In this class the student learns how to design, run and write up an experiment. Each student attends three lectures and one lab per week. The lectures cover basic data aquisition, Labview programming, data analysis, report writing and presentation skills. In the labs the students apply what they have learned, using Labview code to run their experiments and reduce their results.
Students begin the course with no knowledge of the programming language.
Labview is an icon based language which is very intuitive and is extremely adaptable to a laboratory setting. At the end of the first month, students compete against the clock, racing their joystick controlled Lego cars through Vinny's cone maze. After the students build their programming confidence, they are ready to use Labview to acquire and reduce data for the upcoming labs. During the second month of the semester, the students further their programming skills and learn different methods of data acquisition. Experiments examining whistle frequencies and oscilating beam damping are used to introduce aliasing, FFT's, and data normalization.