PREFACE Browsing through hardware stores can be fun, interesting, and informative. Hardware stores sell tools and supplies used by mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, homeowners, hobbyists, and do-it-yourselfers. When you have-and know how to use-tools, you can demolish, disassemble, fix, or build just about anything. I was very lucky as a youngster. My grandfather, Louis Helfand, was an expert mechanic and woodworker. He came to live in my parent's house when I was about 10 years old. While he lived with us, he showed me the correct way to use and care for tools. It was through his patience, and his ability to explain the functions of tools, that I became interested in both the tools and the scientific principles that allow them to work. Grandpa took tools very seriously. He praised the ones that were well made and cursed the ones that weren't. In other words, he told it like it was. When I walk through a hard- ware store today, I remember Grandpa pointing out the tools, both good and bad. Sometimes his comments made me laugh so hard that my stomach hurt. Hardware stores still hold a fascination for me. There always seem to be new, strange, nifty, cool, wonderful machines, and tools. I can look at them, touch them, examine them, and even buy them. This book is written as a guidebook to help you learn the scientific principles that make some of the tools dis-played in a hardware store work. I hope that after read-ing this book you will enjoy browsing through hardware stores as much as I do. Who knows? One day we might even meet in one. His comments made me laugh so hard that my stomach hurt. Hardware stores still hold a fascination for me. There always seem to be new, strange, nifty, cool, wonderful machines, and tools. I can look at them, touch them, examine them, and even buy them. This book is written as a guidebook to help you learn the scientific principles that make some of the tools dis-played in a hardware store work. I hope that after read-ing this book you will enjoy browsing through hardware stores as much as I do. Who knows? One day we might even meet in one. * * * * * A Quick Note to Parents and Educators Physics Lab in a Housewares Store, a companion volume in this series, demonstrates many of the same principles as this book. That has been done with intent. Many of the students who will be attracted to one of the titles will probably not be attracted to the other, due to traditional gender preferences. Those that are attracted to both will have the added pleasure of finding out that a workshop and a kitchen have many things in common, and that tools found in one might actually be substituted for those commonly used in the other."

Open-Source Lab: How to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce Scientific Research Costs details the development of the free and open-source hardware revolution. The combination of open-source 3D printing and microcontrollers running on free software enables scientists, engineers, and lab personnel in every discipline to develop powerful research tools at unprecedented low costs.After reading Open-Source Lab, you will be able to: - Lower equipment costs by making your own hardware - Build open-source hardware for scientific research - Actively participate in a community in which scientific results are more easily replicated and cited - Numerous examples of technologies and the open-source user and developer communities that support them - Instructions on how to take advantage of digital design sharing - Explanations of Arduinos and RepRaps for scientific use - A detailed guide to open-source hardware licenses and basic principles of intellectual property

This textbook provides the knowledge and skills needed for thorough understanding of the most important methods and ways of thinking in experimental physics. The reader learns to design, assemble, and debug apparatus, to use it to take meaningful data, and to think carefully about the story told by the data. Key Features: Efficiently helps students grow into independent experimentalists through a combination of structured yet thought-provoking and challenging exercises, student-designed experiments, and guided but open-ended exploration. Provides solid coverage of fundamental background information, explained clearly for undergraduates, such as ground loops, optical alignment techniques, scientific communication, and data acquisition using LabVIEW, Python, or Arduino. Features carefully designed lab experiences to teach fundamentals, including analog electronics and low noise measurements, digital electronics, microcontrollers, FPGAs, computer interfacing, optics, vacuum techniques, and particle detection methods. Offers a broad range of advanced experiments for each major area of physics, from condensed matter to particle physics. Also provides clear guidance for student development of projects not included here. Provides a detailed Instructor’s Manual for every lab, so that the instructor can confidently teach labs outside their own research area.

This textbook presents quantum mechanics at the junior/senior undergraduate level. It is unique in that it describes not only quantum theory, but also presents five laboratories that explore truly modern aspects of quantum mechanics. These laboratories include "proving" that light contains photons, single-photon interference, and tests of local realism. The text begins by presenting the classical theory of polarization, moving on to describe the quantum theory of polarization. Analogies between the two theories minimize conceptual difficulties that students typically have when first presented with quantum mechanics. Furthermore, because the laboratories involve studying photons, using photon polarization as a prototypical quantum system allows the laboratory work to be closely integrated with the coursework. Polarization represents a two-dimensional quantum system, so the introduction to quantum mechanics uses two-dimensional state vectors and operators. This allows students to become comfortable with the mathematics of a relatively simple system, before moving on to more complicated systems. After describing polarization, the text goes on to describe spin systems, time evolution, continuous variable systems (particle in a box, harmonic oscillator, hydrogen atom, etc.), and perturbation theory. The book also includes chapters which describe material that is frequently absent from undergraduate texts: quantum measurement, entanglement, quantum field theory and quantum information. This material is connected not only to the laboratories described in the text, but also to other recent experiments. Other subjects covered that do not often make their way into undergraduate texts are coherence, complementarity, mixed states, the density operator and coherent states. Supplementary material includes further details about implementing the laboratories, including parts lists and software for running the experiments. Computer simulations of some of the experiments are available as well. A solutions manual for end-of-chapter problems is available to instructors.

The purpose and the limitations of this booklet are well synthesized by the title: a set of experiments that a Teacher may use by simply opening their bag containing a small notebook having suitable software (freeware or shareware) and a few components.

Raymond E. Barrett's Build-It-Yourself Science Laboratory is a classic book that took on an audacious task: to show young readers in the 1960s how to build a complete working science lab for chemistry, biology, and physics--and how to perform experiments with those tools. The experiments in this book are fearless and bold by today's standards--any number of the experiments might never be mentioned in a modern book for young readers! Yet, many from previous generations fondly remember how we as a society used to embrace scientific learning. This new version of Barrett's book has been updated for today's world with annotations and updates from Windell Oskay of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, including extensive notes about modern safety practices, suggestions on where to find the parts you need, and tips for building upon Barrett's ideas with modern technology. With this book, you'll be ready to take on your own scientific explorations at school, work, or home.