Standard laboratory exercises in introductory physics courses have little in common with actual research, and are not particularly effective at developing the students' physical intuition. This project is reshaping the introductory physics laboratory exercises to allow students the freedom and creativity to discover physical phenomena and the laws that govern them. When learning occurs by discovery the development of physical intuition is greatly enhanced when compared to traditional approaches. Since there are no fixed procedures for students to follow, students must have general purpose and powerful laboratory tools. Central to the implementation of discovery experiments is the introduction of microcomputer based laboratories (MBLs). A network of eleven Macintosh SE computers served by an SE/30 file server is the central tool. To acquire data from almost any experiment, each machine has an interface and sensor assortment. The sensors include photogates, ultrasonic rangers, Geiger detectors, and force probes. For example, with these tools students may acquire the position of a moving object (perhaps themselves) as a function of time, and immediately see a graph of the object's velocity or acceleration. To analyze the computer acquired data students again use general purpose tools. Computer spreadsheets, graphing, and communication software are being used to quickly find final results. These software and hardware tools allow students to investigate physical phenomena with a minimum of tedium, maximizing the time spent doing physics. The University is matching the award with an equal amount of funds.
