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ABOUT THE BOOK

This textbook provides the knowledge and skills needed for thorough understanding of the most important methods and ways of thinking in experimental physics. The reader learns to design, assemble, and debug apparatus, to use it to take meaningful data, and to think carefully about the story told by the data.

Key Features:

• Efficiently helps students grow into independent experimentalists through a combination of structured yet thought-provoking and challenging exercises, student-designed experiments, and guided but open-ended exploration.
• Provides solid coverage of fundamental background information, explained clearly for undergraduates, such as ground loops, optical alignment techniques, scientific communication, and data acquisition using LabVIEW, Python, or Arduino.
• Features carefully designed lab experiences to teach fundamentals, including analog electronics and low noise measurements, digital electronics, microcontrollers, FPGAs, computer interfacing, optics, vacuum techniques, and particle detection methods.
• Offers a broad range of advanced experiments for each major area of physics, from condensed matter to particle physics. Also provides clear guidance for student development of projects not included here.
• Provides a detailed Instructor’s Manual for every lab, so that the instructor can confidently teach labs outside their own research area. 

Contents

Preface...................................................................................................................................................... vii

Acknowledgments...................................................................................................................................... xi

Part I Fundamentals

1. Introduction....................................................................................................................................... 3

Walter Fox Smith

2. Planning and Carrying Out Experiments...................................................................................... 7

Walter F. Smith

3. Presenting Your Results................................................................................................................. 19

Walter F. Smith

4. Uncertainty and Statistics.............................................................................................................. 29

Paul Thorman

5. Scientific Ethics............................................................................................................................... 53

Grace McKenzie-Smith

Part II Tools of an Experimentalist

6. Analog Electronics.......................................................................................................................... 73

Walter F. Smith

7. Fundamentals of Interfacing Experiments with Computers.................................................... 133

Walter F. Smith

8. Digital Electronics......................................................................................................................... 143

Brian Collett

9. Data Acquisition and Experiment Control with Python........................................................... 195

Paul Freeman and Jami Shepherd

10. Basic Optics Techniques and Hardware..................................................................................... 227

Walter F. Smith

11. Laser Beams, Polarization, and Interference............................................................................. 247

Justin Peatross and Michael Ware

12. Vacuum........................................................................................................................................... 263

Walter F. Smith

13. Particle Detection.......................................................................................................................... 267

Joseph Kozminski

Part III Fields of Physics

14. Development and Supervision of Independent Projects............................................................ 289

Melissa Eblen-Zayas

15. Condensed Matter Physics........................................................................................................... 299

Walter F. Smith

16. Biophysics....................................................................................................................................... 307

Mason Klein

17. Non-Linear, Granular, and Fluid Physics................................................................................... 327

Nathan C. Keim

18. Atomic and Molecular Physics..................................................................................................... 341

Robbie Berg and Glenn Stark

19. Photonics and Fiber Optics.......................................................................................................... 371

Jay Sharping and Walter F. Smith

20. Experiments with Entangled Photons......................................................................................... 377

Enrique J. Galvez

21. Nuclear and Particle Physics........................................................................................................ 403

Brett Fadem

Index........................................................................................................................................................431