An important goal in any advanced physics laboratory is for students, with minimal supervision, to design and implement an experimental scheme to study a physical phenomenon. This project concerns a teaching strategy for the advanced laboratory that systematically develops experimental design skills. A unique feature of this course is the requirement of students to write at least a small section of LabVIEW code for each laboratory experience directly pertaining to data acquisition or system control. Since LabVIEW is icon oriented, students are able to progress from simple experimental design tasks to more complicated ones fairly quickly. The department is purchasing computers, data acquisition and GPIB interface boards, and LabVIEW software. This project is enhancing the advanced laboratory course, which is significantly improving the experimental skills of physics majors.
