Modern physical measurements, communication, and computation rely on electronic hardware and instrumentation. Electronic instrumentation is used in all sub-fields of physics --condensed matter, elementary particles, nuclear physics, and atomic/molecular/optical physics. Electronic measurements are no less common in the other physical sciences, and are essential in many modern interdisciplinary areas such as satellite-based environmental monitoring, the experimental study of chaos, nanotechnology, and the search for extraterrestrial life. Electronics for the Physical Sciences provides an introduction to electronic design through hands-on experimentation. You will be building electronic systems from scratch, then debugging them and demonstrating that you understand how they work.
There are eight student workstations, each consisting of a set of electronic measuring instruments. You will work in groups of two, using the same workstation throughout the semester but sharing it with groups belonging to the other lab sections. Individual experiments, on the other hand, are built up on circuit boards that your team keeps for the entire semester. This allows you to continue to work on your circuit for as long as you need to complete the work.
A course calendar showing the lab and lecture plan for the semester as well as other information is posted on the course web page at http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phys3330. During the semester, announcements will be posted on the course web page and, if needed, sent to you by e-mail. In accordance with University policy, you are required to maintain and regularly check an e-mail account. You are also encouraged to use e-mail to communicate with the instructors.
Each section has one 3-hour instructional lab per week in Duane G-230, supervised by your lab instructor. You must attend your scheduled lab. The course will go much more smoothly for you if you are well prepared for each lab session so you can get most of the work done while your instructor is there to help.
The lab is open for unsupervised work any time the building wing is open, and when no other section is meeting. The building hours will be identical to those of the library on the 1st floor, immediately below our lab. Access will be via the eastern stairwell. These times are available for you to complete unfinished experiments or to explore your own ideas. Your Buff OneCard will open the lab door. Please do not prop the door open after unlocking it.
There will be a series of lectures on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:00 to 1:50 in Duane G-125. The material includes theoretical background that you will need to solve the pre-lab homework problems and to do the experiments. The schedule for the lectures is posted on the web site. Clickers will be used in lecture. If you do not already own an i-Clicker, you can purchase one at the CU bookstore. You also need to register the clicker on CUConnect. If you have previously registered your clicker at CU there is no need to register it again.
The midterm exam will cover material from the lectures and labs. There is no final exam.
Each instructor has 2 hours of office hours per week which are detailed on the web site. You are welcome to go to the office hour of any instructor.
The lab manual for each experiment includes problems to help you design your experiment and learn the theory. The pre-lab problems are due in your instructor's mailbox by 5pm the day before your lab. It is essential that you do the pre-lab problems and read the write-up before your lab section. Otherwise you will not be able to make good use of your time in the lab, which is your main opportunity to get help from your instructor. We recommend that you solve the pre-lab problems in your lab notebook and then hand in a copy. This way you will have your calculations available while you work on the experiment. You will work with a partner in the lab, but you should do the pre-lab problems independently. Solutions to the pre-lab problems will be posted on the web site after all lab sections have met.
Prelabs are due by 5pm the day before the lab in your instructor's mailbox outside the main Duane physics office. The pre-labs are worth 1/5 of your lab grade and will not be accepted late.
Your reports should give a brief and clear account of what you observed in the lab, and what conclusions you can draw from your measurements. The report should be of a quality and style comparable to what you might imagine sending to a supervisor or project coworkers if you were working in a lab in a local high-tech company. A typical report will be three to six pages long. It will contain an introduction which describes the experiment in a few sentences, one or more figures depicting the circuit or other apparatus, a summary of the data or other observations, analysis of the data, and conclusions. It should be self-contained in that one should not have to be a student or instructor in this course to understand it. If the overall goal of an experiment is to measure some quantity, then an account of the important random and systematic uncertainties will be necessary. Always strive to make simple estimates of uncertainties, to avoid wasting time estimating uncertainties that will not contribute to the final result, and to avoid elaborate propagation-of-uncertainty calculations unless they are really necessary.
Data plots are an aspect of the lab report that merit special attention. Each plot should be of a size and quality to enable a clear understanding of the data, and provided with appropriate axis labels and units. Before you take data on a particular circuit's characteristics, think about what data you should take to make an informative plot. For example, if you are measuring characteristics of a low-pass filter, it has an expected "roll off" frequency that you can calculate, or find experimentally. The characteristics of a low-pass filter are best illustrated using a logarithmic scale, so choose your x-axis as logarithmic with the roll-off frequency near the center of the x-axis scale. When you collect data in the lab, 10-30 measurements is usually sufficient for a meaningful plot. Choose data points to cover the range uniformly on the plot. Then go back and take more data where something interesting is happening in the circuit characteristics. The data plots should be done by a computer program such as MathCad, Mathematica, IDL, etc.
Lab reports are due at the beginning of your next lab section. Your grade will be lowered 25% if it is up to 24 hours late, 50% if it is more than 24 hours but less than 1 week late, and will not be accepted more than one week late.
The last few weeks of the semester are devoted to projects. You will use the skills you have learned to explore a topic of your choice. Pick something you are excited about! A list of projects from previous years is posted on the web site, just to give you some ideas. If you have an idea for a project at any time during the semester, by all means discuss it with your instructor and begin reading and collecting the materials you will need. This course is mostly about analog rather than digital electronics, because a good knowledge of analog is more important for laboratory scientists. We will discourage projects that are all or mostly digital.
The first part of the project is a one page proposal which is due at the beginning of your lab on November 3rd or 5th. The second part of the project is a two page progress report due at the beginning of lab on November 17th or 19th. The progress report should indicate what has been done and what work remains. Project oral presentations will be on December 8 and the final written project reports are due in the instructors mailbox on Friday, December 11 at 5pm.
The main textbook for the course is "The Art of Electronics Second Edition" by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill.
Your lab book will not be graded directly. Your instructor may want to see the original data in your lab book when trying to help you diagnose problems. If you are reading instruments while your partner is writing down the data, it is all right to make a photocopy of the data immediately after you leave the lab and paste or staple it permanently in your own book.
The notebook must be bound, not loose-leaf, and it should contain graph paper, rather than lined writing paper. If you forget to bring your notebook to the lab and use loose sheets instead, be sure to staple these into your lab book as soon as possible. Do not tuck loose sheets into the notebook. If you rely on photocopied pages from data books, pages copied from instrument manuals, or any other loose materials, staple them into your book. Make all entries in pen, not pencil, and put a single line through errors, so the text or data can still read if you later decide it was correct after all. Enter all data, text, and calculations directly into the lab book. Do not use loose sheets!
Entries in a lab notebook do not have to be neat, but they must be readable, and some organization is very helpful. Reserve the first few pages for a table of contents, and keep it up to date. Enter the date in your notebook when you start to work each day. Use a consistent format so it is easy to find the work that was done on a given day or a given experiment.
There will be a one-hour midterm exam given on Thursday, October 22nd, 1:00-1:50 pm in Duane G-125. This exam will primarily focus on the theoretical material covered in the lectures as well as some practical knowledge that you are expected to have gained from the lab work.
The grading will be based on a maximum of 810 points. Each of the 10 regular lab reports is worth 40 points and the 9 pre-lab problem sets are worth 10 points each. Your final project will be worth 200 points: 25 points for a project proposal, 25 points for a project progress report, 75 points for your final project oral presentation, and 75 points for your final report. The one-hour midterm exam will be worth 100 points. In class clicker questions will be worth a total of 20 points. Lab reports will be considered late if they are not handed before the beginning of the next lab section. For labs that are less than 24 hours late, 10 points will be taken off your score. Labs that are between 1 day and 1 week late will have 20 points removed. No credit will be given for lab reports which are more than 1 week late. No pre-lab problems will be accepted late.
If you are the last to leave the lab, first be sure to turn off all equipment, especially soldering irons and hot plates. Then close all windows and turn out the lights. Never prop the door open. Anyone who has authorization to use the lab will have access. The equipment is expensive and it would be very difficult to replace.
Before you leave the lab, clean up your mess. Your bench top should be totally cleared except for the test equipment and the toolbox. Your own circuit boards and other equipment should be left on your labeled shelf in one of the storage cabinets. Communal equipment, including meters, stop watches, tools from the bench, cables, etc. should be returned to their storage locations.
Faults or damage that occur to any instrument or non-trivial component should be reported to an instructor or to Michael Thomason (his phone number is posted in the lab). Label the offending item with a tag stating the nature of the fault to help us with repairs.
If you qualify for accommodations because of a disability, please submit to a letter to your instructor from Disability Services in a timely manner so that your needs can be addressed. Disability Services determines accommodations based on documented disabilities. Contact: 303-492-8671, Willard 322, and http://www.Colorado.EDU/disabilityservices. If you have a temporary medical condition or injury, see guidelines at http://www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices/go.cgi?select=temporary.html
Disability Services' letters for students with disabilities indicate legally mandated reasonable accommodations. The syllabus statements and answers to Frequently Asked Questions can be found at http://www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices
Campus policy regarding religious observances requires that faculty make every effort to deal reasonably and fairly with all students who, because of religious obligations, have conflicts with scheduled exams, assignments or required attendance. See full details at http://www.colorado.edu/policies/fac_relig.html
Observance of religious holidays and absences from classes and/or exams Please inform your instructor, at least two weeks in advance, if any of the class activities, including the labs, lectures, exams, or final presentations, fall on a religious holiday that will preclude your attendance. Generally, it is straightforward to make-up for lab absences, but it is still important to inform your instructor. If you have a conflict with the exam or final presentations, please let your instructor know as soon as possible so we can make accommodations.
All students of the University of Colorado at Boulder are responsible for knowing and adhering to the academic integrity policy of this institution. Violations of this policy may include: cheating, plagiarism, aid of academic dishonesty, fabrication, lying, bribery, and threatening behavior. All incidents of academic misconduct shall be reported to the Honor Code Council (honor@colorado.edu; 303-735-2273). Students who are found to be in violation of the academic integrity policy will be subject to both academic sanctions from the faculty member and non-academic sanctions (including but not limited to university probation, suspension, or expulsion). Other information on the Honor Code can be found at http://www.colorado.edu/policies/honor.html and at http://www.colorado.edu/academics/honorcode/
The University of Colorado at Boulder Honor Code applies to all of your work in this class. You will be working in the lab with a partner, with whom you will share notes and data. In submitting a lab report (and your final project report), you are asserting that you were a full participant in the work presented in the report, and that the data you present were collected by you and your lab partner. For the lab reports and project report, a written honor code pledge is not necessary, but the honor code applies nevertheless. Fabrication of data, copying of data from another group, or copying of data from your lab partner when you were not a participant in the actual construction, testing, and taking of data are all honor code violations. Your final project report and presentation must represent the work of you and your partner, with other sources of information cited appropriately. The exam will include the honor code pledge that you must sign.
I welcome your comments on the class and this website. Send them to Kevin Stenson