Acommon undergraduate laboratory experience is the determination of the elastic constant of a spring, whether studying the elongation under a static load or studying the damped harmonic motion of the spring with a suspended mass. An alternative approach to this laboratory experience has been suggested by Menezes et al., aimed at studying the…

End-pipe corrections seldom come to mind as a suitable topic for an introductory physics lab. Yet, the end-pipe correction formula can be verified in an engaging and inexpensive lab that requires only two supplies: plastic-tube toys called boomwhackers and a meter-stick. This article describes a lab activity in which students model data from…

Although nuclear half-life is vital to physics and physical science, and to sensitive societal issues from nuclear waste to the age of the Earth, a true lab on half-life is almost never done at the college or high school level. Seldom are students able to use radioactivity to actually date when an object came into being, as is done in this…

Nowadays, the use of data-acquisition systems in undergraduate laboratories is routine. Many computer-assisted experiments became possible with the PASCO scientific data-acquisition system based on the 750 Interface and DataStudio software. A new data-acquisition system developed by PASCO includes the 850 Universal Interface and Capstone software.…

When teaching physics, it is often difficult to get biology-oriented students to see the relevance of physics. A complaint often heard is that biology students are required to take physics for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) as part of a "weeding out" process, but that they don't feel like they need physics for biology.…

Although simple architectural structures like bridges, catwalks, cantilevers, and Stonehenge have been integral in human societies for millennia, as have levers and other simple tools, modern students of introductory physics continue to grapple with Newton's conditions for static equilibrium. As formulated in typical introductory physics…

The construction of a voltaic pile (battery) is a simple laboratory activity that commemorates the invention of this important device and is of great help in teaching physics. The voltaic pile is often seen as a scientific toy, with the "pile" being constructed from fruit. These toys use some strips of copper and zinc inserted in a piece…

We have frequently enhanced our department's laboratory experiment involving standing transverse waves in a taut horizontal cord. In addition to the standard experiment, students in these labs investigate the surprising concept that the acceleration of a pulse in a chain hanging vertically is a constant and is equal to half the acceleration…

We have frequently enhanced our department's laboratory experiment involving standing transverse waves in a taut horizontal cord. In addition to the standard experiment, students in these labs investigate the surprising concept that the acceleration of a pulse in a chain hanging vertically is a constant and is equal to half the acceleration…

Most introductory physics courses include a chapter on "RC" circuits in which the differential equations for the charging and discharging of a capacitor are derived. A number of papers in this journal describe lab experiments dealing with the measurement of different parameters in such "RC" circuits. In this contribution, we…

We designed a physics laboratory exercise around pulse oximetry, a noninvasive medical technique used to assess a patient's blood oxygen saturation. An alternative to a traditional optics and light lab, this exercise teaches the principles of light absorption, spectroscopy, and the properties of light, while simultaneously studying a common…

We discuss how compressed images created by modern digital cameras can lead to even severe problems in the quantitative analysis of experiments based on such images. Difficulties result from the nonlinear treatment of lighting intensity values stored in compressed files. To overcome such troubles, one has to adopt noncompressed, native formats, as…

Usually parametric oscillations are not the topic of general physics courses. Probably it is because the mathematical theory of this phenomenon is relatively complicated, and until quite recently laboratory experiments for students were difficult to implement. However parametric oscillations are good illustrations of the laws of physics and can be…

Students entering physics courses in high school have seen graphs for years in math and science classes, but often do not have a deep understanding of the physical meaning of the graphs. This introductory activity is designed to allow students to collect data for a real world or physical situation (the height versus volume of water held in…

The proper choice of a measurement technique that minimizes systematic and random uncertainty is an essential part of experimental physics. These issues are difficult to teach in the introductory laboratory, though. Because most experiments involve only a single measurement technique, students are often unable to make a clear distinction between…