Modern Physics Laboratory establishment help

[msaleh87]

Hi all
First of all, I don't know whether this is the right sub-forum to post at, so forgive me if it is not.

I have recently been asked to establish a modern physics lab for university students at sophomore level, so what experiments do you suggest to found the lab.

I've included the following experiments:
-measuring the Blank's Constant
-measuring e/m ratio for electron

so what else do you suggest to include

thanks

 

[jtbell]

Photoelectric effect.
Millikan oil drop experiment.
Electron diffraction.
Hydrogen spectrum and Rydberg's constant, using a good-quality prism or grating spectrometer.

Perhaps a few simple experiments with a Michelson interferometer, although you won't be able to do the Michelson-Morley experiment with one that can fit on a student lab table; this is probably better as part of an optics course if you have one.

 

[Dr Transport]

http://www.teachspin.com/

http://www.advlab.org/

Try those for ideas and equipment help

 

[Andy Resnick]

It's hard to offer advice without any information- for example, how many students are projected to be enrolled? What sort of infrastructure/lab equipment do you already have, and what is your budget for new equipment and supplies? What is the balance between computational and experimental lab work?

etc. etc.

 

[atyy]

Millikan oil drop experiment.

I'm curious whether undergraduate labs are able to routinely get the right value from their Millikan experiments?

 

[G01]

When I was in modern lab, I also did an experiment on x-ray diffraction, and measuring crystal lattice constants along with an experiment on measuring the decay rate of some radiation sources.

 

[robphy]

You could get some ideas from a subset of
http://web.mit.edu/8.13/www/experiments.shtml
http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/ugrad/389/schedule.html
http://www-meg.phys.cmu.edu/physics_33340/experiments/
http://people.umass.edu/phys286/
..made appropriate for your sophomores.