Laboratory Requirements and Equipment
LABS ARE NOT OPTIONAL.
All labs for credit must be completed by the close of the school year in June, unless you make special arrangements with the instructor.
Most lab assignments will be available from the web site at the start of the session. Most labs will be associated with specific topics, and you are encouraged to complete the lab and send in the report during during the assignment period. You make make arrangements to complete the other labs out of sequence if you have trouble obtaining equipment.
IMPORTANT! For safety reasons, both you and your parents must read the safety procedures before starting the lab sequence. Your parents must sign and send a copy of the lab permission letter to me before I can accept any lab reports from you for credit.
I will put together a kit that will include the following items. Cost varies depending on availability of materials and postage. If you are interested, please let me know so that we can determine content and I can order the equipment in time for class to start.
In addition, you will need to supply some materials for various experiments for fall quarter.
Significant extra materials are required for the challenge labs. Please contact the instructor as soon as you decide that you are interested in completing any of these, so that we can work together to find appropriate equipment.
Lab equipment may be borrowed from schools or purchased. Most physics principles can be demonstrated using household equipment; measuring these phenomena accurately gets trickier, and that's where we have to be the most inventive. However, if you are willing to make do with "home" accuracy instead of "lab grade" equipment, you can still learn the priniciples of physics...and remember: most of our household equipment such as voltmeters are better than the ones used by the original scientists who discovered these principles. If you want more accurate equipment, you should check my growing list of mail order suppliers.
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