Intro to Zap Labs 1

February 2, 2005

Introduction to 15b “ZAP” Labs

Lab Information for Physics 15b, Spring 2005

• Teaching Fellows: Andrii (or “Andrey”) Pashin, (PASHIN@FAS)and an undergrad, to be

announced

• Lab Supervisor: Tom Hayes (HAYES@PHYSICS)

1 What’s ZAP?

The major difference between ZAP! and a more traditional approach to E & M labs is that all the
labs are designed to be carried out in the comfort of you own room. None of the equipment is set
up for you – you have to build it all yourself, before using it to make measurements. There are
three main benefits from this approach:

1. You will get experience in solving real-world experimental problems, which are
“dirty” multifaceted, and quite unlike textbook problems. You will become designers,
inventors, and doers.
2. Abstract electrical concepts will become more real, more a part of the intuitive
scientific knowledge you need for creative research or engineering.
3. You will meet and become familiar with basic electronic technology, which is now a
mainstay of many research and engineering labs.

And there is one drawback: the lab exercises treat topics long before they come up in the lectures
and problem sets. Some of you will find this disconnection frustrating. For quite a few of you, we
hope, the labs will become fun—more like a game than a homework assignment.

We encourage partnerships. However, each partner should do her or his own work. Lab notebooks
will be collected weekly.

People who have had some experience with electronics will be able to complete each of the first few
labs in under 4 hours. Others, who have never used a soldering iron, may need 6 hours or more for
the first few weeks, until they become accustomed to wiring and soldering circuits.
Intro to Zap Labs 2

2 Help Labs

• There will be a help lab for ZAP in room 305 of the Science Center 3 times a week. The times
are still tentative, but here’s our best estimate: Tuesday, 6-9 pm, Wednesday 6-9 pm, Thursday
3-9 pm.

We encourage you to come to the help labs, although we understand that for many of you the
comfort of doing a lab in your own room is irresistible. A lot of problems that can require hours
for you to track down by yourself can be solved in a few minutes in help lab. We also may be able
to offer additional information about the physics of devices, and helpful hints about completing
experiments. Oscilloscopes and other equipment are also available for use in the help lab; a ’scope,
particularly, can make vivid what you might otherwise see only through a glass darkly.

3 Tool Kits

In the past year, we have changed the scheme by which you buy a tool box with parts for the
course. As before, you will pick up this kit from the Science Center Stockroom, in the basement
of 1 Oxford St. You will be charged about $80 for the kit. This is a subsidized price. The durable
goods in the kit—items like the tool chest, soldering iron, and multimeter – should far outlast the
course.

You are required to buy the kit online, at http://hpps.harvard.edu/coursepacks. You then will be
able to pick it up at the Sci Center basement. We hope this scheme will let you spend less time
standing in line—but we’re a little nervous, since this is our first term doing distribution this way.
You will be able to do this beginning the week of February 7, once the 15b kit has been assigned a
“coursepack” number (though it’s not literally a coursepack, that’s the way it’s listed). When this
number is assigned, we will post it on the lab website, and will try to email it to you, as well.

• Kits will NOT be accepted for return, we’re sorry to say, so please be sure you mean to take the
course before buying a kit. This is a policy set by the printing-and-publishing office, and we have
not been able to do anything to soften the rule.

There are almost 100 items in the kit, perhaps a bewildering array. By the end of 15b they will be
familiar to you.

4 Lab Handouts; Your Lab Reports

• Lab handouts will be available in lecture on Thursdays. They will also be posted on the 15b Lab
web page www.people.harvard.edu/∼thayes/15b. If you’re not able to get a handout from
either of these sources, contact Tom Hayes.

• Lab writeups (i. e. your notebooks) are due on Friday before 12 NOON in front of room
Intro to Zap Labs 3

301 in the Science Center. Just drop them in the special box.

• Graded lab notebooks will be available for pickup after 6 PM on Saturday outside room 301 in
the Science Center, in general. If we will be late getting the notebooks graded, we will let you know
by email.

4.1 What We’d Like to see in Lab Reports

• Your lab notebook should be a record written as you work. Entries can be brief but need to be
intelligible to your T.F. and to yourself at some later date. Each part of an experiment ought
to be labeled with a heading when you start it. DO NOT take notes on scrap paper and
then copy them over neatly into the lab book. If you feel your initial scribbles are illegible,
leave them in, but also write up a neater summary at the end. As the semester progresses,
you will get better at taking neat notes on the fly. (The above rules for using a scientific
notebook are standard operating procedure in any science lab.)

• There should be a schematic diagram of every circuit you use, and enough information to
define what procedures you followed and what voltages, currents, or other data were recorded.
(This helps the reader of the notebook understand what you did.)

• Where a graph will help in data interpretation, or analysis (such as an I-V curve) it should be
drawn immediately after data is collected, or even as the data is obtained. Raw data should
be recorded in a clear and neat table. There is no need for extra sheets of graph or data
paper in this course; the quadrille-ruled notebook pages will do very well.

• Write down your bright ideas, questions, and interpretations as you go. Try to estimate the
precision of measurements when they are to verify or contradict some theory. Otherwise a
rigorous interpretation cannot be made.

• Record at the end of an experiment the approximate time you spent on it. If you have
problems, they need to be documented, and your strategies to overcome them noted. If you
don’t succeed in finishing an experiment (after a reasonable amount of time and effort), you
also need to write a few explanatory sentences detailing, for the parts of the experiment you
didn’t complete: 1) exactly what you tried, 2) what did and did not work, and 3) an educated
guess about why it didn’t work.

5 Grading

We are moving from a straight Pass/Fail to what is almost that. Here’s the scheme:

• Pass, on first submission: 1 point

• Pass, after repair in the second week: 0.75

• Fail, or late without a good excuse: 0

Intro to Zap Labs 4

Maximum points available: 7, for the 6 labs (lab 6 counts as two labs). Most people have gotten
full credit, in recent terms. On the early labs, the principal challenge will be to take the error
analysis seriously, as you do your writeups.

5.1 Redemption, Forgiveness, etc.

If you fail a lab after making a significant effort and handing in a notebook showing this work, you
can redeem yourself.

• Fix it the following week You have one week to do more work and turn the F into a passing
grade (which will give you 3/4 credit). In order to effect that change, you must attend help
lab during this second week. We do not give more than 2 weeks for completion of any one
lab. If you made no significant effort to do the lab in the week in which the lab was assigned,
you will be given a fail grade for that lab with no chance to make it up. A late notebook will
result in a fail.

More on the Help Labs

We will leave extra fuses outside 301, so you can get them at any time. In addition, we will leave
parts in envelopes taped to the door, if you send us e-mail requests for replacement parts. Parts
will usually be left within less than 24 hours of the receipt of the request.

Pamela Gay has just taken over responsibility for looking after introductory Physics labs. Her office
is SC 303, and her phone number is 5-2039. She’s the one who can actually find extra parts and
multimeters, for example, when we need them—but if you need something for 15b labs, pester Tom
Hayes, first.

If you want to ask about an experiment when the help lab is not open, please e-mail us to arrange
a time.

We welcome your comments and suggestions, and we wish you lots of fun with the experiments.
Intro to Zap Labs 5

List of Physics 15b Labs, Spring 2005

• Lab 0 (not really a lab!): Parts Checkout: (nothing to hand in!) “Due” Feb. 11
• Lab 1: Simple circuit elements (R’s and voltage sources): Due Feb. 18
• Lab 2: I-V curves; voltage dividers: Due Feb. 25
• Lab 3: Diodes and rectifiers: Due March 4
• Lab 4: The Capacitor: Due March 11
• Lab 5: Variable-voltage power supply (an integrated feedback circuit): Due ?
(we’ll need to dodge an hour exam, at about this time)
• Lab 6: The op amp—used to help build a radio (more on feedback): Due ? )
(this is a two-week lab)

(labinfo 205b.tex; End of Document)