• This is an advanced experimental laboratory course, intended for graduate students who did not have an opportunity to conduct advanced lab work during their undergraduate programs.
• Fall term lectures start from Wednesday, September 4, 2024. We have lectures on Mondays and Fridays, 2-4pm.
• This course uses Brightspace for latest anouncements, updated information on the labs and to accept lab reports. Please monitor the PHYS 5P80 Brightspace page.
• Important: before working in the lab (i.e. before September 9, 2024 at the latest) all students must complete several mandatory safety training sessions. All of the safety courses for students are on Brightspace on the tab "Brock Student Health and Safety Training". To access, use this link.
  • For this course, you must complete the Radiation Safety and X-ray Safety courses, and score a minimum of 80% in each.
  • You must also complete at least the WHMIS (online) training. Once complete, please send a screenshot of your certificate to Ivana Metcalf. Records of completion of other safety training sessionss are sent automatically to the department.
  • If you are planning to do an experimental Physics thesis project, or other graduate-level experimental Physics courses, you should complete the full Science Safety Training session instead of just basic WHMIS. This is also found on the Brightspace site.
  Previous announcements

This is an advanced experimental laboratory course, 13 weeks in duration, four hours per week. Normally, six lab reports are completed, some involving several weeks of experiments.

Completing all experiments and submitting all lab reports is required to pass the course. Lab marks contribute a total of 75% to the final grade. Late submissions have a sinking cap of 15%/day, unless medical documentation is provided. See the Medical Exemption Policy and the medical health certificate at the Registrar's Website at this link.

There is a two-part final exam in the last week of the course:

• an oral exam worth 10% of the final mark, during which the student will be asked questions based on the principles and may be required to provide detailed explanations of the operating procedures and/or of the operation of the equipment in any of the experiments; and
• a written exam of 3 hours held on the same day, in which a student is supposed to perform an experiment, acquire data, perform analysis and submit the lab report which will be graded for 15% of the final mark. Students are encouraged to bear this in mind during the labs, and to take notes that could later be used for final revision of experiments.

Maintaining safe and tidy workspace in the laboratory is required, and a failure to do so will result in an immediate involuntary withdrawal from the course. A passing grade in the course is conditional on maintaining safe laboratory practices, and on the final clean-up of the laboratory workspace at the end of the term, to the satisfaction of the instructor.

This is an approximate list; some of the experiments are conducted on research-grade equipment which may not always be available for student use. Some of the experiments listed below may not be offered this year, and others may be added to the list.

• Preparation of a thin film of Bismuth (H303B)
• Resistivity and Hall effect measurements on a thin film of Bismuth (H300A)
• Gamma-ray scintillation spectroscopy and the Compton effect (H308)
• Energy-dispersive X-ray diffraction (H305B)
• Planck's constant measurement I (black-body radiation) (H308)
• Planck's constant measurement II (photoelectric effect) (H308)
• Electron diffraction (H300)
• Raman spectroscopy (H300A)
• X-ray powder diffraction (H305)
• Differential scanning calorimetry (H208)