Your TA will go over information in this lab. This page has a short overview of details that will be discussed.

The most important point is administrative details, which are mostly available on the PHY 121 and PHY 122 webpages (as relevant). Your TA will give you any more specific details, such as unusual deadlines and electronic submission mechanisms (if any).

There will be some discussion of what is expected of you in your write-ups. You can find a document describing those details here: PHY121/122 Lab Report Expectations

In this lab, we will be using Google Sheets for our data tables. Depending on your level of skill with Google Sheets, we recommend our Google Sheets Tutorial to familiarize yourself with how to use it efficiently. (You should, at a minimum, know what "$A$3" means in a formula, and how it differs from just "A3" in the formula. If you know that, you'll know most of what the tutorial contains, although some parts are still likely to be new.)

Regardless of your familiarity, you should know that we will not be using Google Sheets to actually make plots in this class. Instead, we will use the Plotting Tool, for which there is a guide: Guide to Making and Using Plots.

Finally, there will be some discussion of error analysis. A full description can be found in the Guide to Uncertainty Propagation and Error Analysis, with an abbreviated version in the Quick Reference. More discussion will be provided prior to performing Lab 1, and you should familiarize yourself with the material in that guide (sections 1-4, especially section 2.2) before attending that lab.