity. Since magnetism is a purely relativistic
effect, and relativistic effects depend on the speed of
light, any measurement of a magnetic effect can be
used to determine the speed of light.
Setup
The idea is to set up opposite currents in two wires,
one under the other, and use the repulsion between
the currents to levitate the top wire. Instead of nor-
mal wires, you’ll use strips of aluminum foil. Fold a
two-meter piece of aluminum foil in half lengthwise,
lay a 15-mm strip of it under the meter stick, and
tear off the excess, leaving behind a folded 15 mm ×
2 m strip that is folded in half. Locate the foil and
the meter stick so that the ends are as close as possi-
ble to the lab’s DC outlet. Place slightly more than
one meter of the foil under the meter stick, with a
few inches sticking out, tape the meter stick down
on the desk, and lay the other half on top of the me-
ter stick. The foil now forms a U shape lying on its
side. Tape the top piece to the meter stick near its
free end, leaving a little slack, so that the magnetic
force can lift it. As with the bottom part, leave a
few inches on the end to allow an electrical contact
to be made. Attach alligator clips to both ends, at-
tach cables to the clips, and tape the cables down
for strain relief. Check the resistance of your setup
with the multimeter; if it’s more than about an ohm,
92 Lab 29 Relativity
you have a bad connection somewhere.
Get ready to make a circuit with the ammeter in
it, but don’t hook it up to the DC outlet yet. The
setup requires about as much current as the lab’s
DC supply can put out, so only one group can run
at once. If two groups are connected at the same
time when your instructor activates the DC, you’ll
trip a circuit breaker. Worse than that, people could
get shocked or burned if their setup got turned on
when they weren’t expecting it.
Once all the groups are set up, everyone will leave
the room except for one group. When it’s your
group’s turn, your instructor will gradually ramp up
the current until you see the top strip of foil levitate
and yell for him to stop. You can tell when the foil
is really levitating because the levitation is unstable,
and the floating foil falls off to one side. Take the
current reading.
As part of your data, you’ll also need to determine
the mass per unit area of the foil by weighing a large
piece on a scale, and you’ll need to measure the
width of your strips, w, and the distance between
them, h.
Analysis
The mass of an aluminum atom is 4.48 × 10−26 kg.
Let’s assume that each aluminum atom contributes
one conduction electron. You can then calculate the
number of coulombs per meter of conduction elec-
trons, −λ, in your strips. By combining this with
your measured levitation current, you can find the
average velocity, v, at which the electrons were drift-
ing through the wire. This velocity is quite small
compared to the speed of light, so the relativistic ef-
fect is slight. However, as you found when you did
the prelab, the amount of charge in a piece of ordi-
nary matter is huge, so even a slight effect is enough
to produce a measurable result.
Now imagine yourself as one of the moving electrons
in the top strip. In your frame of reference, the elec-
trons in the other strip are moving at velocity −2v,
and for each such electron there is a corresponding
proton moving at velocity −v relative to you. (You
don’t care about the protons and electrons that are
paired off in atoms, because they cancel each other.)
Both the electrons and the protons are squashed to-
gether by the relativistic contraction of space, so we The only complication is that we have strips instead
have of wires, so the field is weaker because the charge is
spread out. The equation therefore becomes
1
λp = λ p
1 − v 2 /c2 6f kI 2
= (mass per unit area)wg ,
1 4hc2
λe = −λ p .
1 − (2v)2 /c2

In the frame of reference fixed to the tabletop, these where the unitless correction factor f is less than
would have canceled each other out, but in your one. The following table gives f , as determined by
frame of reference, we have numerical integration:
w/h f
λtotal = λp + λe
" # 1.4 0.80
1 1 1.6 0.77
=λ p −p 1.8 0.74
1 − v 2 /c2 1 − (2v)2 /c2
2.0 0.70
2.2 0.67
You may want to try plugging this into your calcu-
2.4 0.65
lator just for fun, but unless it has unusually high
3.0 0.58
precision, it will round off to zero, since the gamma
3.5 0.53
factors are both very close to one. To get a useful re-
sult, we need to use the approximation (1 − )−1/2 ≈ Solving for c, we have
1 + /2, which results in s
fk
c = (1.22)I
3v 2 hwg(mass per unit area)
λtotal ≈ −λ 2 .
4c
Note that although I asked you to calculate v and
In your frame of reference, the electric field of this λ for physical insight, it turns out that all you re-
charge is what is responsible for repelling you and ally need to know is their product, which equals the
causing the strip you’re in to levitate. If we had current you read on your meter.
wires instead of strips, then the electric field would
be easy to calculate by applying Gauss’ law to a Your final result is the speed of light, with error bars.
cylinder of radius h and length `:

ΦE = 4πkqin Prelab
(E)(2πh`) = 4πkλtotal ` The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
2kλtotal understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
E= and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
h
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
The electrical force per unit length cancels out the setting yourself up for failure in lab.
gravitational force per unit length, so ignoring plus P1 Calculate −λ, the number of coulombs per me-
and minus signs, we have ter in the tabletop’s frame of reference, if w = 15 mm
m and the mass per unit area of the foil is 46 g/m2 .
Eλ = g Answer: −2.5 × 103 C/m
`
6kλ2 v 2 P2 This is a huge amount of charge! Why doesn’t
= (mass per unit area)wg
4hc2 it produce any measurable electrical forces when the
foil is just lying there without being connected to
But λv is just the current, so any electrical circuit?

6kI 2
= (mass per unit area)wg
4hc2

93
30 The Charge to Mass Ratio of the Electron
Apparatus magnetic
b
field created
vacuum tube with Helmholtz by coils coil
coils (Leybold ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Cenco 33034 HV supply . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
12-V DC power supplies (Thornton) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 coil
multimeters (Fluke or HP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 vacuum capacitor
compass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 tube plates
ruler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
banana-plug cables beam of
light made
h by electrons

Goal
Measure the charge-to-mass ratio of the electron.
of the magnetic field on the electrons is

F = qvB , (1)
Introduction
Why should you believe electrons exist? By the turn directed towards the center of the circle. Their ac-
of the twentieth century, not all scientists believed celeration is
in the literal reality of atoms, and few could imag-
ine smaller objects from which the atoms themselves v2
were constructed. Over two thousand years had a= , (2)
r
elapsed since the Greeks first speculated that atoms
existed based on philosophical arguments without so using F = ma, we can write
experimental evidence. During the Middle Ages in
Europe, “atomism” had been considered highly sus- mv 2
qvB = . (3)
pect, and possibly heretical. Finally by the Vic- r
torian era, enough evidence had accumulated from
If the initial velocity of the electrons is provided by
chemical experiments to make a persuasive case for
accelerating them through a voltage difference V ,
atoms, but subatomic particles were not even dis-
they have a kinetic energy equal to qV , so
cussed.
If it had taken two millennia to settle the question 1
mv 2 = qV . (4)
of atoms, it is remarkable that another, subatomic 2
level of structure was brought to light over a period
From equations 3 and 4, you can determine q/m.
of only about five years, from 1895 to 1900. Most
Note that since the force of a magnetic field on a
of the crucial work was carried out in a series of
moving charged particle is always perpendicular to
experiments by J.J. Thomson, who is therefore often
the direction of the particle’s motion, the magnetic
considered the discoverer of the electron.
field can never do any work on it, and the particle’s
In this lab, you will carry out a variation on a crucial KE and speed are therefore constant.
experiment by Thomson, in which he measured the
You will be able to see where the electrons are going,
ratio of the charge of the electron to its mass, q/m.
because the vacuum tube is filled with a hydrogen
The basic idea is to observe a beam of electrons in
gas at a low pressure. Most electrons travel large
a region of space where there is an approximately
distances through the gas without ever colliding with
uniform magnetic field, B. The electrons are emitted
a hydrogen atom, but a few do collide, and the atoms
perpendicular to the field, and, it turns out, travel
then give off blue light, which you can see. Although
in a circle in a plane perpendicular to it. The force
I will loosely refer to “seeing the beam,” you are
really seeing the light from the collisions, not the

94 Lab 30 The Charge to Mass Ratio of the Electron

beam of electrons itself. The manufacturer of the
tube has put in just enough gas to make the beam
visible; more gas would make a brighter beam, but
would cause it to spread out and become too broad
to measure it precisely.
The field is supplied by an electromagnet consisting
of two circular coils, each with 130 turns of wire
(the same on all the tubes we have). The coils are
placed on the same axis, with the vacuum tube at
the center. A pair of coils arranged in this type of
geometry are called Helmholtz coils. Such a setup
provides a nearly uniform field in a large volume
of space between the coils, and that space is more
accessible than the inside of a solenoid.
Safety
You will use the Cenco high-voltage supply to make
a DC voltage of about 300 V . Two things automat-
ically keep this from being very dangerous:
Several hundred DC volts are far less danger-
ous than a similar AC voltage. The household
AC voltages of 110 and 220 V are more dan-
gerous because AC is more readily conducted
by body tissues.
The HV supply will blow a fuse if too much
current flows.
Despite these inherent safety features, you should
read the safety checklist on high voltage at the begin-
ning of the manual. Before beginning the lab, make
sure you understand the safety rules, initial them,
and show your safety checklist to your instructor. If
you don’t understand something, ask your instructor
for clarification.
Setup
Before beginning, make sure you do not have any
computer disks near the apparatus, because the mag-
netic field could erase them.
Heater circuit: As with all vacuum tubes, the cath-
ode is heated to make it release electrons more easily.
There is a separate low-voltage power supply built
into the high-voltage supply. It has a set of plugs
that, in different combinations, allow you to get var-
ious low voltage values. Use it to supply 6 V to the
terminals marked “heater” on the vacuum tube. The
tube should start to glow.
Electromagnet circuit: Connect the other Thornton
power supply, in series with an ammeter, to the ter-
minals marked “coil.” The current from this power
supply goes through both coils to make the magnetic
field. Verify that the magnet is working by using it
to deflect a nearby compass.
High-voltage circuit: Leave the Cenco HV supply
unplugged. It is really three HV circuits in one box.
You’ll be using the circuit that goes up to 500 V.
Connect it to the terminals marked “anode.” Ask
your instructor to check your circuit. Now plug in
the HV supply and turn up the voltage to 300 V .
You should see the electron beam. If you don’t see
anything, try it with the lights dimmed.
Observations
Make the necessary observations in order to find
q/m, carrying out your plan to deal with the effects
of the Earth’s field. The high voltage is supposed
to be 300 V, but to get an accurate measurement
of what it really is you’ll need to use a multimeter
rather than the poorly calibrated meter on the front
of the high voltage supply.
When measuring the beam, you can improve your
accuracy by placing a ruler in front and a ruler be-
hind, and sighting along a line connecting the corre-
sponding points on each ruler.
Be sure to compute q/m before you leave the lab.
That way you’ll know you didn’t forget to measure
something important, and that your result is reason-
able compared to the currently accepted value.
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
The week before you are to do the lab, briefly famil-
iarize yourself visually with the apparatus.
Read the high voltage safety checklist, Appendix 8.
P1 Derive an equation for q/m in terms of V , r
and B.
P2 For an electromagnet consisting of a single cir-
cular loop of wire of radius b, the field at a point on
its axis, at a distance z from the plane of the loop,
95
is given by
1
−3/2
B= µo Ib2 b2 + z 2
2
Starting from this equation, derive an equation for
the magnetic field at the center of a pair of Helmholtz
coils. Let the number of turns in each coil be N (in
our case, N = 130), let their radius be b, and let the
distance between them be h. (In the actual experi-
ment, the electrons are never exactly on the axis of
the Helmholtz coils. In practice, the equation you
will derive is sufficiently accurate as an approxima-
tion to the actual field experienced by the electrons.)
If you have trouble with this derivation, see your in-
structor in his/her office hours.
P3 Find the currently accepted value of q/m for
the electron.
P4 The electrons will be affected by the Earth’s
magnetic field, as well as the (larger) field of the
coils. Devise a plan to eliminate, correct for, or at
least estimate the effect of the Earth’s magnetic field
on your final q/m value.
P5 Of the three circuits involved in this experi-
ment, which ones need to be hooked up with the
right polarity, and for which ones is the polarity ir-
relevant?
P6 What would you infer if you found the beam
of electrons formed a helix rather than a circle?

Analysis
Determine q/m, with error bars.
Answer the following questions:
Q1. Thomson started to become convinced during
his experiments that the “cathode rays” observed
coming from the cathodes of vacuum tubes were
building blocks of atoms — what we now call elec-
trons. He then carried out observations with cath-
odes made of a variety of metals, and found that
q/m was the same in every case. How would that
observation serve to test his hypothesis?
Q2. Thomson found that the q/m of an electron
was thousands of times larger than that of ions in
electrolysis. Would this imply that the electrons had
more charge? Less mass? Would there be no way to
tell? Explain.
Q3. Why is it not possible to determine q and m
themselves, rather than just their ratio, by observing
electrons’ motion in electric or magnetic fields?

96 Lab 30 The Charge to Mass Ratio of the Electron

97
31 RC Circuits
Apparatus 8

oscilloscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
function generator (HP, not
Daedalon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group ex 4
unknown capacitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
known capacitors, 0.05 µF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group

0
resistors of various values -2 0 2
x

Goals
balance
Observe the exponential curve of a discharging on credit
capacitor. card if you
make the
Determine the capacitance of an unknown ca- minimum
pacitor. payment
every month
time
Introduction
God bless the struggling high school math teacher,
but some of them seem to have a talent for mak-
ing interesting and useful ideas seem dull and use-
less. On certain topics such as the exponential func- radioactivity
tion, ex, the percentage of students who figure out near
from their teacher’s explanation what it really means Chernobyl
and why they should care approaches zero. That’s
a shame, because there are so many cases where it’s
useful. The graphs show just a few of the important time
situations in which this function shows up.
The credit card example is of the form
number
y = aet/k ,
of yeast
cells in a
while the Chernobyl graph is like barrel of
beer being
y = ae−t/k , brewed

In both cases, e is the constant 2.718 . . ., and k is time

a positive constant with units of time, referred to
as the time constant. The first type of equation is
referred to as exponential growth, and the second
as exponential decay. The significance of k is that
it tells you how long it takes for y to change by a
factor of e. For instance, an 18% interest rate on
your credit card converts to k = 6.0 years. That
means that if your credit card balance is $1000 in
1996, by 2002 it will be $2718, assuming you never
really start paying down the principal.
An important fact about the exponential function is
that it never actually becomes zero — it only gets
closer and closer to zero. For instance, the radioac-
tivity near Chernobyl will never ever become exactly
zero. After a while it will just get too small to pose
any health risk, and at some later time it will get too
small to measure with practical measuring devices.

98 Lab 31 RC Circuits
Why is the exponential function so ubiquitous? Be-
cause it occurs whenever a variable’s rate of change
is proportional to the variable itself. In the credit
card and Chernobyl examples,
(rate of increase of credit card debt)
∝ (current credit card debt)
(rate of decrease of the number of radioactive atoms)
∝ (current number of radioactive atoms)
For the credit card, the proportionality occurs be-
cause your interest payment is proportional to how
much you currently owe. In the case of radioactive
decay, there is a proportionality because fewer re-
maining atoms means fewer atoms available to de-
cay and release radioactive particles. This line of
thought leads to an explanation of what’s so special
about the constant e. If the rate of increase of a vari-
able y is proportional to y, then the time constant
k equals one over the proportionality constant, and
this is true only if the base of the exponential is e,
not 10 or some other number.
Exponential growth or decay can occur in circuits
containing resistors and capacitors. Resistors and
capacitors are the most common, inexpensive, and
simple electrical components. If you open up a cell
phone or a stereo, the vast majority of the parts you
see inside are resistors and capacitors. Indeed, many
useful circuits, known as RC circuits, can be built
out of nothing but resistors and capacitors. In this
lab, you will study the exponential decay of the sim-
plest possible RC circuit, shown below, consisting of
one resistor and one capacitor in series.
R scope needs a repetitive signal, and it is not possi-
C comes positive and negative in a repetitive pattern.
Suppose we initially charge up the capacitor, mak-
ing an excess of positive charge on one plate and an
excess of negative on the other. Since a capacitor
behaves like V = Q/C, this creates a voltage dif-
ference across the capacitor, and by Kirchoff’s loop
rule there must be a voltage drop of equal magni-
tude across the resistor. By Ohm’s law, a current
I = V /R = Q/RC will flow through the resistor,
and we have therefore established a proportionality,
(rate of decrease of charge on capacitor)
∝ (current charge on capacitor) .
It follows that the charge on the capacitor will decay
exponentially. Furthermore, since the proportional-
ity constant is 1/RC, we find that the time constant
of the decay equals the product of R and C. (It may
not be immediately obvious that Ohms times Farads
equals seconds, but it does.)
Note that even if we put the charge on the capac-
itor very suddenly, the discharging process still oc-
curs at the same rate, characterized by RC. Thus
RC circuits can be used to filter out rapidly varying
electrical signals while accepting more slowly varying
ones. A classic example occurs in stereo speakers. If
you pull the front panel off of the wooden box that
we refer to as “a speaker,” you will find that there
are actually two speakers inside, a small one for re-
producing high frequencies and a large one for the
low notes. The small one, called the tweeter, not
only cannot produce low frequencies but would ac-
tually be damaged by attempting to accept them.
It therefore has a capacitor wired in series with its
own resistance, forming an RC circuit that filters
out the low frequencies while permitting the highs
to go through. This is known as a high-pass filter.
A slightly different arrangement of resistors and ca-
pacitors is used to make a low-pass filter to protect
the other speaker, the woofer, from high frequencies.
Observations
In typical filtering applications, the RC time con-
stant is of the same order of magnitude as the pe-
riod of a sound vibration, say ∼ 1 ms. It is therefore
necessary to observe the changing voltages with an
oscilloscope rather than a multimeter. The oscillo-
ble for you to insert and remove a battery in the
circuit hundreds of times a second, so you will use
a function generator to produce a voltage that be-
Such a wave pattern is known as a square wave. The
mathematical discussion above referred to the expo-
nential decay of the charge on the capacitor, but an
oscilloscope actually measures voltage, not charge.
As shown in the graphs below, the resulting volt-
age patterns simply look like a chain of exponential
curves strung together.
R
function
generator
C
99
 voltage across
function generator
voltage across
capacitor
voltage across
resistor
time
Make sure that the yellow “VAR” knob, on the front
of the knob that selects the time scale, is clicked
into place, not in the range where it moves freely —
otherwise the times on the scope are not calibrated.
A Preliminary observations
Pick a resistor and capacitor with a combined RC
time constant of ∼ 1 ms. Make sure the resistor is
at least ∼ 10kΩ, so that the internal resistance of
the function generator is negligible compared to the
resistance you supply.
Note that the capacitance values printed on the sides
of capacitors often violate the normal SI conventions
about prefixes. If just a number is given on the ca-
pacitor with no units, the implied units are micro-
farads, mF. Units of nF are avoided by the manufac-
turers in favor of fractional microfarads, e.g. instead
of 1 nF, they would use “0.001,” meaning 0.001 µF.
For picofarads, a capital P is used, “PF,” instead of
the standard SI “pF.”
Use the oscilloscope to observe what happens to the
voltages across the resistor and capacitor as the func-
tion generator’s voltage flips back and forth. Note
that the oscilloscope is simply a fancy voltmeter, so
you connect it to the circuit the same way you would
a voltmeter, in parallel with the component you’re
interested in. A complication is added by the fact
that the scope and the function generator are fussy
about having the grounded sides of their circuits con-
nected to each other. The banana-to-BNC converter
that goes on the input of the scope has a small tab on
one side marked “GND.” This side of the scope’s cir-
cuit must be connected to the “LO” terminal of the
function generator. This means that when you want
to switch from measuring the capacitor’s voltage to
measuring the resistor’s, you will need to rearrange
the circuit a little.
If the trace on the oscilloscope does not look like the
one shown above, it may be because the function
generator is flip-flopping too rapidly or too slowly.
The function generator’s frequency has no effect on
the RC time constant, which is just a property of
the resistor and the capacitor.
If you think you have a working setup, observe the
effect of temporarily placing a second capacitor in
parallel with the first capacitor. If your setup is
working, the exponential decay on the scope should
become more gradual because you have increased
RC. If you don’t see any effect, it probably means
you’re measuring behavior coming from the internal
R and C of the function generator and the scope.
Use the scope to determine the RC time constant,
and check that it is correct.
B Unknown capacitor
Build a similar circuit using your unknown capacitor
plus a known resistor. Use the unknown capacitor
with the same number as your group number. Take
the data you will need in order to determine the RC
time constant, and thus the unknown capacitance.
As a check on your result, obtain a known capacitor
with a value similar to the one you have determined
for your unknown, and see if you get nearly the same
curve on the scope if you replace the unknown ca-
pacitor with the new one.
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Plan how you will determine the capacitance
and what data you will need to take.
Analysis
Determine the capacitance, with error bars.

100 Lab 31 RC Circuits

101
32 Energy in Fields
Apparatus
Heath coils . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
decade capacitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
Daedalon function generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
HP sine-wave generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
oscilloscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
Goal
Observe how the energy content of a field relates to
the field strength.
Introduction
A simplified version of the circuit.
The basic idea of this lab is to observe a circuit like
the one shown in the figure above, consisting of a ca-
pacitor and a coil of wire (inductor). Imagine that
we first deposit positive and negative charges on the
plates of the capacitor. If we imagined that the uni-
verse was purely mechanical, obeying Newton’s laws
of motion, we would expect that the attractive force
between these charges would cause them to come
back together and reestablish a stable equilibrium
in which there was zero net charge everywhere in
the circuit.
However, the capacitor in its initial, charged, state
has an electric field between its plates, and this field
possesses energy. This energy can’t just go away,
because energy is conserved. What really happens
is that as charge starts to flow off of the capacitor
plates, a current is established in the coil. This cur-
rent creates a magnetic field in the space inside and
around the coil. The electric energy doesn’t just
evaporate; it turns into magnetic energy. We end up
with an oscillation in which the capacitor and the
coil trade energy back and forth. Your goal is to
monitor this energy exchange, and to use it to de-
duce a power-law relationship between the each field
and its energy.
102 Lab 32 Energy in Fields
The actual circuit.
The practical realization of the circuit involves some
further complications, as shown in the second figure.
The wires are not superconductors, so the circuit has
some nonzero resistance, and the oscillations would
therefore gradually die out, as the electric and mag-
netic energies were converted to heat. The HP sine
wave generator serves both to initiate the oscillations
and to maintain them, replacing, in each cycle, the
energy that was lost to heat.
Furthermore, the circuit has a resonant frequency at
it prefers to oscillate, and when the resistance is very
small, the width of the resonance is very narrow.
To make the resonance wider and less finicky, we
intentionally insert a 47-ohm resistor.
The actual circuit consists of the Heath coil, a 0.01
µF capacitance supplied by the decade capacitor
box, a 47-ohm resistor, and the HP sine wave gener-
ator.
Observations
Let E be the magnitude of the electric field be-
tween the capacitor plates, let Ẽ be the maximum
value of this quantity. It is then convenient to define
x = E/Ẽ, a unitless quantity ranging from −1 to 1.
Similarly, let y = B/B̃ for the corresponding mag-
netic quantities. The electric field is proportional
to the voltage difference across the capacitor plates,
which is something we can measure directly using
the oscilloscope:
E VC
x= =
Ẽ V˜C
Magnetic fields are created by moving charges, i.e.
by currents. Unfortunately, an oscilloscope doesn’t
measure current, so there’s no equally direct way to
get a handle on the magnetic field. However, all
the current that goes through the coil must also go
through the resistor, and Ohm’s law relates the cur-
rent through the resistor to the voltage drop across
it. This voltage drop is something we can measure
with the oscilloscope, so we have

B I VR
y= = =
B̃ I˜ V˜R

To measure x and y, you need to connect channels

1 and 2 of the oscilloscope across the resistor and
the capacitor. Since both channels of the scope are
grounded on one side (the side with the ground tab
on the banana-to-bnc connector), you need to make
sure that their grounded sides both go to the piece of
wire between the resistor and the capacitor. Further-
more, one output of the sine wave generator is nor-
mally grounded, which would mess everything up:
two different points in the circuit would be grounded,
which would mean that there would be a short across
some of the circuit elements. To avoid this, loosen
the banana plug connectors on the sine wave genera-
tor, and swing away the piece of metal that normally
connects one of the output plugs to the ground.
Tune the sine wave generator’s frequency to reso-
nance, and take the data you’ll need in order to de-
termine x and y at a whole bunch of different places
over one cycle.

Analysis
Plot x versus y on a piece of graph paper. Let’s
assume that the energy in a field depends on the
field’s strength raised to some power p. Conservation
of energy then gives

xp + y p = 1 .

Use your graph to determine p, and interpret your

result.

Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Sketch what your graph would look like for
p = 0.1, p = 1, p = 2, and p = 10. (You should
be able to do p = 1 and p = 2 without any compu-
tations. For p = 0.1 and p = 10, you can either run
some numbers on your calculator or use your math-
ematical knowledge to sketch what they would turn
out like.)

103
33 LRC Circuits
Apparatus
Heath coils . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
decade capacitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
Daedalon function generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
HP sine-wave generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
Thornton amplifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
oscilloscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
Goals
Observe the resonant behavior of an LRC cir-
cuit.
Observe how the properties of the resonance
curve change when the L, R, and C values are
changed.
Introduction
Radio, TV, cellular phones — it’s mind-boggling
to imagine the maelstrom of electromagnetic waves
that are constantly pass through us and our sur-
roundings. Perhaps equally surprising is the fact
that a radio can pick up a wave with one partic-
ular frequency while rejecting all the others nearly
perfectly. No seasoned cocktail-party veteran could
ever be so successful at tuning out the signals that
are not of interest. What makes radio technology
possible is the phenomenon of resonance, the prop-
erty of an electrical or mechanical system that makes
it respond far more strongly to a driving force that
varies at the same frequency as that at which the de-
vice naturally vibrates. Just as an opera singer can
only break a wineglass by singing the right note, a
radio can be tuned to respond strongly to electrical
forces that oscillate at a particular frequency.
A simplified version of the circuit.
Circuit
As shown in the figure, the basic circuit consists of
the Heath coil, a 0.01 µF capacitance supplied by the
104 Lab 33 LRC Circuits
decade capacitor box, a 47-ohm resistor, and the HP
sine wave generator to supply a driving voltage. You
will study the way the circuit resonates, i.e. responds
most strongly to a certain frequency.
Since this is the real world, things are not quite that
simple. In addition to the 47-ohm resistor, you will
have 62 ohms of resistance coming from the resis-
tance of the wire in the coil, and in addition this
simple version of the circuit would inevitably pos-
sess a resistance coming from the internal resistance
of the sine-wave generator. This latter resistance is
unfortunately rather large, and does not even stay
constant when you change the frequency of the sine
wave.
We therefore create the slightly more complicated
circuit shown in the second schematic, below. The
triangle is the typical electrical symbol for an am-
plifier, such as the one that amplifies the electri-
cal signal from your CD player to make it strong
enough to drive your speakers. As suggested by the
name, an amplifier’s usual purpose is to make a sig-
nal stronger. (This strengthening factor is known
as “gain.”) Here, however, you are encountering a
second very important use of amplifiers in electron-
ics: isolation. The amplifier hides the nasty internal
properties of the sine wave generator from the rest
of the circuit, so that instead of the large and un-
predictable internal resistance of the sine wave gen-
erator, the circuit only sees the small and relatively
constant internal resistance of the amplifier’s out-
put, which is about 50 ohms. The strengthening of
the electrical signal by the amplifier is in fact an un-
desirable side-effect from our point of view, since it
is possible to get a nasty shock from this circuit if
you have the sine wave generator and the amplifier
turned up too high. Keep both the amplitude knob
on the sine wave generator and the gain knob of the
amplifier turned very low. You may also wish to
turn the amplitude knob of the sine wave generator
all the way down when making modifications to the
circuit.
The actual circuit.
Observations
A Observation of Resonance
By connecting the oscilloscope to measure the volt-
age across the resistor, you can determine the amount
of power, P = V 2 /R, being taken from the sine
wavegenerator by the circuit and then dissipated as
heat in the resistor. Make sure that your circuit is
hooked up with the resistor connected to the grounded
output of the amplifier, and hook up the oscilloscope
so its grounded connection is on the grounded side
of the resistor. As you change the frequency of the
function generator, you should notice a very strong
response in the circuit centered around one particu-
lar frequency, the resonant frequency fo . (You could
measure the voltage drop across the capacitor or the
inductor instead, but all the pictures of resonance
curves in your textbook are graphs of the behavior
of the resistor. The response curve of a capacitor or
inductor still has a peak at the resonant frequency,
but looks very different off to the sides.)
Use the equation you derived in the prelab to esti-
mate the inductance of your solenoid. It will only
be a rough approximation, since this isn’t a long,
skinny solenoid. Based on this, estimate the reso-
nant frequency of your circuit,
1 factors of two.
ωo = √ .
LC
Locate ωo accurately, and use it to determine the
inductance of the Heath coil accurately.
B Effect of Changing C
Change the capacitance value, and determine the
new resonant frequency. Check whether the resonant
frequency changes as predicted by theory. This is
like tuning your radio to a different frequency. For
the rest of the lab, go back to your original value of
C.
C The Width of the Resonance
The width of a resonance is customarily expressed as
the full width at half maximum, ∆f , defined as the
difference in frequency between the two points where
the power dissipation is half of its maximum value.
Determine the FWHM of your resonance. You are
measuring voltage directly, not power, so you need
to find the points where the amplitude of the voltage
across the√resistor drops below its peak value by a
factor of 2.
D Effect of Changing R
Replace the resistor with a 3300-ohm resistor, and
remeasure the FWHM. You should find that the
FWHM
db 3 db
log10f
FWHM has increased in proportion to the resistance.
(Remember that your resistance always includes the
resistance of the coil and the output side of the am-
plifier.)
E The Resonance Curve
Going back to your low-resistance setup, collect volt-
age data over a wide range of frequencies, from the
lowest frequencies the function generator can make
up to many times the resonant frequency. You will
want to take closely spaced data near the resonance
peak, where the voltage is changing rapidly, and less
closely spaced points elsewhere. Far above and far
below the resonance, it will be convenient just to
take data at frequencies that change by successive
(At very high frequencies, above 104 Hz or so, you
may find that rather than continuing to drop off, the
response curve comes back up again. I believe that
this effect arises from nonideal behavior of the coil at
high frequencies: there is stray capacitance between
one loop and the next, and this capacitance acts like
it is in parallel with the coil.)
In engineering work, it is useful to create a graph of
the resonance curve in which the y axis is in decibels,
 
P
db = 10 log10
Pmax

V

= 20 log10 ,
Vmax
and the x axis is a logarithmic frequency scale. (On
this graph, the FWHM is the width of the curve at 3
db below the peak.) You will construct such a graph
from your data.
F Ringing
An LRC circuit will continue oscillating even when
there is no oscillating driving force present. This un-
forced behavior is known as “ringing.” Replace the
HP sine wave generator with the Daedalon function
105
generator, and plug your circuit into the back of it, do the calculations and graphing. To do the calcula-
which supplies a square wave. You can think of this tions, you can go to my web page, www.lightandmatter.com
as if you are giving the circuit repeated “kicks,” so . Click on “Pages relating specifically to Fullerton
that it will ring after each kick. College,” and then on “data-analysis tool for the
LRC circuits lab”. Once your data are ready to
Choose a frequency many many times lower than
graph, I suggest using computer software to make
the resonant frequency, so that the circuit will have
your graph (see Appendix 4).
time to oscillate many times in between “kicks.” You
should observe an exponentially decaying sine wave. On the high-frequency end, the impedance is dom-
inated by the impedance of the inductor, which is
The rapidity of the exponential decay depends on
proportional to frequency. Doubling the frequency
how much resistance is in the circuit, since the re-
doubles the impedance, thereby cutting the current
sistor is the only component that gets rid of energy
by a factor of two and the power dissipated in the re-
permanently. The rapidity of the decay is custom-
sistor by a factor of 4, which is 6.02 db. Since a factor
arily measured with the quantity Q (for “quality”),
of 2 in frequency corresponds in musical terms to one
defined as the number of oscillations required for the
octave, this is referred to as a 6 db/octave roll-off.
potential energy in the circuit to drop by a factor of
Check this prediction against your data. You should
535 (the obscure numerical factor being e2π ). For
also find a 6 db/octave slope in the limit of low fre-
our purposes, it will be more convenient to extract
quencies — here the impedance is dominated by the
Q from the equation
capacitor, but the idea is similar. (More complex fil-

πt
 tering circuits can achieve roll-offs more drastic than
Vpeak = Vpeak,i · exp − 6 db/octave.)
QT

where T is the period of the sine wave, Vpeak,i is the

voltage across the resistor at the peak that we use
to define t = 0, and Vpeak is the voltage of a later
peak, occurring at time t.
Collect the data you will need in order to determine
the Q of the circuit, and then do the same for the
other resistance value.
Analysis
Check whether the resonant frequency changed by
the correct factor when you changed the capacitance.
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 A long, skinny solenoid consists of N turns of
wire wrapped uniformly around a hollow cylinder of
length ` and cross-sectional area A. Find its induc-
tance.

For both versions of the circuit, compare the FWHM

of the resonance and the circuit’s Q to the theoretical
equations

R
∆ω =
L

and
ωo
Q= .
∆ω
No error analysis is required, since the main errors
are systematic ones introduced by the nonideal be-
havior of the coil and the difficulty of determining an
exact, fixed value for the internal resistance of the
output of the amplifier.
Graph the resonance curve — you can probably save
yourself a great deal of time by using a computer to

106 Lab 33 LRC Circuits

107
34 Faraday’s Law
Apparatus
function generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
solenoid (Heath) 1/group plus a few more
oscilloscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
10-ohm power resistor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
2-meter wire with banana plugs . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
palm-sized pieces of iron or steel
masking tape
rulers
Goals
Observe electric fields induced by changing mag-
netic fields.
Test Faraday’s law.
Introduction
Physicists hate complication, and when physicist Mi-
chael Faraday was first learning physics in the early
19th century, an embarrassingly complex aspect of
the science was the multiplicity of types of forces.
Friction, normal forces, gravity, electric forces, mag-
netic forces, surface tension — the list went on and
on. Today, 200 years later, ask a physicist to enu-
merate the fundamental forces of nature and the
most likely response will be “four: gravity, electro-
magnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak
nuclear force.” Part of the simplification came from
the study of matter at the atomic level, which showed
that apparently unrelated forces such as friction, nor-
mal forces, and surface tension were all manifesta-
tions of electrical forces among atoms. The other
big simplification came from Faraday’s experimental
work showing that electric and magnetic forces were
intimately related in previously unexpected ways, so
intimately related in fact that we now refer to the
two sets of force-phenomena under a single term,
“electromagnetism.”
Even before Faraday, Oersted had shown that there
was at least some relationship between electric and
magnetic forces. An electrical current creates a mag-
netic field, and magnetic fields exert forces on an
electrical current. In other words, electric forces
are forces of charges acting on charges, and mag-
netic forces are forces of moving charges on moving
108 Lab 34 Faraday’s Law
charges. (Even the magnetic field of a bar magnet is
due to currents, the currents created by the orbiting
electrons in its atoms.)
Faraday took Oersted’s work a step further, and
showed that the relationship between electricity and
magnetism was even deeper. He showed that a chang-
ing electric field produces a magnetic field, and a
changing magnetic field produces an electric field.
Faraday’s law,
ΓE = −dΦB /dt
relates the line integral of the electric field around
a closed loop to the rate of change of the magnetic
flux through the loop. It forms the basis for such
technologies as the transformer, the electric guitar,
the amplifier, and generator, and the electric motor.
Observations
A Qualitative Observations
To observe Faraday’s law in action you will first need
to produce a varying magnetic field. You can do this
by using a function generator to produce a current
in a solenoid that that varies like a sine wave as a
function of time. The solenoid’s magnetic field will
thus also vary sinusoidally.
The emf in Faraday’s law can be observed around a
loop of wire positioned inside or close to the solenoid.
To make the emf larger and easier to see on an oscil-
loscope, you will use 5-10 loops, sending to the scope
a total emf given by
dΦB
ΓE = −N ,
dt
where N is the number of loops.
The only remaining complication is that the rate of
change of the magnetic flux, dΦB /dt, is determined
by the rate of change of the magnetic field, which
relates to the rate of change of the current through
the solenoid, dI/dt. The oscilloscope, however, mea-
sures voltage, not current. You might think that
you could simply observe the voltage being supplied
to the solenoid and divide by the solenoid’s 62-ohm
resistance to find the current through the solenoid.
This will not work, however, because Faraday’s law
produces not only an emf in the loops of wire but also
an emf in the solenoid that produced the magnetic
field in the first place. The current in the solenoid is
being driven not just by the emf from the function
generator but also by this “self-induced” emf. Even
though the solenoid is just a long piece of wire, it
does not obey Ohm’s law under these conditions. To
get around this difficulty, you can simply insert the
10-ohm power resistor in the circuit in series with
the function generator and the solenoid. (A power
resistor is simply a resistor that can dissipate a large
amount of power without burning up.) The power
resistor does obey Ohm’s law, so by using the scope
to observe the voltage drop across it you can infer
the current flowing through it, which is the same as
the current flowing through the solenoid.
Create the solenoid circuit, and hook up one channel
of the scope to observe the voltage drop across the
power resistor. A sine wave with a frequency on the
order of 1 kHz will work.
Wind the 2-m wire into circular loops small enough
to fit inside the solenoid, and hook it up to the other
channel of the scope.
First try putting the loops at the mouth of the solenoid,
and observe the emf induced in them. Observe what
happens when you flip the loops over. You will ob-
serve that the two sine waves on the scope are out of
phase with each other. Sketch the phase relationship
in your notebook, and make sure you understand in
terms of Faraday’s law why it is the way it is, i.e.
why the induced emf has the greatest value at a cer-
tain point, why it is zero at a certain point, etc.
Observe the induced emf at with the loops at several
other positions such as those shown in the figure.
Make sure you understand in the resulting variations
of the strength of the emf in terms of Faraday’s law.
B A Metal Detector
Obtain one of the spare solenoids so that you have
two of them. Substitute it for the loops of wire, so
that you can observe the emf induced in the second
solenoid by the first solenoid. If you put the two
solenoids close together with their mouths a few cm
apart and then insert a piece of iron or steel between
them, you should be able to see a small increase in
the induced emf. The iron distorts the magnetic field
pattern produced by the first solenoid, channeling
more of the field lines through the second solenoid.
C Quantitative Observations
This part of the lab is a quantitative test of Fara-
day’s law. Going back to the setup for part A, mea-
sure the amplitude (peak-to-peak height) of the volt-
age across the power resistor. Choose a position
for the loops of wire that you think will make it
as easy as possible to calculate dΦB /dt accurately
based on knowledge of the variation of the current
in the solenoid as a function of time. Put the loops
in that position, and measure the amplitude of the
induced emf. Repeat these measurements with a fre-
quency that is ten times higher.
Self-Check
Before leaving, analyze your results from part C and
make sure you get reasonable agreement with Fara-
day’s law.
Analysis
Describe your observations in parts A and B and
interpret them in terms of Faraday’s law.
Compare your observations in part C quantitatively
with Faraday’s law.
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 Plan what raw data you’ll need to collect for
part C, and figure out the equation you’ll use to
test whether your observations are consistent with
Faraday’s law.
109
35 Electromagnetism
Apparatus due to currents, the currents created by the orbiting
electrons in its atoms.)
solenoid (Heath) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
oscilloscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group Faraday took Oersted’s work a step further, and
2-meter wire with banana plugs . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group showed that the relationship between electricity and
neodymium magnets magnetism was even deeper. He showed that a chang-
masking tape ing electric field produces a magnetic field, and a
changing magnetic field produces an electric field.
Faraday’s work forms the basis for such technologies
as the transformer, the electric guitar, the amplifier,
Goals and generator, and the electric motor.

Observe electric fields induced by changing mag-

netic fields.
Build a generator.
Discover Lenz’s law.
Introduction
Physicists hate complication, and when physicist Michael
Faraday was first learning physics in the early 19th
century, an embarrassingly complex aspect of the
science was the multiplicity of types of forces. Fric- the magnet is simply placed at rest inside the solenoid?
tion, normal forces, gravity, electric forces, magnetic Try the most sensitive voltage scale.
forces, surface tension — the list went on and on.
Today, 200 years later, ask a physicist to enumerate
the fundamental forces of nature and the most likely
response will be “four: gravity, electromagnetism,
the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force.”
Part of the simplification came from the study of
matter at the atomic level, which showed that ap-
parently unrelated forces such as friction, normal
forces, and surface tension were all manifestations
of electrical forces among atoms. The other big sim-
plification came from Faraday’s experimental work
showing that electric and magnetic forces were in-
timately related in previously unexpected ways, so
intimately related in fact that we now refer to the
two sets of force-phenomena under a single term,
“electromagnetism.”
Even before Faraday, Oersted had shown that there
was at least some relationship between electric and
magnetic forces. An electrical current creates a mag-
netic field, and magnetic fields exert forces on an
electrical current. In other words, electric forces
are forces of charges acting on charges, and mag-
netic forces are forces of moving charges on moving
charges. (Even the magnetic field of a bar magnet is
Qualitative Observations
In this lab you will use a permanent magnet to pro-
duce changing magnetic fields. This causes an elec-
tric field to be induced, which you will detect using
a solenoid (spool of wire) connected to an oscillo-
scope. The electric field drives electrons around the
solenoid, producing a current which is detected by
the oscilloscope.
A A constant magnetic field
Do you detect any signal on the oscilloscope when
B A changing magnetic field
Do you detect any signal when you move the magnet
or wiggle it inside the solenoid or near it? What
happens if you change the speed at which you move
the magnet?
C Moving the solenoid
What happens if you hold the magnet still and move
the solenoid?
The poles of the magnet are its flat faces. In later
parts of the lab you will need to know which is north.
Determine this now by rolling the magnet across
the table to the north and observing which way it
swerves due to the Earth’s field. The pole that points
north is called the north pole of the magnet, and the
field comes out of it. The south pole is a sink of the
magnetic field (the field converges comes into it).
D A generator
Tape the magnet securely to the eraser end of a pen-
cil so that its flat face (one of its two poles) is like the
head of a hammer, and mark the north and south

110 Lab 35 Electromagnetism

poles of the magnet for later reference. Spin the pen-
cil near the solenoid and observe the induced signal.
You have built a generator. (I have unfortunately
not had any luck lighting a lightbulb with the setup,
due to the relatively high internal resistance of the
solenoid.)
The most direct way to figure out Lenz’s law is to
chopping motion that ends up with the magnet in
the solenoid, observing whether the pulse induced
is positive or negative. What happens when you
reverse the chopping motion, or when you reverse
the north and south poles of the magnet? Try all
four possible combinations and record your results.

Trying Out Your Understanding

E Changing the speed of the generator
If you change the speed at which you spin the pencil,
you will of course cause the induced signal to have a
longer or shorter period. Does it also have any effect
on the amplitude of the wave?

F A solenoid with fewer loops

GND
Use the two-meter cable to make a second solenoid
with the same diameter but fewer loops. Compare
the strength of the induced signals. (You may need
to use the most sensitive setting of the scope, and
pull out the red knob to increase its sensitivity by
an additional factor of 5.) It can be tricky to make the connection between the
polarity of the signal on the screen of the oscilloscope
G Dependence on distance and the direction of the electric field pattern. The
How does the signal picked up by your generator figure shows an example of how to interpret a posi-
change with distance? tive pulse: the current must have flowed through the
scope from the center conductor of the coax cable to
Try to explain what you have observed, and discuss its outer conductor (marked GND on the coax-to-
your interpretations with your instructor. banana converter).
Note that there is a knob on some scopes that says
Lenz’s Law “PULL INV.” If this is pulled out, your traces will
all be upside down!
Lenz’s law describes how the clockwise or counter-
clockwise direction of the induced electric field’s whirlpool
pattern relates to the changing magnetic field. The Self-Check
main result of this lab is a determination of how
Lenz’s law works. To focus your reasoning, here are Determine which version of Lenz’s law is correct.
four possible forms for Lenz’s law:
1. The electric field forms a pattern that is clockwise
when viewed along the direction of the B vector of
the changing magnetic field.
2. The electric field forms a pattern that is counter-
clockwise when viewed along the direction of the B
vector of the changing magnetic field.
3. The electric field forms a pattern that is clockwise
when viewed along the direction of the ∆B vector of
the changing magnetic field.
4. The electric field forms a pattern that is coun-
terclockwise when viewed along the direction of the
∆B vector of the changing magnetic field.
Your job is to figure out which is correct.

111
36 Impedance
Observe how the impedances of capacitors and
inductors change with frequency.
Observe how impedances combine according to
the arithmetic of complex numbers.
Setup
We’ll start by observing the impedance of a capaci-
tor. Ideally, what we want is this:
However, we want to know not just the amplitude
of the voltage and current sine-waves but the phase
relationship between them as well, which we can’t
get from a regular meter. We need to use an oscil-
loscope, and oscilloscopes only measure voltage, not
current. This leads us to something like the follow-
ing setup:
oscillo- oscillo-
scope scope
ch. 1 ch. 2
GND +
GND +
Here ch. 2 tells us the voltage across the resistor,
which is related to the current in the resistor accord-
ing to Ohm’s law. By the junction rule, the current
in the resistor is the same as the current through the
capacitor.
But even now, we’re not out of the woods. In this
setup, the ground of ch. 2 is connected to the same
wire as the active (+) connection to ch. 1, which
112 Lab 36 Impedance
would cause ch. 1 to read zero, and would short
across the capacitor as well. Instead, we need this:
oscillo-
oscillo-
scope
ch. 1, scope
inverted ch. 2
+ GND GND +
Now both GND connections are going to the same
point in the circuit. Because we’ve swapped the con-
nections to ch. 1, its trace will be upside-down, and
inconsistent with ch. 2. There is a special control on
the scope for inverting ch. 2, which makes the two
channels consistent again.
Observations
A Impedance of the capacitor
Hook up the circuit as shown, using a 1 kΩ resistance
and a 0.2 µF capacitance. The HP signal genera-
tor has a ground strap connecting one of its output
terminals to ground. Disconnect this ground strap,
since grounding either side of the signal generator
would mean that either the resistor or the capacitor
would be connected to ground on both sides. Try a
frequency of 100 Hz.
Observe the phase relationship between VC , on ch.
1, and the signal on ch. 2, which essentially tells
us the current IC except for a factor of 1/R. Sketch
this phase relationship in your raw data. Because
VC = q/C and I = dq/dt, the current through the
capacitor should be proportional to dV/dt. Based
on the phase relationship you observed, does this
seem to be true?
Measure the phase angle numerically from the oscil-
loscope. Is it what you expect?
Determine the magnitude of the capacitor’s impedance.
Suppose you represent the signal that is ahead in
phase using a point that is more counterclockwise
in the complex plane. Sketch the locations of the
voltage and current in the complex plane. (You can
arbitrarily choose one of them to be along the real
axis if you like.) Where would the impedance then
lie in the plane?
Now change the frequency to 1000 Hz, and see what
changes. Sketch your new impedance in the com-
plex plane. Do you find the expected relationship
between impedance and frequency?

B Inductance of the Heath coil

Make the measurements you need in order to calcu-
late the theoretical inductance of the inductor, using
the equation derived in the prelab. The approxima-
tion may be off by as much as a factor of two, since
the solenoid isn’t long and skinny, but it’s useful so
you have some idea of what to expect.

C Impedance of the inductor

Now repeat all the above steps using the Heath coil
as an inductor.

D Impedances in series
Put the capacitor and inductor in series, and collect
the data you’ll need in order to determine their com-
bined impedance at several frequencies ranging from
100 to 1000 Hz.

Analysis
Use your data from part C to determine an experi-
mental value of the coil’s inductance, and compare
with the theoretical result based on your measure-
ments in part B.
Graph the theoretical and experimental impedance
of the series combination in part D, overlaying them
on the same graph. Show theory as a curve and ex-
periment as discrete data-points. Do the same kind
of graph for the parallel combination.

113
37 Refraction and Images
Apparatus
rectangular block of plastic (20x10x5 cm,
from blackboard optics kit), or plastic box with wa-
ter in it
laser
spiral plastic tube for demonstrating
total internal reflection
ruler
protractor
Goals
Observe the phenomena of refraction and total
internal reflection.
Locate a virtual image in a plastic block by
ray tracing, and compare with the theoretically
predicted position of the image.
Introduction
Without the phenomenon of refraction, the lens of
your eye could not focus light on your retina, and you
would not be able to see. Refraction is the bending of
rays of light that occurs when they pass through the
boundary between two media in which the speed of
light is different. Light entering your eye passes from
air, in which the speed of light is 3.0 × 108 m/s, into
the watery tissues of your eye, in which it is about
2.2 × 108 m/s. Since it is inconvenient to write or
say the speed of light in a particular medium, we
usually speak in terms of the index of refraction, n,
defined by
n = c/v,
where c is the speed of light in a vacuum, and v is
the speed of light in the medium in question. Thus,
vacuum has n = 1 by definition. Air, which is not
very dense, does not slow light down very much, so
it has an index of refraction very close to 1. Water
has an index of refraction of about 1.3, meaning that
light moves more slowly in water by a factor of 1/1.3.
Refraction, the bending of light, occurs for the fol-
lowing reason. Imagine, for example, a beam of light
entering a swimming pool at an angle. Because of
the angle, one side of the beam hits the water first,
and is slowed down. The other side of the beam,
114 Lab 37 Refraction and Images
however, gets to travel in air, at its faster speed, for
longer, because it enters the water later — by the
time it enters the water, the other side of the beam
has been limping along through the water for a little
while, and has not gotten as far. The wavefront is
therefore twisted around a little, in the same way
that a marching band turns by having the people on
one side take smaller steps.
θi
incident medium
transmitting medium
θt
Quantitatively, the amount of bending is given by
Snell’s law:
ni sin θi = nt sin θt ,
where the index i refers to the incident light and in-
cident medium, and t refers to the transmitted light
and the transmitting medium. Note that the an-
gles are defined with respect to the normal, i.e. the
imaginary line perpendicular to the boundary.
Also, not all of the light is transmitted. Some is re-
flected — the amount depends on the angles. In fact,
for certain values of ni , nt , and θi , there is no value
of θt that will obey Snell’s law (sin θt would have
to be greater than one). In such a situation, 100%
of the light must be reflected. This phenomenon is
known as total internal reflection. The word inter-
nal is used because the phenomenon only occurs for
ni > nt . If one medium is air and the other is plastic
or glass, then this can only happen when the incident
light is in the plastic or glass, i.e. the light is try-
ing to escape but can’t. Total internal reflection is
used to good advantage in fiber-optic cables used to
transmit long-distance phone calls or data on the in-
ternet — light traveling down the cable cannot leak
out, assuming it is initially aimed at an angle close
enough to the axis of the cable.
Although most of the practical applications of the
phenomenon of refraction involve lenses, which have
curved shapes, in this lab you will be dealing almost
exclusively with flat surfaces.
Preliminaries

Check whether your laser’s beam seems to be roughly

parallel.

Observations
A Index of refraction of plastic
Make the measurements you have planned in order Light rays spreading out
to determine the index of refraction of the plastic from the finger by diffuse
reflection. The emerging rays
block (or the water, whichever you have). The laser
all appear to have come from
and the block of plastic can simply be laid flat on the a point inside the block.
table. Make sure that the laser is pointing towards
the wall.

B Total internal reflection

laser
Try shining the laser into one end of the spiral-
shaped plastic rod. If you aim it nearly along the
axis of the cable, none will leak out, and if you put
your hand in front of the other end of the rod, you
will see the light coming out the other end. (It will
not be a well-collimated beam any more because the
beam is spread out and distorted when it undergoes
Simulating one of the rays
the many reflections on the rough and curved inside
using the laser.
the rod.)

C A virtual image
Pick up the block, and have your partner look side-
ways through it at your finger, touching the surface
of the block. Have your partner hold his/her own
finger next to the block, and move it around un-
til it appears to be as far away as your own finger.
(Your brain achieves a perception of depth by sub-
consciously comparing the images it receives from
your two eyes.) Measure the distance di , which is
the depth of the image of your finger relative to the
front of the block.
age, and put the block back on the paper. Shine
the laser at the point where your finger was origi-
nally touching the block, observe the refracted beam,
and draw it in. Repeat this whole procedure several
times, with the laser at a variety of angles. Finally,
extrapolate the rays leaving the block back into the
block. They should all appear to have come from the
same point, where you saw the virtual image. You’ll
need to photocopy the tracing so that each person
can turn in a copy with his or her writeup.

Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
di
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
image of Read the laser safety checklist.
finger
P1 Laser beams are supposed to be very nearly
parallel (not spreading out or contracting to a focal
point). Think of a way to test, roughly, whether this
is true for your laser.
Now trace the outline of the block on a piece of pa-
per, remove the block, mark the location of the im- P2 Plan how you will determine the index of re-

115
fraction in part A.

Analysis
Using your data for part A, extract the index of re-
fraction. Estimate the accuracy of your raw data,
and determine error bars for your index of refrac-
tion.
Using trigonometry and Snell’s law, make a the-
oretical calculation of di . You’ll need to use the
small-angle approximation sin θ ≈ tan θ ≈ θ, for θ
measured in units of radians. (For large angles, i.e.
viewing the finger from way off to one side, the rays
will not converge very closely to form a clear virtual
image.)
Explain your results in part C and their meaning.
Compare your three values for di : the experimental
value based on depth perception, the experimental
value found by ray-tracing with the laser, and the
theoretical value found by trigonometry.

116 Lab 37 Refraction and Images

117
38 Geometric Optics
Apparatus
optical bench . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
convex lens (unknown focal
length to be measured) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
convex lens, longest available
focal length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1/group
convex lens, f = 50 mm
1/group lamp and arrow-shaped mask . . . . 1/group
frosted glass screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
Goals
Observe a real image formed by a convex lens,
and determine its focal length.
Construct a telescope and measure its angular
magnification.
Introduction
The credit for invention of the telescope is disputed,
but Galileo was probably the first person to use one
for astronomy. He first heard of the new invention
when a foreigner visited the court of his royal pa-
trons and attempted to sell it for an exorbitant price.
Hearing through second-hand reports that it con-
sisted of two lenses, Galileo sent an urgent message
to his benefactors not to buy it, and proceeded to
reproduce the device himself. An early advocate of
simple scientific terminology, he wanted the instru-
ment to be called the “occhialini,” Italian for “eye-
thing,” rather than the Greek “telescope.”
His astronomical observations soon poked some gap-
ing holes in the accepted Aristotelian view of the
heavens. Contrary to Aristotle’s assertion that the
heavenly bodies were perfect and without blemishes,
he found that the moon had mountains and the sun
had spots (the marks on the moon visible to the
naked eye had been explained as optical illusions or
atmospheric phenomena). This put the heavens on
an equal footing with earthly objects, paving the
way for physical theories that would apply to the
whole universe, and specifically for Newton’s law of
gravity. He also discovered the four largest moons
of Jupiter, and demonstrated his political savvy by
naming them the “Medicean satellites” after the pow-
erful Medici family. The fact that they revolved
118 Lab 38 Geometric Optics
around Jupiter rather than the earth helped make
more plausible Copernicus’ theory that the planets
did not revolve around the earth but around the sun.
Galileo’s ideas were considered subversive, and many
people refused to look through his telescope, either
because they thought it was an illusion or simply
because it was supposed to show things that were
contrary to Aristotle.
Theory
A convex lens is capable of bringing a diverging set
of light rays back together to a focus. In the fig-
ure, the object (arrow) is reflecting light diffusely,
so light is leaving every point on it in every direc-
tion. Two such points are shown, with a few repre-
sentative rays of light. The rays all converge again
at the right, forming an image of the object. The
person viewing the arrangement from the right can-
not tell that the object is really small and far away.
It appears to be larger and closer. Since the rays
coming to the person’s eye really did cross at the
location of the image, there is absolutely no way to
tell that there wasn’t really an object there diffusely
reflecting the light from the room. Your eye cannot
detect anything about the history of each light ray,
e.g. that the rays were bent through a lens at some
point. Although the image is not “real,” it is called
a real image because the rays of light actually cross
there. Real images can be projected on a screen if
the screen is put at the location of the image — all
the rays of light coming from a specific point on the
object are reunited at a corresponding spot on the
screen, producing an illuminated spot.
do di
It is a surprising fact that a lens can not only bring
light to a focus when the object is a specific value of
do , but for a large range of distances. As do is in-
creased, di decreases. Mathematically, the equation
relating them is
1 1 1
+ = ,
do di f
where f is a characteristic of the lens called the focal
length. Note that in the special case where the ob-
ject is at infinity, we have di = f . On the other hand,
if the object is closer than the focal length (do < f ),
no real image is formed — the rays are diverging too
much, and the lens is not powerful enough to bend
them back to a focus.
The figure on ther next page shows the simplest re-
fracting telescope. The object is assumed to be at
infinity, so a real image is formed at a distance from
the objective lens equal to its focal length, fo . By
setting up the eyepiece at a distance from the image
equal to its own focal length, fE , light rays that were
parallel are again made parallel.
The point of the whole arrangement is angular mag-
nification. The small angle θ1 is converted to a large
θ2 . It is the small angular size of distant objects that
makes them hard to see, not their distance. There is
no way to tell visually whether an object is a thirty
meters away or thirty billion. (For objects within a
few meters, your brain-eye system gives you a sense
of depth based on parallax.) The Pleiades star clus-
ter can be seen more easily across many light years
than Mick Jagger’s aging lips across a stadium. Peo-
ple who say the flying saucer “looked as big as an
aircraft carrier” or that the moon “looks as big as
a house” don’t know what they’re talking about.
The telescope does not make things “seem closer”
— since the rays coming at your eye are parallel,
the final virtual image you see is at infinity. The
angular magnification is given by
MA = θ2 /θ1
for a rough determination of its angular magnifica-
tion. One easy method is to observe the same object
with both eyes open, with one eye looking through
the telescope and one seeing the object without the
telescope.
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
P1 In part A, do you want the object to be closer
to the lens than the lens’ focal length, exactly at a
distance of one focal length, or farther than the focal
length? What about the screen?
P2 Plan what measurements you will make in part
A and how you will use them to determine the lens’
focal length.
Analysis
Determine the focal length of the unknown lens, with
error bars.
Find the angular magnification of your telescope from
your data, with error bars, and compare with the-
ory. Do they agree to within the accuracy of the
measurement?

(to be measured directly in this lab)

MA = fo /fE

(theory)

Observations
A Focal length of a convex lens
Use your unknown convex lens to project a real im-
age on the frosted glass screen. For your object, use
the lamp with the arrow-shaped aperture in front of
it. Make sure to lock down the parts on the opti-
cal bench, or else they may tip over and break the
optics!

B The telescope
Use your optical bench and your two known lenses
to build a telescope. Take the data you will need

119
 real
objective image eyepiece

θ1

θ2

fo fE

A refracting telescope

120 Lab 38 Geometric Optics

121
39 Two-Source Interference
Apparatus ment. This way the lamp acts like a point source of
light above the tank. Clamp the light source to the
ripple tank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group post and turn it on. Put the white plastic screen on
yellow foam pads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4/group the floor under the tank. If you make ripples in the
lamp and unfrosted straight-filament bulb water, you should be able to see the wave pattern on
1/group wave generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1/group the screen.
big metal L-shaped arms for hanging
the wave generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group The wave generator consists of a piece of wood that
little metal L-shaped arms with yellow hangs by rubber bands from the two L-shaped metal
plastic balls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/group hangers. There is a DC motor attached, which spins
rubber bands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/group an intentionally unbalanced wheel, resulting in vi-
white plastic screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group bration of the wood. The wood itself can be used
Thornton DC voltage source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group to make straight waves directly in the water, but
small rubber stopper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group in this experiment you’ll be using the two little L-
power strip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group shaped pieces of metal with the yellow balls on the
bucket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 end to make two sources of circular ripples. The DC
mop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 motor runs off of the DC voltage source, and the
flathead screwdriver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 more voltage you supply, the faster the motor runs.
rulers and protractors Start just by sticking one little L-shaped arm in the
piece of wood, and observing the circular wave pat-
tern it makes. Now try two sources at once, in neigh-
boring holes. Pick a speed (frequency) for the motor
Goals that you’ll use throughout the experiment — a fairly
Observe how a 2-source interference pattern of low speed works well. Measure the angular spacing
water waves depends on the distance between of the resulting diffraction pattern for several values
the sources. of the spacing, d, between the two sources of ripples.
If the water wave interference pattern is analogous
to interference of light with a double slit, how should
Observations you expect the angular spacing of the waves to be
related to d, the distance between the two sources of
The ripple tank is tank that sits about 30 cm above
ripples? Construct a graph to test whether this was
the floor. You put a little water in the tank, and
really true.
produce waves. There is a lamp above it that makes
a point-like source of light, and the waves cast pat-
terns of light on a screen placed on the floor. The
patterns of light on the screen are easier to see and
measure than the ripples themselves.
Put the tank on the floor. Plug the hole in the side
of the tank with the black rubber stopper. Place
the four yellow foam pads around the sides of the
tank, and if they don’t lie flat, tape them down with
masking tape. Pour in water to a depth of about
5-7 mm. Adjust the metal feet to level the tank,
so that the water is of equal depth throughout the
tank. (Do not rotate the wooden legs themselves,
just the feet.)
Make sure the straight-filament bulb in the light
source is rotated so that when you look in through
the hole, you are looking along the length of the fila-

122 Lab 39 Two-Source Interference

123
40 Wave Optics
Apparatus
helium-neon laser
1/group optical bench with posts & holders 1/group
double slits, 0.05 cm (Klinger) . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
rulers
meter sticks
tape measures
Goals
Observe evidence for the wave nature of light.
Determine the wavelength of red light (specif-
ically, the color emitted by the laser), by mea-
suring a double-slit diffraction pattern.
Determine the approximate diameter of a hu-
man hair, using its diffraction pattern.
Introduction
Isaac Newton’s epitaph, written by Alexander Pope,
reads:
Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night.
God said let Newton be, and all was light.
Notwithstanding Newton’s stature as the greatest
physical scientist who ever lived, it’s a little ironic
that Pope chose light as a metaphor, because it was
in the study of light that Newton made some of his
worst mistakes. Newton was a firm believer in the
dogma, then unsupported by observation, that mat-
ter was composed of atoms, and it seemed logical to
him that light as well should be composed of tiny
particles, or “corpuscles.” His opinions on the sub-
ject were so strong that he influenced generations
of his successors to discount the arguments of Huy-
gens and Grimaldi for the wave nature of light. It
was not until 150 years later that Thomas Young
demonstrated conclusively that light was a wave.
Young’s experiment was incredibly simple, and could
probably have been done in ancient times if some
savvy Greek or Chinese philosopher had only thought
of it. He simply let sunlight through a pinhole in a
window shade, forming what we would now call a
coherent beam of light (that is, a beam consisting
124 Lab 40 Wave Optics
of plane waves marching in step). Then he held a
thin card edge-on to the beam, observed a diffrac-
tion pattern on a wall, and correctly inferred the
wave nature and wavelength of light. Since Roemer
had already measured the speed of light, Young was
also able to determine the frequency of oscillation of
the light.
Today, with the advent of the laser, the production
of a bright and coherent beam of light has become
as simple as flipping a switch, and the wave nature
of light can be demonstrated very easily. In this lab,
you will carry out observations similar to Young’s,
but with the benefit of hindsight and modern equip-
ment.
Observations
A Determination of the wavelength of red light
Set up your laser on your optical bench. You will
want as much space as possible between the laser
and the wall, in order to let the diffraction pattern
spread out as much as possible and reveal its fine
details.
Tear off two small scraps of paper with straight edges.
Hold them close together so they form a single slit.
Hold this improvised single-slit grating in the laser
beam and try to get a single-slit diffraction pattern.
You may have to play around with different widths
for the slit. No quantitative data are required. This
is just to familiarize you with single-slit diffraction.
Make a diffraction pattern with the double-slit grat-
ing. See what happens when you hold it in your
hand and rotate it around the axis of the beam.
The diffraction pattern of the double-slit grating con-
sists of a rapidly varying pattern of bright and dark
bars, with a more slowly varying pattern superim-
posed on top (see figure, page 124). The rapidly
varying pattern is the one that is numerically related
to the wavelength, λ, and the distance between the
slits, d = 0.05 cm, by the equation
∆θ = λ/d,
where θ is measured in radians. To make sure you
can see the fine spacing, put your grating several
meters away from the wall. This will necessitate
shining it across the space between lab tables. To
make it less likely that someone will walk through Analysis
the beam and get the beam in their eye, put some
of the small desks under the beam. Determine the wavelength of the light and the diam-
eter of the hair, with error bars.
Think about the best way to measure the spacing of
the pattern accurately. Is it best to measure from a
bright part to another bright part, or from dark to
dark? Is it best to measure a single spacing, or take
several spacings and divide by the number to find
what one spacing is? Do it.
Determine the wavelength of the light, in units of
nanometers. Make sure it is in the right range for
red light. If it’s way off, check with your instructor
— a few of the double slits are damaged.

B Diameter of a human hair

Pull out one of your own hairs, hold it in the laser
beam, and observe a diffraction pattern. It turns
out that the diffraction pattern caused by a narrow
obstruction, such as your hair, has the same spac-
ing as the pattern that would be created by a sin-
gle slit whose width was the same as the diameter
of your hair. (This is an example of a general theo-
rem called Babinet’s principle.) Measure the spacing
of the diffraction pattern. (Since the hair’s diame-
ter is the only dimension involved, there is only one
diffraction pattern with one spacing, not superim-
posed fine and coarse patterns as in part A.) De-
termine the diameter of your hair. Make sure the
value you get is reasonable, and compare with the
order-of-magnitude guess you made in your prelab
writeup.

Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
Read the safety checklist.
P1 Roughly what wavelength do you expect red
light to have?
P2 It is not practical to measure ∆θ directly us-
ing a protractor. Plan how you will determine ∆θ
indirectly, via trigonometry.
P3 Make a rough order-of-magnitude guess of the
diameter of a human hair.

125
 This spacing, ∆θ, is the one you want to
measure. It is related to d, the center-to-
center distance between the slits, by ∆θ=λ/d.

If your screen is too close to the slits,

the finer pattern may be invisible, and this
spacing may be all you see. This larger angular
spacing is related to the width of the slits, not to d.

A double-slit diffraction pattern.

126 Lab 40 Wave Optics

127
41 Polarization
Apparatus
laser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
calcite crystal (flattest available) . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
polarizing films . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/group
Na gas discharge tube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
photocell and collimator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
(Need to build more for spring 2001 222.)
Goals
Make qualitative observations about the polar-
ization of light.
Test quantitatively the hypothesis that polar-
ization relates to the direction of the field vec-
tors in an electromagnetic wave.
Introduction
It’s common knowledge that there’s more to light
than meets the eye: everyone has heard of infrared
and ultraviolet light, which are visible to some other
animals but not to us. Another invisible feature of
the wave nature of light is far less well known. Elec-
tromagnetic waves are transverse, i.e. the electric
and magnetic field vectors vibrate in directions per-
pendicular to the direction of motion of the wave.
Two electromagnetic waves with the same wavelength
can therefore be physically distinguishable, if their
electric and magnetic fields are twisted around in
different directions. Waves that differ in this way
are said to have different polarizations.
direction of motion of wave
E B E B
B E B E
plane of
vibration plane of vibration
of magnetic field
of electric
field
An electromagnetic wave has electric and magnetic field
vectors that vibrate in the directions perpendicular to its
direction of motion. The wave’s direction of polarization is
defined as the line along which the electric field lies.
128 Lab 41 Polarization
Maybe we polarization-blind humans are missing out
on something. Some insects and crustaceans can de-
tect polarization, and a neuroscientist at the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania has recently found evidence that
a freshwater fish called the green sunfish can see the
polarization of light (Discover magazine, Oct. 1996).
Most sources of visible light (such as the sun or a
light bulb) are unpolarized. An unpolarized beam
of light contains a random mixture of waves with
many different directions of polarization, all of them
changing from moment to moment, and from point
to point within the beam.
Qualitative Observations
Before doing anything else, turn on your gas dis-
charge tube, so it will be warmed up when you are
ready to do part E.
A Double refraction in calcite
Place a calcite crystal on this page. You will see two
images of the print through the crystal.
To understand why this happens, try shining the
laser beam on a piece of paper and then inserting
the calcite crystal in the beam. If you rotate the
crystal around in different directions, you should be
able to get two distinct spots to show up on the
paper. (This may take a little trial and error, partly
because the effect depends on the correct orientation
of the crystal, but also because the crystals are not
perfect, and it can be hard to find a nice smooth
spot through which to shine the beam.)
In the refraction lab, you’ve already seen how a beam
of light can be bent as it passes through the interface
between two media. The present situation is similar
because the laser beam passes in through one face of
the crystal and then emerges from a parallel face at
E B the back. You have already seen that in this type of
B E situation, when the beam emerges again, its direc-
tion is bent back parallel to its original direction, but
the beam is offset a little bit. What is different here
is that the same laser beam splits up into two parts,
which bumped off course by different amounts.
What’s happening is that calcite, unlike most sub-
stances, has a different index of refraction depending
on the polarization of the light. Light travels at a
different speed through calcite depending on how the
electric and magnetic fields are oriented compared to
the crystal. The atoms inside the crystal are packed
in a three-dimensional pattern sort of like a stack of
oranges or cannonballs. This packing arrangement
has a special axis of symmetry, and light polarized
along that axis moves at one speed, while light polar-
ized perpendicular to that axis moves at a different
speed.
It makes sense that if the original laser beam was
a random mixture of all possible directions of po-
larization, then each part would be refracted by a
different amount. What is a little more surprising is
that two separated beams emerge, with nothing in
between. The incoming light was composed of light
with every possible direction of polarization. You
would therefore expect that the part of the incoming
light polarized at, say, 45 ◦ compared to the crystal’s
axis would be refracted by an intermediate amount,
but that doesn’t happen. This surprising observa-
tion, and all other polarization phenomena, can be
understood based on the vector nature of electric
and magnetic fields, and the purpose of this lab is
to lead you through a series of observations to help
you understand what’s really going on.
B A polarized beam entering the calcite
A single laser beam entering a calcite crystal breaks up
into two parts, which are refracted by different amounts.
E E
B
B B
E purely polarized at 90 ◦ to the axis.
B
B
E single spot at the midpoint. This shows that the
B
The calcite splits the wave into two parts, polarized in per-
pendicular directions compared to each other.
We need not be restricted to speculation about what
was happening to the part of the light that entered
the calcite crystal polarized at a 45 ◦ angle. You can
use a polarizing film, often referred to informally as a
“Polaroid,” to change unpolarized light into a beam
of only one specific polarization. In this part of the
The original beam
contains every
possible polar-
ization.
Only two beams with two
polarizations emerge from
the calcite crystal.
lab, you will use a polarizing film to produce a beam
of light polarized at a 45 ◦ angle to the crystal’s in-
ternal axis.
If you simply look through the film, it doesn’t look
like anything special — everything just looks dim-
mer, like looking through sunglasses. The light reach-
ing your eye is polarized, but your eye can’t tell that.
If you looked at the film under a microscope, you’d
see a pattern of stripes, which select only one direc-
tion of polarization of the light that passes through.
Now try interposing the film between the laser and
the crystal. The beam reaching the crystal is now
polarized along some specific direction. If you rotate
the film, you change beam’s direction of polariza-
tion. If you try various orientations, you will be able
to find one that makes one of the spots disappear,
and another orientation of the film, at a 90 ◦ angle
compared to the first, that makes the other spot go
away. When you hold the film in one of these direc-
tions, you are sending a beam into the crystal that
is either purely polarized along the crystal’s axis or
By now you have already seen what happens if the
film is at an intermediate angle such as 45 ◦ . Two
spots appear on the paper in the same places pro-
duced by an unpolarized source of light, not just a
crystal is not just throwing away the parts of the
light that are out of alignment with its axis. What
is happening instead is that the crystal will accept a
beam of light with any polarization whatsoever, and
split it into two beams polarized at 0 and 90 ◦ compared
to the crystal’s axis.
This behavior actually makes sense in terms of the
wave theory of light. Light waves are supposed to
obey the principle of superposition, which says that
waves that pass through each other add on to each
129
other. A light wave is made of electric and magnetic
fields, which are vectors, so it is vector addition we’re
talking about in this case. A vector at a 45 ◦ angle
can be produced by adding two perpendicular vec-
tors of equal length. The crystal must therefore can-
not respond any differently to 45-degree polarized
light than it would to a 50-50 mixture of light with
0-degree and 90-degree polarization.
The vector sum of
this plus this equals this.
The principle of superposition implies that if the 0 ◦ and
90 ◦ polarizations produce two different spots, then the
two waves superimposed must produce those two spots,
not a single spot at an intermediate location.
C Two polarizing films
So far I’ve just described the polarizing film as a
device for producing polarized light. But one can
apply to the polarizing film the same logic of super-
position and vector addition that worked with the
calcite crystal. It would not make sense for the film
simply to throw away any waves that were not per-
fectly aligned with it, because a field oriented on a
slant can be analyzed into two vector components,
at 0 and 90 ◦ with respect to the film. Even if one
component is entirely absorbed, the other compo-
nent should still be transmitted.
θ across the photocell when light is shining on it. The
Based on these considerations, now think about what
will happen if you look through two polarizing films
at an angle to each other, as shown in the figure
above. Do not look into the laser beam! Just look
around the room. What will happen as you change
the angle θ?
130 Lab 41 Polarization
D Three polarizing films
Now suppose you start with two films at a 90 ◦ angle
to each other, and then sandwich a third film be-
tween them at a 45 ◦ angle, as shown in the two fig-
ures above. Make a prediction about what will hap-
pen, and discuss your prediction with your instructor
before you make the actual observation.
Quantitative Observations
E Intensity of light passing through two polar-
izing films
In this part of the lab, you will make numerical mea-
surements of the transmission of initially unpolarized
light transmitted through two polarizing films at an
angle θ to each other. To measure the intensity of
the light that gets through, you will use a photo-
cell, which is a device that converts light energy into
an electric current. (Photocells have been getting
cheaper and more efficient, and in some remote ru-
ral areas it is more economical for people to generate
their own electricity rather than paying the electric
company a huge amount of money to run a line to
their home.)
You will use a voltmeter to measure the voltage
voltage across the voltmeter causes current to flow,
dissipating energy as heat inside the voltmeter. Since
the photocell is not 100% efficient, some of the origi-
nal light energy is converted to heat within the pho-
tocell and not absorbed by the voltmeter. However,
you only need to make relative measurements of light
intensity, not absolute ones, so it’s OK just to use
the power dissipated inside the voltmeter as a mea-
sure of light intensity. The power dissipated inside
the voltmeter equals V 2 /R, and since the voltmeter’s
resistance is constant, you can use V 2 as a measure
of the power of the light striking the photocell.
This measurement requires a source of light that is
unpolarized, constant in intensity, and comes from a
specific direction so it can’t get to the photocell with-
out going through the polaroids. The ambient light
in the room is nearly unpolarized, but varies ran-
domly as people walk in front of the light fixtures,
etc. The laser beam is constant in intensity, but as
I was creating this lab I found to my surprise that it
is partially polarized, with a polarization that varies
over time. A suitable source of light is the sodium
gas discharge tube, which makes a nearly monochro-
matic, unpolarized yellow light. There is actually
some important physics going on in a gas discharge
tube, which we’ll discuss later in the course. For
now, just think of it as a convenient source of light.
Make sure you have allowed it to warm up for at
least 15-20 minutes before using it; before it warms
up, it makes a reddish light, and the polaroids do
not work very well on that color.
Make measurements of the relative intensity of light
transmitted through the two polarizing films, using
a variety of angles θ.

Analysis
Discuss your qualitative results in terms of superpo-
sition and vector addition.
Graph your results from part E, and superimpose a
theoretical curve for comparison. Discuss how your
results compare with theory. Since your measure-
ments of light intensity are relative, just scale the
theoretical curve so that its maximum matches that
of the experimental data. (You might think of com-
paring the intensity transmitted through the two po-
laroids with the intensity that you get with no po-
laroids in the way at all. This doesn’t really work,
however, because in addition to acting as polarizers,
the polaroids simply absorb a certain percentage of
the light, just as any transparent material would.)

131
42 The Photoelectric Effect
Apparatus having as a particle, now called a photon. The beam
of light could be visualized as a stream of machine-
Hg gas discharge tube, light aperture gun bullets. The electrons would be small targets,
assembly, and lens/grating assembly but when a “light bullet” did score a hit, it packed
light aperture assembly enough of an individual wallop to knock the elec-
lens/grating assembly tron out immediately. Based on other experiments
photodiode module, support base, and coupling rod involving the spectrum of light emitted by hot, glow-
digital multimeter (Fluke) ing objects, Einstein also proposed that each photon
pieces of plywood had an energy given by
green and yellow filters
E = hf ,

where f is the frequency of the light and h is Planck’s

Goals constant.
Observe evidence that light has particle prop- In this lab, you will perform the classic experiment
erties as well as wave properties. used to test Einstein’s theory. You should refer to
the description of the experiment in your textbook.
Measure Planck’s constant. Briefly, you will expose the metal cathode of a vac-
uum tube to light of various frequencies, and deter-
mine the voltage applied between the cathode and
Introduction anode that just barely suffices to cut off the pho-
The photoelectric effect, a phenomenon in which toelectric current completely. This is known as the
light shakes an electron loose from an object, pro- stopping voltage, Vs . According to Einstein’s theory,
vided the first evidence for wave-particle duality: the stopping voltage should obey the equation
the idea that the basic building blocks of light and
matter show a strange mixture of particle and wave eVs = hf − W ,
behaviors. At the turn of the twentieth century,
physicists assumed that particle and wave phenom- where the work function, W , is the amount of energy
ena were completely distinct. Young had shown that required by an electron to penetrate the surface of
light could undergo interference effects such as diffrac- the cathode and escape.
tion, so it had to be a wave. Since light was a wave
slit 1
composed of oscillating electric and magnetic fields,
it made sense that when light encountered matter, filter
diffraction
it would tend to shake the electrons. It was only grating slit 2
to be expected that something like the photoelectric
effect could happen, with the light shaking the elec- Hg
trons vigorously enough to knock them out of the lamp photodiode
atom. The best theoretical estimates, however, were module
that light of ordinary intensity would take millions
of years to do the trick — it would take that long
for the electron slowly to absorb enough energy to collimator
tube
escape.
The actual experimental observation of the photo- Optical setup.
electric effect was therefore an embarrassment. It
started up immediately, not after a million years.
Albert Einstein, better known today for the theory Setup
of relativity, was the first to come up with the rad-
ical, and correct, explanation. Einstein simply sug- You can use the Hg gas discharge tube to produce
gested that in the photoelectric effect, light was be- monochromatic light with the following wavelengths:

132 Lab 42 The Photoelectric Effect

 color wavelength (nm)
ultraviolet 365
violet 405
blue 436
green 546
orange 578
The diffraction grating splits up the light into these
lines, so you can make one line at a time enter the
photodiode. Slit 1 slides into the slot in the front of
the discharge tube. The lens serves to create focused
images of slit 1 at the photodiode. The lens and
diffraction grating are housed in a single unit, which
is attached to a pair of rods (not shown) projecting
from slit 1. Do not drop the lens and diffraction
grating — I have already damaged one by dropping
it, and they cost $200 to replace. For measurements
with the green and yellow lines, green and yellow
filters are used to help eliminate stray light of other
colors — they stick magnetically on the front of the
collimator tube. Slit 2 and the collimator tube keep
stray light from getting in.
The photodiode module is held on top of a post on
a rotating arm. The ultraviolet line is invisible, but
the front of slit 2 is coated with a material that flu-
oresces in UV light, so you can see where the line
is.
light
(a)
A
V not mean it is getting in to the photodiode. You
light
(b)
V
Circuit.
Circuit
The circuit in fig. (a) above is the one shown in
textbooks for this type of experiment. Light comes
in and knocks electrons out of the curved cathode.
If the voltage is turned off, there is no electric field,
so the electrons travel in straight lines; some will
hit the anode, creating a current referred to as the
photocurrent. If the voltage is turned on, the electric
field repels the electrons from the wire electrode, and
the current is reduced or eliminated. The stopping
voltage would be measured by increasing the voltage
until no more current was flowing. We used to use
a setup very similar to this in this course, but it
was difficult to get good data because it was hard to
judge accurately when the current had reached zero.
The circuit we now use, shown in fig. (b), uses a
cute trick to determine the stopping voltage. The
photocurrent transports electrons from the cathode
to the anode, so a net positive charge builds up on
the cathode, and a negative charge on the anode. As
the charge and the voltage increase, the photocur-
rent is reduced, until finally the voltage reaches the
stopping voltage, and no more current can flow. You
then read the voltage off of the voltmeter. When
you have the next color of light shining on the cath-
ode, you momentarily close the switch, discharging
the photodiode, and then take your next measure-
ment. The only disadvantage of this setup is that
you cannot adjust the voltage yourself and see how
the photocurrent varies with voltage.
Setup
Move the housing containing the grating and lens
until you get a good focus at the front of the photo-
diode box. It may be necessary to turn the housing
around to get a good focus.
Just because the light gets in through slit 2 does
may have to rotate the photodiode module a little
bit and use trial and error to find the right angle. A
good way to tell when it’s lined up correctly is to try
to take data using the UV line. If you don’t get a
bigger voltage for this line than for the others, then
the light is not making it in to the photodiode.
Observations
You can now determine the stopping voltages corre-
sponding to the six different colors of light.
Hints:
The biggest possible source of difficulty is stray
light. The room should be dark when you do
your measurements.
The shortest wavelengths of light (highest fre-
quencies), for which the energy of the pho-
tons is the highest, readily produce photoelec-
133
 trons. The photocurrent is much weaker for
the longer wavelengths. Start with the short-
wavelength line and graduate to the more diffi-
cult, lower frequencies. Don’t forget the filters
for the yellow and green lines!
If the switch to zero the voltage doesn’t work,
it is because the batteries are dead.
Where the lines hit the white front of slit 2,
they should be sharp, and should not overlap.
You can adjust the focus by moving the lens
and grating in or out. If you can’t get a good
focus, check and make sure that the square side
of the unit is away from the Hg tube.
Analysis
Extract Planck’s constant from your data, with error
bars (see apendix 4). Is your value consistent with
the accepted value given in your textbook?
Every electron that absorbs a photon acquires a ki-
netic energy equal to hf . Thus it would seem that
if the voltage is less than the stopping voltage, ev-
ery electron should have enough energy to reach the
other electrode. Give two reasons why many elec-
trons do not reach the other electrode even when
the voltage is less than the stopping voltage.

The photodiode module can be rotated on its

post so that the light goes straight down the
tube. If you don’t line it up correctly, you’ll
be able to tell because the voltage will creep
up slowly, rather than shooting up to a certain
value and stopping. There is a screw that is
supposed to allow you to lock the photodiode
into position at the correct angle. Make sure
to loosen the screw before trying to aim the
photodiode, and lock it once it’s aimed cor-
rectly. If your photodiode won’t lock in place,
you need to tighten the aluminum post that
forms the base of the box.

Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
The week before you are to do the lab, briefly famil-
iarize yourself visually with the apparatus.
P1 In the equation eVs = hf − W , verify that all
three terms have the same units.
P2 Plan how you will analyze your data to deter-
mine Planck’s constant.
P3 Students who have not been sufficiently careful
in avoiding the effects of stray light have often ended
up with garbage data in this lab. Plan how you will
do a preliminary check on your data to figure out if
any of your data points are way off.

134 Lab 42 The Photoelectric Effect

135
43 Electron Diffraction
Apparatus you will see direct evidence that electrons, which you
had been completely convinced were particles, also
old Teltron version display the wave-like property of interference. Your
(one setup available) schooling had probably ingrained the particle inter-
pretation of electrons in you so strongly that you
cathode ray tube (Teltron TEL 555) used particle concepts without realizing it. When
high-voltage power supply (old Leybold) you wrote symbols for chemical ions such as Cl−
microammeter, 100 µA full-scale (Simpson) and Ca2+ , you understood them to mean a chlorine
analog multimeter for measuring high voltages (Triplett atom with one excess electron and a calcium atom
630) — not the similar Triplett meter that measures with two electrons stripped off. By teaching you to
lower voltages and does not have banana plug con- count electrons, your teachers were luring you into
nectors the assumption that electrons were particles. If this
DC power supply (Thornton) lab’s evidence for the wave properties of electrons
multimeter disturbs you, then you are on your way to a deeper
understanding of what an electron really is — both
a particle and a wave.
new Leybold version
(two setups available)
cathode ray tube (Leybold 555 626) 13.5 cm
high-voltage power supply (new Leybold)
100-kΩ resistor with banana-plug connectors
+

phosphor coated
Groups 1 and 4 will use the old setup. Groups 2, 3,
5, and 6 will use the new setup.
-

Goals graphite
Observe wave interference patterns (diffraction foil
patterns) of electrons, demonstrating that elec-
trons exhibit wave behavior as well as particle side view
behavior.

Learn what it is that determines the wave-

length of an electron.

Introduction
The most momentous discovery of 20th-century physics
has been that light and matter are not simply made
of waves or particles — the basic building blocks of
light and matter are strange entities which display
both wave and particle properties at the same time.
In our course, we have already learned about the front view
experimental evidence from the photoelectric effect
showing that light is made of units called photons,
which are both particles and waves. That proba- The electron diffraction tube. (This is the old version. The
bly disturbed you less than it might have, since you new version is basically the same, but has a slightly dif-
most likely had no preconceived ideas about whether ferent size and shape.)
light was a particle or a wave. In this lab, however,

136 Lab 43 Electron Diffraction

Method d1=0.213 nm

What you are working with is basically the same

kind of vacuum tube as the picture tube in your tele-
vision. As in a TV, electrons are accelerated through
a voltage and shot in a beam to the front (big end)
of the tube, where they hit a phosphorescent coat-
ing and produce a glow. You cannot see the electron
beam itself. There is a very thin carbon foil (it looks
d2=0.123 nm
like a tiny piece of soap bubble) near where the neck
joins the spherical part of the tube, and the elec-
trons must pass through the foil before crossing over
to the phosphorescent screen.
The purpose of the carbon foil is to provide an ultra-
The carbon atoms in the graphite crystal are arranged
fine diffraction grating — the “grating” consists of
hexagonally.
the crystal lattice of the carbon atoms themselves!
As you will see in this lab, the wavelengths of the
electrons are very short (a fraction of a nanometer),
lab, make sure you understand the safety rules, ini-
which makes a conventional ruled diffraction grating
tial them, and show your safety checklist to your
useless — the closest spacing that can be achieved on
instructor. If you don’t understand something, ask
a conventional grating is on the order of one microm-
your instructor for clarification.
eter. The carbon atoms in graphite are arranged in
sheets, each of which consists of a hexagonal pattern In addition to the high-voltage safety precautions,
of atoms like chicken wire. That means they are not please observe the following rules to avoid damaging
lined up in straight rows, so the diffraction pattern the apparatus:
is slightly different from the pattern produced by a
The tubes costs $1000. Please treat them with
ruled grating.
respect! Don’t drop them! Dropping them would
Also, the carbon foil consists of many tiny graphite also be a safety hazard, since they’re vacuum tubes,
crystals, each with a random orientation of its crys- so they’ll implode violently if they break.
tal lattice. The net result is that you will see a bright
Do not turn on anything until your instructor
spot surrounded by two faint circles. The two circles
has checked your circuit.
represent cones of electrons that intersect the phos-
phor. Each cone makes an angle θ with respect to If you have the old setup, always make sure you
the central axis of the tube, and just as with a ruled have an ammeter in your circuit to measure the elec-
grating, the angle is given by tric current from the electrons going from the cath-
ode to the anode, and do not exceed 100 µA. Before
sin θ = λ/d turning on your high voltage, ask your instructor to
make sure that the ammeter is wired into the cir-
where λ is the wavelength of the wave. For a ruled cuit correctly. If you are using an analog ammeter,
grating, d would be the spacing between the lines. make sure that it is set up with the right polarity —
In this case, we will have two different cones with you can tell this by putting a small amount of high
two different θ’s, θ1 and θ2 , corresponding to two voltage on the cathode ray tube, and seeing if the
different d0 s, d1 and d2 . Their geometrical meaning meter registers a small current. (The power supply
is shown below. used with the new setup automatically limits its own
current, so no meter is needed.)
Safety With the old setup, keep the heater voltage
below 9 V, and always use the minimum heat needed
in order to produce a visible beam. With the new
This lab involves the use of voltages of up to 6000 V.
setup, use the 6-V AC connection on the back of the
Do not be afraid of the equipment, however; there
high-voltage supply.
is a fuse in the high-voltage supply that limits the
amount of current that it can produce, so it is not Don’t operate the tube continuously at the
particularly dangerous. Read the safety checklist on highest voltage values (5000-6000 V). It produces
high voltage in Appendix 8. Before beginning the x-rays when used at these voltages, and the strong

137
beam also decreases the life of the tube. With the
old setup, both of these issues are addressed by ad-
justing the heater to get the weakest possible beam
that is still visible. With the new setup, you can
use the circuit on the right side of the HV supply’s
panel, which limits its own voltage to 5000 V.
Setup
old setup
The small black plastic part on the end of the tube’s
thin neck is referred to as the “base.” You setup
will consist of two circuits, a heater circuit and the
high-voltage circuit.
The heater circuit is to heat the cathode, increas-
ing the velocity with which the electrons move in
the metal and making it easier for some of them
to escape from the cathode. This will produce the
friendly and nostalgia-producing yellow glow which
is characteristic of all vacuum-tube equipment. The
heater is simply a thin piece of wire, which acts as a
resistor when a small voltage is placed across it, pro-
ducing heat. The two electrical connections for the
heater are the two larger-diameter (4 mm) female
banana-plug connectors on the base. Connect these
to the terminals of the Thornton DC power supply.
Now connect the negative terminal of the (deacti-
vated!) high-voltage supply to the small-diameter
(2 mm) female socket on the base. Complete the
circuit by connecting the male banana plug project-
ing from the waist of the tube to the ammeter, and
the ammeter to the positive high voltage. Connect
the Triplett multimeter to allow you to measure the
amount of high voltage you are applying.
Check your circuit with your instructor before turn-
ing it on!
new setup
The instructions are basically the same as for the old
setup, with the following exceptions.
Connect the heater connections, labeled F1 and F2,
to the 6-V AC outlet at the back of the HV supply.
Connect the anode (A) and cathode (C) to the right-
hand panel of the HV supply, and switch the switch
on the HV supply to the right, so it knows you’re
using the right-hand panel.
The following connections are specified in the doc-
umentation, although I don’t entirely understand
what they’re for. First, connect the electrode X to
the same plug as the cathode.1 Also, connect F1 to
1 If you look inside the tube, you can see that X is an extra
138 Lab 43 Electron Diffraction
C with the 100-kΩ resistor. The circuit diagram on
page 140 summarizes all this.
Observations
You are now ready to see for yourself the evidence of
the wave nature of electrons, observe the diffraction
pattern for various values of the high voltage, and
figure out what determines the wavelength of the
electrons. You will need to do your measurements
in the dark.
You will measure the θ’s, and thus determine the
wavelength, λ, for several different voltages. Each
voltage will produce electrons with a different veloc-
ity, momentum, and energy.
Hints:
While measuring the diffraction pattern, don’t
touch the vacuum tube — the static electric
fields of one’s body seem to be able to perturb
the pattern.
If the HV meter used with the old setup acts
flaky and inconsistent, and gives readings that
are too low (e.g. reads 2000 V when it should
be 6000), the problem is a blown fuse. The
meter also has a battery.
It is easiest to take measurements at the high-
est voltages, where the electrons pack a wallop
and make nice bright rings on the phosphor.
Start with the highest voltages and take data
at lower and lower voltages until you can’t see
the rings well enough to take precise data. To
get unambiguous results, you’ll need to take
data with the widest possible range of voltages.
In order to reach a definite conclusion about
what λ is proportional to, you will need accu-
rate data. Do your best to get good measure-
ments. Pay attention to possible problems in-
curred by viewing the diffraction patterns from
different angles on different occasions. Try re-
peating a measurement more than once, and
seeing how big your random errors are.
The Thornton power supply used for the heater
circuit with the old setup may fluctuate wildly
when the high voltage is above about 5000
volts.
electrode sandwiched in between the anode and the cathode.
I think it’s meant to help produce a focused beam.
You can probably save yourself a lot of time on this function of other quantities such as 1/KE, 1/p, etc.
analysis by using a computer to crunch the numbers
What does λ seem to be proportional to? Your data
and make the graphs.
may cover a small enough range of voltage that more
than one graph may look linear. You can rule one
out by checking whether a line fit through the data
Prelab points would pass near the origin, as it must for a
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you proportionality. This is why it is important to have
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, your graph include the origin.
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
You can use the values of the mass and charge of
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
the electron given in your textbook. Do not, how-
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
ever, use circular reasoning by looking up a formula
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
in your textbook for the wavelength of an electron
The week before you are to do the lab, briefly famil- — that’s relationship is what you’re trying to find
iarize yourself visually with the apparatus. experimentally!
Read the safety checklist.
P1 It is not practical to measure θ1 and θ2 directly
with a protractor. Come up with a plan for how to
get the angles indirectly using trigonometry.
P2 If the voltage difference across which the elec-
trons are accelerated is V , and the known mass and
charge of the electron are m and e, what are the
electrons’ kinetic energy and momentum, in terms
of V , m, and e? (As a numerical check on your re-
sults, you should find that V = 5700 V gives KE =
9.1 × 10−16 J and p = 4.1 × 10−23 kg·m/s.)
P3 Why is it not logically possible for the wave-
length to be proportional to both p and KE? To
both 1/p and 1/KE?
P4 I have suggested plotting λ as a function of
p, KE, 1/p and 1/KE to see if λ is directly propor-
tional to any of them. Once you have your raw data,
how can you immediately rule out two of these four
possibilities and avoid drawing the graphs?
P5 On each graph, you will have two data-points
for each voltage, corresponding to two different mea-
surements of the same wavelength. The two wave-
lengths will be almost the same, but not exactly
the same because of random errors in measuring the
rings. Should you get the wavelengths by combining
the smaller angle with d1 and the larger angle with
d2 , or vice versa?

Analysis
Once you have your data, you can try plotting λ as
a function of, say, the kinetic energy, KE, of the
electrons, and see if it makes something simple like
a straight line. Make sure your graph includes the
origin (see below). You could also try plotting λ as
a function of the electrons’ momentum, p, or as a

139
The circuit for the new setup.

140 Lab 43 Electron Diffraction

141
44 The Hydrogen Atom
Apparatus
straight-filament incandescent light bulb . . . . . . . . . 1
H gas discharge tube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
Hg gas discharge tube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
spectrometer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1/group
diffraction grating, 600 lines/mm . . . . . . . . . 1/group
1/16” Allen key
spirit levels
laser
small screwdriver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Goals
Observe the visible line spectrum of hydrogen.
Determine the mass of the electron.
Introduction
What’s going on inside an atom? The question would
have seemed nonsensical to physicists before the 20th
century — the word “atom” is Greek for “unsplit-
table,” and there was no evidence for subatomic
particles. Only after Thomson and Rutherford had
demonstrated the existence of electrons and the nu-
cleus did the atom begin to be imagined as a tiny
solar system, with the electrons moving in elliptical
orbits around the nucleus under the influence of its
electric field. The problem was that physicists knew
very well that accelerating charges emit electromag-
netic radiation, as for example in a radio antenna, so
the acceleration of the electrons should have caused
them to emit light, steadily lose energy, and spiral
into the nucleus, all within a microsecond,.
Luckily for us, atoms do not spontaneously shrink
down to nothing, but there was indeed evidence that
atoms could emit light. The spectra emitted by very
hot gases were observed to consist of patterns of dis-
crete lines, each with a specific wavelength. The
process of emitting light always seemed to stop short
of finally annihilating the atom — why? Also, why
were only those specific wavelengths emitted?
In this lab, you will study the spectrum of light emit-
ted by the hydrogen atom, the simplest of all atoms,
with just one proton and one electron. In 1885, be-
fore electrons and protons had even been imagined,
142 Lab 44 The Hydrogen Atom
a Swiss schoolteacher named Johann Balmer discov-
ered that the wavelengths emitted by hydrogen were
related by mysterious ratios of small integers. For in-
stance, the wavelengths of the red line and the blue-
green line form a ratio of exactly 20/27. Balmer even
found a mathematical rule that gave all the wave-
lengths of the hydrogen spectrum (both the visible
ones and the invisible ones that lay in the infrared
and ultraviolet). The formula was completely empir-
ical, with no theoretical basis, but clearly there were
patterns lurking in the seemingly mysterious atomic
spectra.
The first step toward understanding Balmer’s nu-
merology was Einstein’s theory that light consisted
of particles (photons), whose energy was related to
their frequency by the equation Ephoton = hf , or
substituting f = c/λ, Ephoton = hc/λ .
According to this theory, the discrete wavelengths
that had been observed came from photons with spe-
cific energies. It seemed that the atom could exist
only in specific states of specific energies. To get
from an initial state with energy Ei to a final state
with a lower energy Ef , conservation of energy re-
quired the atom to release a photon with an energy
of Ephoton = Ei − Ef .
Not only could the discrete line spectra be explained,
but if the atom possessed a state of least energy
(called a “ground state”), then it would always end
up in that state, and it could not collapse entirely.
Knowing the differences between the energy levels of
the atom, it was not too difficult to figure out the
atomic energy levels themselves. Niels Bohr showed
that they obey a relatively simple equation,
mk 2 e4 1
En = − · 2
2~2 n
where n is an integer labeling the level, k is the
Coulomb constant, e is the fundamental unit of charge,
~ is Planck’s constant over 2π, and me is the mass of
the electron. All the energies of the photons in the
emission spectrum could now be explained as differ-
ences in energy between specific states of the atom.
For instance the four visible wavelengths observed by
Balmer all came from cases where the atom ended up
in the n = 2 state, dropping down from the n = 3,
4, 5, and 6 states.
Although the equation’s sheer size may appear for-
midable, keep in mind that the quantity in paren-
theses is just a numerical constant, and the variation
of energy from one level to the next is of the very
simple mathematical form 1/n2 . It was because of
this basic simplicity that the wavelength ratios like
20/27 occurred. The minus sign occurs because the
equation includes both the electron’s potential en-
ergy and its kinetic energy, and the standard choice
of a reference-level for the potential energy results
in negative values.
Along with the nice formulas came a whole new
set of subversive concepts: that nature is random
in certain ways, that the building blocks of nature
are both particles and waves, and that subatomic
particles do not follow well-defined trajectories as
they travel through space. Today these ridiculous-
sounding ideas are taken for granted by working physi-
cists, and we are so sure of the theory behind Bohr’s
equation that it is now used as one of the most accu-
rate ways of determining the mass of the electron. In
a previous lab, you measured the charge-to-mass ra-
tio of the electron, but like the experiment by Thom-
son on which it was based, that technique was un-
able to give the charge and mass separately. Mod-
ern techniques allow us to measure wavelengths of
light, and therefore energies of photons, with high
precision, so if all the other fundamental constants
in Bohr’s equation are known, we can solve for the
mass of the electron. This lab is really the only ex-
ample of a high-precision experiment that you’ll do
in this course — done correctly, it allows the de-
termination of the electron’s mass to five significant
figures!
Method
The apparatus you will use to observe the spectrum
of hydrogen is shown in the figure. For a given wave-
length, the grating produces diffracted light at many
different angles: a central zeroth-order line at θ = 0,
first-order lines on both the left and right, and so on
through higher-order lines at larger angles. The line
of order m occurs at an angle satisfying the equation
mλ = d sin θ.
To measure a wavelength, you will move the tele-
scope until the diffracted first-order image of the slit
is lined up with the telescope’s cross-hairs and then
read off the angle. Note that the angular scale on
the table of the spectroscope actually gives the angle
labeled a in the figure, not θ.
Sources of systematic errors
This is a high-precision experiment, and since you
will not be able to position the grating perfectly, it
is necessary to eliminate the effect of your imper-
fect placement. There are three ways in which your
placement could be off:
side-to-side displacement of the grating: This
doesn’t matter at all, because the grating is the
same everywhere across its width. It doesn’t
matter which part of the grating the light goes
through.
grating too far forward or backward: For in-
stance, if the grating was too close to the col-
limator, all the θ’s would be a little too big.
angle of the grating: The error caused by not
getting the grating perfectly perpendicular to
the collimator makes θ too big on one side and
too small on the other side.
There are also two more sources of systematic error:
factory’s calibration of d: The factory that
made the grating labeled it with a certain spac-
ing (in lines per millimeter) which can be con-
verted to d (center-to-center distance between
lines). But their manufacturing process is not
all that accurate, so the actual spacing of the
lines is a little different from what the label
says.
angular scale out of alignment: If the angular
scale is out of alignment, then all the angles
will be off by a constant amount.
Eliminating systematic errors
The first person who ever did this type of experi-
ment simply had to get skilled machinists to build
a setup that could be very precisely aligned. But
it turns out that once someone has accurately mea-
sured at least one wavelength of one emission line of
one element, there are a couple of tricks that allows
later spectroscopists to calibrate away all of these
sources of systematic error. The first trick is simply
to determine the spacing, d, of the grating using a
line whose wavelength is known. This doesn’t just
eliminate the error due to the factory’s calibration of
d, but also any other error that would tend to make
the diffraction errors either too widely or too closely
spaced. Further details of this calibration procedure
are given below.
143
The other trick is to observe the same line on both
the right and the left, and take θ to be half the differ-
ence between the two angles, i.e. θ = (αR − αL )/2.
Because you are subtracting two angles, any source
of error that adds a constant offset onto the angles
is eliminated.
Optics
The figure below shows the optics from the side, with
the telescope simply looking down the throat of the
collimator at θ = 0. You are actually using the op-
tics to let you see an image of the slit, not the tube
itself. The point of using a telescope is that it pro-
vides angular magnification, so that a small change
in angle can be seen visually.
A lens is used inside the collimator to make the light
from the slit into a parallel beam. This is important,
because we are using mλ = d sin θ to determine the
wavelength, but this equation was derived under the
assumption that the light was coming in as a parallel
beam. To make a parallel beam, the slit must be
located accurately at the focal point of the lens. This
adjustment should have already been done, but you
will check later and make sure. A further advantage
of using a lens in the collimator is that a telescope
only works for objects far away, not nearby objects
from which the reflected light is diverging strongly.
The lens in the collimator forms a virtual image at
infinity, on which the telescope can work.
The objective lens of the telescope focuses the light,
forming a real image inside the tube. The eyepiece
then acts like a magnifying glass to let you see the
image. In order to see the cross-hairs and the image
of the slit both in focus at the same time, the cross-
hairs must be located accurately at the focal point
of the objective, right on top of the image.
Setup
Turn on both gas discharge tubes right away, to let
them get warmed up.
Adjusting the optics at the start of the experiment is
vital. You do not want to fail to get the adjustments
right and then spend several frustrating hours trying
fruitlessly to make your observations.
First you must adjust the cross-hairs so they are at
the focal point of the objective. This can be done
by looking at an object far away, and sliding the
eyepiece in or out until both the object and the cross-
hairs can be viewed in focus at the same time. An
144 Lab 44 The Hydrogen Atom
object in the room is not far enough; you will either
need to look out the window at something across the
atrium, or down the length of the stockroom. If the
eyepiece is too far from the objective, a converging
beam will be coming into your eye, and you will not
be able to focus on it. If the eyepiece is too close
to the objective, the beam coming at you will be
diverging, and you will be able to focus your eyes on
the virtual image of the object, but you will not be
able to focus your eye simultaneously on the cross-
hairs. Once you think you are fairly close in your
adjustment, the most sensitive way to tweak it is to
move your head from side to side, and see if the cross-
hairs appear to move relative to the image, due to
parallax. If the image and the cross-hairs are at the
same point in space, you will not see any parallax.
If you cannot get the adjustment to work by moving
the eyepiece, you may need to move the crosshairs
in or out as well; this is done by sliding the tube
that is just outside the eyepiece tube. (You need to
use the small screwdriver to loosen the screw on the
side, which is recessed inside a hole. The hole may
have a dime-sized cover over it.)
Now put the Hg tube behind the collimator. Make
sure the brightest part of the gas discharge tube is
directly in front of the slits; you may need to use the
pieces of plywood to raise either the spectrometer or
the tube. Look at the slit through the telescope and
collimator without the diffraction grating in place.
At this point you should already have telescope ad-
justed correctly for viewing a parallel beam of in-
coming light. If the collimator is adjusted correctly
already, which it should be, then the slit is at the
focal point of the lens, the beam is parallel when it
emerges from the collimator, and you should see the
slit in focus. If it is not in focus, then you either
need to repeat your focusing of the telescope on a
distant object, or to get your instructor’s help with
adjusting the collimator. Do not try to adjust the
collimator without consulting your instructor, who
has the screwdriver needed to loosen a set screw that
holds it in place.
Observations
A Preliminary observations
Try holding the diffraction grating right in front of
your eye, and looking at the straight-filament incan-
descent light. You may have to mess around to find
out the right orientation of the grating — make sure
to note the correct orientation! Since the incandes-
cent bulb emits a continuous spectrum, you will see
two rainbows, one on each side, which are the first-
order diffraction patterns. You should also be able
to see at least one of the higher-order diffraction pat-
terns on each side.
Now try looking at the Hg tube and H tube through
the grating, without the spectrometer. This will give
you a rough idea of what kind of angles you should
be measuring with the spectrometer. Once in a while
we get a bad tube, so check if it looks like what you
expect.
B Calibration of the grating
Level the little pedestal in the center of the spec-
trometer using a spirit level and the three screws
underneath. Get the grating right-side up, and use
a laser to determine which side of the glass has the
grating on it. You can do this by putting a piece of
paper in contact with the far side of the grating and
seeing whether you observer a diffraction pattern.
Put the grating in the holder and place the holder
on the pedestal so that the grating side of the glass
is as close as possible to the center of the pedestal.
Adjust the grating by eye so that it is as nearly per-
pendicular as possible to the collimator tube.
Put the Hg tube in front of the collimator. You may
need to use the pieces of plywood to get the brightest
part of the discharge tube level with the collimators.
Referring back to the list of lines in the photoelectric
effect lab, make sure that you can find all of them
in the correct sequence — if they are not, then you
have probably found some first-order lines and some
second-order ones. If you can find some lines but
not others, use your head and search for them in
the right area based on where you found the lines
you did see. You may see various dim, fuzzy lights
through the telescope — don’t waste time chasing
these, which could be coming from other tubes or
from reflections. The real lines will be bright, clear
and well-defined.
Measure the m = −1, and 1 diffraction angles of
the bright violet line, whose wavelength is 404.769
nm. The vernier scale is similar to the one on the
vernier calipers you have already used in the first-
semester lab course. Your final reading for an angle
will consist of degrees plus minutes. (One minute of
arc, abbreviated 1’, is 1/60 of a degree.) The main
scale is marked every 30 minutes. Your initial, rough
reading is obtained by noting where the zero of the
vernier scale falls on the main scale, and is of the
form “xxx ◦ 0’ plus a little more” or “xxx ◦ 30’ plus
a little more.” Next, you should note which line on
the vernier scale lines up most closely with one of the
lines on the main scale. The corresponding number
on the vernier scale tells you how many minutes of
arc to add for the “plus a little more.”
Extract d using the equation mλ = d sin θ for the
first-order (m = 1) lines on both sides. Average
your three values together, and make sure this is
roughly consistent with the factory’s less accurate
value printed on the label on the box.
As a check on your calibration, determine the wave-
length of the bright yellow-green line (not the dim
blue-green one), and make sure you can reproduce
the previously measured value of 546.227 nm to within
a few tenths of a nm. Check this right away before
going on.
C Spectrum of hydrogen
Put the H tube in front of the collimator. As before,
make sure the brightest part of the tube is in front
of the collimator. First, just try to identify all the
first-order lines. There should be red, blue-green,
purple and violet lines.
Measure all the angles you will need in order to de-
termine the wavelengths of the four lines.
If there’s time, you may want to measure the lines in
second order in case there turns out to be a mistake
in one of your first-order data-points.
You should do your analysis in lab, since you may
find that you have made a mistake on one or more
of your data-points.
Prelab
The point of the prelab questions is to make sure you
understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it,
and how to avoid some common mistakes. If you
don’t know the answers, make sure to come to Al’s
Place before lab and get help! Otherwise you’re just
setting yourself up for failure in lab.
The week before you are to do the lab, briefly famil-
iarize yourself visually with the apparatus.
P1 When you determine the spacing, d, of the
grating from your calibration using the Hg tube, you
will want to check it against the approximate spac-
ing written on the grating, which is given in terms
of lines per mm. Figure out a method to convert d,
in meters, to lines per mm.
P2 Make sure you understand the first three vernier
readings in the figure, and then interpret the fourth
one.
P3 In what sequence do you expect to see the Hg
lines on each side? Make a drawing showing the
145
sequence of the angles as you go out from θ=0.
P4 The visible lines of hydrogen come from the
3 → 2, 4 → 2, 5 → 2, and 6 → 2 transitions. Based
on E = hf , which of these should correspond to
which colors?

Analysis
Throughout your analysis, remember that this is
a high-precision experiment, so you don’t want to
round off to less than five significant figures. See ap-
pendix 4 for information on how to do error analysis
for this type of high-precision line-fitting.
The energies of the four types of visible photons
emitted by a hydrogen atom equal En − E2 , where
n = 3, 4, 5, and 6. Graph Ephoton vs. 1/n2 , and
use the slope of the graph to find the proportion-
ality constant in the Bohr equation. Since this is
a high-precision experiment, a hand-drawn graph is
not good enough; you will want to use a computer
to make the graph. If any of the points deviate vis-
ibly from the line, then you’ve messed up; fix your
mistake, or throw out the data-point, if necessary.
From the measurement of the above proportionality
constant, extract the mass of the electron, with error
bars. We assume that the following constants are
already known:

e = 1.6022 × 10−19 C
k = 8.9876 × 109 N·m2 /C2
h = 6.6261 × 10−34 J·s

146 Lab 44 The Hydrogen Atom

 220 230 240

=221°0'
0 5 10 15 20 25 30

220 230 240

=221°30'
0 5 10 15 20 25 30

220 230 240

=221°40'
0 5 10 15 20 25 30

220 230 240

=?
0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Prelab question 2.

grating
Na or H
lamp
collimator θ
telescope
slit

The spectrometer

crosshairs
slit lens grating objective eyepiece

collimator telescope

Optics.

147
 Appendix 1: Format of Lab Writeups
Lab reports must be three pages or less, not counting of communication is the same here as it is in a pro-
your raw data. The format should be as follows: fessional paper. Do not be afraid to say so if your
results deviated from the ideal equations. After all,
Title
this is real life, and many of the equations we learn
Raw data — Keep actual observations separate from are only approximations, or are only valid in certain
what you later did with them. circumstances. However, (1) if you simply mess up,
These are the results of the measurements you take it is your responsibility to realize it in lab and do it
down during the lab, hence they come first. You again, right; (2) you will never get exact agreement
should clearly mark the beginning and end of your with theory, because measurements are not perfectly
raw data, so I don’t have to sort through many pages exact — the important issue is whether your results
to find your actual presentation of your work, below. agree with theory to roughly within the error bars.
Write your raw data directly in your lab book; don’t
Summary box (when appropriate)
write them on scratch paper and recopy them later.
Put your important numerical results in a box, with
Don’t use pencil. The point is to separate facts from
error bars where appropriate. There should nor-
opinions, observations from inferences.
mally be no more than two to four numbers here.
Procedure — Did you have to create your own Do not recapitulate your raw data here — this is for
methods for getting some of the raw data? your final results. Some labs do not have numerical
Do not copy down the procedure from the manual! results, or the numerical results are more appropri-
In this section, you only need to explain any meth- ately displayed in a graph, so those writeups need
ods you had to come up with on your own, or cases not have a summary box.
where the methods suggested in the handout didn’t
Comments and Conclusions — Use your calcu-
work and you had to do something different. Do not
lations to support your abstract.
discuss how you did your calculations here, just how
Finally, what can you conclude based on your mea-
you got your raw data.
surements? This is where you convince me that the
Calculations statements you made about your results in the ab-
Here is where you analyze your data. The more stract follow logically from your data and calcula-
clearly you show what you did, the easier it is for tions. If you have a suggestion for how to improve
me to give you partial credit if there is something the lab in the future, give it here.
wrong with your final result. If you have a long se-
ries of similar calculations, you may just show one
as a sample. If your prelab involved deriving equa-
tions that you will need, repeat them here without
the derivation. Try to lay out complicated calcula-
tions in a logical way, going straight down the page
and using indentation to make it easy to understand.
When doing algebra, try to keep everything in sym-
bolic form until the very end, when you will plug
in numbers. The two most important methods for
checking if you did a calculation correctly are (1)
make sure your results make sense, and (2) when
you plug in numbers, make sure the units work out
right, and that you did the right conversions of units.
Remember your significant figures!
Abstract — What did you find out?
The “abstract” of a scientific paper is a short para-
graph at the top that summarizes the experiment’s
results in a few sentences. Although you are not
professional scientists doing original work, the goal

148 Lab Appendix 1: Format of Lab Writeups

Model Lab Writeup
Comparison of Heavy and Light Falling Objects
- Galileo Galilei
Raw Data
(Galileo’s original, somewhat messy notes go here.)
He does not recopy the raw data to make them look
nicer, or mix calculations with raw data.
Calculations
From a point 100 cubits away from the base of the
tower, the top was at a 63 ◦ angle above horizontal.
The height of the tower was therefore
We do not have any data on feathers, but we sug-
gest that extremely light objects like feathers are
strongly affected by air resistance, which would be
nearly negligible for a cannonball. We think we saw
the cannon ball leading at the bottom by a slight
margin (1 hand’s breadth), but we could not be sure.
It is possible that the musket ball was just notice-
ably affected by air resistance. In any case, the Aris-
totelian theory is clearly wrong, since it predicts that
the cannon ball, which was 400 times heavier, would
have taken 400 times less time to hit the ground.

100 cubits × tan 63 ◦ = 200 cubits.

We estimated the accuracy of the 100-cubit horizon-
tal measurement to be +2 cubits, with random errors
mainly from the potholes in the street, which made
it difficult to lay the cubit-stick flat. If it was 102
cubits instead of 100, our result for the height of the
tower would have been 204 cubits, so our error bars
on the height are +4 cubits.

Abstract
We dropped a cannon ball weighing two hundred
pounds and a musket ball weighing half a pound si-
multaneously from the same height. Both hit the
ground at nearly the same time. This contradicts
Aristotle’s theory that heavy objects always fall faster
than light ones.

Summary Box

height of drop = 200 ± 4 cubits

amount by which cannon
ball was ahead at the bottom < 1 hand’s breadth

Procedure
We followed the procedure in the lab manual with
the following additions: (1) To make sure both ob-
jects fell at the same time, we put them side by side
on a board and then tipped the board. (2) We waited
until there was no wind.

Comments and Conclusions

It is common knowledge that a feather falls more
slowly than a stone, but our experiment shows that
heavy objects do not always fall much more rapidly.

149
 Appendix 2: Basic Error Analysis
No measurement is perfectly ex-
act.
One of the most common misconceptions about sci-
ence is that science is “exact.” It is always a strug-
gle to get beginning science students to believe that
no measurement is perfectly correct. They tend to
think that if a measurement is a little off from the
“true” result, it must be because of a mistake — if
a pro had done it, it would have been right on the
mark. Not true!
What scientists can do is to estimate just how far
off they might be. This type of estimate is called
an error bar, and is expressed with the ± symbol,
read “plus or minus.” For instance, if I measure my
dog’s weight to be 52 ± 2 pounds, I am saying that
my best estimate of the weight is 52 pounds, and I
think I could be off by roughly 2 pounds either way.
The term “error bar” comes from the conventional
way of representing this range of uncertainty of a
measurement on a graph, but the term is also used
when no graph is involved.
Some very good scientific work results in measure-
ments that nevertheless have large error bars. For
instance, the best measurement of the age of the uni-
verse is now 15 ± 5 billion years. That may not seem
like wonderful precision, but the people who did the
measurement knew what they were doing. It’s just
that the only available techniques for determining
the age of the universe are inherently poor.
Even when the techniques for measurement are very
precise, there are still error bars. For instance, elec-
trons act like little magnets, and the strength of a
very weak magnet such as an individual electron is
customarily measured in units called Bohr magne-
tons. Even though the magnetic strength of an elec-
tron is one of the most precisely measured quantities
ever, the best experimental value still has error bars:
1.0011596524 ± 0.0000000002 Bohr magnetons.
There are several reasons why it is important in sci-
entific work to come up with a numerical estimate
of your error bars. If the point of your experiment
is to test whether the result comes out as predicted
by a theory, you know there will always be some
disagreement, even if the theory is absolutely right.
You need to know whether the measurement is rea-
sonably consistent with the theory, or whether the
discrepancy is too great to be explained by the lim-
150 Lab Appendix 2: Basic Error Analysis
itations of the measuring devices.
Another important reason for stating results with er-
ror bars is that other people may use your measure-
ment for purposes you could not have anticipated.
If they are to use your result intelligently, they need
to have some idea of how accurate it was.
Error bars are not absolute limits.
Error bars are not absolute limits. The true value
may lie outside the error bars. If I got a better scale I
might find that the dog’s weight is 51.3±0.1 pounds,
inside my original error bars, but it’s also possible
that the better result would be 48.7 ± 0.1 pounds.
Since there’s always some chance of being off by a
somewhat more than your error bars, or even a lot
more than your error bars, there is no point in be-
ing extremely conservative in an effort to make ab-
solutely sure the true value lies within your stated
range. When a scientist states a measurement with
error bars, she is not saying “If the true value is
outside this range, I deserve to be drummed out of
the profession.” If that was the case, then every sci-
entist would give ridiculously inflated error bars to
avoid having her career ended by one fluke out of
hundreds of published results. What scientists are
communicating to each other with error bars is a
typical amount by which they might be off, not an
upper limit.
The important thing is therefore to define error bars
in a standard way, so that different people’s state-
ments can be compared on the same footing. By
convention, it is usually assumed that people esti-
mate their error bars so that about two times out of
three, their range will include the true value (or the
results of a later, more accurate measurement with
an improved technique).
Random and systematic errors.
Suppose you measure the length of a sofa with a
tape measure as well as you can, reading it off to
the nearest millimeter. If you repeat the measure-
ment again, you will get a different answer. (This
is assuming that you don’t allow yourself to be psy-
chologically biased to repeat your previous answer,
and that 1 mm is about the limit of how well you
can see.) If you kept on repeating the measurement,
you might get a list of values that looked like this:
203.1 cm 203.4 202.8 203.3 203.2
203.4 203.1 202.9 202.9 203.1
Variations of this type are called random errors, be-
cause the result is different every time you do the
measurement.
The effects of random errors can be minimized by av-
eraging together many measurements. Some of the
measurements included in the average are too high, small random errors,
and some are too low, so the average tends to be small systematic error
better than any individual measurement. The more
measurements you average in, the more precise the
average is. The average of the above measurements
is 203.1 cm. Averaging together many measurements
cannot completely eliminate the random errors, but
it can reduce them.
On the other hand, what if the tape measure was a
little bit stretched out, so that your measurements
always tended to come out too low by 0.3 cm? That
would be an example of a systematic error. Since
the systematic error is the same every time, aver-
large random errors,
aging didn’t help us to get rid of it. You probably small systematic error
had no easy way of finding out exactly the amount
of stretching, so you just had to suspect that there
might a systematic error due to stretching of the
tape measure.
Some scientific writers make a distinction between
the terms “accuracy” and “precision.” A precise
measurement is one with small random errors, while
an accurate measurement is one that is actually close
to the true result, having both small random errors
and small systematic errors. Personally, I find the
distinction is made more clearly with the more mem-
small random errors,
orable terms “random error” and “systematic error.”
large systematic error
The ± sign used with error bars normally implies
that random errors are being referred to, since ran-
dom errors could be either positive or negative, whereas
miles by gallons, to get your final result. When you
systematic errors would always be in the same direc-
communicate your result to someone else, they are
tion.
completely uninterested in how accurately you mea-
sured the number of miles and how accurately you
measured the gallons. They simply want to know
The goal of error analysis how accurate your final result was. Was it 22 ± 2
Very seldom does the final result of an experiment mi/gal, or 22.137 ± 0.002 mi/gal?
come directly off of a clock, ruler, gauge or meter.
Of course the accuracy of the final result is ulti-
It is much more common to have raw data consist-
mately based on and limited by the accuracy of your
ing of direct measurements, and then calculations
raw data. If you are off by 0.2 gallons in your mea-
based on the raw data that lead to a final result.
surement of the amount of gasoline, then that amount
As an example, if you want to measure your car’s
of error will have an effect on your final result. We
gas mileage, your raw data would be the number of
say that the errors in the raw data “propagate” through
gallons of gas consumed and the number of miles
the calculations. When you are requested to do “er-
you went. You would then do a calculation, dividing
ror analysis” in a lab writeup, that means that you

151
are to use the techniques explained below to deter-
mine the error bars on your final result. There are
two sets of techniques you’ll need to learn:
techniques for finding the accuracy of your raw
data
techniques for using the error bars on your raw
data to infer error bars on your final result
Estimating random errors in raw
data
We now examine three possible techniques for es-
timating random errors in your original measure-
ments, illustrating them with the measurement of
the length of the sofa.
Method #1: Guess
If you’re measuring the length of the sofa with a
metric tape measure, then you can probably make a
reasonable guess as to the precision of your measure-
ments. Since the smallest division on the tape mea-
sure is one millimeter, and one millimeter is also near
the limit of your ability to see, you know you won’t
be doing better than ± 1 mm, or 0.1 cm. Making al-
lowances for errors in getting tape measure straight
and so on, we might estimate our random errors to
be a couple of millimeters.
Guessing is fine sometimes, but there are at least two
ways that it can get you in trouble. One is that stu-
dents sometimes have too much faith in a measuring
device just because it looks fancy. They think that
a digital balance must be perfectly accurate, since
unlike a low-tech balance with sliding weights on it,
it comes up with its result without any involvement
by the user. That is incorrect. No measurement is
perfectly accurate, and if the digital balance only
displays an answer that goes down to tenths of a
gram, then there is no way the random errors are
any smaller than about a tenth of a gram.
Another way to mess up is to try to guess the error
bars on a piece of raw data when you really don’t
have enough information to make an intelligent esti-
mate. For instance, if you are measuring the range
of a rifle, you might shoot it and measure how far
the bullet went to the nearest centimeter, conclud-
ing that your random errors were only ±1 cm. In
reality, however, its range might vary randomly by
fifty meters, depending on all kinds of random fac-
tors you don’t know about. In this type of situation,
you’re better off using some other method of esti-
mating your random errors.
152 Lab Appendix 2: Basic Error Analysis
Method #2: Repeated Measurements and the Two-
Thirds Rule
If you take repeated measurements of the same thing,
then the amount of variation among the numbers can
tell you how big the random errors were. This ap-
proach has an advantage over guessing your random
errors, since it automatically takes into account all
the sources of random error, even ones you didn’t
know were present.
Roughly speaking, the measurements of the length
of the sofa were mostly within a few mm of the av-
erage, so that’s about how big the random errors
were. But let’s make sure we are stating our error
bars according to the convention that the true result
will fall within our range of errors about two times
out of three. Of course we don’t know the “true”
result, but if we sort out our list of measurements
in order, we can get a pretty reasonable estimate of
our error bars by taking half the range covered by
the middle two thirds of the list. Sorting out our list
of ten measurements of the sofa, we have
202.8 cm 202.9 202.9 203.1 203.1
203.1 203.2 203.3 203.4 203.4
Two thirds of ten is about 6, and the range covered
by the middle six measurements is 203.3 cm - 202.9
cm, or 0.4 cm. Half that is 0.2 cm, so we’d esti-
mate our error bars as ±0.2 cm. The average of the
measurements is 203.1 cm, so your result would be
stated as 203.1 ± 0.2 cm.
One common mistake when estimating random er-
rors by repeated measurements is to round off all
your measurements so that they all come out the
same, and then conclude that the error bars were
zero. For instance, if we’d done some overenthu-
siastic rounding of our measurements on the sofa,
rounding them all off to the nearest cm, every single
number on the list would have been 203 cm. That
wouldn’t mean that our random errors were zero!
The same can happen with digital instruments that
automatically round off for you. A digital balance
might give results rounded off to the nearest tenth of
a gram, and you may find that by putting the same
object on the balance again and again, you always
get the same answer. That doesn’t mean it’s per-
fectly precise. Its precision is no better than about
±0.1 g.
Method #3: Repeated Measurements and the Stan-
dard Deviation
The most widely accepted method for measuring er-
ror bars is called the standard deviation. Here’s how
the method works, using the sofa example again.
(1) Take the average of the measurements. Probability of deviations
average = 203.1 cm You can see that although 0.2 cm is a good figure
for the typical size of the deviations of the mea-
surements of the length of the sofa from the aver-
(2) Find the difference, or “deviation,” of each mea-
age, some of the deviations are bigger and some are
surement from the average.
smaller. Experience has shown that the following
0.0 cm 0.3 -0.3 0.2 0.1 probability estimates tend to hold true for how fre-
0.3 0.0 -0.2 -0.2 0.0 quently deviations of various sizes occur:
(3) Take the square of each deviation.
< 1 standard deviation about 2 times out of 3
0.00 cm2 0.09 0.09 0.04 0.01
0.09 0.00 0.04 0.04 0.00 1-2 standard deviations about 1 time out of 4
(4) Average together all the squared deviations. 2-3 standard deviations about 1 time out of 20

average = 0.04 cm2 3-4 standard deviations about 1 time out of

500

(5) Take the square root. This is the standard devi-

ation. Precision of an average
standard deviation = 0.2 cm We decided that the standard deviation of our mea-
surements of the length of the couch was 0.2 cm, i.e.
If we’re using the symbol x for the length of the the precision of each individual measurement was
couch, then the result for the length of the couch about 0.2 cm. But I told you that the average, 203.1
would be stated as x = 203.1 ± 0.2 cm, or x = 203.1 cm, was more precise than any individual measure-
cm and σx = 0.2 cm. Since the Greek letter sigma ment. How precise is the average? The answer is
(σ) is used as a symbol for the standard deviation, a that the standard deviation of the average equals
standard deviation is often referred to as “a sigma.”
standard deviation of one measurement
Step (3) may seem somewhat mysterious. Why not √ .
just skip it? Well, if you just went straight from number of measurements
step (2) to step (4), taking a plain old average of That means that you can theoretically measure any-
the deviations, you would find that the average is thing to any desired precision, simply by averaging
zero! The positive and negative deviations always together enough measurements. In reality, no mat-
cancel out exactly. Of course, you could just take ter how small you make your random error, you can’t
absolute values instead of squaring the deviations. get rid of systematic errors by averaging, so after a
The main advantage of doing it the way I’ve outlined while it becomes pointless to take any more mea-
above are that it is a standard method, so people will surements.
know how you got the answer. (Another advantage
is that the standard deviation as I’ve described it
has certain nice mathematical properties.)
A common mistake when using the standard devi-
ation technique is to take too few measurements.
For instance, someone might take only two measure-
ments of the length of the sofa, and get 203.4 cm
and 203.4 cm. They would then infer a standard de-
viation of zero, which would be unrealistically small
because the two measurements happened to come
out the same.
In the following material, I’ll use the term “stan-
dard deviation” as a synonym for “error bar,” but
that does not imply that you must always use the
standard deviation method rather than the guessing
method or the 2/3 rule.

153
 Appendix 3: Propagation of Errors
Propagation of the error from a nificant errors in the density. The following more
general method can be applied in such cases:
single variable
(1) Change one of the raw measurements, say m, by
In the previous appendix we looked at techniques one standard deviation, and see by how much the
for estimating the random errors of raw data, but final result, ρ, changes. Use the symbol Qm for the
now we need to know how to evaluate the effects of absolute value of that change.
those random errors on a final result calculated from
the raw data. For instance, suppose you are given a m = 1.658 g gave ρ = 2.690 g/cm3
cube made of some unknown material, and you are m = 1.661 g gives ρ = 2.695 g/cm3
asked to determine its density. Density is defined Qm = change in ρ = 0.005 g/cm3
as ρ = m/v (ρ is the Greek letter “rho”), and the
volume of a cube with edges of length b is v = b3 , so (2) Repeat step (1) for the other raw measurements.
the formula b = 0.851 cm gave ρ = 2.690 g/cm3
ρ = m/b3 b = 0.852 cm gives ρ = 2.681 g/cm3

will give you the density if you measure the cube’s Qb = change in ρ = 0.009 g/cm3
mass and the length of its sides. Suppose you mea- (3) The standard deviation of ρ is given by the for-
sure the mass very accurately as m = 1.658±0.003 g, mula q
but you know b = 0.85±0.06 cm with only two digits σρ = Q2m + Q2b ,
of precision. Your best value for ρ is 1.658 g/(0.85 cm)3 =
2.7 g/cm3 .
yielding σρ = 0.01 g/cm3 .
How can you figure out how precise this value for ρ
The final result is ρ = 2.69 ± 0.01 g/cm3 .
is? We’ve already made sure not to keep more than
twosignificant figures for ρ, since the less accurate
piece of raw data had only two significant figures.
We expect the last significant figure to be somewhat
uncertain, but we don’t yet know how uncertain. A
simple method for this type of situation is simply to
change the raw data by one sigma, recalculate the
result, and see how much of a change occurred. In
this example, we add 0.06 cm to b for comparison.
b = 0.85 cm gave ρ = 2.7 g/cm3
b = 0.91 cm gives ρ = 2.0 g/cm3
The resulting change in the density was 0.7 g/cm3 ,
so that is our estimate for how much it could have
been off by:
ρ = 2.7 ± 0.7 g/cm3 .

Propagation of the error from sev-

eral variables
What about the more general case in which no one
piece of raw data is clearly the main source of error?
For instance, suppose we get a more accurate mea-
surement of the edge of the cube, b = 0.851 ± 0.001
cm. In percentage terms, the accuracies of m and
b are roughly comparable, so both can cause sig-

154 Lab Appendix 3: Propagation of Errors

155
 Appendix 4: Graphing
Review of Graphing
Many of your analyses will involve making graphs.
A graph can be an efficient way of presenting data
visually, assuming you include all the information
needed by the reader to interpret it. That means
labeling the axes and indicating the units in paren-
theses, as in the example. A title is also helpful.
Make sure that distances along the axes correctly
represent the differences in the quantity being plot-
ted. In the example, it would not have been correct
to space the points evenly in the horizontal direction,
because they were not actually measured at equally
spaced points in time.
motion of a falling object
200
190
position (cm)
180
170
160
150
10 12 14 16 18
time (s)
Graphing on a Computer
Making graphs by hand in your lab notebook is fine,
but in some cases you may find it saves you time to
do graphs on a computer. For computer graphing,
I recommend OpenOffice, which is free, open-source
software. It’s installed on the computers in rooms
416 and 418. Because OpenOffice is free, you can
download it and put it on your own computer at
home without paying money. If you already know
Excel, it’s very similar — you almost can’t tell it’s
a different program.
Here’s a brief rundown on using OpenOffice:
From the Start menu, choose OpenOffice, and
calc.
Type in your x values in the first column, and
your y values in the second column.
156 Lab Appendix 4: Graphing
Select those two columns using the mouse.
From the Insert menu, do Chart.
Fitting a Straight Line to a Graph
by Hand
Often in this course you will end up graphing some
data points, fitting a straight line through them with
a ruler, and extracting the slope.
In this example, panel (a) shows the data, with error
bars on each data point. Panel (b) shows a best
fit, drawn by eye with a ruler. The slope of this
best fit line is 100 cm/s. Note that the slope should
be extracted from the line itself, not from two data
points. The line is more reliable than any pair of
individual data points.
In panel (c), a “worst believable fit” line has been
drawn, which is as different in slope as possible from
the best fit, while still pretty much staying consis-
tent the data (going through or close to most of the
error bars). Its slope is 60 cm/s. We can therefore
estimate that the precision of our slope is +40 cm/s.
There is a tendency when drawing a “worst believ-
able fit” line to draw instead an “unbelievably crazy
fit” line, as in panel (d). The line in panel (d), with
a very small slope, is just not believable compared
to the data — it is several standard deviations away
from most of the data points.
Fitting a Straight Line to a Graph
on a Computer
It’s also possible to fit a straight line to a graph using
computer software such as Excel, or the free Excel
clone included with the OpenOffice suite. Gener-
ally I recommend doing it by hand, because you’re
more likely to understand exactly what’s happen-
ing. However, lab 44 (the hydrogen atom) is a high-
precision lab, and it’s not possible to get a suffi-
ciently accurate result by hand.
Most business-oriented software, including Excel, doesn’t
give you any way of determining the error bars on
your fit. One way of handling this for lab 44 is to
artificially change one of your data points to reflect
your estimate of how much it could have been off,
 800
(a)
600
x (cm)
400

200

0
0 2 4 6 8
t (s)
800
(c)
600
x (cm)
400

200

0
0 2 4 6 8
t (s)
800
(b)
600
x (cm)
400

200

0
0 2 4 6 8
t (s)
800
(d)
600
x (cm)
400

200

0
0 2 4 6 8
t (s)

and then redo the fit and find the new slope. The
change in the slope tells you the error in the slope
that results from the error in this data-point. You
can either repeat this for the other three point and
proceed as in appendix 3, or simply change one √of the
ones on the ends and multiply the error by 4 = 2
on the assumption that all four contributions to the
error are similar (which is actually a conservative as-
sumption, since the points on the ends are the ones
that have the most effect on the slope).

157
 Appendix 5: Finding Power Laws from Data
For many people, it is hard to imagine how scientists
originally came up with all the equations that can
now be found in textbooks. This appendix explains
one method for finding equations to describe data
from an experiment.
Linear and nonlinear relationships
When two variables x and y are related by an equa-
tion of the form
y = kx ,
where k is a constant (does not depend on x or y),
we say that a linear relationship exists between x
and y. As an example, a harp has many strings of
different lengths which are all of the same thickness
and made of the same material. If the mass of a
string is m and its length is L, then the equation
m = kL
will hold, where k is the mass per unit length, with
units of kg/m. Many quantities in the physical world
are instead related in a nonlinear fashion, i.e. the
relationship does not fit the above definition of lin-
earity. For instance, the mass of a steel ball bearing
is related to its diameter by an equation of the form
m = kd3 , The difference between each successive value of h is
where k is the mass per unit volume, or density, of
steel. Doubling the diameter does not double the
mass, it increases it by a factor of eight.
It’s fairly easy to figure out what’s going on just
by staring at the numbers a little. Every time you
increase the height of the animal by a factor of 10, its
food consumption goes up by a factor of 100. This
implies that f must be proportional to the square of
h, or, displaying the proportionality constant k = 3
explicitly,
f = 3h2 .
Use of logarithms
Now we have found k = 3 and p = 2 by inspection,
but that would be much more difficult to do if these
weren’t all round numbers. A more generally appli-
cable method to use when you suspect a power-law
relationship is to take logarithms of both variables.
It doesn’t matter at all what base you use, as long as
you use the same base for both variables. Since the
data above were increasing by powers of 10, we’ll use
logarithms to the base 10, but personally I usually
just use natural logs for this kind of thing.
log10 h log10 f
shrew 0 0.48
rat 1 2.48
capybara 2 4.48
This is a big improvement, because differences are
so much simpler to work mentally with than ratios.
1, while fincreases by 2 units each time. The fact
that the logs of the f 0 s increase twice as quickly
is the same as saying that f is proportional to the
square of h.

Power laws Log-log plots

Both examples above are of the general mathemati- Even better, the logarithms can be interpreted visu-
cal form ally using a graph, as shown here. The slope of this
y = kxp , type of log-log graph gives the power p. Although
it is also possible to extract the proportionality con-
which is known as a power law. In the case of a stant, k, from such a graph, the proportionality con-
linear relationship, p = 1. Consider the (made-up) stant is usually much less interesting than p. For
experimental data shown in the table. instance, we would suspect that if p = 2 for rodents,
h=height of rodent f =food eaten per then it might also equal 2 for frogs or ants. Also,
at the shoulder day (g) p would be the same regardless of what units we
(cm) used to measure the variables. The constant k, how-
shrew 1 3 ever, would be different if we used different units,
rat 10 300 and would also probably be different for other types
capybara 100 30,000 of animals.

158 Lab Appendix 5: Finding Power Laws from Data

 5

4
slope=2.0
3
log f
2

0
0 1 2
log h

159
 Appendix 6: Using the Photogate
The photogate
The photogate is a U-shaped thing about 10 cm
across, with an invisible infrared beam going across
the gap of the U, like the infrared beam of a TV re-
mote control. When something blocks the beam, an
electrical signal is sent through a wire to the com-
puter. We will use the photogate by sending moving
objects through it. The computer tells you for how
long the photogate was blocked, allowing you to cal-
culate the speed of the object as it passed through.
Using the data
Often you may find that the software rounds off too
severely. For instance, when you’re in the mode for
measuring how long the photogate was blocked, you
want more than the three decimal places it offers by
default in the Delta-T column. To fix this, double-
click on the title of the Delta-T column, and select
a greater number of significant figures.

Using the software

Make sure the interface box is turned on before you
boot up the computer.
From the Start menu at the lower left corner of the
screen, run Logger Pro (in Programs>Vernier Soft-
ware). It asks for permission to scan for the right
port — say OK. (If it complains that it can’t find the
port, you may be able to fix the problem if you quit
Logger Pro, power the interface off and on again,
and then get back in Logger Pro and try again.)
The next step depends on what mode you are using
the software in.

Using the software in different modes

For various labs, there will be three different modes
in which we’ll use the software. From the File menu,
do Open, and locate the file you need:

Mode for measuring how long the photogate

was blocked: Probes & Sensors > Photogate
> One Gate Timer

Mode for measuring the time between two in-

terruptions of the photogate: ...

Mode for measuring the period of a pendulum:

Probes & Sensors > Photogate > Pendulum

If there is no button for collecting data, it’s because

the interface box wasn’t turned on when you booted
up. Reboot.

160 Lab Appendix 6: Using the Photogate

161
 Appendix 7: Using a Multimeter
The most convenient instrument for measuring cur- tor. The connections to the meter should be made
rents and voltage differences is called a digital mul- at the “common” socket (“COM”) and at the socket
timeter (DMM), or simply a multimeter. “Digital” labeled “V” for Volts.
means that it shows the thing being measured on a
calculator-style LCD display. “Multimeter” means
that it can measure current, voltage, or resistance, Blowing a fuse is not a big deal.
depending on how you have it set up. (Sometimes
If you hook up your multimeter incorrectly, it is pos-
when two physics lab classes are doing electronic
sible to blow a fuse inside. This is especially likely to
measurements simultaneously, we’ll break out the
happen if you set up the meter to measure current
old analog meters, which have a needle indicator
(meaning it has a small internal resistance) but hook
rather than a numerical display.) Since we have
it up in parallel with a resistor, creating a large volt-
many different types of multimeters, these instruc-
age difference across it. Blowing a fuse is not a big
tions only cover the standard rules and methods that
problem, but it can be frustrating if you don’t real-
apply to all such meters. You may need to check with
ize what’s happened. If your meter suddenly stops
your instructor regarding a few of the particulars for
working, you should check the fuse.
the meter you have available.

Measuring current
When using a meter to measure current, the meter
must be in series with the circuit, so that every elec-
tron going by is forced to go through the meter and
contribute to a current in the meter. Many multime-
ters have more than one scale for measuring a given
thing. For instance, a meter may have a milliamp
scale and an amp scale. One is used for measuring
small currents and the other for large currents. You
may not be sure in advance what scale is appropri-
ate, but that’s not big problem — once everything
is hooked up, you can try different scales and see
what’s appropriate. Use the switch or buttons on the
front to select one of the current scales. The connec-
tions to the meter should be made at the “common”
socket (“COM”) and at the socket labeled “A” for
Amperes.

Measuring voltage
For a voltage measurement, use the switch or but-
tons on the front to select one of the voltage scales.
(If you forget, and hook up the meter while the
switch is still on a current scale, you may blow a
fuse.) You always measure voltage differences with
a meter. One wire connects the meter to one point
in the circuit, and the other connects the meter to
another point in a circuit. The meter measures the
difference in voltage between those two points. For
example, to measure the voltage across a resistor,
you must put the meter in parallel with the resis-

162 Lab Appendix 7: Using a Multimeter

163
 Appendix 8: High Voltage Safety Checklist
Before beginning a lab using high voltages, make
sure you understand these points, initial them, and
show your safety checklist to your instructor. If you
don’t understand something, ask your instructor for
clarification.
Never work with high voltages by yourself.
Do not leave HV wires exposed - make sure
there is insulation.
Turn the high-voltage supply to standby (shut-
ting off the voltage) while working on the circuit.
When the voltage is on, avoid using both hands
at once to touch the apparatus. Keep one hand in
your pocket while using the other to touch the ap-
paratus. That way, it is unlikely that you will get a
shock across your chest.
It is possible for an electric current to cause
your hand to clench involuntarily. If you observe this
happening to your partner, do not try to pry their
hand away, because you could become incapacitated
as well — simply turn off the switch or pull the plug
out of the wall.

164 Lab Appendix 8: High Voltage Safety Checklist

165
 Appendix 9: Laser Safety Checklist
Before beginning a lab using lasers, make sure you
understand these points, initial them, and show your
safety checklist to your instructor. If you don’t un-
derstand something, ask your instructor for clarifi-
cation.
The laser can damage your eyesight perma-
nently if the beam goes in your eye.
When you’re not using the laser, turn it off or
put something in front of it.
Keep it below eye level and keep the beam hor-
izontal. Don’t bend or squat so that your eye is near
the level of the beam.
Keep the beam confined to your own lab bench.
Whenever possible, orient your setup so that the
beam is going toward the wall. If the beam is going
to go off of your lab bench, use a backpack or a box
to block the beam.
Don’t let the beam hit shiny surfaces such as
faucets, because unpredictable reflections can result.

166 Lab Appendix 9: Laser Safety Checklist

167
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