The Physics Department at Lewis and Clark College is developing a modern laboratory for teaching solid state physics. Building on a base of introductory and intermediate courses, the Physics faculty has recently turned its attention to the development of a series of advanced laboratory/student-faculty research investigations which will serve to emphasize topics being studied in Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics, Modern Physics, Solid State Physics and Quantum Mechanics. Solid State Physics was selected to illustrate fundamental interactions of electrons with matter. The development of this laboratory is also very practical in view of the graduate and career plans of undergraduate physics majors. The laboratory will support a range of experiments of differing degrees of sophistication. A number of pieces of equipment for crystal growth and electrical and optical measurements have or are being acquired. The central piece of equipment in this project is a superconducting magnet and variable temperature cryostat to be used to investigate fundamental properties of materials. The system is capable of temperatures from 1.5 to 300 Kelvin and magnetic fields up to ten Tesla. This system will be used by students enrolled in Advanced Laboratory, Undergraduate Research, or student-faculty collaborative research. Examples of concepts to be studied are: magnetic susceptibility, specific heat, electrical conductivity, Landau quantization, electronic band structure, superconductivity, and semiconductor carrier concentration. The grantee institution is matching the NSF award with an equal sum obtained from non-Federal sources.
