Over the course of this lab, you will do ten experiments. Each experiment will have a pre-lab quiz and a main report. The quiz will constitute 15% of your grade and the main report 85% of your grade.

The pre-lab quiz will need to be done before the lab, and is mainly designed to ensure you are adequately prepared before you enter lab. You will perform this quiz on Brightspace , and receive immediate feedback.

The main report will be due at the beginning of your next lab period, excepting special circumstances. You should submit your report digitally on Brightspace, where a place to upload will be provided. You can submit multiple files in a single submission, so you should upload both your data table (as a .xls or .xlsx file) and main report (as a .pdf file) simultaneously.

Each lab will have an associated quiz to perform before you arrive to lab.

These quizzes will be multiple-choice (or true/false, or similar) and done through your Brightspace section. They are primarily intended to test you on the "big picture" of the lab, and not on the specific details that you can figure out when you get there.

All information required for these labs will be contained in the relevant manuals and data tables. You can refer to these resources (or any you choose) during the quiz, and they are not timed.

At the end of your quiz, you will get your score and be told the correct answers to all questions. You will then have the ability to take the quiz again, and your score will be the average of your two attempts. (The second attempt will have the same questions with the same answers, so you should get 100% the second time, boosting your score for free if you do so!)

This second attempt should encourage you to look over your incorrect answers before coming to lab, thereby correcting potential misconceptions.

Some parts of a lab report will be consistent across all experiments. Other sections are dependent on what the specific experiment warrants, and for these sections your TA will clarify their expectations (with an outline of possible topics listed in the manuals).

Here is a sample lab report to show a possible format.

Your lab report should have some of the following elements (sections in italics are experiment-dependent):

• Header/Cover Page: Either at the top of the first page or on a separate cover page, you should have the following information clearly laid out:
  • Your Name
  • Identifying information for course ("PHY133 Section [##] With [TA Name]")
  • Identifying information for experiment ("Experiment [##]: [Name of Experiment]")
  • Date of experiment & partner ("Experiment Performed On [Date] With [Partner]")
  • Submission date ("Report Submitted On [Date]")
• Introduction: A short (at most one paragraph) overview of the experiment.
• Theory: If needed, some explanation of the physics behind the experiment, such as:
  • Mathematical derivations of important formulas from first principles
  • Discussions of special cases and limits of the physics phenomenon discussed
• Apparatus/Procedure: If needed, some explanation for any unusual or interesting aspects of our equipment or procedure, such as:
  • Labelled diagrams for complicated apparatuses
  • Explanations of how the apparatus/procedure is designed to control for certain kinds of systemic errors
• Data Table: Your data, as taken from the Google Sheet (see below).
• Calculations: Show the calculations you did (including uncertainty propagation). For large data sets, show only one calculation of each kind. Note: If you do your calculations in Google Sheets and submit as an Excel document, you do not need to write out your calculations again.
• Results: A description of the important results of your experiment, and any comments worth making about them. These include:
  • Plots: Plots show relationships between variables, and so are important to include (and discuss what they show).
  • Physically-interesting quantities measured: Major "final results," such as measurements of physical constants
  • Any remarks about your data quality you feel are worth making
• Error Analysis: A discussion of potential errors beyond the basic uncertainties.
• Conclusion: A short (at most one paragraph) summary of the results of your experiment. (Repeating information is entirely appropriate here.)

The order described above is a reasonable general order for the sections, but do not take it as a necessary prescription of how to arrange things - format them in a way that is reasonable for the specific lab in question. If you are unsure, ask your TA for guidance.

Plots: Make plots in the PHY133/134 Plotting Tool. They should always have a good, descriptive title; descriptive axis labels, with units; and error bars where appropriate. Remember that when people read a report, they will often skim, and look at the plots without greater context. For this reason, it should ideally be possible to understand what a plot is showing without reading the main text. For more information, see our Plotting Guide.

Calculations and Uncertainty Propagation: You can either write out your calculations in your main report (after doing them in the calculator), or show your work using formulas in Google Sheets. Generally, the latter is preferable (and will make your life easier), but by-hand calculations will be accepted as well. Remember if you show your work in Google Sheets to submit in a .xls file format - we cannot look at your formulas if you submit as a .pdf file.

Experiment-Dependent Sections: Each lab manual will have some "suggested discussion points," which you can reasonably split between Theory, Apparatus, Procedure, and Error Analysis sections as you see fit. Your TA will tell you which specific points they expect you to include (which will be somewhat dependent on how much work the rest of the lab report is).

(Note: This section gives advice on using Google Sheets for this class specifically. For a more general introduction to spreadsheet programs such as Google Sheets/Excel/etc. and how to do calculations in them, see our Introduction to Google Sheets instead.)

Getting Data Sheets

For each lab, there will be a corresponding data sheet available on Google Sheets. These will be linked both from the main website and from the individual lab manuals.

The links posted are merely templates and not actual sheets, however - you cannot edit them directly. To make an editable copy, click "File->Make a Copy". Assuming you are logged into a Google account (including your Stony Brook account), this will make a copy of the data sheet in your personal Google Drive that you can then edit.

An alternative is to download as an Excel document ("File->Download As->Microsoft Excel (.xlsx)") and work on a copy of Excel on your own personal computer. This does not require being logged into a Google account, although it does require a copy of Excel (or another spreadsheet program).

Use of Google Sheets

Once you have made a copy, you can then use it as you would a typical spreadsheet - type numbers, formulas, etc. You can also use pre-written dropdown menus for some cells.

For sake of standardization of the data presentation (consistency makes faster grading easier), we ask the following:

• Do not move cells around. If you would like to do auxiliary calculations off to the side somewhere, feel free, just don't move around the main cells of the data table to do so.
• For units drop-downs, please format your units in the style provided. Most reasonable units should be in the drop-down somewhere, but if the units that your quantity comes in are not in this drop-down, please attempt to place it in the same format.
• For other drop-downs (such as "multiple-choice" questions), please choose one of those options. Only type text yourself if what you believe to be the correct answer is not present.

If you do you calculations using formulas in your spreadsheet program and submit your data sheet as a .xls document on Brightspace, then you do not need to separately write out your calculations. (If you do your work in Google Sheets, once you are finished, download as an Excel document - see above - and then upload the resulting file. You do not need a copy of Excel to do this.)

Color Coding

One nice feature of these data sheets is that they are color-coded for your convenience. The colors are laid out as follows:

• Gray: Header cells
• Yellow: Raw data you will acquire in lab.
• Blue: Quantities you have to calculate with formulas.
• Orange: Slopes/intercepts you take from the plotting tool (after you plot some other data).
• Purple: Key final results. Also (usually) calculated.
• Green: Quantities calculated/filled out for you (don't touch these cells!), including standard values for physical constants.
• Red: Ignore these cells. (Uncertainties we are ignoring, etc.)
• Pink: "Options" cells (i.e., things you have a choice about; plotting tool only).

If you lose this formatting and want it back, an easy way is to copy all cells from the original data sheet template, and paste back into your spreadsheet with "Paste Special->Formatting Only" (which has a shortcut of Ctrl-Alt-V in Google Sheets).

If you want to be particularly fancy (or don't want to spend a long time wrestling with getting Word or Google Docs to write math formulas), you can spend a little time learning \(\LaTeX\) (pronounced "la-tech"). This is a bit more of a time investment to learn than Google Sheets (and for less immediate benefit), but it makes really polished-looking documents, and if you go into an academic discipline that involves writing mathematical equations in papers (including but not limited to a professional physics career) it's an excellent skill to have.

There are basically three ways to use \(\LaTeX\), in increasing order of complexity:

1. Making pictures: There exist utilities that will take \(\LaTeX\) code and give you an image file that you can paste into something else that you're using for the "main" part of your document. I.e.: you write your report in Word, but you paste your equations as pictures into your word document. One nice one is this utility. (This can be especially nice as a way to start learning \(\LaTeX\).)
2. Using an online interface: Websites such as Overleaf give you the ability to work on \(\LaTeX\) documents rather like Google Docs. Although we won't make use of the sharing features (since you write individual reports), it also means you don't have to install anything on your computer, which is nice. (You have to make an account, but it's free, and you can log in with Google, including your Stony Brook account.)
3. On your own computer: You can also install \(\LaTeX\) on your own computer (either with an IDE or just operating on ordinary text files) and use it that way. Unless you're technically savvy, though, this is probably more trouble than it's worth.

If you use the first method, you can probably make it by with just the UI provided, but if you want to write your whole document in \(\LaTeX\), it's probably worth reading a tutorial. We made one available here (with the project file here), although that template is based on an older lab report style.

You can also find other guides online. For example, here's one that gives some more advanced tricks than our guide provides, such as circuit diagrams (which you may find useful in PHY134).

We also have a template for a lab report that you can start with if you write your entire document in \(\LaTeX\), which deals with most of the formatting for you and shows how to set up various things (formulas, tables, etc.). You can find it here. (You can also search Overleaf for other lab report templates if you like - there are certainly some that look fancier.)

Some other references you may find useful:

• The Great, Big List of \(\LaTeX\) Symbols
• The Comprehensive \(\LaTeX\) Symbol List
• Reverse Symbol Lookup (draw a symbol, see what the command is)
• The \(\LaTeX\) Font Catalogue