Dr. Browder

Fitting Recommendations

Here are some recommendations and comments on fitting data. In many cases, to analyze the data recorded during experiments you will need to fit and plot your data. There are large number of good fitting programs available. MICROSOFT Excel is marginally acceptable but lacks flexibility. Fitting is difficult and handling of error bars is weak. … Read more

Written Work

These labs are designated WI for purposes of the University writing-intensive course requirement. This means that your written work will be evaluated both for physics content and for technical writing correctness and style. Your course grade will be based almost entirely on your written work. You should obtain a bound laboratory notebook or computation book. … Read more

Suggestions

Say what you did; do not give directions for doing it, as in a lab manual. The past tense is best for describing what you did. Use correct symbols, not spelled-out Greek letters, etc. Hand-write them if necessary. All measurements should have errors and units. Exceptions are when the error is negligible, which should be commented upon, … Read more

Rebinning a Histogram

Instructions for rebinning code: Compile it:     cc rebin.c -o rebin Use it. e.g.     cat data | ./rebin 10 > rebinned_data This would take data, interpret the rows as the bin numbers, and accumulate every 10 row’s data into a newly binned row. It will complain to stderr if there are problems, but will do its … Read more

Grammar Notes

The following notes discuss some of the common problems found in PHYS 480-1L written work. Write complete sentences, which contain a subject, a verb and possibly an object: “We started the counter.” Two sentences may be combined with “and” or with a semicolon “;” but not with a comma: “We started the counter and we … Read more