Expectations

To make this a fulfilling and fun learning experience, I ask the following:

You must attend the lab section to turn in the lab for credit. If you must miss lab, you may attend another lab with that section’s TA’s permission! Please let us both know if you plan to do this.
Be to lab on time. Some of your classmates undoubtedly have classes immediately after this lab and this room has a class in it at 3:00pm. So be courteous. If you are more than 20 minutes late, you will be counted absent.
Read the lab manual before coming to lab each week.
Bring your textbook. It will be helpful in doing the lab, and, of course, bring your lab manual every time.
Labs will involve calculations. Bring a calculator to lab.

What You Can Expect of Me…

In turn, I will:

Start on time.
Be prepared to review the material and help explain the lab to you.
Always be willing to answer questions about the lab or other questions about the course.
Promptly return your graded labs to you. I’ll grade the labs and get them back to you in a week so that you can look at them and use them to study for your quizzes.
Be willing to help you with the mathematics. I know that some of you may be rusty on your math and might need some assistance occasionally. You need only ask me. And remember, if you have a question, at least 5 other people probably do as well. Also, you might want to see pages 18-26 in your lab manual.

Questions, Office Hours, etc.

I encourage you to come to my office hours if you have any questions about the labs. You are also welcomed to come with questions about the course, even if they are not specific to the lab (homework, quizzes or material from the lecture). If my office hours are not convenient, please get in touch with me (email is best) and we can arrange a time to meet. You can find my availability at http://bogart.colorado.edu/~weissj/whereami.html.

Remember, I’m here to help you learn. So ask questions, both in and out of lab! That’s why I’m here!

Grading

There will be 12 day-labs (during the Wednesday 1-3 meeting time) and 4 night-lab sessions. You must turn in 12 labs, at least one of which must be a night lab. Your grade will be out of 12 labs, so if you do more than 12 labs, I will take your 12 best scores. Thus, it is in your interest to do as many labs as you can to maximize your grade.

Lab Reports

Your lab write-ups are due at the start of the next lab. Late labs will be penalized one point (out of 10) for each day late. No write-ups will be accepted more than a week late.
Your write up should represent your own work. Not only should you not copy from elsewhere, you and your lab partner should write your reports separately.
Use complete sentences and show your work and data. This is in part so that I can tell you know what you are saying, and in part so I can assign partial credit even if you have the wrong answer.
Write your report on a separate sheet of paper, not in your lab manual.
Spelling, grammar and neatness will not be graded. However, if I can’t read your report or understand it, I can’t grade it.
Don’t forget units on your numbers. Numbers without units are wrong.
Reports should include your name, the name of the lab, the name(s) of your lab partner(s) and the date at the top. At the beginning of the lab, summarize what you did in lab in one or two sentences. (“In this lab, we studied the effects of collisions on particle sizes.”) At the end of the lab, summarize what you learned in lab in a short paragraph. This is both to help you integrate the material and for me to get some feedback on what you are learning.

Night Sessions

There will be five night sessions. Remember, you must do at least ONE night lab.

Wed. Sept 12 8:30-10:00pm

Tues. Sept 25 9:30-11:00pm

Thurs. Oct. 18 7:30-9:00pm

Thurs. Nov 1 8:00-9:30pm

Mon. Dec 3 6:30-8:00pm

Start attending night-labs early. If you put them off, you’ll likely be clouded out. If there are 3 clear nights at the start of the semester and the last two are cloudy and you put the night labs off, you’re out of luck. Besides, the observatory is much warmer at the beginning of the term than at the end!

If you don’t know if we will be observing, call the observing deck at 492-2020.