An Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Late Twentieth Century Physics Education

本课题是为二年级现代物理主题课程设计并实施一个学生实验室。课程的基础是与现代物理学的四大发展相关的主题：相对论、统计物理学、混沌和量子力学。这些发展有两个共同的特点，为本课程提供了一个概念性和组织性的主题：(1)它们的特点是，它们对人们获取物理世界知识的能力提出了根本性的限制；(2)这些限制要求开发新的数学和概念工具来评估知识和描述观察结果。虽然实验室强调使用测量仪器，但各种计算机和软件也被用于模拟，数据分析和解决问题。本文所描述的实验是跨学科的，旨在培养创造力以及传授信息和发展实验技术。现代物理课程起着连接入门课程和高级物理课程的桥梁作用。该实验室的目的类似于作为指导驱动的入门实验室和较少结构化的研究实验室之间的联系。

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.