Development of an Advanced Physics and Instrumentation Laboratory

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This project continues development of an advanced physics and electronics laboratory for upper-level undergraduates majoring in science and engineering. The project directly impacts (1) a laboratory course in modern physics and (2) the laboratory for a course in electronic instrumentation. Additional courses in physics and computer engineering will also benefit from this facility. The guiding theme for the project is to provide skills needed to design and implement virtual instrumentation for experiments involving real time signals and to perform computer assisted analysis of these data. As students learn fundamental concepts in modern physics and electronic instrumentation, they gain first hand experience in hardware interfacing to standard laboratory transducers, control of laboratory instrumentation, and graphical programming modern data acquisition systems. The students design their own virtual instruments for these experiments. A laboratory manual is being prepared and distributed on-line as a guide for future students both on this campus and at other schools. The equipment includes (1) eight high-speed microcomputers with data acquisition interfaces and supporting instrumentation software, and (2) an instructional x-ray diffraction apparatus. This equipment complements the advanced physics laboratory apparatus constructed over the past three years. Additional experiments housed in remote laboratories will be placed on-line and will be accessible in the advanced laboratory through the university's local area network. Several of these experiments will be on he Internet for others to use. All codes and laboratory documents will also be distributed on-line.