The Department of Physics and Astronomy at Hunter College will introduce a new laboratory for physics majors. Students taking this new laboratory will have had an already existing lecture course and laboratory in the fundamentals of electronics. The equipment purchases will allow physics majors access to microcomputers (personal computers) used to (1) control experiments and (2) collect data from probes placed in the experiment. The five experiments which will be used are in the areas of heat (thermodynamics), properties of magnetic materials, properties of repetitive or oscillatory motion (nonlinear harmonic motion). The students will also see how a computer collects data from an experiment through various kinds of probes which sense the temperature and other quantities in time. The digital computer cannot make continuous measurements of (for example) temperature as it changes with time but instead must measure the temperature at discrete but closely spaced time intervals. This process of digitizing is quite interesting in itself and the student will learn what conditions must be met so that the digitizing is done properly and the result is faithful to the phenomena measured. The major equipment proposed for purchase are six Macintosh microcomputers, chosen for their ease of use by the student. Also, proposed for purchase are (1) the equipment to perform the experiments, (2) the probes that sense or collect the data from the experiment, and (3) the equipment which connects the signal from the experimental probe to the computer (the computer interface).
