PHYS 211 Winter 2022 Format

This page describes some changes being made to PHYS 211 for Winter Quarter 2022. Changes to the course are motivated primarily by the following three factors:

• The delayed in-person start to the quarter (with in-person activities starting Week 3).
• A desire to address student concerns about expectations and feedback on written submissions.
• A desire to address TA concerns about grading consistency and workload.

The schedule for Winter Quarter is shown below.

Note that there will be no in-person activities Weeks 1 and 2, but that in-lab work will begin immediately on Monday of Week 3. Prep Meetings and Analysis Meetings (discussed in more detail below) will be held via Zoom.

In addition, there will be Zoom lectures on a few select Wednesdays at 4:30 pm, including the following:

• January 12 – Introduction to the Course

More lectures may be added later.

Here is a summary of the major elements of the course.

Students will again work on experiments in-person, but the format and schedule are changing slightly.

• Due to the reduced amount of time available for in-lab work, the number of experiments is reduced from 3 to 2 for the quarter.
• Each experiment is still divided into two 4-hour sessions. However, these sessions are now one full week apart.
• Lab groups no longer have exclusive use of an apparatus for their experiment. There will be other groups working on the same apparatus in-between days scheduled in the lab.
  • When a student comes into the lab for the second day of an experiment, they can no longer assume that the apparatus is in the state in which it was left on Day 1. (The experiments running this quarter have been picked in part due to their suitability for this sort of interleaved operation.)
  • There is now more emphasis on keeping an appropriate lab notebook when working in the lab. There is an immediate and practical need for maintaining a good lab notebook as students will need to refer to it in order to be able to pickup where they left off on Day 1.
    • This is one of the purposes of lab notebooks in real research labs: documenting what you are doing in the lab as you are doing it, with sufficient detail that you can easily and accurately reconstruct what you were doing.
    • As such, individual lab notebooks will no longer be graded, with the penalty for not keeping a good lab notebook that a student will be making their own life as an experimentalist more difficult.
  • Each experiment will now have its own logbook. This is just a lab notebook devoted to that specific experiment. The experiment logbook does not leave the lab; it remains in the room with the experiment at all times.
    • Students are required to sign in to the logbook when they first arrive in lab and sign out at the end of the day.
    • Students are expected to enter into this log book any information which the next group should know about. This may include, for example, notes on settings which were changed, unusual difficulties which were encountered (and solutions which were implemented), or problems with apparatus which came up. It is important that all of these notes include times and dates.
    • Students are encouraged to leave notes to future groups which may make their experience with the apparatus more productive.
    • Things NOT to put in the logbook include the following: student data, answers to questions which students are expected to work out on your own, etc.
    • Also, while we appreciate the occasional humorous comment, students are expected to display an appropriate level of professionalism. Comments such as “This lab sucks” are inappropriate and will be dealt with accordingly.

Each experiment now requires two group meetings with the TA who grades the experiment: a Prep Meeting which occurs before a group comes to lab for the first day of a new experiment and an Analysis Meeting to go over the analysis before students submit their final report. These meetings are expected to take place over Zoom and should last about an hour. The meetings are required and students will be graded based on coming to the meeting prepared and participating in a meaningful way.

Students will be graded on their participation and preparedness for each meeting.

• Prep Meeting: The purpose of this meeting is to make sure that students understand what the experiment is about (in terms of both the phenomena being studied and the techniques being employed), and to make sure that students have a clear plan established for getting started when they come to lab.
  • The wiki page for each experiment provides much of what students are expected to know before coming to this meeting, but students may need to look up some additional things. It is up to individual students to do the background research and reading necessary for this preparation. (This is a real lab research skill.)
  • The meeting is also an opportunity for students to make sure that they are clear on what the TA expects to see from work in the lab.
• Analysis Meeting: The purpose of this meeting is to allow students to discuss their analysis results with the TA, and to ask questions about interpretation and to get feedback before writing their final report.
  • At the analysis meeting, students will present and talk about their analysis, and will receive feedback on their work which will help them write the final report for the experiment. (We will provide more guidelines on the differences between the “analysis” and the “report” in a different document.)
  • Students are also expected to present an outline of their coming report which will incorporate their analysis, expand the discussion, and flesh out conclusions.

Note that these group meetings before and after doing an experiment are not entirely new for PHYS 211. This format is very similar to how the remote version of PHYS 211 ran in 2020-2021. Instructors and TAs felt that these meetings helped greatly to alleviate both the TA and student concerns listed at the top of this page. The reasons we did not implement them this past Autumn Quarter are several, but the main obstacle was scheduling the meetings around three experiments. Our desire to address student's legitimate concerns about how the course is structured combined with the reduced amount of in-lab time for this quarter have convinced us to give this system a try.

As mentioned above, students will also submit two written documents for each experiment: an Analysis and a Report.

• Analysis: After the second day in lab, students will have four days to complete the full analysis of the data.
  • This analysis will be submitted on the due date indicated in the schedule. Late analyses will not be accepted as the TA needs time to look over the analysis before the analysis meeting.
  • The TA will grade the analysis on its own merits according to the rubric in the experiment wiki and return the graded analysis to the student after the analysis meeting.
  • In general terms, the analysis is all of the number crunching, calculations, plotting, curve fitting, error propagation, etc. It does not need to include descriptions of what was done in the lab or specific discussion or contextualization of results, but it does need to at least include final values (with uncertainties) where appropriate. It needs to be understandable and readable, but it does not need to be formal and does not require a lot of descriptive text.
• Report: Students will have an additional two days after the analysis meeting to turn their analysis into the final report.
  • The report will be submitted on the due date indicated in the schedule. Late lab reports will be graded as in past quarters (with a 5% per day penalty and with each student receiving two grace days to use to avoid such penalties.)
  • The report is more like what was submitted last quarter in that it includes the results of the analysis, final conclusions, and a discussion of all the important factors that go into supporting those final conclusions.
  • Importantly, the report should incorporate all changes suggested by the TA or discussed at the Analysis Meeting.

All assignments will be graded on a 4.0 scale.

The final grade for the course will be the average of five assignments, each with equal weight (20% of the total grade).

1. Analysis 1: Each experiment will have a complete (but not necessarily formal or final) analysis. Each experiment wiki page includes an analysis rubric unique to that experiment that indicates what items must be included. TAs may request additional, specific items (after consultation with the lab staff).
2. Analysis 2: Same as above.
3. Report 1: Each experiment will have a more rigorous report that incorporates the above analysis (corrected and expanded based on TA feedback and the discussion at the analysis meeting) as well as additional contextual writing. Each experiment wiki page includes a report rubric which is the same for all experiments.
4. Report 2: Same as above.
5. Meetings, etc.: There are a few additional graded assignments throughout the quarter. These will be averaged together to form the fifth contribution to the final score:
   1. There are four meetings for the quarter (two prep meetings and two analysis meetings). Each meeting will be scored based on preparedness for and participation in that session.
   2. Students are required to sign-in and out of the experiment logbook and to record relevant notes for future users. The lab staff will check logbooks after each experiment has ended and students will receive a participation score for actively contributing to their log.
   3. There will be one or more “homework” assignments associated with Wednesday lectures during the quarter (e.g. an exercise on “how to write an introduction”).

Students should begin working on their analysis as soon as data comes in. With a week between Day 1 and Day 2 of the lab and an additional 4 days after Day 2, students have sufficient time to get all the analysis completed by the due date and to ask any questions which come up.

Absolutely no late analyses will be accepted without prior arrangement!

• The analysis must be completed on time in order for the TA to grade it and provide feedback at the Analysis Meeting.
• If you are not finished with the analysis by the due date, you should turn in what you have for partial credit.
• If you do not turn in an analysis by the due date, you will receive a zero for that assignment (which is a big deal since it is worth 20% of your overall grade in the course.

As in past quarters, reports will be accepted late (up to the end of the quarter). Late reports will receive a penalty of 5% per day (up to a maximum of 3 days). After 3 days, students must meet with lab instructors to discuss the situation before continuing with the course.