Laboratory

Each of you should be enrolled in one of the laboratory sections associated with this course. The laboratory experiments illustrate some of the concepts we will be studying, and will serve to remind you that physics is an observational science, grounded in experiment. Doing the experiments yourself will allow you to confront the real-world issues of accuracy and precision, experimental error, and how to decide whether your results agree with theoretical expectations to within the limitations of the experimental setup.

The conduct of the laboratories is largely determined by your laboratory instructors. Since you are enrolled in a variety of sections, little can be said about this until you attend your first laboratory. I will receive your laboratory grade from your instructor, and include it in your final grade for this course. You must have a passing grade in the laboratory (60% when normalized to an average of 85%) to pass the course. Attendance at each laboratory is very important.