Skills Sessions Part 2 - Durham University

Skills Sessions - Part 2

During the second half of Michaelmas term you will conduct the three further experiments in addition to an Enterprise Seminar. In these sessions you will develop the skills you have obtained earlier in the term as well as obtaining many more.

Report writing guidelines

Experiments

LRC Circuits

This practical investigates a.c. circuits containing resistors (R), capacitors (C) and inductors (L).

Semiconductors

In this session learn about semiconductors, investigate the current-voltage characteristics of diodes & experiment with the energy gap of silicon

Gravity

In this session measure the acceleration of gravity, determine the gravitional constant, G, and minimise errors and propagate them via equations

Enterprise

Learn how to 'think outside the box', networking, and the ability of recognizing and seizing opportunities

An example of a session script can be found here.

What are the Aims?

Once you have completed the experiments and report writing activity in Michaelmas term, we believe that you'll have gained experience in the following skills. These skills will be required in later activities, both this year and beyond. If you do not feel confident with some of them be sure to use the resources below to catch up.

Experimental skills	Lab book skills	Error Analysis
Work in teams - both in pairs and larger groups Build simple circuits Use an oscilloscope to measure voltage and frequency of time varying sine and square waves Use an oscilloscope to measure the phase shift between two waves (both using the Lissajous method and the wave shift/displacement method)	Record observations Comment on results Highlight the conclusions obtained Tabulate data Sketch results Plot graphs including plotting logarithms Make histograms	Calculate the standard errors and for repeated measurements Manipulate tabulated data within spreadsheets (e.g., using the ln function, etc.) Linearise data Propagate errors within a spreadsheet Use Excel to create graphs with title, axis labels, error bars and a trend line, within 10 minutes! Calculate a line of best fit and its error using LINEST

Back to Level 1 Labs