Improving undergraduate labs

Abstract

The April 2017 issue of Physics Today included a report by Toni Feder on the current poor state of student advanced physics labs and efforts by the Advanced Laboratory Physics Association to improve the situation. But a few aspects need discussion to complete our understanding of the situation.Some colleges advertise that all their undergraduates have the opportunity to participate in faculty research projects. I wonder whether such arrangements are an attempt to compensate for poor or nonexistent advanced labs.As the US population ages, an increasing share of federal revenue will go for Social Security and health care benefits. Less money will be available for discretionary federal spending, such as for student lab equipment, so petitioning NSF for funds is not promising. Physics teachers should be petitioning their own universities to make some tuition money available for that purpose.The typical department budget for lab equipment and supplies is approximately $1000, according to the report. If the college charges $30 000 annual tuition, why not use $1000 of that to upgrade lab equipment? If 20 students took the lab each year, that lab would receive $20 000, which should be enough to pay for one new or refurbished experiment set-up. If we assume student pairs rotated through 10 experiments and that each required only one apparatus set, after 10 years all experiments would be upgraded or refurbished!The article reports complaints about century-old lab experiments. Yet there is nothing wrong with letting students perform a few classic experiments such as the Millikan oil drop, the Michelson interferometer, or the Franck–Hertz tube. Recent Physics Today pieces (July 2016, pages 8 and 38; March 2017, page 11) have suggested that students should learn the history of physics. Doing classic experiments allows students to experience using simpler equipment and getting meaningful results without using computerized black boxes. I never appreciated how hard it is to measure the universal constant of gravitation G until I used a Cavendish balance.Feder reports that new professors are reluctant to get involved with maintaining student lab equipment because such activity does not contribute to obtaining tenure. Perhaps we need a reform of the tenure process so that ratings include those activities that directly help undergraduate students. For their tuition dollars, students should be getting good laboratory training.In a separate editorial (Physics Today, June 2016, page 8), Charles Day commented that the student labs he took did not inspire him to become an experimental physicist. I think his complaint is invalid. Student labs are not recruiting events for the field but training sessions that should Teach some laboratory techniques and practices. Give experience in analyzing real-world data whose error distribution does not follow a Gaussian distribution. Observe physics phenomena firsthand. Verify firsthand that some textbook theory is borne out by experiment. Allow one to learn some physics topics not covered in other courses. As demonstrated by the effort required to become proficient at playing a musical instrument, learning a craft is hard work, and not all of it is inspiring.[Editors’ note: Some of the issues Victor Slabinski mentions are also discussed in the feature article “Introductory physics labs: We can do better” by Natasha Holmes and Carl Wieman on page 38 of this issue.] Section:ChooseTop of page <<© 2018 American Institute of Physics.