Computers and Software in the Physics Lab

Table of Contents

Physics Lab Computers Astronomers on CD-ROM Encarta'95 on CD-ROM Graphical Analysis Interactive Physics II Microsoft Office MultiPurpose Lab Interface

PlotIT 3.1 Redshift on CD-ROM Smart Pulley Timer

Physics Department Links		Southwestern College Links

Expert Astronomer CD-ROM is two programs in one. Its a remarkably easy planetarium program with which a user can locate any of 12,000 celestial objects in the sky. Its also a multimedia presentation with over 40 minutes of video clips, hundreds of still pictures and 150,000 words of informative text articles that can teach a user about astronomy.

The Astronomer CD with users guide can be checked out from George Gangwere in MOS 110. The CD can be used on computers 1, 2, 3, and 5.

Encarta '95 is an interactive multimedia encyclopedia with a rich resource of information, education, and intertainment. With Encarta's 26,000 articles, you can browse language and audio clips, see high-resolution graphics and videos, and experiment with interactivities. Or you can jump from the illustrated timeline of world history to cross-referenced articles, then discover the atlas and zoom into a city map. After your explorations you can test your new knowledge with the multimedia mindmaze game.

The Encarta 95' CD with users guide can be checked-out from George Gangwere in MOS 110. The CD can be used on computers 1, 2, 3, and 5.

The Graphical Analysis program can be found on all five of the physics lab computers. Graphical Analysis is a DOS based program and is loaded from the Physics Department #1 menu.

This program can be used to analyze experimental data using graphical methods. Data may be entered from the keyboard or from files stored on a disk.

The Interactive Physics program can be found on all five physics lab computers.

Microsoft Office can be found on five of the physics lab computers.

• Word - word processor
• Excel - spreadsheet
• Access - data base
• Power Point - presentation software

The MultiPurpose Lab Interface (MPLI) software and hardware can be found on all five physics lab computers.

The MPLI program allows you to use a computer as a laboratory instrument for a wide variety of experiments. Some of the features of the MPLI software/hardware combination are:

• Three input channels may be monitored. Each channel can be displayed as a graph, oscilloscope, digital meter, or analog meter. The physics department has several types of sensors available including, temperature, voltage, magnetic field, and motion detection.
• Data can be displayed as a data table, printed, or saved. Since this is a Windows program, you can easily copy your data to a word processor or a spreadsheet program.
• Data can be collected at rates at least as fast as 70,000 readings per second or at pre-determined time intervals, including periods as long as several weeks.
• The oscilloscope mode turns the computer into a three-trace, storage oscilloscope.
• Powerfull data analysis tools are provided, including curve fits, derivatives, tangent lines, integrals, smoothing, FFT's, and histograms.

The Smart Pulley Timer can be found on all six computers in the physics lab.

The PASCO Smart Pulley is an easy-to-use link between experimental equipment and a computer. Equipment such as air track gliders, dynamics carts, pendulums, spring-mass systems, and rotating disks are easily monitored with the Smart Pulley, enhancing physics labs with the advantage of accurate data collection and automatic graphing.

The Smart Pulley is a low friction, low inertia pulley, with an attached photogate that monitors its rotation. One arm of the photgate emits a thin beam of infrared light. The other arm houses an infrared detector. The computer monitors whether the beam is striking the detector or whether the beam is blocked by one of the ten spokes in the pulley sheave. The photogate can be detached from the pulley and used independently.

By accurate timing of the signels arriving from the photogate, the motion of any object linked to the pulley can be monitored. The power of the Smart Pulley lies in the versatile software that accurately times and interprets the signals coming from the photogate.

The Smart Pulley software provides an abundance of features including a manual stopwatch mode, a special timing mode for pedulum and harmonic motion experiments, real time graphing which produces a graph of the motion as it is happening, and much more.

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