Textbook
Reading will be from the Matlab and other web sites.

Purpose
The purpose of this course is to familiarize students with electronics, computer programming, and interfacing of computers to experimental systems.

Course Work
There will be approximately weekly lab assignments.

The course grade will be calculated as follows:

• 100% labratory assignments
  • 20%: You are expected to be familiar with the assignment before coming to lab. Roughly one quarter of your lab grade depends upon being prepared. There is no explicit homework, but you should arrive with appropriate code already written.
  • 40%: The quality, quantity and character of the work done during the lab period. This portion of the lab grade is included to recognize conscientious effort in the lab environment.
  • 40%: Lab report. See below for more information.
  • Assignments are due at the beginning of the next lab period.
  • No late assigments will be accepted without prior permission.
    (Except for sickness or family emergency)
  • A late assignment receives a ZERO grade.
  • Laboratory work will be done in groups of two where, of course, collaboration is encouraged between members of the group. Both members are expected to become proficient with all aspects of the lab. You must turn in one report per team.
• There will be no exams.

Laboratory Policies

You are expected to attend the lab period every week. If you have a compelling (academic) reason why you cannot attend, there will be makeup time.

Laboratory Reports

Each laboratory assignment requires a written report. You must a single report for your group. The report should be a collection of pages stapled or bound together with a title page.

The report should be a concise documentation of the project assigned. The presentation should be arranged so that any reader with technical competence in the subject can easily understand what was done and how it was done. A typical report will be 2 or 3 pages, but a couple may be longer. The audience for the report is yourself in one year. There has to be enough information so that you can reproduce the assignment. The following report organization is suggested:

1. Introduction: Give a short explanation of what was done.
2. Design and Testing Methods: Explain the approach you used for both software and hardware aspects of the assignment. Be sure to include the design of tests whose outcome are convincing to the reader (or to the instructor in the lab) that the requirements of the assignment have been met.
3. Results: Include drawings, graphs and comments about the perfromance of the project.
4. Answers to specific questions given in the lab writeups.

N.B. You should keep all of your work backed up on flash drive, or some other removable media.