ORGANIZATION

There are nine student workstations, each consisting of a set of electronic measuring instruments. You will work in groups of two, using the same workstation throughout the semester but sharing it with groups belonging to the other lab sections. Individual experiments, on the other hand, are built up on circuit boards that your team keeps for the entire semester. This allows you to continue to work on your circuit for as long as you need to complete the work.

A course calendar showing the lab and lecture plan for the semester is posted on the course  web page, along other information for course (www.colorado.edu/physics/phys3330). During the semester, announcements will be posted on the course web page and, if needed, sent to you by e-mail. In accordance with University policy, you are required to maintain and regularly check an e-mail account. You are also encouraged to use e-mail to communicate with the instructors.

LAB SESSIONS

Each section has one 3-hour instructional lab per week in Duane G-230, supervised by your lab instructor. You must attend your scheduled lab. The course will go much more smoothly for you if you are well prepared for each lab session so you can get most of the work done while your instructor is there to help.

The lab is open for unsupervised work any time the building wing is open, and when no other section is meeting. The building hours will be identical to those of the library on the 1st floor immediately below our lab – access will be via the eastern stairwell. These times are available for you to complete unfinished experiments or to explore your own ideas. Your Buff OneCard will open the lab door. Please do not prop the door open after unlocking it.

LECTURES

There will be a series of lectures on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:00 to 1:50 in the JILA auditorium. The material includes theoretical background that you will need to solve the pre-lab homework problems and to do the experiments. The schedule for the lectures is posted on the web site. The midterm exam will cover material from the lectures and from the labs.

OFFICE HOURS

The office hours are for help with pre-lab problems and for hands-on help in the lab. You may seek help from any of the instructors. Office hours are posted on the instructor page of the course web site.

WEEKLY WORK SCHEDULE

Before your lab section:

During scheduled lab:

During open lab periods:

PRE-LAB PROBLEMS

The lab manual for each experiment includes problems to help you design your experiment and learn the theory. The problems are due in the lab before you begin work on the experiment. It is essential that you do the pre-lab problems and read the write-up before your lab section. Otherwise you will not be able to make good use of your time in the lab, which is your main opportunity to get help from your instructor. We recommend that you solve the pre-lab problems in your lab notebook and then hand in a copy. This way you will have your calculations available while you work on the experiment. You will work with a partner in the lab, but you should do the pre-lab problems independently. Solutions to the pre-lab problems will be posted on the web site after all lab sections have met.

LAB REPORTS

Your reports should give a brief and clear account of what you observed in the lab, and what conclusions you can draw from your measurements. The report should be of a quality and style comparable to what you might imagine sending to a supervisor or project coworkers if you were working in a lab in a local high-tech company. A typical report will be three to six pages long. It will contain an introduction which describes the experiment in a few sentences, one or more figures depicting the circuit or other

apparatus, a summary of the data or other observations, analysis of the data, and conclusions. It should be self-contained in that one should not have to be a student or instructor in this course to understand it. If the overall goal of an experiment is to measure some quantity, then an account of the important random and systematic errors will be necessary. Always strive to make simple estimates of errors, to avoid wasting time estimating errors that will not contribute to the final result, and to avoid elaborate propagation-of-errors calculations unless they are really necessary.

Data plots are an aspect of the lab report that merit special attention. Each plot should be of a size and quality to enable a clear understanding of the data, and provided with appropriate axis labels and units. Before you take data on a particular circuit’s characteristics, think about what data you should take to make an informative plot. For example, if you are measuring characteristics of a low-pass filter, it has an expected "roll off" frequency that you can calculate, or find experimentally. The characteristics of a low-pass filter are best illustrated using a logarithmic scale, so choose your x-axis as logarithmic with the roll-off frequency near the center of the x-axis scale. When you collect data in the lab, 10-30 measurements is usually sufficient for a meaningful plot. Choose data points to cover the range uniformly on the plot. Then go back and take more data where something interesting is happening in the circuit characteristics.

PROJECTS

The last four weeks of the semester are devoted to projects. You will use the skills you have learned to explore a topic of your choice. Pick something you are excited about! A list of projects from previous years is posted on the web site, just to give you some ideas. If you have an idea for a project at any time during the semester, by all means discuss it with your instructor and begin reading and collecting the materials you will need. This course is mostly about analog rather than digital electronics, because a good knowledge of analog is more important for laboratory scientists. We will discourage projects that are all or mostly digital.

TEXTBOOK

The main textbook for the course is Horowitz and Hill, The Art of Electronics, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press (1989). This is one textbook that you will use long after the course is over. The approach taken by the authors is highly practical, with a minimum of analysis. They teach you to think about electronics the way practicing engineers think about it. See the reading list for several other texts that are on reserve in the library. We especially recommend the two books on the reading list by Jim Williams. These are not really textbooks, but much of the material is elementary (some is not), and there is a lot of culture in these books – how scientists and engineers think about electronics and what their working conditions are like. Also, do not dismiss the three ‘cookbooks’ on the reading list. They were written by experts in the field.

LAB NOTEBOOKS

Whenever you work in a laboratory it is essential to keep a record of your experiments in a bound lab notebook. The purpose of your lab book is to document your experiment clearly and accurately. The usual guideline is that you record enough information so that you could reproduce the experiment without too much difficulty a year later. It often happens that a result must be reproduced in the light of new information or criticism.

Your lab book will not be graded directly. Your instructor may want to see the original data in your lab book when trying to help you diagnose problems. If you are reading instruments while your partner is writing down the data, it is all right to make a photocopy of the data immediately after you leave the lab and paste or staple it permanently in your own book.

The notebook must be bound, not loose-leaf, and it should contain graph paper, rather than lined writing paper. If you forget to bring your notebook to the lab and use loose sheets instead, be sure to staple these into your lab book as soon as possible. Do not tuck loose sheets into the notebook. If you rely on photocopied pages from data books, pages copied from instrument manuals, or any other loose materials, staple them into your book. Make all entries in pen, not pencil, and put a single line through errors, so the text or data can still read if you later decide it was correct after all. Enter all data, text, and calculations directly into the lab book. Do not use loose sheets!

Entries in a lab notebook do not have to be neat, but they have to be readable, and some organization is very helpful. Reserve the first few pages for a table of contents, and keep it up to date. Enter the date in your notebook when you start to work each day. Use a consistent format so it is easy to find the work that was done on a give day or a given experiment.

MIDTERM EXAM

There will be a one-hour midterm exam given on Thursday, November 9, 1:00-1:50 pm in the JILA auditorium. This exam will primarily focus on the theoretical material covered in the lectures as well as some practical knowledge that you are expected to have gained from the lab work.

GRADING (tentative)

The grading will be based on a maximum of 650 points. The first prelab problem set is worth 25 points (there is no lab report for the first lab). For the 9 remaining experiments, each lab report is worth 40 points, and the pre-lab problem sets are worth 10 points each. Your final project will be worth a total of 125 points, with 25 points for a project proposal, 50 points for your final project oral presentation, and 50 points for your final report. The one-hour midterm exam will be worth 50 points.

Late prelab problem sets will not be accepted. Late lab reports will be graded at the discretion of your instructor. There will be at least an 8-point penalty per day when a report is late. No pre-lab problems will be accepted after the solutions are posted.

LAB RULES

If you are the last to leave the lab, first be sure to turn off all equipment, especially soldering irons and hot plates. Then close all windows and turn out the lights. Never prop the door open. Anyone who has authorization to use the lab will have access. The equipment is expensive, and it would be very difficult to replace.

Before you leave the lab, clean up your mess. Your bench top should be totally cleared except for the test equipment and the toolbox. Your own circuit boards and other equipment should be left on your labeled shelf in one of the storage cabinets. Communal equipment, including meters, stop watches, tools from the bench, cables, etc. should be returned to their storage locations.

Faults or damage that occur to any instrument or non-trivial component should be reported to an instructor or to Michael Thomason (303.492.7117). Label the offending item with a tag stating the nature of the fault to help us with repairs.

STATEMENTS OF CAMPUS POLICY

The following statements of policy are required by the University. Only the first two topics contain information that is specific to this course.

Please inform your instructor, at least two weeks in advance, if any of the class activities, including the labs, lectures, exams, or final presentations, fall on a religious holiday that will preclude your attendance. Generally, it is straightforward to make-up for lab absences, but it is still important to inform your instructor. If you have a conflict with the exam or final presentations, please let your instructor know as soon as possible so we can make accommodations.

The University of Colorado at Boulder Honor Code applies to all of your work in this class. You will be working in the lab with a partner, with whom you will share notes and data. In submitting a lab report (and your final project report), you are asserting that you were a full participant in the work presented in the report, and that the data you present were collected by you and your lab partner. For the lab reports and project report, a written honor code pledge is not necessary, but the honor code applies nevertheless. Fabrication of data, copying of data from another group, or copying of data from your lab partner when you were not a participant in the actual construction, testing, and taking of data are all honor code violations. Your final project report and presentation must represent the work of you and your partner, with other sources of information cited appropriately. The exam will include the honor code pledge that you must sign.

If you qualify for accommodations because of a disability, please submit to your instructor a letter from Disability Services, in a timely manner, so that your needs may be addressed. Disability Services determines accommodations based on documented disabilities (303-492-8671, Willard 322, www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices ).

Students and faculty each have responsibility for maintaining an appropriate learning environment. Students who fail to adhere to such behavioral standards may be subject to discipline. Faculty have the professional responsibility to treat all students with understanding, dignity and respect, to guide classroom

discussion and to set reasonable limits on the manner in which they and their students express opinions. Professional courtesy and sensitivity are especially important with respect to individuals and topics dealing with differences of race, culture, religion, politics, sexual orientation, gender variance, and nationalities. Class rosters are provided to the instructor with the student's legal name. We will gladly honor your request to address you by an alternate name or gender pronoun. Please advise us of this preference early in the semester so that we may make appropriate changes to our records. See polices at www.colorado.edu/policies/classbehavior.html and at www.colorado.edu/studentaffairs/judicialaffairs/code.html#student_code .

The University of Colorado at Boulder policy on Discrimination and Harassment (http://www.colorado.edu/policies/discrimination.html, the University of Colorado policy on Sexual Harassment and the University of Colorado policy on Amorous Relationships applies to all students, staff and faculty. Any student, staff or faculty member who believes s/he has been the subject of discrimination or harassment based upon race, color, national origin, sex, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status should contact the Office of Discrimination and Harassment (ODH) at 303-492-2127 or the Office of Judicial Affairs at 303-492-5550. Information about the ODH and the campus resources available to assist individuals regarding discrimination or harassment can be obtained at http://www.colorado.edu/odh .

INSTRUMENTS

ACCESSORIES