| Lab Schedule | Schedule of Lab Instructor meetings | Your Laboratory Notebook |
| Pre-lab assignments for labs 1 and 2 | Lab 3: Testing Paper Towels (Is Bounty Better?) |
| Lab Schedule |
LABS 1+2: These activities are taken from the parts of the lab manual which are packaged with your textbook. We will be doing the lab on motion, which is numbered "3". The pre-lab assignments have been posted on the world wide web. (2/12-2/17 and 2/19-2/23).
LAB 3: (a) Testing Consumer Products: Paper Towel Testing
(b) Evaluating Previous Big Projects (2/26-3/2)
LAB 4: Investigating Electric Circuits; Series and Parallel Circuits; Big Project Planning (3/5-3/9)
LAB 5: Performance Assessment of Series and Parallel Circuits (3/12-3/16)
LAB 6: Exploring Magnetism (3/19/3-23; week before spring break)
3/26-3/30 Spring Break, no labs
LAB 7: Big Projects II: Doing the work on your projects; finish exploring magnetism (4/2-4/6)
LAB 8: Who Robbed the Bank? A Four Powders Activity
Big Project Interim Reports (4/9-4/13)
LAB 9: Big Projects III: Finishing up your projects (4/16-4/20); Using a ruler to measure the size of a molecule via molecular layers
LAB 10: Big Project Presentations (4/23-4/27)
APRIL 30 - MAY 1: CAMPUS WIDE POSTER SESSION. If your Big Project has been selected for the campus-wide poster session, your group should be responsible for presenting it.
LAB 11: The Reason for the Seasons (4/30-5/4)
LAB 12: The Inverse Square Law (5/7-5/11)
| Schedule of Lab Instructor meetings |
All lab instructor meetings take place at 4 P.M. in room 024 Sharp Lab. They will last as long as needed but no longer than an hour. This schedule is subject to change during the semester.
| Date | Agenda Items |
| 2/5/01 | Introduction to course, to each other
First Two labs Laboratory Safety |
| 2/26/01 | Labs 3-5 (Paper Towel Testing, Circuits, and Circuit
Performance Assessment)
Introduction to Big Projects |
| 3/12/01 | Exploring Magnetism
Big Projects: Review and possibly change rubric for evaluation |
| 3/26/01 | No meeting; spring break |
| 4/2/01 | Four Powders; molecular layers
Schedule Big Project Reviews |
| 4/23/01 | Reason for the Seasons, Inverse Square Law |
| 4/23/01 - 4/27/01 | Lab Instructors will be expected to participate in lab sections other than their own, as judges for the Big Project presentations. |
The above schedule of meetings is for LAB INSTRUCTORS ONLY, not students.
Your Laboratory Notebook |
Each student is responsible for keeping a laboratory notebook. The laboratory final exam will be an open-book exam and your chief resource will be your laboratory notebook. If you keep careful notes of what you did and - most importantly - what you learned, the lab final exam should be easy. And so it is a good idea for you to record your notes in your lab notebook in a reasonably well-organized way. The following is a suggested format for your laboratory notebook:
EXAMPLE NOTEBOOK ENTRY
DATE: February 31, 2999
EXPERIMENT: "Controlling a Light from Two Places"
WHAT WAS DONE:
We used wires, batteries, and switches to try to control a light from two places. When we came to lab, we thought the circuit would work like this.......
. . . . . continue writing what was done
CONCLUSIONS FROM THIS LABORATORY EXERCISE:
. . . list your conclusions.
HOW THIS LABORATORY RELATES TO THE REST OF THE COURSE:
You should list AS SPECIFICALLY AS YOU CAN the major ideas in the course which are illustrated as part of this laboratory.
Pre-Laboratory Assignments |
Why are there pre-labs? Research in science education has shown that you learn much more from laboratory assignments if you are mentally prepared for them. These assignments are not meant to be particularly difficult, but they do require you to read the lab ahead of time and think about what it means. You will be given credit for a reasonable effort on these questions.
Read the procedure for the lab, in the spiral bound lab book which has been packaged with your textbook. BRING IN an answer to the following two questions:
1. If you follow the directions given in the lab book, which you will in the actual lab, what equipment do you use to measure the motion of the motorized toy in part A?
2. How does this lab relate to the rest of the course?
In many experiments we do in this course, you will be dealing with different variables. A variable is, not surprisingly, something that may change during the course of the experiment. In physics experiments there are generally three kinds of variables:
Manipulated (or independent) variables - these are quantities which you change during the course of an experiment.
Measured (or dependent) variables - these are quantities which you measure, and which should change, depending on the value of the things you manipulate. These variables are what people call data.
Controlled variables - these are things which might affect the values which you measure, but which you do NOT want to change during the experiment.
Your assignment is to read the procedure in part C and:
1. List one manipulated variable and describe in a short sentence why you believe it is a manipulated variable.
2. List at least one variable which you measure, or calculate from your measurements, and describe in a short sentence why you believe it is a measured variable.
3. List at least two things which could become uncontrolled variables if this experiment were not done carefully.
Pre-lab assignment for lab #3
Find someone (friend, roommate, fellow group member) and talk for about 10 minutes about what the best brand of paper towels is. List several of the issues which came up in your conversation.
| Lab #3 |
Lab #3 is written up in the lab manual, but in case you don't get the lab manual before the week of lab, here it is:
LAB 3
(A) Evaluating Previous Big Projects
Posters from several previous Big Projects will be displayed around the room. Groups should go from one poster to another, evaluating the Big Projects according to the rubric for this years' course, which by this time will be on the course website. There should be some discussion of rubrics within the group, and some discussion as a large group.
(B) Paper Towel Testing : Is Bounty Better?
Introduction and objectives:
You may well have heard advertising claims that "Bounty is Better." This lab will permit you to validate that claim. In addition, it will introduce you to the kinds of techniques that are used both by manufacturing companies (which you may end up managing someday) and by consumer advocacy organizations such as Consumers Union, publisher of the magazine Consumer Reports, in order to test consumer products. After doing this laboratory, you will be able to:
This lab is divided into three phases: preliminary activity, laboratory activity, and concluding conversation. In order for you and your group to really understand what you are supposed to learn, it is important for you to spend some time in all three phases. You are not done when you have saturated the last paper towel with water.
Preliminary activity: Get together as a lab group and share the results of your pre-lab assignments. There are instructions on the pre-lab assignments which indicate what you should be doing.
Laboratory activity:
You have available a graduated cylinder and beakers of various sizes. We also have samples of Bounty paper towels along with some other kinds of paper towels. There are a variety of liquids which you can use in your experiment: tap water and various kinds of diet sodas. (We don't provide regular sodas or fruit juices because sugary liquids can leave a sticky residue that would be a real mess by Friday. ) You can get access to this equipment in order to design the experiment. Your first assignment is to design an experiment to determine whether "Bounty is better." Summarize the design of your initial experiment in your laboratory notebook.
2. You should get together with other lab groups to share procedures. Here is one way to accomplish this:
Designate the four members of your laboratory group as numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4. Three "1s" from three different lab groups should meet to share designs. Three '2s' should meet, three '3s' should meet, and three '4s' should meet to share designs.
3. Now get back together in your original lab groups. Refine your design, paying particular attention to the questions of controlled variables and manipulated variables which are defined on a sheet which your lab instructor will pass out. You should also be aware of the importance of replication - you should do several tests, and not just one. Based on experience, you should do at least ten tests of each type of paper towel.
4 Now carry our the procedure you developed in section 4. You can use the computers which are located around the room to determine the standard deviation, and the significance, of your results. Make sure that each member of the group has a chance to do everything in the procedure: wetting the towels, recording the data, going to the computers to assess its meaningfulness, and anything else which is part of your procedure.
Concluding conversation:
This can be organized as a whole-class activity, or several different concluding conversations can take place, as happened with the preliminary conversation. The following questions can be used to guide your conversation:
If you were to use this activity with a class of your own, how many times would you have students measure with individual paper towels? Is it necessary to measure each kind of towel ten times?
Compare the experimental designs developed by the different groups, particularly with respect to keeping different variables under control.
How did the different groups develop procedures to determine, in a consistent way, how much liquid a paper towel could absorb?