User:Alex G. Benedict/Notebook/Physics 307L: Junior Lab/Poisson Lab

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Steve Koch 04:23, 21 December 2010 (EST):Very nice data and plots. More explanation needed in primary notebook to ensure reproducibility.

Poisson Lab

This lab was performed in the junior laboratory in the UNM physics building on November 8th.

Links

[Dr. Gold's Lab Manual]

Equipment and Setup

The equipment used is listed in the lab manual, and consisted of a computer, and a device used to measure the activity. The equipment should already be set up and just needs to be turned on.

SJK 04:22, 21 December 2010 (EST)

04:22, 21 December 2010 (EST)
It's actually all new equipment, so Gold's lab manual is very out of date now. See Brian Josey's or Kirstin Harriger's notebooks for good explanation of how to set it up.

Procedure and Data

Data from each trial is listed in the spreadsheet below, all plots of the data vs the Poisson distribution are on the charts directly following the data sheet.

{{#widget:Google Spreadsheet |key=0AsLE8iWrtjlSdEFkUGM4WU4wQ3NNVHdFODVXaXVqZUE |width=900 |height=600 }}

Results

For the first trial, the observed values were

  • mean 0.35546875
  • min 0
  • max 4
  • stddev 0.63447475188877
  • sqrt(mean) 0.59621200088559

for the second trial:

  • mean 1.6015625
  • min 0
  • max 6
  • stddev 1.24516220693074
  • sqrt(mean) 1.26552854570729

for the third trial:

  • mean 12.359375
  • min 2
  • max 24
  • stddev 3.4817901611011
  • sqrt(mean) 3.51559027760631

for the fourth trial:

  • mean 0.69140625
  • min 0
  • max 3
  • stddev 0.78869734683335
  • sqrt(mean) 0.83150841847813

for the fifth trial:

  • mean 2.67578125
  • min 0
  • max 7
  • stddev 1.58682052773932
  • sqrt(mean) 1.6357815410378

for the sixth trial:

  • mean 4.88671875
  • min 0
  • max 14
  • stddev 2.30065194830833
  • sqrt(mean) 2.21059239797842


For each of the six trials above, the standard deviation was never more than 0.1 away from the square root of the mean, which implies the distributions were all Poisson Distributions.