An Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Late Twentieth Century Physics Education

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This project is designing and implementing a student laboratory to accompany a theme-oriented sophomore-level modern physics course. The curriculum is based on topics associated with four major developments in modern physics: relativity, statistical physics, chaos and quantum mechanics. These developments share two features that provide a conceptual and organizational theme for the course: (1) they are characterized by the fact that they introduce fundamental limitations on people's ability to acquire knowledge of the physical world, and (2) these limitations have necessitated the development of new mathematical and conceptual tools for evaluating knowledge and describing observations. While the laboratory emphasizes the use of measurement instrumentation, a variety of computers and software is also being used for simulations, data analysis, and problemsolving. The experiments described herein are interdisciplinary and are intended to foster creativity as well as impart information and develop experimental technique. The modern physics course serves the role as a bridge between the introductory courses and the more advanced physics courses. The laboratory is intended to serve similarly as a link between the instruction-driven introductory laboratory and the less structured research laboratory.