Independent lab project ideas

General principles

For those of you who took physics 25L with Prof. Stuart, that's exactly the type of lab you should be thinking of.
For those who took 13H with Prof. Lipman, that's NOT the sort of lab you should be thinking of. (This is not a quarter-long, life-consuming project. It's not an invention, it's a measurement.). You do not have access to the machine shop, for example. You do not have an equipment budget.
For those of you who took 3L-5L, that's almost the sort of lab you should be thinking of. Think of the sorts of physics effects you dealt with there, and imagine dealing with them BETTER---as a bare minimum, imagine one of those lab setups, but with proper data analysis.

Things worth measuring:

Motion and kinetics. We have various things that can move: pellet guns, air cars, pendulums, weights. We have automated position and time-measuring devices: photo gate timers, spark timers, etc. We have springs, pulleys, weights, force-gauges, etc.. What aspects of Newton's Laws could you test Rotational motion. We can give you gyroscopes, turntables, pendulums, pulley wheels. What aspects of angular momentum and rotational motion can you test Many of the tools of motion/kinetics will work on circular motion too.
Electrostatics and magnetostatics. You can build a capacitor, an inductor, a resistor, an electromagnet. You can measure forces with our mechanical tools, or currents, voltages, etc. with voltmeters and maybe oscilloscopes. What were the theoretical ingredients of your Physics 23-24 problem sets Can you reproduce that physics on the lab bench Optics and light. We have prisms (including fluid-filled prisms), filters, polarizers, photodiodes (I.e. light detectors); you could illuminate them with various lamps, sunlight, or simple lasers.
Circuits: Sorry, this is not 127A. You've already hand a chance to play with "pure" circuit problems---Ohm's Law, or RLC circuit oscillations, or RC discharge, or the IV curve of a diode, Of course, there are "real" physics problems in which a circuit might be a measurement tool: how would you measure a permittivity or permeability A magnetization A temperature coefficient of resistivity Fluid mechanics. In a limited way, you can fill containers with fluid, move the fluid through apertures, move solids through the fluid. You can measure depths, flow rates, drag forces. You can induce waves, hydraulic jumps, etc.; in simple cases you could mix fluids, salts, dyes, and measure concentrations. What physical laws involve those quantities
Thermodynamics. You can measure temperatures; you can apply controlled heat and cooling. You can manipulate air, including its pressure, temperature, and volume, and maybe composition. You can introduce flows, oscillations, waves (like sound, which we can measure) and boundary conditions.
Radioactivity: chain reactions, neutron generation, extraction of radium from pitchblende NO NO NO.
Explosives: shock focusing, the detonation/deflagratin transition, formation of metallic hydrogen NO NO NO. Please no.
Anything you've seen on Mythbusters No.
Astrophysics: Probably not. This class meets during the day, so the stars are not available. Even with an astronomical body you have access to, like the Sun, most "standard" astronomy data measurements are (absent the professional analysis tools that are beyond the scope of 128L) far removed from the data-points-with-error-bars analysis that you need to learn now, and there is an astrophysics lab class you may take if you want to deal with telescopes and their data. Can you think of an astronomy experiment that (a) uses benchtop equipment in daytime, and (b) results in a collection of data points, not a photograph Brightness vs. altitude of the daytime sky I might put in a plug for one of my favorite books, "The Nature of Light and Color in the Open Air" by Minnaert.
Chemical and biological physics: Mostly not. I invite you to try to convince me otherwise (electrochemistry but the default is NO.

How to find resources:

Look around. If something is sitting on a shelf, labeled clearly, and not plugged into anything, chances are it's available for your use. All of the bins, open shelves, and unlocked cabinets in 3323 are fair game.
If it is *connected to something else* it is probably needed by that other thing; DO NOT unplug, unscrew, dismantle, scavenge, borrow, or reappropriate---not even temporarily. If in doubt, ASK.
ASK. If it's something you've seen or used in 3L-5L, we can probably get one. If it's something that you have seen in a lecture demo in 1610 or 1640, we might be able to borrow it from Louis.