Individual projects

At the end of the semester each group will be working on its own independent projects. Each group has to decide on the project by October 15, 2009, and then work on this project during November 4&5 and November 18&19 meetings. Each group has to prepare a tentative plan of the experiment and discuss it with the instructor before the first project week.

Individual project descriptions	Wednesday	Thursday
Project 1:  Speed of light measurement Objective: measure the speed of light	Group 6
Project 2: Refractive index of air Objective: measure the refractive index of air using Michelson interferometer	Group 5
Project 3: Faraday rotation Objective: determine the Verde constant of the glass rod
Project 4: Mercury spectroscopy Objective: Measure and identify Hg spectral lines	Group 4
Project 5: Milliken oil drop experiment Objective: observe oil drop behavior in real Milliken apparatus, and then use the same data analysis tools to determine the weight of unknown small object.
Project 6: Lock-in amplifier Objective: study the basic principle of lock-in amplifier and use it to measure a weak signal on the large background.
Project 7: Fiber optics (Nobel-prize inspired) Objective: launch the laser beam into an optical fiber and explain the guiding mechanism, measure the speed of light inside the fiber.	Group 3	Sandro, Colin
Project 8: Quantum analog Objective: use acoustic waves to imitate wave-functions of quantum mechanical systems.		Andy, James