Undergraduate Lab: Photoelectric Effect Experiment

[arhanbezbora]

hi, i was wondering if there were any websites or any links that talked about performing the photoelectric effect for an undergraduate lab? i have to come up with a proposal for an experiment and i was considering the photoelectric effect but didnt really know what would be needed in terms of materials and apparatus design. any help and advice would be appreciated. also, suggestions as to any other experiment that i could potentially do (preferably related to quantum phenomena) would be welcomed. thank you

 

[dachikid]

Not sure about the photoelectric effect, but just finished J.J Thomson's q/m experiment. Nifty little setup, and not that complicated at all. Although, I did do it at school, with the apparatus provided by the school. There is loads of info on the web about J.J's discovery of his famous ratio. Another one that looks pretty neat, but have heard that it is tedious is Millikan's oil drop experiment. The experiment finally gave a value for the charge of the electron. There's quite a bit of info related to that one as well on the net. Have fun and good luck!

 

[ZapperZ]

hi, i was wondering if there were any websites or any links that talked about performing the photoelectric effect for an undergraduate lab? i have to come up with a proposal for an experiment and i was considering the photoelectric effect but didnt really know what would be needed in terms of materials and apparatus design. any help and advice would be appreciated. also, suggestions as to any other experiment that i could potentially do (preferably related to quantum phenomena) would be welcomed. thank you

You could try looking at the online lab instructions for the photoelectric effect experiments. Several universities have those, so you may have to go googling around quite a bit. I know of one right away:

http://www.iit.edu/~bcps/database/frontend/resource_center/manuals/physics_223/Lab5-photoelectric.pdf

As for other experiments, the most common ones are the spectroscopy lab using hydrogen discharge light source and diffraction gratings to look at the discrete spectral lines. One can easily see 4 to 5 Balmer lines in such experiments, and match the wavelengths measured with the Rydberg formula.

Zz.