Hands-On Advanced Physics Laboratory

A comprehensive guide to advanced laboratory techniques and scientific thinking for physics students.

📚 Overview

This textbook provides a thorough introduction to advanced laboratory methods in physics, focusing on experimental design, data analysis, scientific thinking, and technical writing. It is designed for upper-level undergraduate physics students.

✨ Features

• 📊 Detailed statistical analysis methods with Python implementations
• 🧠 Guidance on scientific thinking and experimental design
• 📝 Professional scientific writing instruction
• 💻 Interactive examples and exercises
• 📱 Responsive design for all devices
• 📥 Downloadable in multiple formats (PDF, DOCX)

📋 Table of Contents

• Preface
• Chapter 1: Approach to Laboratory Work
• Chapter 2: Measurement and Uncertainty
• Chapter 3: Statistics of Measurement
• Chapter 4: The Nature of Scientific Thinking
• Chapter 5: Designing Experiments: Principles and Methods
• Chapter 6: Evaluating Experimental Results
• Chapter 7: Writing Scientific Reports
• Appendices
  • Appendix 1: The Gaussian Distribution
  • Appendix 2: The Principle of Least Squares
  • Appendix 3: Introduction to Jupyter and Python for Data Analysis
  • Appendix 4: Model Experiment

🚀 Getting Started

📱 Online Access

Visit the textbook website at https://veillette.github.io/hands-on/

🛠️ Building Locally

This textbook is built using mystmd, a modern publishing system designed for scientific and technical content.

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/veillette/hands-on.git
cd hands-on

# Install dependencies using npm
npm install

# Build the site
myst build --html

# Preview locally (available at http://localhost:3000 by default)
myst start

👥 Contributing

We welcome contributions from the physics education community! Please see our Contributing Guide for details on how to help improve this textbook.

Types of contributions we're looking for:

• 🐛 Error corrections
• 📖 Clarity improvements
• 🧪 Additional examples
• 📝 New problem sets
• 📊 Enhanced visualizations
• 💡 Modern laboratory techniques

📄 License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

📬 Contact

For questions, corrections, or suggestions, please open an issue