Main Page/Phys 4210/4210Reports

The lab reports should be organized in the following manner:

• Abstract: Method, results and comparison to established values concisely stated.
• Introduction/Theory: Strong motivation; appropriate theoretical and experimental background material; citations included; clear presentation; figures labelled with captions provided.
• Procedure/Method: Important experiment details clearly presented; apparatus described; appropriate diagrams and citations included. No step-by-step recipe. No irrelevant diversions.
• Results/Analysis: High quality data; data clearly presented in labelled tables and figures with captions; appropriate significant figures used; analysis explained and applied correctly; appropriate uncertainties justified and propagated correctly; sample calculation for error propagation; long tables placed in appendix.
• Discussion/Conclusion: Sound physics explanations clearly presented; comparison to world average values including comment on agreement or lack thereof; discussion of major contributions to uncertainty, any systematic biases, and potential improvements included. Questions in lab manual answered.
• Citations/References

Note on comparison of experiment result to accepted values or theory

Performing careful measurements, collecting good data, and interpreting the results to determine a physically meaningful result is the goal of this course. But is your results the 'right' result? Thankful, for most of these experiments others have made careers out of determining the results which you obtain. As such, (perhaps with the exception of Sonoluminescence) you can perform a meaningful comparison between your results and the accepted result. Imagine you obtained a result of E +/- δE and the theoretical value is T +/- δT. The correct comparison to perform is to the absolute value of your result subtracted by the theoretical result and compare it's magnitude to the the two uncertainties added in quadrature.

If the result of the above comparison is True, then your result agrees, if False you have some explaining to do.

Note on significant digits

They matter. If you are unsure, please refer to Taylor Introduction to Error Analysis, or consult the TA or Course director.