Today, we benefit tremendously from the records of accomplishments and failures of people who have come before us. The people who took the time to accurately record their efforts, decisions, measurements, tests and conclusions are the same people who will live forever in their records and will serve as guides for future generations.

In this course, you will be given the tools and time each week to record the efforts that you have made individually and with your team. Your reports will be published on the world wide web. The WWW is a common medium used by nearly all scientists today to widely disseminate the intentions, products and results of their research. As tools, you will use:

Netscape Composer

This is a simple visual web page composing tool.

Windows Notepad text editor

This will be used to add HTML (HyperText Markup Language) to web pages.

IDL

This will produce science graphs and process images.

QuickTime Virtual Reality Editor

This will be used to produce virtual reality scenes to help visualize environments.

Your report should include the following basic sections:

Title

The title should accurately summarize the topic of your investigation, the name(s) of the investigator(s) and the date of the investigation.

Introduction

This section will summarize important facts about what is known about the system under study, explain why it is of interest and propose an hypothesis about the results of the experiment to be studied in the report. This section should include a drawing, animation or panorama that helps the reader visualize an important concept about the report.

Equipment

List all equipment (with model numbers) that was used to do the investigation.

Procedure

Explain, step-by-step, all the activities that were performed to complete the investigation. Pictures taken during the lab should be downloaded off the web and included in this section to clarify and enhance the description.

Data

List all data that was measured for the investigation. The data should be organized in a clear table or column format.

Graphs and Calculations

Provide examples of calculations and graphs of data or results that can help the reader derive conclusions from the data.

Modeling and Simulation

Use the Visual Python software to develop a model of the system being studied. Does the computer model behave the same as the real-life experiment?

Error Analysis

List important sources of uncertainty for the experiment. Do the calculations and analysis necessary to estimate the uncertainty in the results of this experiment. See the data analysis guide.

Results

Summarize what your data, graphs and calculations prove about the system under investigation.

Conclusions

State what your investigation has proven. Did you experiment support or deny your hypothesis? What are the main sources of error in your measurements?

Follow-Up Suggestions

Explain what studies should be done next to extend and improve your investigation.

References

List at least one reference and source of some information relating to the lab topic.