This is a senior undergraduate laboratory course, 13 weeks in duration, four
hours per week. Seven experiments, running one or two weeks each, are completed:
- Breadboard techniques and simple circuits
-- errors introduced by instruments, low-pass filtering, measuring phase shift
- Operational amplifiers: basic concepts
-- operational characteristics, offset voltages and currents, gain, simple
op-amp circuits
- Building circuits with operational amplifiers
-- current-to-voltage converter, math operations, op-amp operational
characteristics
- Advanced op-amp designs
-- op-amps integrator and differentiator, difference amplifier,
instrumentation amplifier, logarithmic amplifier, analog multiplier
- Active filters and tuned amplifiers
-- active filters, notch filter, lock-in amplifier
- Microcomputers in a Physics Laboratory
-- basics of microcomputer design, IBM PC registers and I/O, introduction
machine-language programming, controlling PC LAB interface board
- Building and using a digital thermometer
-- A/D and D/A conversion, mixed-language programming
Each experiment requires a written lab report. In addition, a term project
requiring at least three weeks of independent work by the student is
completed and a final report written.
