An Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Late Twentieth Century Physics Education

这个项目正在设计和实施一个学生实验室，以配合一门以主题为导向的大二水平的现代物理课程。该课程基于与现代物理学的四个主要发展相关的主题：相对论、统计物理、混沌和量子力学。这些发展有两个共同的特点，为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造成了根本的限制，以及(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。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。这里描述的实验是跨学科的，旨在培养创造力以及传授信息和开发实验技术。现代物理课程在初级课程和更高级的物理课程之间起到了桥梁作用。该实验室的目的同样是作为指导导向的入门实验室和结构较差的研究实验室之间的纽带。

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.