Required practicals

This is the list of 10 required practicals that you must include on the 4psow. The reason you have to do these is that there will be a question on paper 3 that related to one of them. There are many ways of doing these experiments so the question will have to be on general experimental techniques rather than the specifics.

Here are the worksheets for the labs

2.1 - Determining the acceleration of free-fall experimentally
Measuring g (card drop)
Measuring g (falling ball)

3.1 – Applying the calorimetric techniques of specific heat capacity or specific latent heat experimentally
Specific heat capacity of water (electric kettle)

3.2 – Investigating at least one gas law experimentally
Verification of Boyles law

4.2 – Investigating the speed of sound experimentally
Speed of sound (drinking straw)

4.4 – Determining refractive index experimentally
Refractive index

5.2 – Investigating one or more of the factors that affect resistance experimentally
Factors affecting R (paper)
Factors affecting R (nichrome)
Factors affecting R (pencil)

5.3 - Determining internal resistance experimentally
EMF and internal resistance 

7.1 - Investigating half - life experimentally (or by simulation)
Measuring half life of beer foam 

9.3 – Investigating Young’s double - slit experimentally
Two slit interference

11.2 – Investigating a diode bridge rectification circuit experimentally
Rectifier circuit

Minimal apparatus list

Custom made ball dropping apparatus (e.g. PASCO) (I only have 2 so do this as part of a circus of experiments)
Electric kettle and thermometer plus top pan balance (class set, I actually use a temp. sensor)
Datalogger (e.g. Vernier or PASCO) + pressure sensor and attachments (class set, although the measurements are very quick so students could rotate around one set)
Drinking straws (Audacity software)
Glass block and ray lamp (or use my photos and onscreen protractor) (I only have one block so my students used my ready made photos)
Laser plus Double slits (e.g PASCO) (I have 6 lasers but only two sets of slits)
Pencil and paper plus multimeter (class set)
Multimeter, Nichrome wire and battery plus holder (class set)
Paul falstads circuit simulation
Measuring cylinder and beer plus loggerPro video analysis software or pencil and paper. (I borrow the cylinder from Chem. lab many video the same one, saves wasting too much beer)

Practical: Measuring g (card drop)

In this practical the acceleration due to gravity will be measured by dropping a strip of card through a photo gate.When the card of length L is dropped it accelerates downwards. The photo gate is used...

Practical: Measuring g (falling ball)

In this practical the acceleration due to gravity will be calculated by using an electronic timer to measure the time taken for a small steel ball to fall a known distance.The apparatus is set up as in...

Practical: Specific heat capacity of water (electric kettle)

In this experiment a temperature sensor is used to measure the rate of temperature rise of a known mass of water heated in an electric kettle. This method is far from ideal so think how you could modify...

Practical: Verification of Boyles law

In this practical the pressure of a sample of gas trapped in a syringe will be measured with a pressure sensor.Boyles law states that for a fixed mass of gas at constant temperature the pressure will...

Practical: Speed of sound (drinking straw)

In this practical the speed of sound will be measured by analysing the standing wave in a drinking straw using a computer program called Audacity. This can be downloaded free from sourceforge. If you...

Practical: Refractive index

In this practical the refractive index of a glass (or perspex depending on what you choose) block will be found by measuring the angles of incidence and refraction for a ray of light passing through it.

Practical: Two slit interference

In this exercise the interference and diffraction of light passing through narrow slits will be observed and understood by comparing to a GeoGebra simulation.The original experiment was performed with...

Practical: Factors affecting R (paper)

In this practical a strip of conductivity paper will be used to show how the resistance of a conductor is related to it's length, and cross sectional area.The resistance of a conductor is given by the...

Practical: Factors affecting R (nichrome)

In this practical the resistance of samples of nichrome wire will be measured with a multimeter and the resistivity of nichrome calculated.The resistance of a cylinder of metal is given by the formula

Factors affecting R (pencil)

Pencil lead is made out of graphite which conducts electricity so a line drawn on a piece of paper has electrical resistance that can be measured using a multimeter. In this practical the resistance of...

Practical: EMF and internal resistance

To measure the internal resistance of a battery the PD across the terminals needs to be measured as current flows, in this practical the current is varied by changing the length of a piece of nichrome...

Practical: EMF and internal resistance

To measure the internal resistance of a battery the PD across the terminals needs to be measured as current flows, in this practical the current is varied by changing the length of a piece of nichrome...

Practical: Rectifier circuit

In this practical the input and output of a half wave and full wave rectifier will be investigated with a datalogger.Depending on the equipment available you can either build the circuit by clipping components...

Practical: Measuring half life of beer foam

This practical is adapted from a worksheet posted by Mark Headlee (UWC USA) on the OCC.When you pour a glass of beer the gas in the beer forms bubbles (called a head), when you are going to drink the...

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