Physics307L F07:Interactions

This page may serve as a sort of Q&A or message board for students and instructors.

This one made me laugh
Steve Koch 23:37, 12 December 2007 (CST):From Linh, and very relevant to our formal reports: http://xkcd.com/285/

We need to have an end of Finals get together
We should all get together at Kelly's or some other place one day this week to have a few drinks and hang out to celebrate surviving another semester. I am available Thursday or Friday and flexible most other days just let me know your ideas and lets pick something to do.
 * Steve Koch 23:36, 12 December 2007 (CST):This would be fun, if people have time. Best time for me is either early afternoon (3 pm) or after 8 pm (because of family time).  Let me know if you all figure something out!

--Anne Ozaksut 21:52, 13 December 2007 (CST)Ugg i worked there for like 3 weeks this summer. So, in conclusion... have fun! ps i just had the best beer of my life at chama. i'll miss the class. it was seriously fun. and informative. good night.

The gamma cosmic background radiation

 * Tomas A. Mondragon 16:17, 5 December 2007 (CST):Aggg... I can't find any useful sources of information about the relative gamma ray brightness of the galactic disk compared to the rest of the diffuse gamma ray background.Ah, well, probably not important, its not like I collected data for the Poisson experiment over a year, just a few hours. I'm just curious. Any of you astro geeks know more about the gamma ray background?

hahahaha
--Anne Ozaksut 22:38, 3 December 2007 (CST)Oh man, everyone's lab summaries are hilarious. "authors: princess bradley and nikipoo", "with some mental manipulation, we can see that binomial distribution is very similar to the poisson distribution...", explicitly: "supplies: mineral oil (intestinal lubricant)"... i'm sure the list goes on... and i'm inspired to find out

End celebration
To celebrate making it through J-lab 1, I resurrect the idea of a lab vs lab football game at the end of classes. Nothing crazy, just touch or something, but I think it would be a blast and give everyone a chance to unwind a bit around finals. Lets get some opinions on this, I wanna see who'd be in other than myself. Besides, who doesn't want to swat down a pass from Dr. Koch?
 * Steve Koch 02:31, 24 November 2007 (CST):There is no way you are swatting down one of my passes. I'm in as long as I don't have to organize it :)

Dr Koch Question
What was the web address to access the UNM list of journals that you talked about on Monday 11/12
 * Steve Koch 05:54, 14 November 2007 (CST): http://libproxy.unm.edu will get you to a page to let you sign in and go to a list of journals and databases. You can also append the "libroxy.unm.edu" to the url part of a website.  For example, sciencemag.org.libproxy.unm.edu/blahblahblah.  Let me know if that doesn't work, and thanks for posting the question here!

This should be a field trip next year
Punkin Chunkin

Survey and Lab Summaries
Steven J. Koch 19:20, 3 October 2007 (EDT): Two notes:
 * 1) Here is a link to the mid-semester survey I sent out via email: click here for the survey
 * 2) The first graded lab summary is due before you start the next lab next week.  Please send me an email or somehow alert me when you are done.  Here is some incomplete guidance for lab summaries.

Some resources for magnetic calculations
Lakeshore is a company that sells magnetics stuff. And this page is a great resource for converting between units.--Steven J. Koch 19:00, 1 October 2007 (EDT)

OWW brainstorming session
--Anne Ozaksut 13:25, 28 September 2007 (EDT): i'd probably forget to wake up for a meeting, so i'm not signing up to participate, but my suggestions are: 1) stop logging us out when we have a page open that we are editing and want to save. that's a pain in the ass.  or have an auto save thing like gmail does. 2) some data processing utility would be greeeat-- they let you make a table, but it would be cool if they could process that data into graphs, calculate best fit curves, put in error bars etc...  3) also, i don't know how bradley knockel does it, but he puts equations into his lab notebook... does he just cut and paste from microsoft word symbols, or from already written out equations on wikipedia?  or is it magic?  some sort of thing that lets you write equations easily would be cool--either open a list of symbols and click on one to insert it like microsoft word, or have some kind of code that you can type and then when it saves the page, it becomes a good looking equation- that would be even better. or maybe this exists already and i just haven't found it... --Tomas A. Mondragon 17:01, 28 September 2007 (EDT):The table editor is wonky. It keeps on eating a cell every time I save a table. I almost lost an entire row before I figured out what it was doing. I also really dislike the code it spits out. Wiki's code for tables is pretty easy to figure out but the code the table editor spits out, while it still works, takes a while to interpret and makes editing (by hand, I guess) difficult.
 * --Tomas A. Mondragon 17:01, 28 September 2007 (EDT):Koch put a link in the Help page that's been useful for when I am putting in equations. Wikipedia guide to Tex editing in a Wiki. I don't know of a way to automagiclly do that stuff. Wiki typesetting of mathematical formulas and wiki's editor handbook may also be helpful.
 * Steven J. Koch 18:08, 3 October 2007 (EDT):Anne says that if you press "enter" after typing in a value, then you won't lose the data when saving. If so, then this is a potential workaround until the bug is fixed.

Some photos for lab summaries and formal reports
Steven J. Koch 01:31, 22 September 2007 (EDT): Hey all, I took some photos of some of the experiments and put them here: Physics307L F07:Labs/Photos

Opportunity to purchase new experiments
Steven J. Koch 02:22, 11 September 2007 (EDT):As I mentioned in class, there is an opportunity to obtain funding to purchase another experiment for the lab. My deadline to submit proposals is Thursday, September 13, so I think perhaps we could obtain the experiment before the end of the semester. So, I am soliciting ideas from students. If I think your idea would fit well into the course, I will then submit the idea up the bureaucratic chain. If not, your suggestion may be appropriate for another lab. Here are some places to look (links courtesy of Professor Bill Miller, the professor helping out a ton in the lab): The funding is for equipment > $1,000 but not too crazy expensive. I think this is the correct range for most "canned" experiments.
 * PASCO
 * Klinger Educational Products
 * Teachspin

Dark labs and taking notes on wiki
Two labs in particular, the e/m ratio and electron diffraction labs, are very hard to conduct even with only the light from the Balmer series and Plank's constant experiments going on in the room. Unfortunately, the Dark room is the same room where all the shiny new computers are at as well. I remember even using tiny flashlights to take down written notes was annoying for the dark labs, since it took some time to readjust to the darkness. Editing the wiki during the experiments will be even more of a pain if done improperly. What will be the procedure for taking down notes during dark labs?--Tomas A. Mondragon 17:12, 10 September 2007 (EDT)
 * That's a great question and thanks for thinking of problems ahead of time...unfortunately, my quick answer is: I don't know! Do you have ideas?  My opinion with the e/m ratio is that it can be done while using the computer (maybe they improved it by adding a light to see the scale?).  And so far the electron diffraction lab isn't working.  So maybe it won't be too much of a problem?  Here are a couple ideas: (1) Since the monitors are LCDs, it's possible they can be turned down.  (2) we could purchase some kind of dark plastic to make the monitors dark.  Does anyone else have ideas?  Well, these first two weeks will go a long ways towards figuring these kinds of things out, and I appreciate everyone's creativity, patience, and hard work!--Steven J. Koch 02:13, 11 September 2007 (EDT)

A site for the operations of the oscilloscope
here is a link to a website where the expected value of the RC constant for our osicilloscopes is most likley located users manual.
 * Thanks, Kyle!--Steven J. Koch 00:52, 5 September 2007 (EDT)

Evenly matched
I reorganized the People page by Mondays and Wednesdays, and couldn't help noticing that if we split me and Devon up, we can play some kind of game with 9 people on a side. I feel like we should play softball or something.--Steven J. Koch 00:22, 29 August 2007 (EDT)
 * Or, we could recruit students from my biophysics lab and have 22 total people for football: one offensive squad and one defensive squad. Then we could play Michigan and beat them 34-32.  Ha ha ha ha ha ha.  Yes, I went to Michigan: tease me about this at your own peril.--Steven J. Koch 00:52, 5 September 2007 (EDT)

I forgot
Hey Steven. After all that I ran out of lab without having you sign my yellow card. How about I catch you at the end of Wednesdays lab, so I can get that taken care of? --Brian Ritter
 * That should be fine. Or anytime during Wednesday lab is OK to come by.--Steven J. Koch 15:09, 28 August 2007 (EDT)

i can switch
But, the wednesday class is full in loboweb. maybe we can both drop our classes monday and add the ones we want right after class?--Anne Ozaksut 14:36, 27 August 2007 (EDT)

Yeah I'll switch...
For an A! Just kidding. I went to one of the Consortium seminars for the first time this monday at 2 in the room next door to 184, and it was SO COOL. I really want to start attending those. I'm definitely interested in switching lab days with someone, but I need to clear it with my job first. I'll let you know what happens this weekend.--Anne Ozaksut 00:43, 22 August 2007 (EDT)
 * Thanks, Anne! If it works out, that is great.  Everyone else in Monday lab, please let us know if you can switch, too, in case it doesn't work out for Anne.--Steven J. Koch 01:17, 22 August 2007 (EDT)
 * PS: That is great that you enjoyed the Consortium seminar!

Too many peeps in the Monday session
Hi Everyone: We have too much demand for the Monday lab session, and there is currently at least one student who cannot enroll. Are there any students who are able and willing to switch to the Wednesday session?--Steven J. Koch 12:55, 21 August 2007 (EDT)

The middleman
What is the page reached by the link "____'s page" for if all it has is a link to our notebook? Shouldn't the link "____'s page" become "My lab notebook" to cut out the middleman? Or will we use the middleman for something else in the future? --Bradley A. Knockel 12:41, 21 August 2007 (EDT)
 * Yeah, I hear you. I put the middleman in there "for something else in the future," just like you said.  Not sure what, though.  Actually, now I remember: it will be a good place to link to your lab reports and / or presentations.--Steven J. Koch 12:48, 21 August 2007 (EDT)