The goal in restructuring Bowdoin's Modern Physics laboratory is to increase active and thoughtful participation of students in the laboratory experience through involvement in the design, construction, and execution of lab experiments. The new lab experiments are designed to achieve this goal for a broad range of students with differing career goals, at the level appropriate to each student. This constraint has led to the choice of a lab structure with three levels of experiments, varying their degree of sophistication and instrumentation. For more efficient use of resources these experiments have been created using some common equipment where possible. The major instruments used are PC-based plug-in multichannel analyzers, scintillators and scintillation counters, X-ray diffractometers, photomultipliers, time-to-amplitude converters, as well as germanium, silicon, and sodium-iodide detectors. These are being used in various experiments involving nuclear decay machanisms, gamma-rays, X-rays, and other decay products such as positrons or muons. This project is a necessary step in achieving the goal of providing excellent preparation for those considering further graduate study, as well as cultivating and encouraging students to major in physics who may follow other career paths. The college is matching the award with an equal amount of funds.
