The principle constraint on the class is space. We must maintain social distancing (> 6 ft) of students working in the lab, and limit the overall number of students passing through the lab as much as possible. To that end, we suggest the following:

<ul> <li><p>Limited number of students: The class enrollment would be capped at seven students. All students would work on different experiments and they would work alone; there would be no pairs.</p></li> <li><p>Physical separation: To maximize separation in the lab, students would be divided into two groups that would be allowed into the lab on different days: a Monday/Wednesday group and a Tuesday/Thursday group.</p> <ul> <li>In this way, only half the class (at maximum) is in the basement area at a time.</li> <li>Which experiments belong to each group would be chosen so as to further provide physical separation between students in the basement at the same time. </li></ul> </li> <li><p>Shift sign-up: As lab staff will need to be in the building while students are in the lab, we would institute an online sign-up sheet. Traditionally, the lab would be open for 4-hour periods, so we assume that as a starting point and adjust throughout the quarter as needed.</p></li> <li><p>Timeline: In recent years, students have done an introductory 1-week experiment, two 3-week long experiments and one oral presentation based on one of their experiments. Using a similar schedule this quarter would be difficult due to the necessary COVID-19 restrictions and the new shorter 9-week quarter. Instead, we recommend keeping the 1-week introductory experiment and the final oral presentation, but replacing the two 3-week experiments with a single 6-week experiment. (Example schedules are given below in the next section.)</p> <p>Some arguments for this change include the following:</p> <ul> <li>Physical access to the lab is restricted, so students will have fewer opportunities to come to the lab in general, and no opportunities to stop by by for a quick measurement or to start/stop data collection (on experiments where multiple runs are common). Experiments will therefore likely require more time to finish.</li> <li>Students will be working by themselves (and with less direct assistance from instructors). Progress will therefore likely be slower.</li> <li>The new 9-week quarter means there are limited opportunities to build in breaks or days off. Attempting to do two 3-week experiments would mean running them back-to-back (with students continuing to work on analysis or report writing for the first experiment when they should be focusing on data collection for the second). A single 6-week experiment is therefore a more efficient use of the same block of time.</li> <li>With 6 weeks to work on an experiment, students would have more time to absorb what they are doing. Students should therefore be able to progress deeper into their experiment.</li> <li>A 6-week schedule for the lab also means that students may not necessarily need to be on campus both days each week. Staff may therefore not need to be present as often, subsequently limiting exposure risk.</li></ul> </li> <li><p>Weekly meetings with faculty: Something we added to the course several years ago is a short, weekly meeting between students and faculty. This meeting functions somewhat like a weekly research group meeting where the student describes where they are in the experiment and the faculty helps them formulate a plan for the coming week. We found that this interaction with the students works very well. In particular, it allows the instructors the opportunity to set expectations for individual students based on their ability level and to react and change goals quickly. These meetings should be retained, and can easily be done virtually on Zoom.</p></li> <li><p>Oral presentations: The oral presentations at the end of the quarter can be retained, and can be done virtually on Zoom.</p></li></ul>

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Below are the experiments which we feel we can offer in Spring Quarter 2021 for PHYS 334. They are all manageable for a single person, and flexible enough to be adapted and modified based on student interest and ability.

We have removed a few of the traditional PHYS 334 experiments (e.g. Optical Pumping and Raman Scattering) because they require a lot of staff involvement in order to make the apparatus work, and therefore are not well-suited to independent work. On the other hand, since PHYS 211 will be running remotely (with a more limited set of experiments than it normally uses), we have access to some experiments from that course that can be easily adapted into graduate-level experiences.

The tentative list of experiments is as follows:

The question remains as to whether to try to squeeze in two 3-week experiments or to be satisfied with one longer, deeper 6-week experiment. The two possible schedules are shown below.

Plan A most closely follows traditional format. Note, however, that three weeks may be too short for experiments given that students are limited to 2 days in lab per week (whereas they used to typically have 3 or 4 days per week) and that they will progress slower since they are working alone. Note also that this schedule does not provide any time to receive a grade or feedback on the second report before students have to prepare for their oral presentation.

Plan B provides more time for students to work on experiments and creates more allowance for potential difficulties they (or staff) may encounter (especially due to limited access). The trade-off here is more depth in place of more breadth.