PHY221 Physics Lab II 2017 Monsoon Semester For the 2016 BS-MS batch Instructors: Bhas Bapat (Coordinator), Ashna Bajpai, Atikur Rehman, Rejish Nath Assistants: Deepak Sharma, Ankita Niranjan, Krithika V R and Vikhyaat Ahlawat

Course Experiments

This course has experiments in Optics and Heat.

1. Thermal Expansion of Solids
2. Thermal Conductivity by Lee’s method
3. Specific Heat of Solids
4. Stefan’s Law of Radiation
5. Temperature dependence of a Thermistor
6. Resolving power of Telescope
7. Newton’s Rings
8. Malu’s Law
9. Spectrometer and Gratings
10. Optical Rotation

Roll-number-wise sequence of experiments

Interaction in the Lab

Your interaction with the TAs is of immense importance. You must show the TAs what you do and what you record. Get your observations signed and dated by the TA. This is your responsibility, not of the TA. This endorsment is the only valid record of having done the experiment.

You should try your best to finish an experiment in one session. Complete your analysis in the subsequent days and bring back the completed lab notebook next week. Following that week's experiment, hand over your notebook to the TA and collect it after 1.5 day. You will be quizzed by the instructor(s) on the experiment that has been evaluated by the TA.

Please follow the sequence of experiments week after week according to your position in the list of students within your batch. You will get one session after every four assigned experiments to finish incomplete tasks. If you have no pending work, you may do an additional experiment in consulatation with the instructor. You cannot do a subsequent experiment unless you have completed at least the previous three.

Till the mid-sem Deepak Sharma and Ankita Niranjan will be TAs for batches 3,4 (Mondays and Tuesdays). Till the mid-sem Krithika V R and Vikhyaat Ahlawat will be TAs for batches 1,2 (Tuesdays and Wednesdays). After the mid-sem the TAs will exchange batches.

Minimum Requirements

• At least 6 completed experiments to pass the course.
• At least 8 completed experiments to be considered for an A grade.
• Completing 8 experiments does not guarantee an A grade, but not completing 6 guarantees an F grade.

Evaluation Pattern

• 50% towards continuous evaluation: hands on-skills, data logging, neatness of work and viva.
  Additional work and novel initiatives will be rewarded.
• 25% for Lab notebook (write-up, graphs, analysis).
• 25% for final exam

Fun Experiments

As part of this lab there are two fun experiments. There is no special time earmarked for this. Do these whenever you find a little time off from your regular experiments.

One is to measure the length and period of a few pendula (5 pendula of different lengths). Measure the time taken for 10 oscillations and repeat this as many times as possible throughout the semester. At the end of the exercise, your batch should be able to say that

The second experiment is to measure the diameter of peas from a sample. This too is to be repeated as many times as possible throughout the semester. To approximate the pea to a sphere, measure in a few places the approximate diameters for each pea you pick up. Measure the diameter for as many peas in one go as you can. Also measure the mass of the pea – here you are asked to measure the mass of 20 peas together and not of an individual pea. At the end of the exercise, your batch should be able to present the distribution of the sizes of peas and state that

The idea behind these exercises is to understand the importance of large number of observations, distribution of experimental values, confidence in measurements etc. You can store the values you measure using a google form, so that we have a consolidated record of the observations of the entire batch. Please contact your TAs for details.

Lab Manuals

Lab Manual

General Notes Regarding Experiments

Documents related to Errors and Fitting functions

• Analysis of Random Errors in Physical Experiments (by Pramod Joag)
• Least Squares Fitting
• Least Squares Method (by Steven J. Miller)
• Curve Fitting (by Kurtis Gurley)
• Using GNUPLOT

Experiment-wise Manuals (from other sources)

These are supplementary materials related to the experiments. Please do not follow these line-by-line for either the procedure or for the analysis. They are only meant to serve as rough guides.

1. Thermal Expansion of Solids
2. Thermal Conductivity by Lee’s method
3. Specific Heat of Solids
4. Stefan’s Law of Radiation-1, Stefan’s Law of Radiation-2
5. Temperature dependence of a Thermistor
6. Resolving power of Telescope
7. Newton’s Rings
8. Malu’s Law-1, Malu’s Law-2
9. Spectrometer and Gratings-1, Spectrometer and Gratings-2, Spectrometer and Gratings-3
10. Optical Rotation

The documents above are copies made available on the internet by the respective authors on as-is basis. Authors are acknowledged with thanks!

Updated 10-Aug-2017