When UMass-Amherst decided to go to remote learning after spring break, I needed one more lab for my Physics 132 – IPLS II course. This course has a traditional setup where the lab is run semi-autonomously from the “lecture” portion of the course. For the last two iterations, however, the lab has been run with a different focus based on data analysis. Thus, a lab focused on understanding the exponential growth patterns and fitting the parameters fit well with our education objectives and could be done with publicly available data.
While this may not be “physics” per se, I think that such a lab makes sense:
- It uses all of the skills our students have been developing over the course of the semester.
- It is topical.
- It is probably of interest to the predominately life-science students who comprise the student population of 132.
- It will hopefully help students see that the skills they learned in physics lab are not unique to physics, but instead valuable to all of science.
The lab we gave to students can be found here as as pdf. Feel free to use etc. If you are an instructor and would like access to the full suite of materials including the data we used, the solutions, and rubric, please complete this form and we will get them to you.