Digital Imaging is an emerging discipline with widespread applications in science and engineering. We are introducing digital image acquisition and processing as standard techniques throughout our laboratory curriculum. Recent advances in digital video and in the power of microcomputers have made imaging technology a powerful and cost-effective new tool for data acquisition and analysis in undergraduate physics laboratories. Inexpensive systems are now available which can capture full-motion digital video directly to computer disk at live video rates. We are using these systems to improve laboratory instruction in our introductory, modern physics, and advanced laboratories. Each laboratory station is being networked and equipped with a television camera, video acquisition hardware, and a computer capable of processing and displaying video images. In the introductory laboratory these systems are being used to study motion, wave phenomena and optical diffraction and interference. Live video is especially well suited for the quantitative motion studies since it is capable of capturing and quantifying a wide variety of phenomena without the construction of special apparatus. With video, motion is recorded far more completely than is possible with photogates even when trajectories cannot be predicted. For advanced laboratories we have purchased an instructional scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and a powder camera and develop experiments using digital image processing techniques to compare images of atomic structures (ATM) with electron and x-ray diffraction patterns. Standardization of imaging hardware and software across our curriculum allows students to build skills efficiently, preparing them for research with four faculty members who use digital imaging techniques. We make full-motion and still frame images and curricular materials available to others by maintaining a listserver and supporting anonymous file transfers (FTP) via the Internet.
