The Art of Experimental Physics

Book excerpt: Fills the need for an experimental physics text. There are three main sections of the text. The first is an introduction that offers valuable insights into the importance of the human element in physics and traces the course of its historical development. This section also explains the objectives of the physics laboratory and the skills you must master to maintain a ``Notebook'' and analyze data, and presents a general discussion of spectroscopy experiments. The second section discusses the unique and valuable role of the computer in the laboratory and explains how to use it; software is included with the text. The final section contains over twenty experiments, providing students with a broad introduction into the use of a variety of instruments for carrying out many different measurements.