Reminder of Academic Honesty Policy

The need has arisen for me to remind everyone that you are all bound by the University’s policy on Academic Honesty. Specifically under no circumstance are you permitted to collaborate when writing lab reports. As stated in the Undergraduate Physics Laboratories web page, under the link Lab Policy and Regulations:

“You may work with others to understand the experiment but your report must be your unique work in your own words.”

If there is any doubt in student’s mind as to what the University’s Academic Honesty policy is, I urge everyone to visit the Dean of Students Office webpage:

http://www.umass.edu/dean_students/codeofconduct/acadhonesty/

Some students may falsely assume that collaboration on an experiment in lab carries over to writing lab reports. As the faculty supervisor of the laboratory I explicitly forbid any collaboration when writing reports. Each student is submitting his/her own report and each report is graded individually.

If you have any questions, please review the Dean of Students web page.

Instructor Schedule and Contacts

I have posted in each of the four introductory physics courses pages the lab instructor schedule and contacts. The schedule is the same as the section schedule but it also indicates which instructor is teaching which section. At the bottom of the schedule is a key (the instructors’ initials) listing the names of the instructors and their email addresses.

From this point on all questions concerning specific issues about your lab section should be directed to your lab instructor; issues like office hours, reports, grades, attendances, lab make ups, etc.

When you email your instructor it is good to exercise a little etiquette. Please introduce yourself and indicate what course, what section, time and day you are registered in. That will help your instructor in keeping track of things.

Course Material Posted on Moodle

I’ve started posting course material on Moodle. You will find both the weekly and section schedules, the section instructors and contacts for your course, and the first set of questions for experiment 1 lab report. Please take to time to visit Moodle to get these materials.

Meet Moodle

Moodle is now the online Learning Management System (LMS) for the introductory physics laboratories. In the next few days I will post some useful materials on Moodle for you like weekly and sections schedules, and contact list of lab instructors. You will also find the lab questions for writing reports on Moodle as well as grades for reports. You can find more information and help by visiting the UMass Moodle web site. The link to the right should bring you to the intro. physics lab Moodle log in.

Preparing for Lab…

Labs for Physics 131(133), 132(134), 151(153) and 152(154) begin next week. To prepare for lab here is a check list of things you will need.

  • Copy of the Lab Manuals are available in the Textbook Annex.
  • Carbonless Duplicate Student Lab Notebooks are available in the Textbook Annex or many other places like University Store or office supple store (any kind will do).
  • Calculator.
  • Pens and pencils.

Please follow the link under “Courses” for your course. There are detailed weekly and section schedules there.

No Laboratories During First Week!

Just a reminder there are no labs scheduled during the first week of the semester. Labs for physics 131(133), 132(134), 151(153) and 152(154) begin the week of January 30th. Some courses like physics 132(134) and 152(154) are on a two week cycle; which means some sections will start labs January 3oth and other sections will start labs February 6th. Please follow the links to the right to your respective course and review the sections schedules under “Schedules” and see if your section starts lab Week 1 or Week 2.

Enrollment in Introductory Physics Labs – Spring 2012

Space is limited but we will do our best to accommodate people that wish to enroll in the introductory physics labs for physics 131(133), 132(134), 151(153) and 152(154). If you have questions please contact Kris Reopell (reopell@physics.umass.edu), the physics department scheduler.

Some students have taken in the past either the lab only or lecture only course and wish to take the other component of introductory physics course. For those students please contact Kris Reopell for assistance in enrollment.

Hello and Welcome!

Hello and welcome to the Undergraduate Physics Laboratories at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In the coming weeks I hope this site will provide you with some useful information about our laboratories.