The project involves the development of an upper-division laboratory course on computer- interfacing. The purpose of the course is to teach students the elementary aspects of automating experiments using a personal computer (PC). During the course, students use a PC to control the temperature of the bottom plate of a convection cell and to monitor the heat flux through the cell. The transition from the conduction to the convection state will be determined by this heat flux measurement. Throughout the course, students learn about a Windows NT operating system, a C/C++ programming language, and an analog to digital and digital to analog converter. Supplementary materials on Labview (a popular programming language for computer interfacing) and GPIB (a popular instrument interface standard) are being incorporated into the course.
