Dear Students,

Welcome to the Introductory Physics Laboratory (IPL)!

We hope that you find this experiential laboratory course a worthwhile educational experience. This course gives you a unique opportunity to perform experimental investigations of the underlying phenomena and physical laws that are presented in the physics lecture from a theoretical perspective.

Besides practical experience involving a range of scientific apparatus, you will learn basic experimental methods in science including data acquisition and quantitative analyses. The latter includes statistical methods and numerical tools that are used to analyze large arrays of data collected with scientific software. You will learn how to quantify errors, do regression analysis, visualize data, and how to present this information.

After each experiment, you will independently prepare and submit a lab report describing your findings and your data analysis. Creating these reports independently will equip you with strong technical writing and information transfer skills. It will also lead to a deeper understanding of the fundamental laws of nature.

During the class, you will work on the online lab material that will be provided to you before your lab. You will be instructed by a Teaching Assistant (TA), who is also a graduate student in the physics department. At the beginning of the class, your TA will make comments on last weeks’ reports, and give a brief introduction to the investigations you will perform.

A schedule of the experiments in your course can be found on the Lab Syllabus page and a summary of each experiment can be found on the Abstracts page. Please also read over the Policies and Procedures of the IPL.

Best regards,
IPL Team