Remember that you need to turn in reports on 4 of the 6 lab experiments for the semester. So far, I've been very happy with the lab reports you've turned in, but I worry that you're going to put the remaining ones off a bit too long ... there is not much time left in the semester.
This is just your friendly reminder that it is that time of the semester again, the time when we all wish we had not put things off :-)
Also, I should point out more clearly that our last few labs followed an inquiry-based method. That is fancy talk for when the professor doesn't quite know what will happen either, and the whole point of the thing is to try and figure something out given the resources you have. As a result, your results for the last several labs may not be as straightforward as you might like, and that is ok! If you did your measurements correctly, analyzed the data the best you could, just do the best you can to explain what happened. It may not fit the nice formulas in the book, and that is partly the point - why didn't it work out? Perhaps the intensity variation within your laser beam illuminated some slits less than others, and your intensity measurements are therefore screwy. Perhaps your gratings are not so simply constructed as the textbook imagines. Could be anything, but if you were careful enough, you can rule out a good many possibilities. Real sciencing is messy and difficult. We're not baking cakes here, and there is no recipe for making it come out perfectly.
This is just your friendly reminder that it is that time of the semester again, the time when we all wish we had not put things off :-)
Also, I should point out more clearly that our last few labs followed an inquiry-based method. That is fancy talk for when the professor doesn't quite know what will happen either, and the whole point of the thing is to try and figure something out given the resources you have. As a result, your results for the last several labs may not be as straightforward as you might like, and that is ok! If you did your measurements correctly, analyzed the data the best you could, just do the best you can to explain what happened. It may not fit the nice formulas in the book, and that is partly the point - why didn't it work out? Perhaps the intensity variation within your laser beam illuminated some slits less than others, and your intensity measurements are therefore screwy. Perhaps your gratings are not so simply constructed as the textbook imagines. Could be anything, but if you were careful enough, you can rule out a good many possibilities. Real sciencing is messy and difficult. We're not baking cakes here, and there is no recipe for making it come out perfectly.
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