{"id":1084,"date":"2007-02-02T11:28:59","date_gmt":"2007-02-02T11:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/02\/02\/physics-lab-by-the-numbers\/"},"modified":"2007-02-02T11:28:59","modified_gmt":"2007-02-02T11:28:59","slug":"physics-lab-by-the-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/02\/02\/physics-lab-by-the-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"Physics Lab, By the Numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Time spent locating the parts for the Compton Effect experiment: 15 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent dragging lead bricks for radiation shielding into the lab: 10 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent bulding little lead houses for the hot <sup>137<\/sup>Cs source and Photo-Multiplier Tube (PMT): 15 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent trying to find somebody who knew the administrator password for the computer: 20 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time between saying &#8220;What happens if you just click &#8216;Cancel?'&#8221; and getting the computer working: 2 seconds.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Time spent connecting the detector, amplifiers, and high-voltage power supply: 5 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent swapping connections around to find the right configuration: 10 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent trying to figure out why the Multi-Channel Analyzer (MCA) on the computer wasn&#8217;t recording a useful spectrum: 30 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time between asking &#8220;What does this switch do?&#8221; and seeing a useful spectrum: 1.5 seconds.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent doing a quick preliminary measurement of the Compton effect: 10 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent re-doing all the connections to move the detector closer to the electronics, because the cables don&#8217;t reach: 10 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent jiggling the cables to the PMT in order to get rid of spurious noise peaks: 20 minutes (integrated over full lab period).<\/li>\n<li>Time spent looking for a working Geiger counter: 30 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent looking for a mouse for the data analysis computer: 5 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent looking for a different mouse for the data analysis computer, one that wasn&#8217;t a useless piece of shit: 10 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent explaining the MCA calibration procedure to students: 15 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent re-explaining the MCA calibration procedure to students: 30 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent trying to get the MCA program display back to normal after students poked randomly at the keyboard for a while: 15 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent hyperventilating after students picked up the very expensive PMT, and waved it around like it was indestructible: 5 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time spent listening to student imitations of me saying, &#8220;Oh, God! Put that down!&#8221;: 1,653 hours (projected).<\/li>\n<li>Time spent decompressing after the end of lab: 45 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Time until I have to do all this again: Not nearly long enough.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Time spent locating the parts for the Compton Effect experiment: 15 minutes. Time spent dragging lead bricks for radiation shielding into the lab: 10 minutes. Time spent bulding little lead houses for the hot 137Cs source and Photo-Multiplier Tube (PMT): 15 minutes. Time spent trying to find somebody who knew the administrator password for the&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/02\/02\/physics-lab-by-the-numbers\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Physics Lab, By the Numbers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13,19,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-education","category-experiment","category-physics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}