Research Skills for Physics (PHY 115L)

Duke University - Ashutosh Kotwal - Spring 2008

This is the home page (http://www.phy.duke.edu/~kotwal/Phy115L) for Physics 115L: Research Skills for Physics given by the Department of Physics of Duke University. These are notes and resources for students taking Physics 115L.

Shown below are examples of research that use the techniques discussed in this course.

Blowfish Liquid Scintillator Array from the High Intensity Gamma Source (HIGS) Facility at Duke University. These liquid scintillator detectors are used to detect the particles produced in the collisions of high energy photons with the target. The plot below shows data recorded by scintillator detectors, and also higher-resolution germanium detectors.
The first segment of this course will discuss data acquisition and analysis techniques.

Physics department graduate students Mike Gehm and Ming Shien Chang adjust the optics in their laser beam experiment shown below.

The second segment of this course will discuss optical system design techniques.

The simple thin lens equation will not provide sufficient information to assemble an optical system that provides much more capability than you might have obtained as a child using a magnifying glass. The picture below shows the type of improvement you can obtain by learning to use currently available software. We will learn to design optical systems to remove spherical aberrations and coma and discuss other aberrations.