User:Garrett E. McMath/Notebook/Junior Lab/2008/10/27/Summary

=Planck's Constant Lab Summary=

I enjoyed this lab a lot simply for the fact that it so clearly and quickly demonstrated quantitatively physics that we have been learning. Seeing that intensity had no effect on the stopping potential was particulary cool to see because even though you hear it in class and learn it for tests its one of those things that at least I had a hard time really believing because it is so unintuitive. Our data was not the best I believe we were somewhere around four standard deviations from the accepted values, though I believe given more time this lab has the potential to get extremely accurate data. The other thing that I think was really important from this lab was learning how the apparatus really worked which I think is something that is often overlooked in other undergraduate labs I've been in. Especially in this lab where almost all of the error can be accounted for and corrected by simply understanding the physical processes that are involved in the taking of the measurements.

Summary of Data


 * Planck's Constant= 4.54234E-15 eV*s with an uncertainty of 5.13689E-17 eV*s which when compared to the accepted value of 4.13566733(10)E-15 eV*s gave a percent error of 9.38%


 * Work Function= -1.63573557 eV with an uncertainty of .034576054 eVwhich when compared to the accepted value of -1.36(08) eV gave a percent error of 20.27%