Lab Manual

B. Crowell and V. Roundy

Physics Department, Fullerton College

(c) 1999 B. Crowell and V. Roundy

 Contents
1 Interactions ............................................... 4
2 Free Fall ..................................................... 8
3 Newton’s Second Law .............................. 12
4 Air Friction ............................................... 14
5 Acceleration In Two Dimensions ............. 16
6A Vector Addition of Forces ........................ 18
6B Vector Addition of Forces ........................ 20
7 Circular Motion ...................................... 22
8 Conservation Laws .................................. 24
9 Conservation of Energy ........................... 28
10 Conservation of Momentum ................... 32
11 Torque..................................................... 34
12 The Moment of Inertia ........................... 36
13 The Pendulum ........................................ 40
14 Standing Waves ....................................... 42
15 Resonances of Sound ............................... 44
16 Resonance ............................................... 48
17 Numerical Simulation ............................. 52
18 Kinematics .............................................. 54
19 Static Electricity ...................................... 56
20 The Oscilloscope ..................................... 58
21 Electric Fields and Potentials ................... 62
22 Electrical Resistance ................................ 66
23 Kirchoff ’s Rules ....................................... 70
24 The Speed of Sound ................................ 72
25 RC Circuits ............................................. 74
26 Magnetism .............................................. 78
27 Refraction and Images ............................. 82
28 Geometric Optics .................................... 84
29 Wave Optics ............................................ 86
30 Polarization ............................................. 90
31 Electron Diffraction ................................ 94
32 The Charge to Mass Ratio of the Electron98
33 The Photoelectric Effect ........................ 102
35 Faraday’s Law ........................................ 112
36 LRC Circuits ........................................ 114
37 Electromagnetism .................................. 118
Format of Lab Writeups ................................ 120
Appendix A: Basic Error Analysis .................. 122
Appendix B: Propagation of Errors ............... 129
Appendix C: Graphing .................................. 132
Appendix D: Using Mac Curve Fit ............... 134
Appendix E: Finding Power Laws from Data 136
Appendix F: Using the Photogate.................. 138
Appendix G: Laser Safety Checklist .............. 140
Appendix H: High Voltage Safety Checklist .. 141
Appendix I: Using a Multimeter ................... 142
3
 1 Interactions
Apparatus
iron magnet (1/group)
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
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 because 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. Aristotle’s explanations
were accepted by Arabs and Europeans for two
thousand years, but beginning in the Renais-
sance, his ideas began to be modified drastically.
Today, Aristotelian physics is discussed mainly by
physics teachers, who often find that their
students intuitively believe the Aristotelian
world-view and strongly resist the completely
different version of physics that is now consid-
ered 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.
4 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
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 ball being
pushed outlines two relationships involving 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
involved 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. (If you don’t have your two lab note-
books yet, staple today’s raw data into your notebook
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, shown in boxed text.
A. Comparison of two magnets’ strengths
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. Pick two different magnets.
Label your magnets A and B, and try to find out
the ratio of their strengths by this method. 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 angle, 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.
If the magnets turn out to have very similar
strengths, try to find a replacement for one of them
that is either significantly stronger or significantly
weaker.
magnet Orient your bar magnet
this way. With no magnet
nearby, the compass
points to magnetic north
(dashed arrow). The
magnet deflects the
compass to a new
direction. With the disk-
shaped magnet, place it
as if it was rolling toward
the compass.
compass
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
order 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.
Lab 1 - Interactions
pencil
small disk magnet
taped to pencil
bar magnet
C. Measurement of interactions between two
magnets
Once you have your data from parts A through C,
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.
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 bottom
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 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
hypothesis; 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, your hypothesis about what will happen with
the two balances, and your plan for how you do error
5
analysis.
Now set up the experiment described above with
two balances. Since we are interested in the changse 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 balances
to reach equilibrium at the same time, because sliding
the weights on one balance can cause its magnet to
move up or down, tipping the other balance. There-
fore, while you take a reading from one balance, you
need to immobilize the other in the horizontal 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 opposite
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 magnets
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 Appendix A at the back of the
lab manual. Think about how you can get an estimate
of the random errors in your measurements.
D. Measurement of interactions involving
objects 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
6 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
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 above.
Self-Check
Do all your analysis in lab, including error analysis
for part C. Basic error analysis is discussed in Appen-
dix A; 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 address
the point of the lab. If you feel like you don’t under-
stand why you were doing any of this, then you were
missing out on your educational experience! 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 under-
standing the answers to all the prelab questions; if you
turn in partial answers or answers you’re unsure 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.
(3) Check the schedule to see what lab you need to
prepare for next week — it probably isn’t lab 2.
7
 2 Free Fall
Apparatus
Part A (two stations):
Behr free-fall column and weight
plumb bob
spark generator (CENCO)
paper tape
switch for electromagnet
Part B (two stations):
vertical plank with electromagnets
steel balls (2/station)
Macintosh
microphone
Goals
Part A: Find out whether it is ∆v/∆x or ∆v/∆t that is
constant for an object accelerating under the
influence of gravity.
Part B: Whichever of those quantities turns out to
be constant, measure it accurately.
Introduction
A fundamental and difficult problem in pre-
Newtonian physics was the motion of falling bodies.
Aristotle 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 Renais-
sance 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 Saxony. Galileo started out
thinking they were both constant, then realized this was
mathematically impossible, and finally determined
from experiments that it was ∆v/∆t, now called accel-
eration, that was constant.
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
8 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
object to fall was very short. Galileo was able to make
settle the issue because he figured out how to use a
pendulum to measure time accurately, and also came
up with the idea of effectively slowing down the
motion by studying objects rolling down an inclined
plane, rather than objects falling vertically. He then
found how to extrapolate from the case of an object
rolling down an inclined plane at an angle θ to the
ideal case of θ=90°, which would be the same as free
fall. Galileo’s task would have been a lot simpler if he’d
had accurate enough devices for measuring time,
because then he could have simply carried out measure-
ments for objects falling vertically. That’s what you’ll
do today.
Part A
Setup
The apparatus consists of a 2-meter tall column
with a paper tape running down it. A weight is held at
the 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
magnet, which does not require
power.) A spark generator 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 pro-
duced only briefly, at regular
intervals of 1/60 of a second. 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 wire
wire paper tape
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.

Part B
In this part of the lab, you will measure g, the
acceleration of an object in free fall, using electronic
timing techniques. The idea of the method is that you’ll
have two steel balls hanging underneath electromagnets
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 impossible to make good enough measurements
with stopwatch. Instead, you will record the sounds of
the two balls’ impacts on the floor using the Macintosh.
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 measure 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.
Two thumps, as recorded on the
computer through the microphone.
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 essen-
tially 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.

Lab 2 - Free Fall 9

Using the computer software
First let’s see how to record yourself on the com-
puter 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 previ-
ously 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 statement,
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 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 volume of the speaker in
software, from the Sound control panel under the apple
menu.
Sometimes you are not sure which wiggles in the
visual 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
sound before
trimming
correctly trimmed sound
incorrectly
trimmed
10
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 silenct segment at the begin-
ning, you first must select the segment. To select it,
position 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 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 clapping your
hands five seconds apart, and then trimming 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
displaying the time numerically. In the example,
that’s not a decimal point after the 1 but a colon,
signifying 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
enjoy 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.
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
Analysis constant, in which case g should be defined as ∆v/∆t .
Derive an equation for g in terms of the quantities
Part A
you’ll measure in part B, which are h1, h2, and the time
Since the sparks start before you release the electro-
interval t2-t1. The point of the lab is to measure g, so
magnet, the first dot at the very top of the tape will give
don’t just say “well of course g is 9.8 m/s2.” Numerical
the starting position of the weight.
check: If h1=0.100 m, h2=1.500 m, and t2-t1=0.411 s,
If you consider any adjacent pair of dots (avoiding then your equation should give g=9.77 m/s2.
the top and bottom ones), then measuring the distance
P2. How will you tell from your graphs in part A
between them allows you to calculate an approximation
whether it is ∆v/∆x or ∆v/∆t that is constant, or neither
to the speed of the weight, which you can think of as
of them?
being its speed at the point half-way between the two
dots.
Make one plot of speed versus time and another of
speed versus distance, preferably using a computer,
since you will have about thirty data points, and it
would be tedious to plot them all by hand.
Determine whether your data are consistent with
constant ∆v/∆x or ∆v/∆t or neither. Whichever one it
is that is constant, call it the acceleration of gravity, g.
Extract g from the slope of the appropriate 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 equation (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. Because the graphing for
part A is time-consuming, you can turn in
copies of the same graph for your whole group.
(Normally this is not allowed.) Read Appendix
B for information on how to do error analysis
with propagation of errors; get help from your
instructor if necessary.

Prelab
P1. Suppose you find in part A that ∆v/∆t is

Lab 2 - Free Fall 11

 3 Newton’s Second Law
Apparatus students got stuck at the very beginning, because my
drawing showed the monkey initially being lower than
pulley
the other mass. They thought that the only way their
string equal masses could be at rest was if they were “bal-
weight holders, not tied to string anced” at the same height, and they expected that if
two-meter stick they were initially positioned as shown, and the
slotted weights monkey just held on, the monkey would go up and the
other mass would go down, until they were side by
stopwatch
side. Drawing them at rest at unequal heights implied
foam rubber cushions to them that the masses were “unbalanced,” so they
thought they were faced with given information that
Goal was inconsistent.
Test Newton’s second law for unequal weights
Here’s your chance to thoroughly explore this type
hanging from a pulley.
of situation, and get one step closer to thoroughly
Introduction understanding Newton’s second law.
We physics teachers tend to assume too often that a
single, generally correct statement such as Newton’s
Observations
Set up unequal masses on the two sides of the
second law, Ftotal=ma, is capable of wiping out with one
pulley, and determine the resulting acceleration by
blow a huge number incorrect expectations held by our
measuring how long it takes for the masses to move a
students about physical phenomena. In reality, stu-
certain distance. Although you will account for friction
dents need to compare their expectations with reality in
mathematically in your analysis, it is easier to work
a variety of situations before the full implications of a
with relatively large masses (several hundred grams on
general law of nature start to sink in. I encountered
each side) so that friction is not such a big force in
such a situation when I gave an exam question about a
comparison to the other forces. Do several different
monkey hanging from one side of a pulley. The
combinations of masses, but keep the total amount of
monkey’s mass, I said, was m, and the mass on the
mass constant and just divide it differently between the
other end of the string was also m. They were initially
just hanging there at rest, and then the monkey began
climbing up the rope. The students were supposed to
predict what would happen. The vast majority of the

12 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

two holders. Remember to take the masses of the between the pulley and its axle, you can treat it as two
holders themselves into account. Make sure to perform forces of equal magnitude acting on the two masses.
your measurements with the longest possible distance The frictional force on the two masses should be
of travel, because you cannot use a stopwatch to get an considered as being in opposite directions, since
accurate measurement of very short time intervals. The friction is reducing each one’s acceleration. Modify
best results are obtained with combinations of weights your derivation from question P1 to take into account
that give times of at least a second and no more than the effect of a frictional force Ff.
five or ten seconds.
The simplest way to find the frictional force is to
find an unequal combination of weights such that
when you gently set the weights in motion, they
continue in motion with constant speed. You can then
solve for Ff in your equation from prelab question P2,
and get a numerical value for Ff. We will assume that Ff
is a constant throughout the whole experiment.

Self-Check
Find Ff. Compare theoretical and experimental
values of acceleration for one of your mass combina-
tions, taking friction into account. 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 accelerations
as small circles. Overlaid on the same graph, show the
theoretical equation as a line or curve.

Prelab
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. If the greater mass is M, and the lesser mass is
m, apply Newton’s second law to predict their theoreti-
cal accelerations. Hints: (1) their accelerations must be
equal in magnitude but in opposite directions, 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 each mass. As a numerical check on
your result, if M=1500 g and m=500 g, your equation
should give a=4.9 m/s2.
P3. You were not asked to take frictional forces into
account in question P1, but friction is important in this
experiment, especially when the two masses are nearly
equal. Although kinetic friction is actually acting

Lab 3 - Newton’s Second Law 13

 4 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 friction
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, discuss 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 respon-
sible 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 moderate
speeds.
The latter effect suggests that air friction might
increase 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 back-
ward on it, so in order to have zero total 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 direction. The car burns more gas
because it must push harder against the road.
Your goal in this lab is to find a proportionality
relating 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 different
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 changing
its aeorodynamic properties. The filters will start
release ceiling
Filters speed up at first.
Filters reach maximum
speed, where total force
is zero.
start
stopwatch
stop
stopwatch

14
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 constant speed.
As long as you don’t use more than about 8 or 10
filters, 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 moving 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.
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, dropping them from
the balcony outside so they have time to get up to their
final speed.

Prelab
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∝v7, which shows that you need more
force to make things go faster.”

Analysis
Use your raw data to compile a list of F and v
values. Use the methods explained in Appendix E to see
if you can find a power-law relationship between F and
v. This will require fitting a line to a set of data, as
explained in appendix C. Both fitting a line to data and
finding power laws are techniques you will use several
more times in this course, so it is worth your while to
get help now if necessary in order to get confident with
them.

15
 5 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 reason 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 beetles,
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 acceleration
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 track.
The speed of the cart at any given point can be
16
cart
vane
photogate
air track
θ
a=component of
g parallel
to track
g
θ
measured 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 signal from
the sensor, and records the amount of time, tb, for
which the photogate was blocked. Given tb, you can
determine the approximate instantaneous speed that
cart had when it passed through the photogate. The
use of the computer software is explained in Appendix
F; 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 instantaneous speed, v,
when it passes through the photogate. 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
where it first blocks the photogate and the point where
it unblocks the photogate. You can determine where
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
these positions are by sliding the cart into the friction, and warping of the track.
photogate and watching the red LED on the top of the
photogate, which lights up when it is blocked.
Hints:
• Keep in mind that if the cart rebounds at the
bottom of the track and comes back up through
the gate, you will get a second, bogus time
reading.
• Note that you have no way to measure accu-
rately to the total amount of time over which
the cart picked up speed (which would be
several seconds) — what you measure is the very
short time required for the cart to pass through
the photogate.

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

Prelab
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 the
distance between the feet of the air track and the height
of the wood block?
P4. Based on v and x, how can you find a?
P5. Explain why the following method for finding
the cart’s acceleration is incorrect. “The time I got off
the computer was 0.0237 s. My vane was 2.2 cm wide,
so v=2.2 cm/.0237 s = 93 cm/s. That means the
acceleration was 93 cm/s divided by .0237 s, or 3900
cm/s2.”

Analysis
Extract the acceleration for each angle at which you
took data. Make a graph with θ on the x axis and
acceleration on the y axis. Show your measured
accelerations as points, and the theoretically expected
dependence of a on θ as a smooth curve.
Error analysis is not required for this lab, because
the random errors are small compared to systematic
errors such as the imperfect leveling of the track,

Lab 5 - Acceleration In Two Dimensions 17

 6A Vector Addition of Forces
Apparatus tend to make Aristotelian statements such as, “The
table’s force overcomes the force of gravity,” as if the
force table ......................................... 1/group
forces were having a contest, in which the victor
spirit level ......................................... 1/group annihilated the loser.
weights
string Observations
The apparatus consists of a small circular table,
Goal with a small metal ring held in the middle by the
Test whether the vector sum of the forces tension in four strings. Each string goes over a pulley
acting on an object at rest is equal to zero. at the edge of the table, so that a weight can be hung
on it to control the tension. The angles can be re-
Introduction corded either graphically, by sliding a piece of paper
Modern physics claims that when a bridge, underneath, or by reading angles numerically off of an
an earthquake fault, or an oak tree doesn’t move, angular scale around the circumference of the table.
it is because the forces acting on it, which
combine according to vector addition, add up to
zero. Although this may seem like a reasonable
statement, it was far from obvious to premodern ring
scientists. Aristotle, for instance, said that it was
the nature of each of the four elements, earth,
fire, water and air, to return to its natural
location. Rain would fall from the sky because it
was trying to return to its natural location in the
lakes and oceans, and once it got to its natural Use the spirit level to level the table completely
location it would stop moving because that was using the screws on the feet. Set up four strings with
its nature. weights, using the small pin to hold the ring in place.
Adjust the angles or the amounts of weight or both,
When a modern scientist considers a book
until the ring is in equilibrium without the pin, and is
resting on a table, she says that it holds still
positioned right over the center of the table. Avoid a
because the force of gravity pulling the book
symmetric arrangement of the strings (e.g. don’t space
down is exactly canceled by the normal force of
them all 90 degrees apart). The ring is an extended
the table pushing up on the book. Aristotle
object, so in order to treat it mathematically as a
would have denied that this was possible, because
pointlike object you should make sure that all the
he believed that at any one moment an object
strings are lined up with the center of the ring, as
could have only one of two mutually exclusive
shown in the figure.
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 object, such as the table, to move the
book). According to his theory, there could be
nothing like the addition 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 students yes no

18 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

 Because of friction, it is possible to change any one
of the weights slightly without causing the ring to
move. This is the main source of error in the experi-
ment. Try to find out roughly how much your weights
could have been different without causing the ring to
move. Within the range of values that don’t cause
slipping, use the center of the range as your best value.
The point here is not to redo the entire experiment
with a completely different combination of weights —
that would not tell you anything about friction as a
source of error, since even if there was no friction at all,
it would be possible for example to double all the
weights and get an equilibrium.
Prelab
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
Lab 6A - A Vector Addition of Forces
results, you should find that the magnitudes of the two
sums are equal.
Self-Check
Do both a graphical calculation and an analytic
calculation 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 compared
to the magnitudes of the individual forces.
Analysis
Calculate the magnitude of vector sum of the forces
on the ring, first graphically and then analytically.
Make sure the two methods give the same result. If
they do not, try measuring the x and y components off
of your drawing and comparing them with the x and y
components you calculated analytically.
Estimate the possible error in your final sum due to
friction.
Are your results consistent with theory, taking into
account the errors due to friction?
19
 6B Vector Addition of Forces
Based on a lab created by Fream Minton.

Apparatus
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
earthquake fault, or an oak tree doesn’t move, it is
because 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 return to its natural
location. Rain would fall from the sky because it was
trying to return to its natural location in the lakes and
oceans, and once it got to its natural location it would
stop moving because that was its nature. contest, in which the victor annihilated the loser.
When a modern scientist considers a book resting Observations
on a table, she says that it holds still because the force
The setup is shown above. The tension in the
of gravity pulling the book down is exactly canceled by
string is very nearly the same on both sides of a good-
the normal force of the table pushing up on the book.
quality pulley, i.e. one with low friction. Your task is to
Aristotle would have denied that this was possible,
use geometrical measurements and measurements of
because he believed that at any one moment an object
the three hanging weights to determine the unknown
could have only one of two mutually exclusive types of
mass of the ball hanging in the middle. This will
motion: natural motion (the tendency of the book to
require vector addition in three dimensions. Once you
fall to the ground, and resume its natural place), and
have determined the weight of the unknown, show it to
forced motion (the ability of another object, such as the
your instructor. Once your instructor checks your work
table, to move the book). According to his theory,
for mistakes, you can weigh the ball for comparison
there could be nothing like the addition of forces,
with your prediction.
because the object being acted on was only capable of
“following orders” from one source at a time. The Prelab
incorrect Aristotelian point of view has great intuitive P1. The weights go on weight holders that hang
appeal, and beginning physics students tend to make from the string, and the weight holders are each 50 g.
Aristotelian statements such as, “The table’s force Criticize the following reasoning: “We don’t need to
overcomes the force of gravity,” as if the forces were in a count the mass of the weight holders, because it’s the

20 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

same on all three strings, so it cancels out.”
P2. Suppose the pulleys have nonnegligible fric-
tion. 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 pre-
dicted mass (see Appendix B), and discuss whether it is
consistent with your direct measurement.

Lab 6B - B Vector Addition of Forces 21

 7 Circular Motion
Apparatus
variable speed motor (CENCO) ....... 1/group
pencil (for use as shaft)...................... 1/group
aluminum ball with a hole in it (for use as bob)1/
group
protractor ......................................... 1/group
computer with photogate and Vernier Timer
software ............................................ 1/group
Goal
Test the equation a=v2/r for the acceleration of an
object moving in a circle at constant speed.
Introduction
It doesn’t mean much to most physics students the
first time someone tells them that acceleration is a
vector, and that the acceleration vector does not have to
be in the same direction as the velocity vector. One
way to understand those statements better is to imagine
an air freshener or a pair of fuzzy dice (or any other
object) hanging from the rear-view mirror of a car.
Such a hanging object, called a bob, constitutes an
accelerometer. If you watch the bob as you accelerate
from a stop light, you’ll see it swing backward. There is
no backward force on the bob (after all, what object
would be behind It pulling it back?). What’s happen-
ing is that the bob is only moving horizontally, which
means that the sum of the force vectors acting on it
must be a horizontal vector. There are two forces on
the bob: the force of the earth’s gravity on the bob and
the string’s tension force on the bob. Vector addition
θ
string's force
earth's
on bob
gravitational
force on bob
total force on bob
22
can be visualized by putting the vectors tip-to-tail, and
the vectors form a right triangle. You can use your
accelerometer to find the car’s acceleration. The earth’s
gravitational force on the bob has magnitude mg, and
according to Newton’s second law, the total force on the
bob must equal ma in order to give it the same accelera-
tion, a, as the car. Using trig, we find tan θ = ma/mg =
a/g, and solving for a we have a = g tan θ. Note that
the horizontal direction in which the bob tilts is
opposite to the direction of the acceleration, e.g. if the
car’s acceleration vector points forward, the bob tilts
backward.
After accelerating and slowing down a few times,
you figure you’ve put your accelerometer through its
paces, but then you make a right turn. Surprise!
Acceleration is a vector, and needn’t point in the same
direction as the velocity vector. As you make a right
turn, the bob swings outward, to your left. That means
the car’s acceleration vector is to your right, which is in
toward the center of your circle, and perpendicular to
your velocity vector. Note that there is no mysterious
force pulling outward on the bob — what object would
be out there on the left pulling on it? The bob is just
trying to go straight, but the car turns, so the bob drifts
off to the side relative to the car.
As always, the acceleration vector is defined as
a = ∆v ,
∆t
but in the case where you’re going at constant speed
around part of a circle, there is a simple equation that
lets you get the magnitude of the acceleration,
2
v
a = r ,
without doing vector subtraction to find ∆v and
dividing the ∆v vector by ∆t. In less pedantic nota-
tion, the equation is
2
a = vr .
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

θ apparatus so that if a ball does go flying, it won’t
r • Only one person at a time should work on the
Setup
The idea of this lab is to do a measurement similar
to the one described above. Instead of driving around
in circles in a car, you’ll swing the bob from the tip of a
vertical shaft being rotated by a motor. The motor
always runs at the same number of revolutions per
second, but it is connected to the shaft with a pair of
rubber disks that act like gears. The big disk causes the
little one to rotate by friction, and by twisting a screw,
you can move the little disk in and out against the big
one, causing the gear ratio to change and the rate of
rotation to change. Turn the part of the motor with
the clamps and stuff on it so it rotates around a vertical
axis.
Put the pencil in the clamp, tip up, and clamp it in.
Tie the bob to the end of a piece of string, and attach
the string at the tip of the pencil. For the best results,
the string should be as short as it can be (roughly a few
cm) while still making it possible to measure the angles
fairly accurately. If the string is too long, then it will be
impossible to spin it slowly enough to get data at small
angles.
To measure how quickly the shaft, and your
accelerometer, are actually rotating, you’ll use the
computer and the photogate. See Appendix A for how
to use the software. You want the mode that measures
the time interval between two interruptions of the
photogate. The idea is to get the bob rotating steadily,
and then hold the photogate so that the bob passes
through it with each rotation. The computer will then
print out the duration of each rotation.
Safety
Please observe the following safety precautions:
• Unplug the motor when you’re working on the
apparatus, and roll up your sleeves so they won’t
get caught inside.
• Use low speeds, so the string won’t break. (High
speeds don’t work anyway, because the angle will
be too close to 90° to give a useful measure of
the acceleration.)
Lab 7 - Circular Motion
• Turn the computer monitor away from the
hit the monitor.
apparatus. This rule is to avoid a situation
where one person is working on the apparatus
when another person turns it on without
warning.
Observations
Take data at several speeds of rotation, in each case
measuring the time per rotation and the angle at which
the bob tilts. Try changing the length of the string and
taking a few more data-points.
Self-Check
Analyze at least one of your data-points and see if
your results look reasonable.
Prelab
P1. You do not directly measure r, the distance of
the center of the bob straight out from the axis, since it
is not possible to hold a ruler up to the apparatus while
it is rotating. Plan how you will determine r from
measurements you can make.
P2. You do not measure v, the speed of the bob,
directly. Plan how you will derive it from measure-
ments you can make directly.
P3. Using your results from prelab questions P1
and P2, use algebra to relate v2/r to quantities you’ll
measure directly. (Don’t just assume that v2/r equals g
tan θ, because the whole point of the lab is to see if
they are equal.)
Analysis
For each data-point, the angle θ you read from
your accelerometer is telling you that the acceleration is
g tan θ. Make a graph showing a smooth curve for g
tan θ as a function of θ, and superimpose on that graph
your data-points, giving values of v2/r measured on the
same y axis. If the lab worked, your v2/r points should
lie close to the curve.
23
 8 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
disappear 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 conservation 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 scientifically useful, we must define
more carefully how the “amount” of a substance is to be
defined and measured 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,
measure 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.
24
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 constant
when you add it all up. Most people have a general
intuitive idea that the amount of a substance is con-
served. 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. Conservation 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 opera-
tional definition of the quantity, meaning a
definition that spells out the operations required
to measure it.
• Conservation laws are only true for closed
systems. For instance, the amount of water in a
bottle will remain constant as long as no water 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
additive. An example of a non-additive quan-
tity 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.
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
 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 more massive one has to move farther 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 simply 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 bubbly 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 chemical elements
and the periodic table, but it was accepted in Europe
for two thousand years, and the inclusion of air as a
material substance was actually a nontrivial concept.
Air, after all, was invisible, seemed weightless, and had
no definite shape. Empedocles decided air was a form
of matter based on experimental evidence: air could be
trapped under 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
suspended in front of it and conjecture that water had
Lab 8 - Conservation Laws
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, however,
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 do 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 container has been removed, including
the air, we say that there is a vacuum in the container.
(In American English, there is a linguistic difficulty
because the word “vacuum” is also used as shorthand
for “vacuum cleaner.” In British English, no such
confusion exists because the appliance is referred to as a
“Hoover.”) In reality, a perfect vacuum is very difficult
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 chemi-
cally 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.
25
Observations
A. Density of air
You can remove the air from the flask by attaching
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 alcohol
find out the density of air and to estimate error bars for
your result.
B. Is volume and/or mass conserved when
two fluids are mixed?
The idea here is to find out whether volume and/or oil
mass is conserved when water and alcohol are mixed.
The obvious way to attempt this would be to measure water
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 problems with the
obvious method: (1) when you pour one of the liquids If the mixture does not turn out to have a volume
into the other, droplets of liquid will be left inside the that looks like exactly 100 mL, you can use the follow-
original vessel; and (2) the most accurate way to ing tricks to measure accurately the excess or deficit
measure the volume of a liquid is with a volumetric with respect to 100 mL. If it is less than 100 mL,
flask, which only allows one specific, calibrated volume weigh the flask, pipette in enough water to bring it up
to be measured. to 100 mL, weigh it again, and then figure out what
mass and volume of water you added based on the
Here’s a way to get around those problems. Put the change in mass. If it is more than 100 mL, weigh the
magnetic stirrer inside the flask. Pour water through a flask, pipette out enough of the mixture to bring the
funnel into a volumetric flask, filling it less than half- volume down to 100 mL, weigh it again, and make a
way. (Do not use the pipette to transfer the water.) A similar calculation using the change in mass and the
common mistake is to fill the flask more than half-way. density of the oil. If you need to pipette out some oil,
Now pour a thin layer of cooking oil on top. Cooking make sure to wash and rinse the pipette thoroughly
oil does not mix with water, so it forms a layer on top afterwards.
of the water. (Set aside one funnel that you will use
only for the oil, since the oil tends to form a film on Prelab
the sides.) Finally, gently pour the alcohol on top. P1. Give an example of two things having the same
Alcohol does not mix with cooking oil either, so it mass and different densities.
forms a third layer. By making the alcohol come
P2. Give an example of two things having the same
exactly up to the mark on the calibrated flask, you can
density and different masses.
make the total volume very accurately equal to 100 mL.
In practice, it is hard to avoid putting in too much P3. Why can the density of water be given in a
alcohol through the funnel, so if necessary you can take book as a standard value under conditions of standard
some back out with the pipette. temperature and pressure, while the mass of water
cannot?
If you put the whole thing on the balance now, you
know both the volume (100 mL) and the mass of the P4. What would your experimental results in part
whole thing when the alcohol and water have been kept A be like if air had no weight? What would they be like
separate. Now, mix everything up with the magnetic if air did have weight?
stirrer. The water and alcohol form a mixture. You can
P5. Referring to the section of the lab manual on
now test whether the volume or mass has changed.
error analysis, plan how you will estimate your random

26 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

errors.
P6. In part B, pick either mass or volume, and
describe what your observations would be like if that
quantity was not conserved.

Self-Check
Do a quick analysis of both parts without error
analysis. Plan how you will do your error analysis.

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

Lab 8 - Conservation Laws 27

 9 Conservation of Energy
Apparatus between two springs. The sum of the forces exerted by
the two springs should at least approximately obey
air track (small)
Hooke’s law,
cart (large)
F = -kx ,
springs (steel, 1.5 cm diameter)
where the equilibrium point is at x=0. The negative
photogate (PASCO) sign means that if the object is displaced in the positive
computer direction, the force tends to bring it back in the
stopwatches negative direction, towards equilibrium, and vice versa.
air blowers Of course, there are no actual springs involved in the
sun or between a rock’s atoms, but we can still learn
alligator clips
about this type of situation in a lab experiment with a
Goal mass attached to a spring. In this lab, you will study
how the changing velocity of the object, in this case a
Test conservation of energy for an object oscillating
cart on an air track, can be understood using conserva-
around an equilibrium position.
tion of energy. Recall that for a constant force, the
Introduction potential energy is simply -F.x, but for a force that is
different at different locations, the potential energy is
minus the area under 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

= – 12 kx 2

One of the most impressive aspects of the physical (counted as negative area because it lies below the x
world is the apparent permanence of so many of its axis), so the potential energy is
parts. Objects such as the sun or rocks on earth have
PE = 12 kx 2 .
remained unchanged for billions of years, so it might
seem that they are in perfect equilibrium, with zero net Conservation of energy, PE+KE=constant, gives
force on each part of the whole. In reality, the atoms in 1 kx 2 + 1 mv 2 = constant .
a rock do not sit perfectly still at an equilibrium point 2 2
— they are constantly in vibration about their equilib-
rium 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 x
these types of motion continue indefinitely without
dying out or building up relates to conservation of PE = -area
energy, which forbids them to get bigger or smaller
without transferring energy in or out.
Our model of this type of oscillation about equilib-
rium will be the motion of a cart on an air track F

28 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

 photogate
cart
Observations
The technique is essentially the same as in the
previous air track lab. Instructions for use of the
Vernier Timer software are given in appendix A; 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 continu-
ously.
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 posi-
tions. 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 card
Lab 9 - Conservation of Energy
card
spring
air track
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
The two springs together can be treated as if they
were a single spring with k=k1+k2. That is, both springs
are exerting their forces on the same object, so their
forces add together, causing them to act like a single,
stiffer spring with a larger value of k. (Note that this is
not the same as chaining two springs together, end-to-
end, which would actually produce a smaller k.)
You can find each of the two spring constants by
hanging a weight vertically under the spring, and
measuring how much its length increases when you add
some weight. Hooke’s law as stated above, F=-kx, refers
to the distance, x, measured from equilibrium,but there
is no obvious way to define x consistently for both the
hanging setup and the vertical setup. The simplest way
to make sure your definition is consistent is to hang
two different weights from the spring and define k as
minus the slope of the F-versus-x graph, i.e. ∆F/∆x. In
other words, you need to measure the change in force
required to produce a certain change in length, and
divide to find k.
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 without stopping. This
method therefore gives a very accurate value for k,
which you should use in your analysis of the conserva-
tion of energy. Your k value from method 1 is still
29
useful as a check, however.

Prelab
P1. What measurements besides those mentioned
above will you need to do in lab in order to check
conservation of energy?

Self-Check
Calculate the energies and see whether they are
remaining roughly constant.

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

30 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

31
 10 Conservation of Momentum
Apparatus
photogate (PASCO) .......................... 1/group
computer .......................................... 1/group
small steel and plastic balls of various masses2/group
plastic rulers
protractor
scotch tape
Goal
Test whether momentum is conserved in a collision
of two balls.
Introduction
Pool players have an intuitive feeling for conserva-
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 directly from
a collision with another ball (except by putting spin on
it, which creates an external friction force with the felt).
They understand that the angles are important, so
without knowing it, they are doing mental estimates
involving momentum as a vector: a quantity that has
both magnitude and direction.
In this lab, you will be studying collisions similar to
the collision of the cue ball with an initially stationary
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, p 1i + p 2i + ... = p 1f + p 2f + ... , where the “...”
means that if there are more than two objects
involved, all their momenta should be added like
vectors.
This is a completely general statement (derivable
from Newton’s second and third laws) that is just as
true for interacting atoms or galaxies as it is for pool
balls. You might worry that pool balls are not isolated
from outside forces: their weight is a downward force
the earth exerts on them, and the table is exerting an
32
upward normal force on them. The key is that those
two forces cancel out, so the total external force on
them is zero, and conservation of momentum holds.
We will be making the approximation that there are no
horizontal forces acting on the balls either, such as air
resistance or rolling resistance, although in reality those
forces do exist, and do slow the balls down significantly
over a long enough time span.
The whole concept of momentum might seem
fishy to you — why not just say that the total velocity
vector of the balls is conserved? The answer is that for
balls of equal mass, m is just a constant factor on both
sides of the conservation of momentum equation, and
you could indeed divide by m on both sides. For pool
balls, then, it is correct to say that the total velocity
vector is conserved. In this lab, though, you will be
using balls of unequal weight, and you will verify
experimentally that the total momentum is the thing
that is conserved, not the total velocity. The fact that
momentum is conserved is the only reason it is worth
defining and studying.
The Technique
The idea is to set up an off-center collision, as
shown below, and measure the initial and final speeds
before
p1,before
p2,before=0
after p1,after
θ1
θ2
p2,after
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
of the balls using the photogate and the computer. The
use of the photogate and the computer software that
works with it is explained in an appendix to this
manual. Since on any given trial you can only use the
photogate to measure the speed of a single ball, you will
have to reproduce the collision at least three times to
measure the three speeds involved. Actually, you will
want to measure each of the three speeds several times
in order to get a good estimate of your random errors.
To reproduce the same initial speed for the projec-
tile (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 them braced. The block of wood also serves as a
convenient reference point: you can release the ball
from the point where it touches the block.
You should choose a completely asymmetrical
setup: two balls of different masses, and a collision in
which the projectile does not hit the target head-on.
It is critical that you position the target ball at exactly
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 on the table
and use a ball-point pen to make a tiny impression in it
for the target ball to sit in.
Tips
You want to avoid conditions for which any of the
speeds involved are too slow, because then the balls
tend to be accelerated, decelerated, or deflected by tiny
bumps in the tabletop. If you notice the balls wander-
ing and wavering as they roll, they are going too slow.
Generally speaking, sufficiently high speeds are
achieved if the ramp is at least 7 cm high. Using the
heavier ball as the projectile helps to keep the final
speeds high.
A good way to test whether your speeds are suffi-
cient 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
Lab 10 - Conservation of Momentum
angles are not reproducible to this level of variation,
then the balls are not going fast enough.
You will want to use vernier calipers to measure the
diameters of the balls. Ask your instructor for help 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.
This means you have to be careful about how you
measure the angles.
If you did not position the photogate at the height
of the center of the ball whose speed you wanted to
determine, then the computation of the ball’s speed
becomes 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 perpendicu-
lar to the projectile’s original direction of motion.
You will be putting the photogate in three different
positions to measure the three velocities. How far from
the collision should you place it? It should be as close as
possible to the collision, because the balls do gradually
slow down as they roll, and you want to know the
speeds immediately before and after the collision.
However, the balls bounce a little immediately after the
collision, so don’t put the it so close to the collision that
they are still bouncing when they go through it.
Prelab
P1. Draw an example of a collision, showing the
balls before and after it happens, in which
p 1, before =0.010 kg.m/s, p 1, after =0.005 kg.m/s, and
p 2, after =0.005 kg.m/s, but momentum was not
conserved. (As in the actual lab, the target ball starts at
rest.) Explain.
Self-Check
Analyze your data without error analysis, and make
sure your graphical and analytical results are the same.
Check whether momentum appeared to be at least
approximately conserved.
Analysis
Test whether momentum was conserved, doing
your vector addition once using the analytic method
and once using the graphical method. Take into
account the random errors in your measurements.
33
 11 Torque
Apparatus F H = the weight hanging underneath
meter stick ........................................ 1/group
spring scales, 250, 500, and 2000 g F M = the meter stick’s own weight
weights
F L = the tension in the string supporting the
string
ruler on the left
protractors
F R = the tension in the string supporting the
Goal
Test whether the total force and torque on an ruler on the right
object at rest both equal zero. Each of these forces also produces a torque.

Introduction In order to determine whether the total force is

It is not enough for a boat not to sink. It also must
not capsize. This is an example of a general fact about
physics, which is also well known to people who
overindulge in alcohol: if an object is to be in a stable
equilibrium at rest, it must not only have zero net force
on it, to keep from picking up momentum, but also
zero net torque, to keep from acquiring angular
momentum.
spring scale
spring scale
meter stick
weight
zero, you will need enough raw data so that for each
torque you can extract (1) the magnitude of the force
vector, and (2) the direction of the force vector. In
order 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
the axis to the point at which the force is applied to the
ruler, and (4) the angle between the force vector and
the line connecting the axis with the point where the
force is applied. Note that the meter stick’s own weight
can be though of as being applied at its center of mass.
Note that the plastic spring scales have a tab on top
that allows you to calibrate them by hanging 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.
Since the analysis requires you to compute the total
torque a second time using a different choice of axis,
you cannot neglect to measure any of the angles
involved.

Observations
Construct a setup like the one shown above. Avoid
any symmetry in your arrangement. There are four
forces acting on the meter stick:
Prelab
P1. You have complete freedom in defining the axis
of rotation — if one choice of axis causes the total
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. Plan what raw data you will need to collect.

34 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

 P3. All the torques will be tending to cause rotation
in the same plane. You can therefore use plus and
minus signs to represent clockwise and counterclock-
wise torques. Choose which one you’ll call positive.
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?
P4. Suppose that in the figure above, the angle
between 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 trying to
calculate the x components of the forces F M and F H ,
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 calcula-
tion 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.

Lab 11 - Torque 35
 12 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 (PC-compatible) with
Vernier Timer software .................... 1/group
photogate and adapter box ................ 1/group
triple-beam balance ........................... 1/group
Goal
Test the equation τtotal=Iα, which relates an object’s
angular acceleration to its own moment of inertia 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
because long-lasting circular motion seemed much
more prevalent in the universe than long-lasting linear
motion. 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. René Descartes (b.
1596) came close to stating a law of inertia 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 confused by the issue
of circular versus linear inertia. An advocate of the
Copernican system, in which the apparent 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?
36
Newton, like other giants of science, saw how to
focus on the simple rather than the complex. His law
of 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 con-
firmed 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’ trajecto-
ries into circles.
Even though circular motion is inherently more
complicated than linear motion, some very close
analogies can be made between the two in the case
where an object is spinning rigidly. (An examples of
nonrigid 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 gravita-
tional torque on it.
Every equation you learned for constant accelera-
tion can also be adapted to the case of rotation with
constant 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
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
valid rotational formula ωf2=2aq.
The moment of inertia is defined as I = Σmr2,
where m can be thought of as the mass of an individual
atom comprising the rotating body, and r is the dis-
tance 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 pivoting 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 concentrated at its center.
Calculus can also be used to derive formulae for the
moments of inertia of objects of various shapes, such as
a sphere, a cylinder rotating along its axis, etc. One
1 mL 2
such formula is I= 12 for the moment of inertia of
a rigid rod rotating about an axis passing perpendicu-
larly through its center. You can use this formula as a
good approximation for the meter stick’s contribution
to the moment of inertia, with L=1 m.
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 attached
to the meter stick, as in figure (a) below. The idea is
that if you first balance this configuration carefully,
(a) initial, balanced configuration
(b) final setup, unbalanced by the added weight
Lab 12 - The Moment of Inertia
(d)
(e)
(f)
then you know that the net gravitational torque on it is
zero. If you then hang another weight from the previ-
ously 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
configuration 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
order to achieve equilibrium, but it is less obvious that
it also makes a difference how high the weights are
placed. That is, the center of mass of the whole bal-
anced setup must coincide both vertically and horizon-
tally 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 initially
released from this horizontal position, but the equilib-
rium 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 assump-
tion would only be valid when the apparatus was
initially released from horizontal. Later in the motion,
there would be an undesired and unknown 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 apparatus. 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
37
left, it accelerates counterclockwise. • Although you want to work only with nearly
In (f), we have a stable equilibrium. Again, there is horizontal positions of the meter stick so that
an unknown, undesired torque unless the rectangle just the torque is approximately constant, you also
happens to be horizontal. You can tell if you have this need to make sure that the total angle traversed
situation because the apparatus can swing back and by the meter stick is still reasonably large
forth about its stable equilibrium position. compared to the angle traversed while the meter
stick is blocking the photogate. Otherwise your
You want a neutral equilibrium, i.e. no matter what measurement of ω=∆θ/∆t will not be a good
angle you release it from, the meter stick just stays approximation to the final instantaneous
there. angular velocity.
Observations • As you will find in your prelab, the angular
Now add the extra weight so that the meter stick is acceleration depends on the square of the angle
slightly unbalanced. The idea of this lab is to release ∆θ. Measuring this angle accurately is therefore
the meter stick and use the photogate to find how vital in order to get a good result. A protractor
quickly it is moving once it has rotated through some cannot measure an angle this small with sufficient
angle, using the photogate to find the amount of time accuracy. Use trigonometry to determine this
required for the tip of the meter stick to pass through angle.
the photogate. From your measurement of ∆t using the
photogate, you can find ω=∆θ/∆t, which is an approxi- • It’s easiest if you use radian measure throughout.
mation to the meter stick’s final angular velocity. The equation τtotal=Iα is only true if a is
Instructions for using the computer software are given measured in radians/s2.
in appendix F; you want the mode for measuring how
long the photogate was blocked. •The sliding bracket and hook contribute both to
the total torque and the moment of inertia, so
Once you know the meter stick’s final value of ω,
you’ll have to weigh them.
you can extract the angular acceleration. This can
then be compared with the theoretical value of the Prelab
angular acceleration from τtotal=Iα. P1. Derive an equation for the experimental value
Tips: of the angular acceleration, expressed in terms of
quantities you will actually measure directly, including
• You may want to put something under the
fulcrum 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=r F sin θ. Since the torque is not
constant, the angular acceleration is not con-
stant, leading to complications. You can avoid
this problem by confining all your measure-
ments 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 angular accelera-
tion. For instance, as long as θ is within 20°
above or below horizontal, sin θ changes by no
more than 0.06.

38 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

the quantities θ and ∆θ defined in the figure below.
Note that this lab is exactly analogous to lab 4, where
you found a linear acceleration using a similar setup.

∆θ
photogate

P2. Why would it not be meaningful to try to deal

with the meter stick’s velocity, rather than its angular
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.

Lab 12 - The Moment of Inertia 39

 13
Apparatus
string ............................................................
hooked weight sets (not the slotted weights)
protractor
stopwatch
computer with photogate and Vernier Timer
software
Goal
Find out how the period of a pendulum depends
on its length and mass, and on the amplitude of its
swing.
Introduction
Until the industrial revolution, the interest of the
world’s cultures in the measurement of time was almost
entirely concentrated on the construction of calendars,
so that agricultural cycles could be anticipated. Al-
though the Egyptians were the first to divide the day
and night into 12 hours, there was no technology for
measuring time units smaller than a day with great
accuracy until four thousand years later.
Galileo was the first to realize that a pendulum
could be used to measure time accurately — previously,
he had been using his own pulse to measure the time
required for objects to roll down inclined planes. The
legend is that the idea came to him while he watched a
chandelier swinging during a church service. Sen-
tenced to house arrest for suspicion of heresy, he spent
the last years of his life trying to build a more practical
pendulum clock that would run for long periods of
time without tending. This technical feat was only
achieved later by Christian Huygens. Along with the
Chinese invention of the compass, accurate clocks were
vital for European exploration by sea, because longitude
can only be determined by astronomical observations
combined with accurate measurements of time.
Notation and Terminology
When a moving thing, such as a wave, an orbiting
planet, a wheel, or a pendulum, goes through a repeti-
tive cycle of motion, the time required for one com-
plete cycle is called the period, T. Note that a pendu-
40
The Pendulum
c f
a b d e g
From a to g is one full period of the pendulum.
From a 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 motion it
will ever perform.
L
A
m
lum visits any given point once while traveling in one
direction and once while traveling in the opposite
direction. The period is defined as how long it takes to
come back to the same point, traveling in the same
direction.
The amplitude of a repetitive motion is a way of
describing the amount of motion. We can define the
amplitude, A, of the pendulum’s motion as the maxi-
mum angle to which it rises, i.e. half the total angle
swept out. Let us denote the mass of the bob, or
weight at the end of the pendulum, by m, and the
length of the pendulum, from the pivot to the middle
of the weight, as L.
Observations
Make observations to determine how the period, T,
depends on A, L, and m. You will want to use the
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
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
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 F for how to use the computer software;
you want the mode that’s meant specifically for measur-
ing 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 easiest 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
students and professional scientists approach experi-
ments is that students tend to be timid about exploring
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 impos-
sible to ascertain how the period depends on a param-
eter if you only explore a small range. When changing
L, you can go up to two meters fairly easily; however,
you should avoid lengths so short that they are compa-
rable 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, compensat-
ing for the different physical size of the new weight.
Prelab
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?
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 directly, and the
vertical axis should be the quantity you measured but
Lab 13 - The Pendulum
did not directly select. The photogate 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 system-
atic 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 E 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 instance, 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 extracting from your graphs, since it will
be different for different pendula.
It may happen that when you change one of the
variables, 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 default which
is to make the y axis stretch only across the range of
actual y data. E.g. if your periods were all between
0.567 and 0.574 s, then the software makes an ex-
tremely 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 period. 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.
41
 14 Standing Waves
Apparatus
string
weights
pulley
vibrator
Goals
• Observe the resonant modes of vibration of a
string.
• Find how the speed of waves on a string depends
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 assuming the
strings are of the same material and under the same
tension.) For instance, he thought a pleasant combina-
tion 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 frequencies 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 harmonics 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 between the two sets of frequencies, and
many of the harmonics lie close enough in frequency to
produce unpleasant beats.
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.
42
pulley vibrator
weight
Observations
Observe as many modes of vibration as you can.
You will probably not be able to observe the fundamen-
tal (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 reso-
nance, 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
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, FT, 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 E to see if
you can find a power-law relationship between the
velocity 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 relationship
is.)
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
43
 15 Resonances of Sound
Apparatus
wave generator (HP 200) .................. 1/group
speaker (Thornton) ........................... 1/group
100 mL graduated cylinder ............... 1/group
large speaker ............................................... 1
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
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
aluminum.
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 process 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 instrumentalists simply by their
distinctly individual timbres — how is this possible?
Helmholtz found (using incredibly primitive
nonelectronic 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 frequen-
cies, including 440 Hz, 880 Hz, 1320 Hz, and many
other multiples of the lowest frequency, known as the
44
fundamental. The ear-brain system perceives all these
overtones as a single sound because they are all mul-
tiples of the fundamental frequency. (The Javanese
orchestra called the gamelan sounds strange to
westerners partly because the various gongs and
cymbals have overtones that are not integer multiples 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
saxophone, but almost entirely missing for the clarinet.
Although Helmholtz thought the relative strengths 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 overtones 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 musical
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 corre-
spond 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 the closed end of the tube, and a node at
the 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 convert its
electrical currents to sound waves, making a pure tone.
The frequency of the sine wave corresponds to musical
pitch, and the amplitude corresponds to loudness.
The gigantic knob is the fine adjustment of the
frequency.
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
 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 adjust-
ment 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 electrical
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 generator
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
banana 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 ampli-
tude 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 and lowest frequencies that
each person in your group can hear. The small speaker
does not have enough bass response to test the lowest
audible frequency, so you can use the big speaker.
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
annoying 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,
Lab 15 - Resonances of Sound
and one in the physics stockroom. Meanwhile, the
other groups will be doing parts B and C.
A. Direct Measurement of Resonances by
Listening
Set up the graduated cylinder so its mouth is
covering the center of the speaker. Find as many
frequencies 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 measure-
ments 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 calculating
approximately where you expect the resonances 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 circle. The
frequency of the sound will be determined electroni-
cally. Note that your analysis for these resonances will
be somewhat different, since the tube is open at both
ends, and it therefore has different patterns of reso-
nances 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 bouncing 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 microphone, click the smaller Record button
in the control panel, let it record for 1 second or so
while you continue 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
45
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
window, 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 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 whistled
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 tap the roll
on the table, 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 mea-
surement 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
vertically, then tap it on the floor. You will hear two
different notes sounding simultaneously. The higher
note is the lowest resonance produced with longitudinal
compression waves, which means that an individual
atom of aluminum is moving up and down the length
of the rod. This type of wave is analogous to sound
waves in air, which are also longitudinal compression
waves. The lower note comes from transverse vibra-
46
tions, 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 longitudinal
mode, which is the one we’re interested in; just wait for
the transverse wave to die out before you begin record-
ing on the computer.
Prelab
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 vibrates. 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.
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
Lab 15 - Resonances of Sound 47
 16 Resonance
Apparatus
vibrator ............................................. 1/group
Thornton power supply .................... 2/group
Instek PC-3030D power supply .................. 1
stopwatch ......................................... 1/group
multimeter ........................................ 1/group
banana plug cables variable-speed
Goals electric motor

• Observe the phenomenon of resonance.

Simplified mechanical drawing of the vibrator, front view.
• Investigate how the width of a resonance
depends on the amount of damping.
power supply multimeter
Introduction power supply
To break a wine glass, an opera singer has to sing A
the right note. To hear a radio signal, you have to be
tuned to the right frequency. These are examples of the + - + -
A COM
phenomenon of resonance: a vibrating system will
respond most strongly to a force that varies with a
particular frequency.

Apparatus
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 upright
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 reduces their ampli-
tude 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.
Motor-
prüfspannung
vibrator
Electrical setup, top view.
Observations
A. Period of Free Vibrations
Start without any of the electrical stuff hooked up.
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.
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

48 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

amount of damping in the system. Whenever a metal
is moved through a magnetic field, the electrons 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 decreasing the strength of the magnetic
field.
Turn off all the electrical equipment and leave it
unplugged. Connect the circuit shown in the top left
of the electrical diagram, consisting of a power supply
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 wil give you
a numerical measure of how strong your damping 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 propor-
tional to the current.
Once you have everything hooked up, check with
your instructor before plugging things in and turning
them on. If you do the setup wrong, you could blow a
fuse, which is no big deal, but a more serious goof
would be to put too much current through the
electromagnet, which could burn it up, permanently
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 energy
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 electro-
magnet turned off, then with a current of 0.25 A
through the electromagnet, and then 0.50A. You will
be using these two current values throughout the lab.
C. Frequency of Driven Vibration
Now connect the power supply to the terminals
Lab 16 Resonance - Resonance
on the motor labeled “motorprüfspannung.” The
Thornton power supply is not powerful enough to
damage the motor, so there is no need to check your
circuit with your instructor. By turning the knob on
the power supply, you can vary the speed of the motor.
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 damping
currents. How does the strength of the resonance
depend on damping?
With low amounts of damping, I have sometimes
encountered 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, because the Thornton power supply
is not stable enough to control the driving frequency
consistently enough. If this happens to you, check with
your instructor. There are two possible solutions: either
work with larger damping currents, or use the higher-
quality Instek power supply when you have to make
measurements near resonance.
F. Width of the Resonance
Now measure the response of the system for a large
number of driving frequencies, so that you can graph
the resonance curve and determine the width of the
resonance. Start with the stronger damping current,
which makes the system approach its steady state more
quickly and is less likely to lead to problems with power
supply instabilities.
49
Prelab
P1. Plan how you will determine the Q of your
oscillator 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.

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 amplitude 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. Determine the FWHM of the
resonance for each value of the damping current, and
find whether the expected relationship exists between Q
and FWHM.

50 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

51
 17 Numerical Simulation
Goals should be computer for each cycle?
Investigate via a numerical simulation whether Set dt to 0.1 (in units of seconds), and calculate
amplitude and damping affect the period of an how far the object falls after one second (ten steps).
oscillator. Compare with the exact result based on the equation
x=(1/2)at2.
Introduction
Now try a setting dt to 0.01 s. Does your numerical
For purely historical reasons, students today are
approximation get better?
taught to solve physics problems primarily via the
techniques of algebra and calculus, even though Main Project
number-crunching on a computer’s spreadsheet is in Now write a new simulation to address the ques-
many respects easier and more broadly applicable. I tions stated under “goals” above.
have created a specialized spreadsheet program to make
it easy for students to do physics simulations, without
any prior knowledge of computer programming.

Warmup Project
My number-crunching software is a type of pro-
gram called an applet, which you simply run over the
internet through your browser. It works best with a
browser called Hot Java, which is already installed on
the PC-compatible computers in rm. 412. Start up
Windows, and run Hot Java from the Start menu.
Go to my web page,
http://home.sprintmail.com/~bcrowell ,
and find my number-crunching software, called
Captain Crunch, in the Miscellaneous area. Click on
the tab at the bottom of the window to view the
documentation, and read it. Try the example it sug-
gests.
Now, as a warmup for applying the software to a
simple physics calculation, let’s calculate the motion of
a falling object. The basic technique is to define a
variable dt, which is the amount of time for each step of
the calculation. This variable never changes. For
convenience and readability, you can also define a
variable a, for acceleration, and set it equal to a con-
stant 9.8 (in units of m/s2). We also create variables v
and x, which will change as the simulation progresses.
For each step of the calculation, we update the value of
v as follows:
new value of v = old value of v + a dt
By analogy, how do you think the new value of x

52 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

53
 18 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 represent-
ing 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 interpret
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.
Setup
Set the cart on the track without the fan. Prop the
motion detector (sonar gun) at one end of the track so
54
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
detector into the PORT2 plug on the interface box.
Start up the computer. For compactness, I’ll use
notation 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.
If the computer presents you with a dialog box
saying “Set Up Interface,” and a menu with choices like
COM1, COM2, etc., you have a bad connection to
your interface box or your interface box is turned off.
Ask your instructor for help if this happens.
Once the program is running, do Setup>Sensors,
click on the Port2 icon, and do Sensor>Motion Detec-
tor. Click OK.
By default it wants to overlay two different graphs,
only onw of which we care about. To get rid of the
other one, do Data>Delete Column>Potential.
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.
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
Observations
A. Moving the cart by hand
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.)
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.
Now see if you can produce a graph that looks like
this:
x
will happen if you repeat your previous run with a
weakened fan. Now try it.
D. 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.
E. Rate of changing speed
Zoom in on the relevant part of your graph from
part D, and print out a big copy. To print the graph on
a computer, do File>Export Data, and select “.txt” for
the type of the file. You can then delete the header from
the file, save it on a floppy disk, and import it into a
spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel for graphing and
printing. Whatever method you use, make sure the
whole group will end up with copies.
Prelab
P1. Make a prediction of the graphs you’ll obtain
in part A.
Self-Check
Do the analysis in lab.

Analysis
At one-second intervals, draw nice long tangent
lines on the curve from part E and determine their
t
slope. Summarize this series of changing speeds in a
B. Accelerating away from the sensor table. Did the speed increase by about the same amount
Suppose the fan is mounted on the cart as shown in with every second?
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.
C. 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

Lab 18 Kinematics - Kinematics 55

 19 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
formula 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
theoretical 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 between two different
“colors” is attractive: red and green attract each other, as
do green and blue, and red and blue.
56
When your freshly laundered socks cling together,
that is an example of an electrical force. If the gravita-
tional 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 Benjamin Franklin,
some scientists thought there were two types of electri-
cal “charge” or “fluid,” while others 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.
Part A: Repulsion and/or attraction
Test the following hypotheses. Note that A1
through A3 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.
A4) Electrical forces obey Newton’s third law.
Interpretation: Once you think you have tested
these hypotheses fairly well, discuss with your instruc-
tor what this implies about how many different types of
charge there might be.
Part 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
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
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
paper 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 uncharged object,
since it can become charged a little bit just by pulling
off the roll.
B1) Objects that have not been specially prepared
never participate in 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
support 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.
Part 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.
Part D: Creation, transfer, and/or conserva-
tion of charge
Test the following mutually exclusive hypotheses:
D1) Charge can be created, destroyed, or transferred
without any particular restrictions.
D2) If all the objects in a closed system are initially
uncharged, there is no way to cause any of them to
become charged. Each type of charge can only be
transferred from one object to another.
D3) 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: 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.”
Writeup
Explain what you have concluded about electrical
charge and forces. Base your conclusions on your data!
Lab 19 - Static Electricity 57
 20 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 “cathode ray tube” origi-
nated before subatomic particles such as electrons were
known to exist — the tube was invented by trial and
error, without understanding the nature of the mysteri-
ous “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
light bulb or an electric stove. It heats the cathode,
58
causing a small fraction of the electrons in it to be
ejected from the surface of the metal by thermal
vibration. These freed electrons are then accelerated by
the strong electric field existing between the cathode
and anode, which together form a parallel plate capaci-
tor. The anode has a small hole in it, which lets the
electrons through without having much effect 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 omitted, 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 human
eye-brain system, it is not usually evident that the
picture is being continually created and recreated,
although if you wave your hand in front of a TV
screen, you will see a stroboscopic pattern because it is
only at certain specific moments that your hand blocks
the same part of the screen that is being illuminated. In
a color television, tiny red, green and blue fluorescent
dots are arranged in a repeating 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 electri-
cal signal varies over time. A 1-cm grid is permanently
drawn on the front of the CRT, and the electron 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
horizontal
vertical deflection
deflection plates spot of
plates light
fluorescent
screen
anode
cathode
heater
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
 insulators
central
conductor
outside
conductor
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 direction
through the central conductor, and returns in the
opposite direction through the outside conductor,
completing the circuit. The outside conductor is
normally kept at ground, and also serves as shielding
against radio interference. The advantage of coaxial
cable is that it is capable of transmitting rapidly varying
signals without distortion.
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. Voltage,
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 terminal 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 alectrical 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 funda-
mental definition of voltage.
Most of the voltages we wish to measure are not big
enough to use directly for the vertical deflection
voltage, so the oscilloscope actually amplifies the input
voltage, i.e. the small input voltage is used to control 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 this example the time base is 10 ms and 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 function 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 phosphorescent trace
dies out fairly quickly, but is being reinforced continu-
ally 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
happened to be exactly equal to, say, four periods of the
signal, there would be no problem. But this is unlikely
to happen in real life — normally the second trace
Lab 20 - The Oscilloscope 59
would start from a different point in the waveform,
producing an offset copy of the wave. Thousands of
traces per second would be superimposed on the screen,
each shifted horizontally by a different 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
circuit. 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 voltage — 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 accept
input through two BNC connectors and display
both or either. Make sure you’re displaying the
same one you’ve hooked up the cable 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
described 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 that is
60
alternating, creating an alternating current,
“AC.” The “DC” setting is only necessary when
dealing with constant or very slowly varying
voltages. The “GND” simply draws a graph
using y=0, which is only useful in certain
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.
Observations
A. Periodic and nonperiodic speech sounds
Try making various speech sounds that you can
sustain 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 writing 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?
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
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
P1. In the sample oscilloscope trace shown above,
what is the period of the waveform? What is its fre-
quency?
P2. In the same example, assume the time base is
10 ms/division, and 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 trigger 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,
1µs, 1 ms, 1 s
P4. Does the oscilloscope show you the period or
the wavelength of the signal? Explain.

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

Lab 20 - The Oscilloscope 61

 21Electric Fields and Potentials
Apparatus
equipotential board and U-shaped probe ruler
DC power supply (Thornton)
carbon paper
multimeter
scissors
stencils for drawing electrode shapes on paper
Goals
• To be better able to visualize electric field lines
and understand their meaning.
• To examine the electric fields around certain
charge distributions.
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 electrical / q ). We
can plot the electric field around any charge distribu-
tion 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.
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 electric
fields. What really is practical to measure at any given
point is the electric potential, V, defined as the poten-
tial energy that a test charge would have at that point,
divided by the amount of charge (V = PE electrical / q ).
This quantity would have units of J/C (Joules per
Coulomb), but for convenience we normally abbreviate
this combination of units as volts, V. The electric
potential is usually informally referred to as the “volt-
age.” 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 describe
electrical phenomena either by their electric fields or by
the potentials involved.
62
Since it is only ever the difference in potential
energy between two points that can be defined unam-
biguously, 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 potential difference
between them if it takes work to go from one place to
another (either positive or negative). If there is a
potential difference between two points in space,
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 equipotential curves; you may be familiar with
topographical maps, which are very similar. On a
topographical map, curves are drawn to connect points
having the same height above sea level. For instance, a
cone-shaped volcano would be represented by concen-
tric 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 levels such as
600, 700, 800, and 900 m. Now imagine a similar
representation of the potential 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 reference point very far away. The
outermost circle on your map might connect all the
points having a potential 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
refered to as equipotentials, because they connect
points of equal potential. In this lab, you are going to
map out equipotentials, but not just for an isolated
point charge, which is just a simple example like the
idealized example of a conical volcano.
You could move a charge along an equipotential 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 an
equipotential, there must not be a component of
electric force along the surface (or you would be doing
work). A metal wire is an equipotential. We know that
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
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 an equipotential. (More generally, any flat
piece of conductor or any three-dimensional volume
consisting of conducting material will be an equipoten-
tial region.)
There are geometrical and numerical relationships
between the electric field and the potential, so even
though the potential 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 electric force
parallel to an equipotential curve, electric field lines
always pass through equipotential surfaces at right
angles. (Analogously, a stream flowing straight downhill
will cross the lines on a topographical map at right
angles.) Also, if you divide the equation ∆PE = F ⋅ d
by q, you get ∆PE / q = (F / q) ⋅ d , which translates
into ∆V = E ⋅ d . This means that you can find the
electric field strength at a point P by dividing the
potential difference between the two equipotential lines
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 equipotential
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 B 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
equipotential board. Two of the conductors in your
pattern are connected directly to the voltage source, so
these will be two of your equipotentials, differening
from each other by 8 volts. You can select one of these
as your reference voltage level, so it is by definition at
V=0 V, and other is at V=8 V. One of the probes of
Lab 21 - Electric Fields and Potentials
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 conuctor 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 if it will not be
convenient for you to photocopy the patterns before
leaving, you may wish to use carbon paper. (Your
instructor is probably old enough to remember how to
use this archaeological relic from the prehistory of
information technology.) Yet another alternative is
simply to trace the pattern by hand on another sheet of
paper.
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 equipotential 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 equipotential curve.
Repeat this procedure with another pattern,
making sure to choose one of the ones where at least
one electrode is a small circle.
Prelab
P1. Looking at a plot of equipotential lines, 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 distribution.) What
would the equipotentials look like in a region of
63
uniform electric field?

Self-check
Calculate at least one numerical electric field value
to make sure you understand how to do it.
You have probably found some equipotentials that
form closed loops. Do any electric field lines 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
patterns, you should try to draw in electric field lines
(dashed) for the equipotential lines you have already
drawn. It would be helpful if you would use another
color of ink or pencil for this so that you can clearly see
which are equipotential lines and which are electric
field lines. Remember that electric field lines are always
perpendicular to equipotential lines. So start by
drawing a line perpendicular to one of your
equipotentials and curve it enough to come in perpen-
dicularly to the next equipotential, etc. Do this until
you have at least eight electric field lines drawn on your
plot. Draw arrowheads along your electric field lines to
represent the direction of the field. (The electric field
lines point from high potential to low potential, just as
the force on a rolling ball points downhill.) For the
second pattern, which includes a small circular conduc-
tor, start your electric field lines from it, spacing them
out at equal angles.
B. Select at least five places on each plot and
determine 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. If, for your second pattern, you followed the
instructions about how to start the electric field lines,
then you can use the fact that the number of lines that
terminate in a given area is proportional to the amount
of charge there. Based on this principle, discuss qualita-
tively how the charge is distributed on the other
conducting surface. Is it evenly distributed?
E. What do you observe about the equipotential
lines near conducting surfaces? How do you explain
this?

64 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

Lab 21 - Electric Fields and Potentials 65
 22 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 electrical
currents without even thinking about it. Despite its
ordinariness, the phenomenon of electric currents
passing through liquids (e.g. cellular fluids) 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 electrically charged, i.e. matter
is electrical. Thus, we now have a picture of these
electrically charged particles sitting around in matter,
ready to create an electric current by moving in re-
sponse to an externally applied voltage. Electricity had
been used for practical purposes for a hundred years,
however, before the electrical nature of matter was
proven at the turn of the 20th century.
Another subtle issue involves Ohm’s law,
∆V / I = R ,
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 ∆V / I over a wide range of voltages.
66
Such materials are called Ohmic. Materials with non-
constant ∆V / I are called non-Ohmic. The interesting
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
Resistor 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 schemat-
ics use this . The symbol represents
a fixed source of voltage such as a battery, while
represents 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 (unless the length is
so great that the resistance of the wire becomes non-
negligible), and the schematic is not meant to give any
information other than that needed to understand the
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
 silver

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

circuit’s behavior. All that really matters is what is red

connected to what.
For instance, the schematics (a) and (b) above are 2 1 6 +10%
completely equivalent, but (c) is different. In the first
two circuits, current heading out from the battery can 21x106 Ω +10%
“choose” which resistor to enter. Later on, the two
currents join back up. Such an arrangement is called a
parallel circuit. In the bottom circuit, a series circuit, Setup
the current has no “choice” — it must first flow Obtain your two unknowns from your instructor.
through one resistor and then the other. Group 1 will use unknowns 1A and 1B, group 2 will
use 2A and 2B, and so on.
Resistors are usually too small to make it conve-
nient to print numerical resistance values on them, so Here is a simplified version of the basic circuit you
they are labeled with a color code, as shown in the table will use for your measurements of I as a function of ∆V.
and example below. Although I’ve used the symbol for a resistor, the objects
you are using are not necessarily resistors, or even
Ohmic.
color meaning
black 0
brown 1
red 2 Here is the actual circuit, with the meters included.
In addition to the unknown resistance RU, a known
orange 3
resistor RK (~1 kΩ is fine) is included to limit the
yellow 4 possible current that will flow and keep from blowing
fuses or burning out the unknown resistance with too
green 5 much current. This type of current-limiting application
blue 6 is one of the main uses of resistors.

violet 7 RK

gray 8
white 9 Ru
A
silver +10%
V
gold +5%

Lab 22 - Electrical Resistance 67

 connection.

Observations Prelab
A. Unknown component A P1. Check that you understand the interpretations
Set up the circuit shown above with unknown of the following color-coded resistor labels:
component A. Most of your equipment accepts the
blue gray orange silver =68 kΩ + 10%
banana plugs that your cables have on each end, but to
blue gray orange gold =68 kΩ + 5%
connect to RU and RK you need to stick alligator clips
blue gray red silver =6.8 kΩ + 10%
on the banana plugs. See Appendix B for information
black brown blue silver =1 MΩ + 10%
about how to set up and use the two multimeters. Do
not use the pointy probes that come with the Now interpret the following color code:
multimeters, because there is no convenient way to green orange yellow silver = ?
attach them to the circuit — just use the banana plug
cables. Note when you need three wires to come P2. Fit a line to the following sample data and use
together at one point, you can plug a banana plug into the slope to extract the resistance (see appendix C).
the back of another banana plug.
Measure I as a function of ∆V. Make sure to take 10
measurements for both positive and negative voltages.
5

current (µA)
B. Unknown component B
Repeat for unknown component B.
0
C. The human body
Now do the same with the body of one member of -5
your group. This is not dangerous — the maximum
voltage available from your power supply is not enough -10
to hurt you. (Children usually figure out at some point -4 -2 0 2 4
that touching the terminals of a 9 V battery to their voltage (V)
tongue gives an interesting sensation. The currents you
will use in this lab are ten to a hundred times smaller.) Your result should be consistent with a resistor color
You may wish to keep the voltage below about 5 V or code of green-violet-yellow.
so. At voltages much higher than that (10 to 12 V), a
P3. Plan how you will measure I versus ∆V for both
few subjects get irritated skin.
positive and negative values of ∆V , since the power
Obviously you will not want to use the alligator supply only supplies positive voltages.
clips, though. With the power supply turned off, put
P4. Would data like these indicate a negative
small dabs of the electrode paste on the subject’s left
resistance, or did the experimenter just hook something
wrist and just below the elbow, and simply lay the
up wrong? If the latter, explain how to fix it.
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
connection through the dry epidermal skin layer, and
the resistance would change erratically. The paste is a
current

relatively good conductor, and makes a better electrical

voltage

68 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

 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,
because the meters just measure the total amount
the power supply is putting out.”
c) “RK doesn’t affect the measurement of RU,
because the current and voltage only go through RK
after they’ve already gone through RU.”
In addition to the physics-based goals stated at the
beginning of this section, you should also be develop-
ing the following skills in lab this week:
(1) Be able to translate back and forth between
schematics and actual circuits.
(2) Use a multimeter (discussed in an appendix to
this lab manual), given an explicit schematic
showing how to connect it to a circuit.
Further practical skills will be developed in the follow-
ing lab.

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 resis-
tance. 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
Practical Electrical Circuits
Physics courses in general are compromises between
the fundamental and the practical, between exploring
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 theoretical
concepts that make up the backbone of the lecture
course, it’s important that you develop certain 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 con-
sumer 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.

Lab 22 - Electrical Resistance 69

 23 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 conservation laws.
A conservation law is a statement that a certain measur-
able 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 = PE / q . Charge is
related to current, because current is defined as
I = ∆Q / ∆t .
Conservation of charge has an important conse-
quence for electrical circuits:
Kirchoff's junction rule
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 junction
would have to be creating electric charge out of no-
where. (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
70
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 poten-
tial energy equal to – eV . Suppose the electron sets off
on a journey through a circuit made of resistors.
Passing through the first resistor, our subatomic
protagonist passes through a voltage difference of ∆V 1 ,
so its potential energy changes by – e∆V 1 . To use a
human analogy, this would be like going up a hill of a
certain height and gaining some gravitational potential
energy. Continuing on, it passes through more voltage
differences, ∆V 2 , ∆V 3 , and so on. Finally, in a
moment of religious transcendence, 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 before getting back to its starting point, then
the total change in its potential energy was
– e ∆V 1 +∆V 1 + ... + ∆V N . 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
∆V 1 +∆V 1 + ... + ∆V N = 0 . This is Kirchoff ’s loop
rule:
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
distinction between uphill and downhill, which
depends entirely on which direction you happen to be
traveling on the trail. Similarly, it is important when
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
applying 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
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 compared to the
color-code value.”
Self-Check
Do the analysis in lab.

R2
R1
Construct a circuit like this one, 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.
B. The loop rule
Now come up with a circuit to test the loop rule.
Since the loop rule is always supposed to be true, it’s
hard to go wrong here! Make sure you have at least
three resistors in a loop, and make sure you hook in the
power supply in a way that creates non-zero voltage
differences across all the resistors. Measure the voltage
differences you need to measure to test the loop rule.
Here it is best to use fairly small resistances, so that the
multimeter’s large internal resistance when used in
parallel as a voltmeter will not significantly reduce the
resistance of the circuit. Do not use resistances of less
than about 100 Ω, however, or you may blow a fuse or
burn up a resistor.
Analysis
Discuss whether you think your observations agree
with Kirchoff ’s rules, taking into account systematic
and random errors.
Programmed Introduction to
Practical Electrical Circuits
The following practical skills are devloped in this
lab:
(1) Use a multimeter without being given an explicit
schematic showing how to connect it to your
circuit. This means connecting it in parallel in order
to measure voltages and in series in order to measure
currents.
(2) Use your understanding of Kirchoff ’s rules to
simplify electrical measurements. Kirchoff ’s rules
often guarantee that you can get the same current or
voltage reading by measuring in more than one
place in a circuit. In real life, it is often much easier
to connect a meter to one place than another, and
you can therefore save yourself a lot of trouble using
Kirchoff ’s rules.

Prelab
P1. Draw a schematic showing where you will
insert the multimeter in the circuit to measure the
currents in part A.
P2. Invent a circuit for part B, and draw a sche-
matic. You need not indicate actual resistor values, since
you will have to choose from among the values actually
available in lab.
P3. Draw a schematic showing how you will attach
the multimeter in the circuit to measure the voltage

Lab 23 - Kirchoffs Rules 71

 24 The Speed of Sound
Apparatus
oscilloscope ........................................ 1/group
optical bench ..................................... 1/group
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
timing 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 hearing,
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 remotely 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 relativity, motion faster than light is impos-
sible.)
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 computing
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
range, is used for imaging fetuses in the womb.
72
Setup
The setup is shown below. A transducer is a device
capable of acting as either a speaker or a microphone.
The function generator is used to create a voltage that
varies sinusoidally over time. This voltage is connected
through two coax cables, to the oscilloscope and the
first transducer, used as a speaker. The sound waves
travel from the first transducer to the second trans-
ducer, used as a microphone. You will be using both
channels of the scope to display graphs of two wave-
forms 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 corresponding to a given number of
wavelengths and extract 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
oscilloscope 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 independently,
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 original
input signal directly, rather than by receiving the sound
waves. A precaution that usually works is to connect
the optical bench to the ground contact of the scope
(use an alligator clip to attach to the body of the
bench). It is easy to check whether the problem exists:
oscilloscope
transducers
function
generator ch 1 ch 2
optical bench
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
put your hand between the two transducers to absorb
the sound, and you should see the amplitude of the
signal from the receiver become much smaller. The
receiving transducer will receive sound best at frequen-
cies in the range of 35-40 kHz, so keep the frequency
in that range.
When you connect the function generator to both
the scope and the transmitting transducer, you’ll
probably end up connecting a BNC-to-banana connec-
tor to the function generator, and then putting a
second banana connector into the back of the first. It’s
important to make sure that the little tabs marked
“GND” are on the same side of both connectors.
of the ultrasound? [Self-check: you should get 0.6 cm]
P2. Does it matter which transducer you move?
P3. You can choose through how many wave-
lengths you will move the transducer. What effect will
this have on the accuracy of your determination of the
speed of sound?
P4. What is a reasonable value for the speed of
sound?
Self-Check
Do an analysis without error bars before leaving
lab, and check that your speed of sound is reasonable.

If you are still having problems after taking the Analysis

above steps, try replacing one of the transducers —
some of the transducers are unreliable.
Observations
Determine the wavelength and frequency of the
sound waves using the oscilloscope. Find out the
temperature in the lab.
Do a quick analysis, without error analysis, during
lab, to see if your result is reasonable.
Prelab
P1. The drawings show two different configura-
tions of the transducers on the optical bench.
Determine the speed of sound from your data, and
use the techniques discussed in appendix B to derive
error bars.
Compare your result with the previously deter-
mined value of
v = 20.1 T ,
where v is in m/s and T is the absolute temperature,
found by adding 273 to the Celsius temperature. Is it
statistically consistent with your value?

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 trans-

ducer from the position shown in the first drawing to
the position shown in the second drawing, the student
swept one trace past five complete cycles of the other
trace. (The actual optical benches are about a meter
long, not 8 or 9 cm as shown.) What is the wavelength

Lab 24 - The Speed of Sound 73

 25 RC Circuits
Apparatus
oscilloscope ........................................ 1/group
function generator (HP, not
Daedalon) ........................................ 1/group
unknown capacitor ............................ 1/group
known capacitors, 0.05 mF ................ 1/group
8
resistors of various values

Goals
• Observe the exponential curve of a discharging ex 4
capacitor.
• Determine the capacitance of an unknown
capacitor. 0
-2 0 2

Introduction x

God bless the struggling high school math teacher,

but some of them seem to have a talent for making balance
interesting and useful ideas seem dull and useless. On on credit
card if you
certain topics such as the exponential function, ex, the make the
percentage of students who figure out from their minimum
teacher’s explanation what it really means and why they payment
should care approaches zero. That’s a shame, because every month
there are so many cases where it’s useful. The graphs time
show just a few of the important situations in which
this function shows up.
The credit card example is of the form

y = ae t / k , radioactivity
near
while the Chernobyl graph is like Chernobyl

y = ae –t / k .
time
In both cases, e is the constant 2.718..., and k is a
positive constant with units of time, referred to as the
time constant. The first type of equation is referred to
number
as exponential growth, and the second as exponential of yeast
decay. The significance of k is that it tells you how long cells in a
it takes for y to change by a factor of e. For instance, an barrel of
18% interest rate on your credit card converts to k=6.0 beer being
years. That means that if your credit card balance is brewed
$1000 in 1996, by 2002 it will be $2718, assuming
time
you never really start paying down the principal.

74 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

 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 radioactivity
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.
Why is the exponential function so ubiquitous?
Because it occurs whenever a variable’s rate of change is
proportional to the variable itself. In the credit card and
Chernobyl examples,
∝ current
rate of increase of credit
credit card debt card debt
∝
rate of decrease current number
of the number of of radioactive . decay equals the product of R and C. (It may not be
radioactive atoms atoms
For the credit card, the proportionality occurs because
your interest payment is proportional to how much you
currently owe. In the case of radioactive decay, there is a
proportionality because fewer remaining atoms means
fewer atoms available to decay and release radioactive
particles. This line of tought leads to an explanation of
what’s so special about the constant e. If the rate of
increase of a variable 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 expo-
nential 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 expoential decay of the simplest possible
RC circuit, shown below, consisting of one resistor and
one capacitor in series.
R necessary to observe the changing voltages with an
C of times a second, so you will use a function generator
Suppose we initially charge up the capacitor,
making 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 difference
across the capacitor, and by Kirchoff ’s loop rule there
must be a voltage drop of equal magnitude 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,
∝ charge
rate of decrease
on
of charge on .
capacitor
capacitor
It follows that the charge on the capacitor will decay
exponentially. Furthermore, since the proportionality
constant is 1/RC, we find that the time constant of the
immediately obvious that Ohms times Farads equals
seconds, but it does.)
Note that even if we put the charge on the capaci-
tor very suddenly, the discharging process still occurs 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 reproducing high
frequencies and a large one for the low notes. The small
one, called the tweeter, not only cannot produce low
frequencies but would actually be damaged by attempt-
ing 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
capacitors 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
constant is of the same order of magnitude as the
period of a sound vibration, say ~1 ms. It is therefore
oscilloscope rather than a multimeter. The oscilloscope
needs a repetitive signal, and it is not possible for you
to insert and remove a battery in the circuit hundreds
to produce a voltage that becomes positive and negative
Lab 25 - RC Circuits 75
 R voltmeter, in parallel with the component you’re
function
generator
C the input of the scope has a small tab on one side
in a repetitive pattern. Such a wave pattern is known as
a square wave. The mathematical discussion above
referred to the exponential decay of the charge on the
capacitor, but an oscilloscope actually measures voltage,
not charge. As shown in the graphs below, the resulting
voltage patterns simply look like a chain of exponential
curves strung together.
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 ~10 kΩ, 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 conven-
tions about prefixes. If just a number is given on the
capacitor with no units, the implied units are microfar-
ads, µF. Units of nF are avoided by the manufacturers
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
function 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
76
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 connected to
each other. The banana-to-BNC converter that goes on
marked “GND.” This side of the scope’s circuit 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 work-
ing, the exponential decay on the scope should become
more gradual because you have increased RC.
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 capaci-
tor 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 capacitor with
the new one.
Prelab
P1. Plan how you will determine the capacitance
and what data you will need to take.
Analysis
Determine the capacitance, with error bars.
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
Lab 25 - RC Circuits 77
 26 Magnetism
Apparatus
solenoid (Heath)
DC power supply (Thornton)
digital multimeters (Fluke and HP)
bar magnet
compass
graph paper, with 1 cm squares
resistors
magnetic dip meter (the one with the blue base)
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 magnet’s
lines of symmetry.
Introduction
The magnetic compass, invented by the Olmec
civilization 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.
The earth’s magnetic field is not directly north.
Practically anywhere on the earth, its horizontal part
does not point directly north along a line of longitude,
which is defined with respect to the earth’s axis of
rotation, not magnetically. From the town of Isachsen,
Canada, magnetic north is directly south. Nor is it
completely horizontal. In Fullerton, it is much closer to
vertical than to horizontal. All of this happens because
the earth’s magnetic poles, defined as the two points
where the magnetic field is exactly vertical, do not
coincide with its true north and south poles, defined as
the two locations where the earth’s axis of rotation
78
passes through the earth’s surface. The north magnetic
pole is located on Bathurst Island, Canada, some 1600
km from the true north pole. The south magnetic pole
lies in Piner Bay, just off of the Adélie Coast of Antarc-
tica, fully 2600 km from the true south pole. The
magnetic poles are not even directly opposite each
other. They are both in the western hemisphere, and
each lies 2500 km away from the other’s antipodal
point.
It remained a mystery until two centuries after
Newton how magnetic fields were caused and what
mathematical relationships existed between the field
and its source. Not until 1820 did Hans Oersted
accidentally 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
magnetic fields were created by currents. Even without
discussing the details of the mathematical relationship
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
proportional to the amount of current.
• The magnetic field is a vector, and when various
patterns of current are simultaneously present, their
magnetic fields add like vectors.
Observations
A. The angle of the Earth’s magnetic field
with respect to horizontal
Use the magnetic dip meter, a compass mounted so
that it can rotate in a vertical plane, to find the angle of
the earth’s field with respect to horizontal, θ dip . (A
normal compass sticks if you try to use it in a vertical
plane.)
B. The Earth’s magnetic field
The idea here is to put a compass inside the
solenoid, put current through the solenoid to generate a
magnetic field, and determine the horizontal compo-
nent of the earth’s magnetic field from the deflection of
the compass. The Thornton power supply can be used
to create an adjustable voltage.
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
 Determine the horizontal component, B eh , 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 supply
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.
C. 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 already
found the horizontal component of the Earth’s mag-
netic 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
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 down.
Line up your magnet so it is pointing east-west.
Choose one of the two symmetry axes of your magnet,
and measure the deflection of the compass at a variety
of points along that axis.
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.

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

Lab 26 - Magnetism 79
Self-Check
You were already requested to extract the horizontal
component of the earth’s magnetic field before proceed-
ing to part C. Before leaving lab, extract the vertical
component of the earth’s field and the total magnitude
of the earth’s field. Check your results with your
instructor.
1 2 4
Analyze one data point from part C to make sure
you know how to do it. Does it look like the trend of
the magnetic field values will make sense? 3

Prelab
The week before you are to do the lab, briefly
familiarize yourself visually with the apparatus.
P1. Suppose that in part C, one of your data points
is as follows: when the compass is 11.0 cm from the
magnet, it is 45 degrees away from north. Also, suppose
that in part B, you find out that the Earth’s field is 50
µT. What is the strength of the bar magnet’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 magnetic
field: (1) inside at the center, (2) inside, off center, but
on-axis, (3) inside and resting on the bottom of the
cavity, and (4) partially inside the mouth of the sole-
noid. 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?
P4. How will you actually find out the horizontal
and vertical components, B eh and B ev , of the Earth’s
magnetic field from the observations suggested above?
List the quantities you will have to measure as raw data,
and give equations for B eh and B ev in terms of your
raw data.
Analysis
Calculate the horizontal and vertical components of
the Earth’s magnetic field here in Fullerton and the
magnitude of the field. Use standard techniques for
propagation of errors to derive error bars for all three
quantities.
Analyze your data from part C 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 relationship
using the technique described in appendix E.

80 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

Lab 26 - Magnetism 81
 27 Refraction and Images
Apparatus
rectangular block of plastic (20x10x5 cm,
from blackboard optics kit), or plastic box with
water 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 3.0x108 m/s, into the
watery tissues of your eye, in which it is about 2.2x108
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
following 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
82
θi
incident medium
transmitting medium
θt
slowed down. The other side of the beam, 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 bad turns by having
the people on one side take smaller steps.
Quantitatively, the amount of bending is given by
Snell’s law:
n isin θ i = n tsin θ t ,
where the index i refers to the incident light and
incident medium, and t refers to the transmitted light
and the transmitting medium. Note that the angles 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
reflected — 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 internal 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 trying 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 internet — 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
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
phenomenon of refraction involve lenses, which have Prelab
curved shapes, in this lab you will be dealing almost
exclusively with flat surfaces. Read the laser safety checklist.
P1. Laser beams are supposed to be very nearly
Preliminaries parallel (not spreading out or contracting to a focal
Check whether your laser’s beam seems to be
point). Think of a way to test, roughly, whether this is
roughly parallel.
true for your laser.
Observations P2. Plan how you will determine the index of
A. Index of refraction of plastic refraction in part A.
Make the measurements you have planned in order
to determine the index of refraction of the plastic block Analysis
(or the water, whichever you have). The laser and the Using your data for part A, extract the index of
block of plastic can simply be laid flat on the table. refraction. Estimate the accuracy of your raw data, and
Make sure that the laser is pointing towards the wall. determine error bars for your index of refraction.
B. Total internal reflection Using trigonometry and Snell’s law, make a theo-
Try shining the laser into one end of the spiral- retical calculation of di. You’ll need to use the small-
shaped plastic rod. If you aim it nearly along the axis of angle approximation sin θ ≈ tan θ ≈ θ. (For large
the cable, none will leak out, and if you put your hand angles, i.e. viewing the finger from way off to one side,
in front of the other end of the rod, you will see the the rays will not converge very closely to form a clear
light coming out the other end. (It will not be a well- virtual image.)
collimated beam any more because the beam is spread Explain your results in part C and their meaning.
out and distorted when it undergoes the many reflec-
tions on the rough and curved inside the rod.) Compare your three values for di: the experimental
value based on depth perception, the experimental
C. A virtual image value found by ray-tracing with the laser, and the
Pick up the block, and have your partner look theoretical value found by trigonometry.
sideways 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 until it appears
to be as far away as your own finger. (Your brain
achieves a perception of depth by subconsciously
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.
Now trace the outline of the block on a piece of
paper, remove the block, mark the location of the
image, and put the block back on the paper. Shine the
laser at the point where your finger was originally
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 photo-
copy the tracing so that each person can turn in a copy
with his or her writeup.

Lab 27 - Refraction and Images 83

 28 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, shortest available
focal length ....................................... 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 dis-
puted, 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 patrons
and attempted to sell it for an exorbitant price. Hearing
through second-hand reports that it consisted of two
lenses, Galileo sent an urgent message to his benefac-
tors not to buy it, and proceeded to reproduce the
device himself. An early advocate of simple scientific
terminology, he wanted the instrument to be called the
“occhialini,” Italian for “eye-thing,” rather than the
Greek “telescope.”
His astronomical observations soon poked some
gaping 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 discov-
84
ered the four largest moons of Jupiter, and demon-
strated his political savvy by naming them the
“Medicean satellites” after the powerful Medici family.
The fact that they revolved 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 figure, the
object (arrow) is reflecting light diffusely, so light is
leaving every point on it in every direction. Two such
points are shown, with a few representative rays of
light. The rays all converge again at the right, forming
an image of the object. The person viewing the arrange-
ment from the right cannot 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
It is a surprising fact that a lens can not only bring
light to a focus when the object is a specific value ofso,
but for a large range of distances. As do is increased, di
do di
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

objective
θ1
fo
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 object 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 shows the simplest refracting 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
magnification. 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 cluster can
be seen more easily across many light years than Mick
Jagger’s aging lips across a stadium. People 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
(to be measured directly in this lab)
MA = fo/fE
(theory)
real
image eyepiece
θ2
fE
Observations
A. Focal length of a convex lens
Use your unknown convex lens to project a real
image on the frosted glass screen. For your object, use
the lamp with the arrow-shaped aperture in front of it.
B. The telescope
Use your optical bench and your two known lenses
to build a telescope. Take the data you will need for a
rough determination of its angular magnification.
Prelab
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.
P3. Plan a method for determining experimentally
the angular magnification of the telescope in part B.
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
theory. Do they agree to within the accuracy of the
measurement?
Lab 28 - Geometric Optics 85
 29 Wave Optics
Apparatus
ripple tank apparatus:
ripple tank ...................................... 1/group
yellow foam pads ............................ 4/group
lamp and unfrosted straight-
filament bulb ............................ 1/group
wave generator ................................ 1/group
big metal L-shaped arms for hanging
the wave generator .................... 1/group
little metal L-shaped arms with yellow
plastic balls ..................................... 2/group
rubber bands................................... 2/group
white plastic screen ......................... 1/group
Thornton DC voltage source .......... 1/group
small rubber stopper ....................... 1/group
power strip ...................................... 1/group
bucket....................................................... 1
mop .......................................................... 1
flathead screwdriver ..................................... 1
rulers and protractors
helium-neon laser (Spectra
Physics 155) .................................... 1/group
optical bench with posts & holders .... 1/group
double slits, 0.05 cm (Klinger) ........... 1/group
rulers
meter sticks
Goals
• As a preliminary to observations of wave diffrac-
tion effects with light, observe how a 2-source
interference pattern of water waves depends on
the distance between the sources.
• Observe evidence for the wave nature of light.
• Determine the wavelength of red light (specifi-
cally, the color emitted by the laser), by measur-
ing a double-slit diffraction pattern.
• Determine the approximate diameter of a
86
human 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 matter 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 subject were so
strong that he influenced generations of his successors
to discount the arguments of Huygens 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 of
plane waves marching in step). Then he held a thin
card edge-on to the beam, observed a diffraction
pattern on a wall, and correctly inferred the wave
nature and wavelength of light. Since Romer 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 equipment.
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
 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.

Observations it makes. Now try two sources at once, in neighboring

A. Two-source diffraction with water waves
The ripple tank is tank that sits about 30 cm above
the floor. You put a little water in the tank, and pro-
duce waves. There is a lamp above it that makes a
point-like source of light, and the waves cast patterns 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 filament.
This way the lamp acts like a point source of light
above the tank. Clamp the light source to the post and
turn it on. Put the white plastic screen on the floor
under the tank. If you make ripples in the water, you
should be able to see the wave pattern on the screen.
The wave generator consists of a piece of wood that
hangs by rubber bands from the two L-shaped metal
hangers. There is a DC motor attached, which spins an
intentionally unbalanced wheel, resulting in vibration
of the wood. The wood itself can be used to make
straight waves directly in the water, but in this experi-
ment you’ll be using the two little L-shaped pieces of
metal with the yellow balls on the end to make two
sources of circular ripples. The DC motor runs off of
the DC voltage source, and the more voltage you
supply, the faster the motor runs.
Start just by sticking one little L-shaped arm in the
piece of wood, and observing the circular wave pattern
holes. Pick a speed (frequency) for the motor that you’ll
use throughout the experiment — a fairly low speed
works well. Measure the angular spacing of the result-
ing diffraction pattern for several values 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
you expect the angular spacing of the waves to be
related to d, the distance between the two sources of
ripples? Construct a graph to test whether this was
really true. Show your instructor your graph before
going on to parts B and C.
B. 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
grating. 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
consists of a rapidly varying pattern of bright and dark
bars, with a more slowly varying pattern superimposed
on top (see figure, below). 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 ,

Lab 29 - Wave Optics 87

where θ is measured in radians. To make sure you can ≈ sin θ, which is valid if θ is small and measured in
see the fine spacing, put your grating several meters radians.
away from the wall. This will necessitate shining it
P4. Make a rough order-of-magnitude guess of the
across the space between lab tables. To make it less
diameter of a human hair.
likely that someone will walk through the beam and get
the beam in their eye, put some of the small desks Analysis
under the beam. Determine the wavelength of the light and the
Think about the best way to measure the spacing of diameter of the hair, with error bars.
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.
C. 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 obstruc-
tion, such as your hair, has the same spacing as the
pattern that would be created by a single slit whose
width was the same as the diameter of your hair. (This
is an example of a general theorem called Babinet’s
principle.) Measure the spacing of the diffraction
pattern. (Since the hair’s diameter is the only dimension
involved, there is only one diffraction pattern with one
spacing, not superimposed fine and coarse patterns as
in part A.) Determine 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
Read the safety checklist.
P1. Roughly what wavelength do you expect red
light to have?
P2. It is not practical to measure ∆θ directly using
a protractor. Plan how you will determine ∆θ indirectly,
via trigonometry.
P3. The book gives the equation
d sin θ = mλ
for the angle, θ, of the mth maximum created by
double-slit diffraction. From this, derive the equation
∆θ = λ/d given above for the spacing between each
maximum and the next. Hint: use the approximation θ

88 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

Lab 29 - Wave Optics 89
 30 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 polariza-
tion relates to the direction of the field vectors
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. Electromag-
netic waves are transverse, i.e. the electric and magnetic
field vectors vibrate in directions perpendicular 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 polar-
izations.
Maybe we polarization-blind humans are missing
out on something. Some insects and crustaceans can
detect polarization, and a neuroscientist at the Univer-
direction of motion of wave
E E
B B
B B
E E
plane of
vibration
of electric
field
90
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 chang-
ing from moment to moment, and from point to point
within the beam.
Qualitative Observations
Before doing anything else, turn on your gas
discharge 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 the back. You have already seen that in this type of
E An electromagnetic wave
B
has electric and magnetic
B field vectors that vibrate in
E
directions perpendicular to
its direction of motion. The
wave’s direction of
plane of vibration
polarization is defined as
of magnetic field the line along which the
electric field lies.
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
situation, when the beam emerges again, its direction 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 A single laser beam entering a calcite
crystal breaks up into two parts, which are
substances, has a different index of refraction depend- refracted by different amounts.
ing 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 E E
B
the crystal. The atoms inside the crystal are packed in a B B
E
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 polarized perpendicular B B
to that axis moves at a different speed.
E
It makes sense that if the original laser beam was a B
random mixture of all possible directions of polariza-
tion, then each part would be refracted by a different The calcite splits the wave into two parts, polarized
amount. What is a little more surprising is that two in perpendicular directions compared to each other.
separated beams emerge, with nothing in between. The
incoming light was composed of light with every
possible direction of polarization. You would therefore The original beam
expect that the part of the incoming light polarized at, contains every
possible polar-
say, 45° compared to the crystal’s axis would be re-
ization.
fracted by an intermediate amount, but that doesn’t
happen. This surprising observation, 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
Only two beams with two
observations to help you understand what’s really going polarizations emerge from
on. the calcite crystal.
B. A polarized beam entering the calcite
We need not be restricted to speculation about
what was happening to the part of the light that polarization of the light that passes through.
entered the calcite crystal polarized at a 45° angle. You
Now try interposing the film between the laser and
can use a polarizing film, often referred to informally as
the crystal. The beam reaching the crystal is now
a “polaroid,” to change unpolarized light into a beam of
polarized along some specific direction. If you rotate
only one specific polarization. In this part of the lab,
the film, you change beam’s direction of polarization. If
you will use a polarizing film to produce a beam of
you try various orientations, you will be able to find
light polarized at a 45° angle to the crystal’s internal
one that makes one of the spots disappear, and another
axis.
orientation of the film, at a 90° angle compared to the
If you simply look through the film, it doesn’t look first, that makes the other spot go away. When you
like anything special — everything just looks dimmer, hold the film in one of these directions, you are sending
like looking through sunglasses. The light reaching a beam into the crystal that is either purely polarized
your eye is polarized, but your eye can’t tell that. If you along the crystal’s axis or purely polarized at 90° to the
looked at the film under a microscope, you’d see a axis.
pattern of stripes, which select only one direction of
By now you have already seen what happens if the

Lab 30 - Polarization 91
film is at an intermediate angle such as 45°. Two spots the film. Even if one component is entirely absorbed,
appear on the paper in the same places produced by an the other component should still be transmitted.
unpolarized source of light, not just a single spot at the
midpoint. This shows that the crystal is not just
throwing away the parts of the light that are out of θ
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 other. A
Based on these considerations, now think about
light wave is made of electric and magnetic fields,
what will happen if you look through two polarizing
which are vectors, so it is vector addition we’re talking
films at an angle to each other, as shown in the figure
about in this case. A vector at a 45° angle can be
above. Do not look into the laser beam! Just look around
produced by adding two perpendicular vectors of equal
the room. What will happen as you change the angle θ?
length. The crystal must therefore cannot respond any
differently to 45-degree polarized light than it would to Carry out this observation, and compare with the
a 50-50 mixture of light with 0-degree and 90-degree prediction you made in the prelab.
polarization. D. Three polarizing films

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 superposition
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 perfectly aligned with it,
because a field oriented on a slant can be analyzed into
two vector components, at 0 and 90° with respect to
Now suppose you start with two films at a 90°
angle to each other, and then sandwich a third film
between them at a 45° angle, as shown in the two
figures above. Make a prediction about what will
happen, and discuss your prediction with your instruc-
tor before you make the actual observation.
Quantitative Observations
E. Intensity of light passing through two
polarizing films
In this part of the lab, you will make numerical
measurements of the transmission of initially unpolar-
ized 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 photocell,
which is a device that converts light energy into an
electric current. (Photocells have been getting cheaper
and more efficient, and in some remote rural areas it is

92 (c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

more economical for people to generate their own data. (You might think of comparing the intensity
electricity rather than paying the electric company a transmitted through the two polaroids with the inten-
huge amount of money to run a line to their home.) sity that you get with no polaroids in the way at all.
This doesn’t really work, however, because in addition
You will use a voltmeter to measure the voltage
to acting as polarizers, the polaroids simply absorb a
across the photocell when light is shining on it. The
certain percentage of the light, just as any transparent
voltage across the voltmeter causes current to flow,
material would.)
dissipating energy as heat inside the voltmeter. Since
the photocell is not 100% efficient, some of the Prelab
original light energy is converted to heat within the
P1. Predict what will happen in part C.
photocell 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 measure of
light intensity. The power dissipated inside the voltme-
ter equals V2/R, and since the voltmeter’s resistance is
constant, you can use V2 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 without
going through the polaroids. The ambient light in the
room is nearly unpolarized, but varies randomly 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 monochromatic, 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. (See your textbook
for the appropriate equation.) Discuss how your results
compare with theory. Since your measurements of light
intensity are relative, just scale the theoretical curve so
that its maximum matches that of the experimental

Lab 30 - Polarization 93
 31 Electron Diffraction
Apparatus (one setup avail-
able)
cathode ray tube (Teltron TEL 555)
high-voltage power supply (Leybold)
microammeter, 100 µA full-scale (Simpson)
analog multimeter for measuring high voltages
(Triplett 630) — not the similar Triplett meter that
measures lower voltages and does not have banana
plug connectors
DC power supply (Thornton)
Goals
• Observe wave interference patterns (diffraction
patterns) of electrons, demonstrating that
electrons exhibit wave behavior as well as
particle behavior.
• Learn what it is that determines the wavelength
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 experi-
mental evidence from the photoelectric effect showing
that light is made of units called photons, which are
13.5 cm
+
-
graphite
foil
side view
94
both particles and waves. That probably disturbed you
less than it might have, since you most likely had no
preconceived ideas about whether light was a particle or
a wave. In this lab, however, you will see direct evidence
that electrons, which you had been completely con-
vinced were particles, also display the wave-like prop-
erty of interference. Your schooling had probably
ingrained the particle interpretation of electrons in you
so strongly that you used particle concepts without
realizing it. When you wrote symbols for chemical ions
such as Cl- and Ca2+, you understood them to mean a
chlorine atom with one excess electron and a calcium
atom with two electrons stripped off. By teaching you
to count electrons, your teachers were luring you into
the assumption that electrons were particles. If this lab’s
evidence for the wave properties of electrons disturbs
you, then you are on your way to a deeper understand-
ing of what an electron really is — both a particle and a
wave.
Method
What you are working with is basically the same
kind of vacuum tube as the picture tube in your
television. 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 coating and
produce a glow. You cannot see the electron beam itself.
There is a very thin carbon foil (it looks like a tiny
piece of soap bubble) near where the neck joins the
spherical part of the tube, and the electrons must pass
phosphor coated
front view
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
through the foil before crossing over to the phosphores-
cent screen.
The purpose of the carbon foil is to provide an
ultra-fine diffraction grating — the “grating” consists of
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), which makes
a conventional ruled diffraction grating useless — the
closest spacing that can be achieved on a conventional
grating is on the order of one micrometer. The carbon
atoms in graphite are arranged in sheets, each of which
consists of a hexagonal pattern of atoms like chicken
wire. That means they are not lined up in straight rows,
so the diffraction pattern is slightly different from the
pattern produced by a ruled grating.
Also, the carbon foil consists of many tiny graphite
crystals, each with a random orientation of its crystal
lattice. The net result is that you will see a bright spot
surrounded by two faint circles. The two circles
represent cones of electrons that intersect the phosphor.
Each cone makes an angle θ with respect to the central
axis of the tube, and just as with a ruled grating, the
angle is given by
θ = λ/d
where λ is the wavelength of the wave. For a ruled
grating, d would be the spacing between the lines. In
this case, we will have two different cones with two
different θ’s, θ1 and θ2, corresponding to two different
d’s, d1 and d2. Their geometrical meaning is shown
below.
d1=0.213 nm
d2=0.123 nm
The carbon atoms in the graphite crystal are
arranged hexagonally.
Safety
This lab involves the use of voltages of up to 6000
V. You should observe the following precautions to
avoid unpleasant electric shocks. Do not be afraid of
the equipment, however; there is a fuse in the high-
voltage supply that limits the amount of current that it
can produce, so it is not particularly dangerous. Read
the safety checklist on high voltage in Appendix H.
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.
In addition to the high-voltage safety precautions,
please observe the following rules to avoid damaging
the apparatus:
______ Do not turn on anything until your
instructor has checked your circuit.
______ Always make sure you have an ammeter in
your circuit to measure the electric current from the
electrons going from the cathode to the anode, and do
not exceed 150 µA. Before turning on your high
voltage, ask your instructor to make sure that the
ammeter is wired into the circuit correctly. If you are
using an analog ammeter, make sure that it is set up
with the right polarity — you can tell this by putting a
small amount of high voltage on the cathode ray tube,
and seeing if the meter registers a small current.
______ Do not leave the tube running unnecessar-
ily for long periods of time using the highest amount of
high voltage.
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, increasing
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 nostal-
gia-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, producing 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
Lab 31 Electron Diffraction
95
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 projecting 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
turning it on!
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 velocity,
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 meter 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 highest
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.
• 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
incurred by viewing the diffraction patterns
from different angles on different occasions. Try
repeating a measurement more than once, and
seeing how big your random errors are.
96
You can probably save yourself a lot of time on this
analysis by using a computer to crunch the numbers
and make the graphs. Check with your instructor about
the software available on the Macs and PC’s in room
412.
Prelab
The week before you are to do the lab, briefly
familiarize yourself visually with the apparatus.
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
electrons are accelerated is V, and the known mass and
charge of the electron are m and e, what are the elec-
trons’ kinetic energy and momentum, in terms of V, m,
and e? (As a numerical check on your results, you
should find that V=5700 V gives KE=9.1x10-16 J and
p=4.1x10-23 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 proportional 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
measurements of the same wavelength. The two
wavelengths 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 elec-
trons, 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 function of
other quantities such as 1/KE, 1/p, etc.
What does λ seem to be proportional to? Your data
may cover a small enough range of voltage that more
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
than one graph may look linear. You can rule one out
by checking whether a line fit through the data points
would pass near the origin, as it must for a proportion-
ality. This is why it is important to have your graph
include the origin.
You can use the values of the mass and charge of
the electron given in your textbook. Do not, however,
use circular reasoning by looking up a formula in your
textbook for the wavelength of an electron — that’s
relationship is what you’re trying to find experimen-
tally!

Lab 31 Electron Diffraction

97
 32 The Charge to Mass Ratio of the
Electron magnetic
b
field created
Apparatus (one setup avail- by coils coil
able)
vacuum tube with Helmholtz coil
coils (Leybold ) .......................................... 1
vacuum capacitor
Heath HV supply ........................................ 1 tube plates
12-V DC power supplies (Thornton) .......... 2
beam of
multimeters (Fluke or HP)........................... 2
light made
compass ....................................................... 1 h by electrons
ruler ............................................................. 1
banana-plug cables
form magnetic field, B. The electrons are emitted
Goal perpendicular to the field, and, it turns out, travel in a
Measure the charge-to-mass ratio of the electron. circle in a plane perpendicular to it. The force of the
magnetic field on the electrons is
Introduction F = qvB , (1)
Why should you believe electrons exist? By the turn
of the twentieth century, not all scientists believed in directed towards the center of the circle. Their accelera-
the literal reality of atoms, and few could imagine tion is
smaller objects from which the atoms themselves were a = v2/r , (2)
constructed. Over two thousand years had elapsed since
so using F=ma, we can write
the Greeks first speculated that atoms existed based on
philosophical arguments without experimental evi- qvB = mv2/r . (3)
dence. During the Middle Ages in Europe, “atomism” If the initial velocity of the electrons is provided by
had been considered highly suspect, and possibly accelerating them through a voltage difference V, they
heretical. Finally by the Victorian era, enough evidence have a kinetic energy equal to qV, so
had accumulated from chemical experiments to make a
persuasive case for atoms, but subatomic particles were 1 2
2mv = qV . (4)
not even discussed.
From equations 3 and 4, you can determine q/m.
If it had taken two millennia to settle the question Note that since the force of a magnetic field on a
of atoms, it is remarkable that another, subatomic level moving charged particle is always perpendicular to the
of structure was brought to light over a period of only direction of the particle’s motion, the magnetic field
about five years, from 1895 to 1900. Most of the can never do any work on it, and the particle’s KE and
crucial work was carried out in a series of experiments speed are therefore constant.
by J.J. Thomson, who is therefore often considered the
discoverer of the electron. You will be able to see where the electrons are
going, because the vacuum tube is filled with a hydro-
In this lab, you will carry out a variation on a gen gas at a low pressure. Most electrons travel large
crucial experiment by Thomson, in which he measured distances through the gas without ever colliding with a
the ratio of the charge of the electron to its mass, q/m. hydrogen atom, but a few do collide, and the atoms
The basic idea is to observe a beam of electrons in a then give off blue light, which you can see. Although I
region of space where there is an approximately uni- will loosely refer to “seeing the beam,” you are really

(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

98
seeing the light from the collisions, not the 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 pre-
cisely.
The field is supplied by an electromagnet consisting
of two circular coils, each with 130 turns of wire. 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 acces-
sible than the inside of a solenoid.
Safety
You will use the Heath high-voltage supply to make
a DC voltage of about 300 V. Two things automatically
keep this from being very dangerous:
• Several hundred DC volts are far less dangerous
than a similar AC voltage. The household AC
voltages of 110 and 220 V are more dangerous
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
cathode is heated to make it release electrons more
easily. Connect a Thornton power supply to the
terminals marked “heater,” and use a multimeter to
monitor how much voltage it is supplying. Turn it
up to six volts. The tube should start to glow.
Electromagnet circuit: Connect the other Thornton
power supply, in series with an ammeter, to the
terminals 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 Heath HV supply
unplugged. It is really two HV circuits in one box.
Use the circuit with outputs on the right, labeled
“B+”. 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 behind,
and sighting along a line connecting the corresponding
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 reasonable
compared to the currently accepted value.
Prelab
The week before you are to do the lab, briefly
familiarize yourself visually with the apparatus.
Read the safety checklist.
P1. Derive an equation for q/m in terms of V, r and
B.
P2. For an electromagnet consisting of a single
circular loop of wire of radius b, the field at a point on
its axis, at a distance z from the plane of the loop, is
given by
–3/2
B = 12 µ oIb 2(b 2 + z 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 experiment, the
electrons are never exactly on the axis of the Helmholtz
coils. In practice, the equation you will derive is
Lab 32 The Charge to Mass Ratio of the Electron
99
sufficiently accurate as an approximation to the actual
field experienced by the electrons.) If you have trouble
with this derivation, see your instructor 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 irrelevant?
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 cathodes
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?

(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

100
101
 33 The Photoelectric Effect
Apparatus
He-Ne laser
Hg gas discharge tube, light aperture
assembly, and lens/grating assembly
light aperture assembly
lens/grating assembly
photodiode module, support base, and coupling rod
digital multimeter (Fluke)
pieces of plywood
green and yellow filters
Goals
• Observe evidence that light has particle proper-
ties as well as wave properties.
• Measure Planck’s constant.
Introduction
The photoelectric effect, a phenomenon in which
light shakes an electron loose from an object, provided
the first evidence for wave-particle duality: the idea that
the basic building blocks of light and matter show a
strange mixture of particle and wave behaviors. At the
turn of the twentieth century, physicists assumed that
particle and wave phenomena were completely distinct.
Young had shown that light could undergo interference
effects such as diffraction, so it had to be a wave. Since
light was a wave composed of oscillating electric and
magnetic fields, it made sense that when light encoun-
tered matter, it would tend to shake the electrons. It
was only to be expected that something like the
photoelectric effect could happen, with the light
shaking the electrons vigorously enough to knock them
out of the atom. The best theoretical estimates, how-
ever, were 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
escape.
The actual experimental observation of the photo-
electric effect was therefore an embarrassment. It
started up immediately, not after a million years. Albert
Einstein, better known today for the theory of relativ-
102
ity, was the first to come up with the radical, and
correct, explanation. Einstein simply suggested that in
the photoelectric effect, light was behaving as a particle,
now called a photon. The beam of light could be
visualized as a stream of machine-gun bullets. The
electrons would be small targets, but when a “light
bullet” did score a hit, it packed enough of an indi-
vidual wallop to knock the electron out immediately.
Based on other experiments involving the spectrum of
light emitted by hot, glowing objects, Einstein also
proposed that each photon had an energy given by
E = hf ,
where f is the frequency of the light and h is Planck’s
constant.
In this lab, you will perform the classic experiment
used to test Einstein’s theory. You should refer to the
description of the experiment in your textbook. Briefly,
you will expose the metal cathode of a vacuum tube to
light of various frequencies, and determine the voltage
applied between the cathode an anode that just barely
suffices to cut off the photoelectric current completely.
This is known as the stopping voltage, Vs. According to
Einstein’s theory, the stopping voltage should obey the
equation
e Vs = hf - φ ,
where the work function, f, is the amount of energy
required by an electron to penetrate the surface of the
cathode and escape.
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
Setup light

You can use the Hg gas discharge tube and the He- (a)
Ne laser to produce monochromatic light with the
A
following wavelengths:
light source color wavelength (nm) V
Hg lamp ultraviolet 365
Hg lamp violet 405
Hg lamp blue 436 light
Hg lamp green 546
Hg lamp orange 578 (b)
laser red 633 V
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
lamp. The lens serves to create focused images of slit 1 Circuit
at the photodiode. The lens and diffraction grating are The circuit in fig. (a) above is the one shown in
housed in a single unit, which is attached to a pair of textbooks for this type of experiment. Light comes in
rods (not shown) projecting from slit 1. Do not drop and knocks electrons out of the curved cathode. If the
the lens and diffraction grating — I have already voltage is turned off, there is no electric field, so the
damaged one by dropping it, and they cost $200 to electrons travel in straight lines; some will hit the
replace. For measurements with the green and yellow anode, creating a current referred to as the photocur-
lines, green and yellow filters are used to help eliminate rent. If the voltage is turned on, the electric field repels
stray light of other colors — they stick magnetically on the electrons from the wire electrode, and the current is
the front of the collimator tube. Slit 2 and the collima- reduced or eliminated. The stopping voltage would be
tor tube keep stray light from getting in. measured by increasing the voltage until no more
The photodiode module is held on top of a post on current was flowing. We used to use a setup very similar
a rotating arm. The ultraviolet line is invisible, but the to this in this course, but it was difficult to get good
front of slit 2 is coated with a material that fluoresces in data because it was hard to judge accurately when the
UV light, so you can see where the line is. 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. The two
electrodes act as a capacitor, so a voltage V=Q/C builds
up. As the charge and the voltage increase, the photo-
current 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
slit 1 have the next color of light shining on the cathode, you
filter momentarily close the switch, discharging the photo-
diffraction
grating slit 2 diode, and then take your next measurement. The only
disadvantage of this setup is that you cannot adjust the
Hg voltage yourself and see how the photocurrent varies
lamp photodiode with voltage.
module

collimator
tube

Lab 33 The Photoelectric Effect

103
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 not
mean it is getting in to the photodiode. You 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
corresponding 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
frequencies), for which the energy of the
photons is the highest, readily produce photo-
electrons. The photocurrent is much weaker for
the longer wavelengths . Start with the short-
wavelength line and graduate to the more
difficult, lower frequencies. Don’t forget the
filters for the yellow and green lines!
• Move the housing containing the grating and
lens until you get a good focus at the front of
the photodiode 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
not mean it is getting in to the photodiode. You
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.
• 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
104
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 lamp.
• 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. On some units, the screw has been
broken by students who rotated the module
without loosening the screw first; if yours is
broken, you’ll need to use masking tape to hold
the module in place once it’s lined up.
Prelab
The week before you are to do the lab, briefly
familiarize yourself visually with the apparatus.
P1. In the equation eVs = hf - φ, verify that all three
terms have the same units.
P2. Plan how you will analyze your data to deter-
mine the work function and 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.
Analysis
Extract Planck’s constant and the work function of
the electrode from your data. estimate the error bars for
your measurement of Planck’s constant. Is your value
consistent with the accepted value given in your
textbook?
Every electron that absorbs a photon acquires a
kinetic energy equal to hf. Thus it would seem that if
the voltage is less than the stopping voltage, every
electron should have enough energy to reach the other
electrode. Give two reasons why many electrons do not
reach the other electrode even when the voltage is less
than the stopping voltage.
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
105
 34 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
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
“unsplittable,” and there was no evidence for subatomic
particles. Only after Thomson and Rutherford had
demonstrated the existence of electrons and the nucleus
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 electromagnetic radia-
tion, as for example in a radio antenna, so the accelera-
tion 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 discrete
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
emitted by the hydrogen atom, the simplest of all
atoms, with just one proton and one electron. In 1885,
before electrons and protons had even been imagined, a
Swiss schoolteacher named Johann Balmer discovered
106
that the wavelengths emitted by hydrogen were related
by mysterious ratios of small integers. For instance, 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 wavelengths of the
hydrogen spectrum (both the visible ones and the
invisible ones that lay in the infrared and ultraviolet).
The formula was completely empirical, with no
theoretical basis, but clearly there were patterns lurking
in the seemingly mysterious atomic spectra.
The first step toward understanding Balmer’s
numerology 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
specific 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 required the
atom to release a photon with an energy of Ephoton = Ei-
Ef.
Not only could the discrete line spectra be ex-
plained, 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. Know-
ing 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 formula,
2π 2k 2e 4m e 1
En = –
h2 n2
where n is an integer labeling the level, k is the Cou-
lomb constant, e is the fundamental unit of charge, h is
Planck’s constant, and me is the mass of the electron.
All the energies of the photons in the emission spec-
trum could now be explained as differences 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,
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
dropping down from the n=3, 4, 5, and 6 states.
Although the equation’s sheer size may appear
formidable, 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 oc-
curred. The minus sign occurs because the equation
includes both the electron’s potential energy 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 physicists, and we are so sure of
the theory behind Bohr’s equation that it is now used as
one of the most accurate ways of determining the mass
of the electron. In a previous lab, you measured the
charge-to-mass ratio of the electron, but like the
experiment by Thomson on which it was based, that
technique was unable to give the charge and mass
separately. Modern 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
example of a high-precision experiment that you’ll do
in this course — done correctly, it allows the determi-
nation 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
α ment simply had to get skilled machinists to build a
grating
Na or H
lamp
collimator θ error. The first trick is simply to determine the spacing,
telescope
slit
order m occurs at an angle satisfying the equation mλ=
d sin θ.
To measure a wavelength, you will move the
telescope 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 α 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 imperfect
placement. There are three ways in which your place-
ment 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 instance,
if the grating was too close to the collimator, 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 spacing (in lines per
millimeter) which can be converted to d (center-to-
center distance between lines). But their manufac-
turing 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-
setup that could be very precisely aligned. But it turns
out that once someone has accurately measured at least
one wavelength of one emission line of one element,
there are a couple of tricks that allows later spectrosco-
pists to calibrate away all of these sources of systematic
d, of the grating using a line whose wavelength is
Lab 33 The Photoelectric Effect
107
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.
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 optics
to let you see an image of the slit, not the tube itself.
The point of using a telescope is that it provides
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 impor-
tant, 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 adjust-
ment 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.
slit lens grating objective
collimator
108
Setup
Turn on both 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 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.
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 adjusted
correctly for viewing a parallel beam of incoming light.
crosshairs
eyepiece
telescope
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy
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 collima-
tor, 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 incandes-
cent 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 incandescent bulb
emits a continuous spectrum, you will see two rain-
bows, 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 patterns 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 look at
it carefully to figure out which side of the glass has the
grating. Put it 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 perpendicular 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 corre-
sponding number on the vernier scale tells you how
many minutes of arc to add for the “plus a little more.”
For each of the three orders of diffraction, extract d
using the equation mλ=d sin θ. 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
wavelength 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
determine 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 week before you are to do the lab, briefly
Lab 33 The Photoelectric Effect
109
 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

familiarize 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 spacing
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 above, 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
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?
2π 2k 2e 4m e
in the Bohr equation. Since this is a
2
h
high-precision experiment, a hand-drawn graph is not
good enough; you will want to use a computer to make
the graph. Make sure whatever software you use is
capable of telling you the error bars on the slope. (Mac
Curve Fit, available on the Mac in rm. 416P, will do
this.) If any of the points deviate visibly from the line,
then you’ve messed up.
From the measurement of the above proportional-
ity constant, extract the mass of the electron, with error
bars.

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.
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 proportionality constant

(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

110
111
 35 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
magnetic fields.
• Test Faraday’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. Friction,
normal forces, gravity, electric forces, magnetic forces,
surface tension — the list went on and on. Today, 200
years later, ask a physicist to enumerate the fundamen-
tal 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 simplifi-
cation came from the study of matter at the atomic
level, which showed that apparently unrelated forces
such as friction, normal forces, and surface tension were
all manifestations of electrical forces among atoms. The
other big simplification came from Faraday’s experi-
mental 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 magnetic
field, and magnetic fields exert forces on an electrical
current. In other words, electric forces are forces of
charges acting on charges, and magnetic forces are
112
forces of moving charges on moving 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,
dΦB
E ⋅ ds = –
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 technolo-
gies 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 path integral E ⋅ ds in Faraday’s law has
units of volts, and it can be observed as an emf around
a loop of wire positioned inside or close to the solenoid.
To make the emf larger and easier to see on an
oscilliscope, you will use 5-10 loops, sending to the
scope a total emf given by
dΦ
= – N dtB ,
where N is the number of loops.
The only remaining complication is that the rate of
dΦ
change of the magnetic flux, dtB , is determined by
the rate of change of the magnetic field, which relates
to the rate of change of the current through the
(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

solenoid, ddti . The oscilloscope, however, measures
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 observe 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’a law why it is the way
it is, i.e. why the induced emf has the greatest value at a
certain 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 sole-
noid 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
Faraday’s law. Going back to the setup for part A,
measure the amplitude (peak-to-peak height) of the
voltage across the power resistor. Choose a position for
the loops of wire that you think will make it as easy as
dΦ
possible to calculate dtB accurately based on knowl-
edge 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 indiced emf. Repeat these
measurements with a frequency that is ten times higher.
Postlab Check
Before leaving, analyze your results from part C and
make sure you get reasonable agreement with Faraday’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.
Lab 35 Faraday’s Law
113
 36 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
circuit.
• 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 surroundings.
Perhaps equally surprising is the fact that a radio can
pick up a wave with one particular 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 property 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 device 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.
The Circuit
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 resistance
of the wire in the coil, and in addition this simple
version of the circuit would inevitably posess a resis-
tance 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 amplifier,
such as the one that amplifies the electrical 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 signal stronger. (This strengthen-
ing factor is known as “gain.”) Here, however, you are
encountering a second very important use of amplifiers
in electronics: 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
unpredictable internal resistance of the sine wave
generator, the circuit only sees the small and relatively
constant internal resistance of the amplifier’s output,
which is about 50 ohms. The strengthening of the
electrical signal by the amplifier is in fact an undesir-
able 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 ampli-
tude knob of the sine wave generator all the way down
when making modifications to the circuit.

As shown in the figure, the basic 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 generator to supply a driving voltage. You
will study the way the circuit resonates, i.e. responds
most strongly to a certain frequency.

(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

114
Observations
A. Observation of Resonance
By connecting the oscilloscope to measure the
voltage 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. As you change the frequency of the
function generator, you should notice a very strong
response in the circuit centered around one particular
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.)
Locate fo accurately, and use it to determine the
inductance of the Heath coil using the equation
fo = 1 .
2π LC
Compare this with the equation
L = µ oN A /
2
for an ideal solenoid, where N is the number of turns of
wire, A is the cross-sectional area, and is the length
of the coil. The latter equation is only an approxima-
tion, but it is useful as a check on your more accurate
result derived from the resonant frequency.
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, FWHM, 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 has increased in proportion to the resistance.
(Remember that your resistance always includes the
resistance of the coil and the output side of the ampli-
fier.)
E. The Resonance Curve
Going back to your low-resistance setup, collect
voltage 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 reso-
nance, it will be convenient just to take data at frequen-
cies that change by successive factors of two. .
FWHM
db 3 db
log10f
(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.)
In engineering work, it is useful to create a graph of
the resonance curve in which the y axis is in decibels,
db = 10 log 10 P
P max
V
= 20 log 10 ,
V max
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
Lab 36 LRC Circuits
115
there is no oscillating driving force present. This Graph the resonance curve — you can probably
unforced behavior is known as “ringing.” Replace the save yourself a great deal of time by using a computer
HP sine wave generator with the Daedalon function to do the calculations and graphing. To do the calcula-
generator, and plug your circuit into the back of it, tions, you can go to my web page,
which supplies a square wave. You can think of this as if
www.lightandmatter.com .
you are giving the circuit repeated “kicks,” so that it
will ring after each kick. Click on “Pages relating specifically to Fullerton
College,” and then on “data-analysis tool for the LRC
Choose a frequency many many times lower than
circuits lab”. Once your data are ready to graph, I
the resonant frequency, so that the circuit will have
suggest using the Macintosh software called Mac Curve
time to oscillate many times in between “kicks.” You
Fit to make your graph (see Appendix D).
should observe an exponentially decaying sine wave.
On the high-frequency end, the impedance is
The rapidity of the exponential decay depends on
dominated by the impedance of the inductor, which is
how much resistance is in the circuit, since the resistor
proportional to frequency. Doubling the frequency
is the only component that gets rid of energy perma-
doubles the impedance, thereby cutting the current by
nently. The rapidity of the decay is customarily mea-
a factor of two and the power dissipated in the resistor
sured with the quantity Q (for “quality”), defined as the
by a factor of 4, which is 6.02 db. Since a factor of 2 in
number of oscillations required for the potential energy
frequency corresponds in musical terms to one octave,
in the circuit to drop by a factor of 535 (the obscure
this is referred to as a 6 db/octave roll-off. Check this
numerical factor being e –2π). For our purposes, it will
prediction against your data. You should also find a 6
be more convenient to extract Q from the equation
db/octave slope in the limit of low frequencies — here
the impedance is dominated by the capacitor, but the
V peak = V peak,i⋅exo – πt idea is similar. (More complex flitering circuits can
QT
achieve roll-offs more drastic than 6 db/octave.)
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 deter-
mine 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.
For both versions of the circuit, compare the
FWHM of the resonance and the circuit’s Q to the
theoretical equations

FWHM = R
2πL
and

fo
Q= .
FWHM
No error analysis is required, since the main errors are
systematic ones introduced by the nonideal behavior of
the coil and the difficulty of determining an exact, fixed
value for the internal resistance of the output of the
amplifier.

(c) 1998 Benjamin Crowell and Virginia Roundy

116
117
 37 Electromagnetism
Apparatus
solenoid (Heath) ................................ 1/group
oscilloscope ........................................ 1/group
2-meter wire with banana plugs ......... 1/group
neodymium magnets
masking tape
Goals
• Observe electric fields induced by changing
magnetic 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. Friction,
normal forces, gravity, electric forces, magnetic forces,
surface tension — the list went on and on. Today, 200
years later, ask a physicist to enumerate the fundamen-
tal 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 simplifi-
cation came from the study of matter at the atomic
level, which showed that apparently unrelated forces
such as friction, normal forces, and surface tension were
all manifestations of electrical forces among atoms. The
other big simplification came from Faraday’s experi-
mental 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 magnetic
field, and magnetic fields exert forces on an electrical
current. In other words, electric forces are forces of
charges acting on charges, and magnetic forces are
forces of moving charges on moving charges. (Even the
magnetic field of a bar magnet is due to currents, the
currents created by the orbiting electrons in its atoms.)
118
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 work forms the basis for such technologies as
the transformer, the electric guitar, the amplifier, and
generator, and the electric motor.
Qualitative Observations
In this lab you will use a permanent magnet to
produce changing magnetic fields. This causes an
electric field to be induced, which you will detect using
a solenoid (spool of wire) connected to an oscilloscope.
The electric field drives electrons around the solenoid,
producing a current which is detected by the oscillo-
scope.
A. A constant magnetic field
Do you detect any signal on the oscilloscope when
the magnet is simply placed at rest inside the solenoid?
Try the most sensitive voltage scale.
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 is a source of
the magnetic field (the field diverges from it). The
south pole is a sink of the magnetic field (the field
converges into it).
D. A generator Your job is to figure out which is correct.
Tape the magnet securely to the eraser end of a
The most direct way to figure out Lenz’s law is to
pencil so that its flat face (one of its two poles) is like
use a single loop of wire connected to the oscilloscope
the head of a hammer, and mark the north and south
and make a chopping motion that ends up with the
poles of the magnet for later reference. Spin the pencil
magnet in the loop, observing whether the pulse
near the solenoid and observe the induced signal. You
induced is positive or negative. (The stronger pulses
have built a generator. (I have unfortunately not had
produced by using the solenoid are easier to observe,
any luck lighting a lightbulb with the setup, due to the
but it can be hard to tell which way the wire is coiled
relatively high internal resistance of the solenoid.)
on it.) What happens when you reverse the chopping
Trying Out Your Understanding motion, or when you reverse the north and south poles
of the magnet? Try all four possible combinations and
E. Changing the speed of the generator
record your results.
If you change the speed at which you spin the
pencil, you will of course cause the induced signal to It can be tricky to make the connection between
have a longer or shorter period. Does it also have any the polarity of the signal on the screen of the oscillo-
effect on the amplitude of the wave? scope and the direction of the electric field pattern. The
figure shows an example of how to interpret a positive
F. A solenoid with fewer loops
pulse: the current must have flown through the scope
Use the two-meter cable to make a second solenoid
from the center conductor of the coax cable to its outer
with the same diameter but fewer loops. Compare the
conductor (marked GND on the coax-to-banana
strength of the induced signals. (You may need to use
converter).
the most sensitive setting of the scope, and pull out the
red knob to increase its sensitivity by an additional
factor of 5.)
G. Dependence on distance
How does the signal picked up by your generator
change with distance?
Try to explain what you have observed, and discuss
your interpretations with your instructor.

Lenz’s Law GND

Lenz’s law discribes how the clockwise or counter-

clockwise direction of the induced electric field’s
whirlpool pattern relates to the changing magnetic
field. The main result of this lab is a determination of
how Lenz’s law works. To focus your reasoning, here are
four possible forms for Lenz’s law:
Self-Check
Determine which version of Lenz’s law is correct.
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 counter-
clockwise when viewed along the direction of the
∆B vector of the changing magnetic field.

119
 Format of Lab Writeups
Lab reports must be three pages or less, not counting your raw data. The format should be as follows:
Title
Raw data — Keep actual observations separate from what you later did with them.
These are the results of the measurements you take down during the lab, hence they come first. You should
clearly mark the beginning and end of your raw data, so I don’t have to sort through many pages to find your
actual presentation of your work, below. Write your raw data directly in your lab book; don’t write them on
scratch paper and recopy them later. Don’t use pencil. The point is to separate facts from opinions, observations
from inferences.
Procedure — Did you have to create your own methods for getting some of the raw data?
Do not copy down the procedure from the manual! In this section, you only need to explain any methods you
had to come up with on your own, or cases where the methods suggested in the handout didn’t work and you had
to do something different. Do not discuss how you did your calculations here, just how you got your raw data.
Calculations
Here is where you analyze your data. The more clearly you show what you did, the easier it is for me to give
you partial credit if there is something wrong with your final result. If you have a long series of similar calcula-
tions, you may just show one as a sample. If your prelab involved deriving equations that you will need, repeat
them here without the derivation. Try to lay out complicated calculations 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 symbolic
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’s the point of your experiment? What did you find out?
The “abstract” of a scientific paper is a short paragraph at the top that summarizes the experiment’s results in a
few sentences. Although you are not professional scientists doing original work, the goal of communication is the
same here as it is in a professional paper. Do not be afraid to say so if your results deviated from the ideal equa-
tions. After all, this is real life, and many of the equations we learn are only approximations, or are only valid in
certain circumstances. However, (1) if you simply mess up, it is your responsibility to realize it in lab and do it
again, right; (2) you will never get exact agreement with theory, because measurements are not perfectly exact —
the important issue is whether your results agree with theory to roughly within the error bars.
Summary box (when appropriate)
Put your important numerical results in a box, with error bars where appropriate. There should normally be
no more than two to four numbers here. Do not recapitulate your raw data here — this is for your final results.
Some labs do not have numerical results, or the numerical results are more appropriately displayed in a graph, so
those writeups need not have a summary box.
Comments and Conclusions — Use your calculations to support your abstract.
Finally, what can you conclude based on your measurements? This is where you convince me that the state-
ments you made about your results in the abstract follow logically from your data and calculations. If you have a
suggestion for how to improve the lab in the future, give it here.

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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
100 cubits x tan 63° = 200 cubits .
We estimated the accuracy of the 100-cubit horizontal 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
simultaneously 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 objects
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. We do not have any data on feathers, but we suggest 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 noticeably affected by air resistance. In any case, the
Aristotelian 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.

121
 Appendix A: Basic Error Analysis
No measurement is perfectly exact.
One of the most common misconceptions about science is that science is “exact.” It is always a struggle 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 uncer-
tainty of a measurement on a graph, but the term is also used when no graph is involved.
Some very good scientific work results in measurements that nevertheless have large error bars. For instance,
the best measurement of the age of the universe 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, electrons
act like little magnets, and the strength of a very weak magnet such as an individual electron is customarily
measured in units called Bohr magnetons. Even though the magnetic strength of an electron 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 scientific 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 reasonably consistent with the theory, or whether the discrepancy is too great to be explained by
the limitations of the measuring devices.
Another important reason for stating results with error bars is that other people may use your measurement
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 being extremely conservative in an
effort to make absolutely 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 scientist 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 estimate 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).

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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 measurement again, you will get a different answer. (This is assuming that you
don’t allow yourself to be psychologically 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, because the result is different every time you do the measure-
ment.
The effects of random errors can be minimized by averaging together many measurements. Some of the
measurements included in the average are too high, and some are too low, so the average tends to be 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, averaging didn’t help us to get rid of it. You probably 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.

small random errors, large random errors, small random errors,

small systematic error small systematic error large systematic error

Some scientific writers make a distinction between the terms “accuracy” and “precision.” A precise measure-
ment 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 memorable terms “random error” and “systematic error.”
The + sign used with error bars normally implies that random errors are being referred to, since random errors
could be either positive or negative, whereas systematic errors would always be in the same direction.

The goal of error analysis

Very seldom does the final result of an experiment come directly off of a clock, ruler, gauge or meter. It is
much more common to have raw data consisting of direct measurements, and then calculations based on the raw
data that lead to a final result. As an example, if you want to measure your car’s gas mileage, your raw data would
be the number of gallons of gas consumed and the number of miles you went. You would then do a calculation,
dividing miles by gallons, to get your final result. When you communicate your result to someone else, they are
completely uninterested in how accurately you measured the number of miles and how accurately you measured
the gallons. They simply want to know how accurate your final result was. Was it 22+2 mi/gal, or 22.137+0.002

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mi/gal?
Of course the accuracy of the final result is ultimately based on and limited by the accuracy of your raw
data. If you are off by 0.2 gallons in your measurement of the amount of gasoline, then that amount of error will
have an effect on your final result. We say that the errors in the raw data “propagate” through the calculations.
When you are requested to do “error analysis” in a lab writeup, that means that you are to use the techniques
explained below to determine 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 estimating random errors in your original measurements,
illustrating them with the measurment 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 measurements. Since the smallest division on the tape measure 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 allowances 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
students 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 estimate. 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, concluding 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 factors you don’t know about. In this type of situation, you’re better off using some other method of
estimating your random errors.
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 approach 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
average, 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 estimate 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.

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 One common mistake when estimating random errors 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 overenthusiastic 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 perfectly precise. Its precision is no
better than about +0.1 g.
Method #3: Repeated Measurements and the Standard Deviation
The most widely accepted method for measuring error bars is called the standard deviation. Here’s how
the method works, using the sofa example again.
(1) Take the average of the measurements.
average = 203.1 cm
(2) Find the difference, or “deviation,” of each measurement from the average.
0.0 cm 0.3 -0.3 0.2 0.1
0.3 0.0 -0.2 -0.2 0.0
(3) Take the square of each deviation.
0.00 cm2 0.09 0.09 0.04 0.01
0.09 0.00 0.04 0.04 0.00
(4) Average together all the squared deviations.
average = 0.04 cm2
(5) Take the square root. This is the standard deviation.
standard deviation = 0.2 cm
If we’re using the symbol x for the length of the couch, then the result for the length of the couch would be
stated as x = 203.1 + 0.2 cm, or x = 203.1 cm and σx=0.2 cm. Since the Greek letter sigma (σ) is used as a symbol
for the standard deviation, a standard deviation is often referred to as “a sigma.”
Step (3) may seem somewhat mysterious. Why not just skip it? Well, if you just went straight from step
(2) to step (4), taking a plain old average of the deviations, you would find that the average is zero! The positive
and negative deviations always cancel out exactly. Of course, you could just take absolute values instead of squar-
ing the deviations. The main advantage of doing it the way I’ve outlined above are that it is a standard method, so
people will 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 deviation technique is to take too few measurements. For
instance, someone might take only two measurements of the length of the sofa, and get 203.4 cm and 203.4 cm.
They would then infer a standard deviation of zero, which would be unrealistically small because the two measure-
ments happened to come out the same.
In the following material, I’ll use the term “standard 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.

Probability of deviations
You can see that although 0.2 cm is a good figure for the typical size of the deviations of the measure-
ments of the length of the sofa from the average, some of the deviations are bigger and some are smaller. Experi-
ence has shown that the following probability estimates tend to hold true for how frequently deviations of various

125
sizes occur:
<1 standard deviation about 2 times out of 3
1-2 standard deviations about 1 time out of 4
2-3 standard deviations about 1 time out of 20
3-4 standard deviations about 1 time out of 500

Precision of an average
We decided that the standard deviation of our measurements of the length of the couch was 0.2 cm, i.e.
the precision of each individual measurement was about 0.2 cm. But I told you that the average, 203.1 cm, was
more precise than any individual measurement. How precise is the average? The answer is

(standard deviation of one measurement)

(standard deviation of average) = .
number of measurements
That means that you can theoretically measure anything to any desired precision, simply by averaging together
enough measurements. In reality, no matter how small you make your random error, you can’t get rid of systematic
errors by averaging, so after a while it becomes pointless to take any more measurements.

126
127
128
 Appendix B: Propagation of Errors
Propagation of the error from a single variable
In the previous appendix we looked at techniques for estimating the random errors of raw data, but now we
need to know how to evaluate the effects of those random errors on a final result calculated from the raw data. For
instance, suppose you are given a cube made of some unknown material, and you are asked to determine its
density. You know that density is defined 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 the formula
ρ=m/b3
will give you the density if you measure the cube’s mass and the length of its sides. Suppose you measure the mass
very accurately as m=1.658 + 0.003 g, but you know b=0.85 + 0.06 cm with only two digits of precision. Your
best value for ρ is 1.658 g / (0.85 cm)3 = 2.7 g/cm3.
How can you figure out how precise this value for ρ 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 gave ρ=2.7 g/cm3
b=0.91 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 several 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 measurement 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 significant errors in the density. The
following more general method can be applied in such cases:
(1) Change one of the raw measurements, say m, by one standard deviation, and see by how much the final
result, ρ, changes. Use the symbol Qm for the absolute value of that change.
m=1.658 g gave ρ=2.690 g/cm3
m=1.661 g gives ρ=2.695 g/cm3
Qm = change in ρ = 0.005 g/cm3
(2) Repeat step (1) for the other raw measurements.
b=0.851 cm gave ρ=2.690 g/cm3
b=0.852 cm gives ρ=2.681 g/cm3
Qb = change in ρ = 0.009 g/cm3
(3) The standard deviation of ρ is given by the formula

σρ = 2
Qm + Qb
2
,

yielding σρ=0.01 g/cm3.

The final result is ρ=2.69 + 0.01 g/cm3.

129
130
131
 Appendix C: 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 parentheses, as in the example. A title is also helpful. Make sure that distances along the
axes correctly represent the differences in the quantity being plotted. 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. The Natural Science Division’s microcomputer lab is in room 412. A schedule of open
hours is posted. We currently have two Macintosh programs that can be used to make graphs, Microsoft Excel (on
one Mac) and Mac Curve Fit (on all the Macs).
If you have not previously used either program, I suggest Mac Curve Fit, which is easier to use. As suggested
by its name, Mac Curve Fit’s main selling point is that it can fit a straight line or other types of mathematical
curves through your data, but it also works fine for plain old graphing. Mac Curve Fit is also extremely inexpen-
sive ($25), so if you decide you like it and have access to a Mac at home or work, you can get your own copy. It is
shareware, meaning you can make your own copy for free, but you are expected to send a check to the author and
become a registered user if you find it useful. The author’s address and information on registering the software are
given in the documentation files that come with the program. An appendix at the back of this manual explains the
use of Mac Curve Fit.

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Fitting a Straight Line to a Graph
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.

800 800
(a) (b)
600 600
x (cm) x (cm)
400 400

200 200

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

200 200

0 0
0 2 4 6 8 0 2 4 6 8
t (s) t (s)

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 consistent 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 believable 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.
It is possible to use Mac Curve Fit to fit a line to your data, rather than doing it by eye. In most cases, it is
easier and quicker to do it be eye, and you will be certain that you really understand what you’re doing.

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 Appendix D: Using Mac Curve Fit
If you’re in the Natural Science Division’s computer lab in room 412, make sure to use one of the Macintoshes
that is connected to the printer. The program is called MCF 1.2.2, and its icon is a little yellow graph. It should be
available from the Apple menu in the upper left corner of the screen, or in the student application folder. The
program starts up and makes a window for your data, calling it “Untitled Data 1.” The data window has rows,
numbered 1,2,3,... and columns, labeled A,B,C, ... Each rectangular cell can hold one number. Normally you will
use column A for your x values and column B for your y values. To select which cell you want to enter data into,
click with the mouse. Hitting the return key brings you down to the next cell. Once you have entered your data,
insert your floppy disk, select Save from the File menu, click on Desktop, double-click on the icon representing
your floppy disk, type a name for your file under Save File As, and click on Save.

You are now ready to make your graph. Select Plot Data from the Data menu. Under Data Columns, click on
Column A, then click on Set X Data. Now click on Column B under Data Columns, then click on Add Y Data.
Click on OK, and your graph will appear. From now on, you can switch back and forth between the two windows
by clicking on them. Make sure your graph window is selected, and save it using the Save command under the File
menu. Under the Plot menu, choose Axes and enter the labels (with units!) for your two axes. Choose Title from
the Plot menu and enter your title for the graph.

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 B

You can now print your graph by selecting the graph window and then choosing Print from the File menu.
Finally, save the final version of your data and graph, and get out of the program by selecting Quit from the
File menu.

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 Appendix E: 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 h = height of
data from an experiment. rodent f = food eaten
at the per day (g)
Linear and nonlinear relation- shoulder (cm)
ships
shrew 1 3
When two variables x and y are related by an
equation of the form
rat 10 300
y = kx ,
capybara 100 30,000
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 It’s fairly easy to figure out what’s going on just
lengths which are all of the same thickness and made by staring at the numbers a little. Every time you
of the same material. If the mass of a string is m and increase the height of the animal by a factor of 10,
its length is L, then the equation its food consumption goes up by a factor of 100.
m = kL This implies that f must be proportional to the
square of h, or, displaying the proportionality
will hold, where k is the mass per unit length, with constant k=3 explicitly,
units of kg/m.
f = 3h2 .
Many quantities in the physical world are instead
related in a nonlinear fashion, i.e. the relationship Use of logarithms
does not fit the above definition of linearity. For Now we have found k=3 and p=2 by inspection,
instance, the mass of a steel ball bearing is related to but that would be much more difficult to do if these
its diameter by an equation of the form weren’t all round numbers. A more generally
applicable method to use when you suspect a
m = kd3 , power-law relationship is to take logarithms of both
where k is the mass per unit volume, or density, of variables. It doesn’t matter at all what base you use,
steel. Doubling the diameter does not double the as long as you use the same base for both variables.
mass, it increases it by a factor of eight. Since the data above were increasing by powers of
10, we’ll use logarithms to the base 10, but person-
Power laws ally I usually just use natural logs for this kind of
Both examples above are of the general math- thing.
ematical form
y = kxp ,
which is known as a power law. In the case of a linear
relationship, p=1. Consider the (made-up) experi-
mental data shown in the table.

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 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. The
difference between each successive value of h is 1, while
f increases by 2 units each time. The fact that the logs of
the f’s increase twice as quickly is the same as saying that
f is proportional to the square of h.

Log-log plots

4
slope=2.0
3
log f
2

0
0 1 2
log h

Even better, the logarithms can be interpreted

visually using a graph, as shown here. The slope of this
type of log-log graph gives the power p. Although it is
also possible to extract the proportionality constant, k,
from such a graph, the proportionality constant is
usually much less interesting than p. For instance, we
would suspect that if p=2 for rodents, then it might also
equal 2 for frogs or ants. Also, p would be the same
regardless of what units we used to measure the vari-
ables. The constant k, however, would be different if we
used different units, and would also probably be
different for other types of animals.

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 Appendix F: 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 remote
control. When something blocks the beam, an electri-
cal signal is sent through a wire to the computer. 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 calculate the
speed of the object as it passed through.
Using the software
From the Start menu at the lower left corner of the
screen, run Logger Pro. Do the following steps:
Setup>Sensors
DG1
Sensor>Photogate
Setup>Data Collection
Mode>Photogate Timing
The next step depends on what mode you are using
the software in.
138
Using the software in different modes
For various labs, there will be three different modes
in which we’ll use the software:
Mode for measuring how long the photogate was
blocked:
Do Sampling>Gate Timing - One Gate.
Mode for measuring the time between two
interruptions of the photogate:
?
Mode for measuring the period of a pendulum:
?
Using the data
The graph is useless when you use Logger Pro with
the photogate. You want to use the data from the
spreadsheet window on the right, which you’ll prob-
ably want to make bigger.
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.
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 Appendix G: Laser Safety Checklist
You should observe the following safety precautions when working with lasers. 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 understand something, ask your instructor for clarification.
_____ Do not look directly into the beam of the laser.
_____ Set up your equipment so that the laser is pointing at the wall, not across the room.
_____ When you are not using the laser, switch it off or move the switch labeled “beam attenuator” to
“closed.”
_____ Avoid bending over with your eyes at the level of the laser.
_____ As much as possible, avoid putting shiny objects in the beam of the laser, because they could reflect the
beam around the room. However, the diffraction grating used in the wave optics lab is shiny, and you
must put it in the beam; make sure it is straight up and roughly perpendicular to the beam, so that the
reflection simply comes back and hits the housing of the laser itself.

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Appendix H: 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 (shutting 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 apparatus. 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.

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 Appendix I: Using a Multimeter
The most convenient instrument for measuring currents and voltage differences is called a digital multimeter
(DMM), or simply a multimeter. “Digital” means that it shows the thing being measured on a calculator-style
LCD display. “Multimeter” means that it can measure current, voltage, or resistance, depending on how you have
it set up. (Sometimes when two physics lab classes are doing electronic measurements simultaneously, we’ll break
out the old analog meters, which have a needle indicator rather than a numerical display.) Since we have many
different types of multimeters, these instructions only cover the standard rules and methods that apply to all such
meters. You may need to check with your instructor regarding a few of the particulars for 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 electron
going by is forced to go through the meter and contribute to a current in the meter. Many multimeters 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
appropriate, 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 connections 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 buttons 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 resistor.
The connections to the meter should be made at the “common” socket (“COM”) and at the socket labeled “V” for
Volts.

Blowing a fuse is not a big deal.

If you hook up your multimeter incorrectly, it is possible to blow a fuse inside. This is especially likely to
happen if you set up the meter to measure current (meaning it has a small internal resistance) but hook it up in
parallel with a resistor, creating a large voltage difference across it. Blowing a fuse is not a big problem, but it can
be frustrating if you don’t realize what’s happened. If your meter suddenly stops working, you should check the
fuse.

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