I have finally finished my first class at The College of William and Mary. Last week was my last lab for General Physics 101. This post will both explore the knowledge that I've gained from this class and serve as a guide to any student who plans on taking this lab in the future.
Every lab (formal labs aside) requires a pre-lab. This sounds like a big deal and a lot of work, but, luckily, your lab manual practically did it for you already. The introduction covers every important piece of information and formula that you're required to use, so just read that. Also, be sure to adjust your font size, so it looks like you wrote more than you did. Some kids fill up the whole page with little text, some fill it with big text; they both get the same grade.
Each lab requires measurement of some form, and every time that you take a measurement using an electronic device, it's KEY to tare it up first. There are scrubs that roll up into class, throw their unknown mass (which is often labeled) onto the scale, and start writing down numbers in their tables, but now you know better. Take that scale, set it flat on the table, and hit that tare button. In fact, as Uncle Kurtis suggested to us (my partner, Ben, and me), it never hurts to tare it up a few times, for good measure.
The next crucial step to a successful lab is practice. Don't you dare hit the "Start" button on your DataStudio program without giving the turn table a couple of practice spins first. Don't even think about the "Start" button before tossing that ball a few times. In fact, it might be a good idea to master the techniques you'll be using in the lab back at the dorm, before even stepping inside of Small Hall. The key to a beautiful data set is a practiced hand.
Take pride in your work. Personally, I save every beautiful sinusoidal graph of a simple harmonic oscillator, ever burnt piece of paper tracking inelastic collisions, and every parabolic arc that Ben and I have ever produced during our labs and post them to my fridge. Pro tip: if your graph doesn't look good the first time, make sure to fudge the data and play around with your scale until it does. A little trimming around the edges never hurt anyone.
Interpret the data, guys. Don't just write down numbers. Write down numbers and stare at them for a while. Be inquisitive. Make claims. They don't have to be right, just so long as you make them. Let know data set go uninterpreted. Why does their graph look like a straight line and yours looks like a dinosaur's back? Why did Uncle Kurtis make you redo the entire first half of the lab? It's questions like these that make students into scholars.
Don't stress enormous percent errors. The conclusion section of the lab always gives you a chance to blame it on something-- a few causes I like to default to are air resistance, force of friction, mass of a pendulum or string, and inaccurate measurements. Be sure to reference the "perfect world" that real scientists seem to live in, when justifying the 60% difference between your results and the actual measurement you were trying to achieve. Everyone makes mistakes.
Conclusion writing is easy, if you know what you're doing. Be sure to start every conclusion you write (there will be over ten of them, over the course of the semester) with "I learned that..." A few words later, when you're fumbling for words again, throw in "I also learned," and go from there. Like I mentioned before, you can take up a lot of space accounting for the outrageous error in your results. Once you're getting near the bottom of the page (which you've filled with your biggest, boldest, double-spaced hand-writing), close it out by saying that your results were conclusive. They will be conclusive, trust me-- the lab is designed that way.
Good luck, my friend.
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