Introduction to P142

Laboratory & Error Analysis

Prolay K. Mal
(prolay@niser.ac.in)
School of Physical Sciences
January 6, 2017
 Introduction &
Basics
P142 consists of some basic experiments to give you
hands on experience
For better understanding/application of your knowledge,
taught through physics classes
To train you how to perform experiments in physics and also
an introduction to the error analysis (Data analysis)

Experiments are based on Optics, Electromagnetism &

General physics
Guideline/lab manual for these experiments are also
available in the laboratory
Results/Objective of these experiments are completely well
understood; you are highly encouraged to check that your
final results are sensible
 List of experiments
Conversion of voltmeter to ammeter and
vice-versa

Electromagnetic damping of a compound

pendulum

Magnetic field variation along the axis of a

circular coil & a Helmholtz coil

Horizontal component of Earth’s magnetic

field using a tangent galvanometer

Study of polarization and Malu’s law

List of experiments - optics

Resolving power of a telescope with a

rectangular aperture

Dispersion of light by a prism

Laser diffraction and interference

Study of Newton’s rings

 Your P142 lab
help-lines
Faculties:
Ajaya K. Nayak (Thursdays)
Myself (Mondays, Tuesdays & Wednesdays)

Scientific Officers:
Saralasrita Mohanty

Laboratory Assistants:
Pravakar Mallick & Srikrushna Sahoo
Teaching Associates
Chandiprasad Kar, Samir Banik, Ekta Bhatia &
Palash Dubey
Laboratory Reports & Grading
Two laboratory exercise books (for writing reports) are to
be systematically maintained
For each experiment report, you are encouraged to split into
the sections – “Objective”, “Theory”, “Apparatus”, “Procedure”,
“Results & Calculations”, “Error analysis” & “Conclusions”
and all sections are to be hand-written
Please try to write the relevant sections before performing
the experiments and have a good understanding with the
experiment before coming to laboratory

Viva for each experiment (performed say this week) would

be on the following day (when you come to the lab for the
next experiment) along with the completed reports

Please check your slots for individual experiments

And most importantly please submit the completed report

from the previous week, before trying the next one
 Laboratory Reports &
Grading (II)
The reports would be graded by Ph.D students, SOs
& faculties – all the reports from the same
experiment would presumably be graded by a single
grader to smoothen out the non-uniformity between
the graders and should be transparent to you

Final exam papers would be graded by the faculties

and would be made as uniform as possible

Tentative point split-ups

Laboratory reports -- 30%
Viva (through out the semester) – 10%
One “quiz” would be there around the mid-term – 20%
Final exam report & viva – 40%
 Lab Etiquette/
Practicalities
Please handle the instruments very diligently and leave the
setups in proper condition to be experimented by one of
your batch-mates next time
Don’t handle the instruments very harshly beyond the limits/
tolerance level

Safety: None of the equipment have lethal level of

electricity/beam intensity (optics), but you should be
careful

Please try to utilize most of your time efficiently while in

P142 laboratory in recording/analyzing data
Try to avoid gossiping, usage of phones, talking loudly
Foods & drinks are not allowed

Please respect the authority of laboratory personnel in all

matters and ask for help in case of doubts
Error Analysis

Any measurement carry some degree of accuracy

which can conventionally be quoted in terms of
“errors”

If the measured values (μ±σ) are distributed

according to the “normal” (Gaussian) distribution,
one can immediately interpret the measurement
errors as follows
Another observer repeats the same experiment and (s)he
would measure a value between (μ-σ, μ+σ) with 68%
probability [(μ-2σ, μ+2σ) with 95.5% probability, and so on…]
 Error Analysis (II)
Suppose you have measured {xi, yi±σi} – called “dataset”

You expect the dataset to follow a straight line (called

“hypothesis” or “model”): y=mx+b
The values of m and b (called “parameters”) have to be
extracted/determined with and without errors on them
m±σm & b±σb

There are several statistical techniques to extract the

parameter values (called “fit”):
Maximum likelihood techniques (ML), χ2 techniques
The hypothesis doesn’t need to be only linear
relationship

However, in this lab all the fits involve only linear

hypothesis
 Least Square fit
Suppose you are trying to fit a dataset {xi, yi±σi} to linear
hypothesis/model y=mx+b [let us call it y=f(x|α), where α ≣ m, b]
and your measurement points are scattered/distributed according
to the normal distribution. Then Maximum likelihood (ML)
estimator would be:

The log likelihood is then:

Maximizing this is equivalent to minimizing:

This is what is done is least square fitting (LS), where the

measurement points are normally/gaussian distributed
Linear Least Square fits
Linear Least Square fits (II)
Errors in LS fits
 Statistical & Systematic
Errors
The errors so far we discussed are statistical or
“random” errors
If you perform the experiment with larger dataset [more
measured {xi, yi±σi} points], the fits would converge to more
precise values of the parameters [smaller values of σm & σb]

These errors are random – fluctuate up/down-ward

Systematic errors are on the other hand are associated

with the a flaw in the equipment or in the design of
the experiment itself. Suppose you are using a stop-
watch and it runs slow; it will always result in
underestimating your time measurements
Most of the times in P142 lab, the least count of the
instruments you are using would lead to systematic uncertainty
Error Propagation
 Error Propagation (II)

For uncorrelated errors (between x and y)

Most of your experimental observables in P142 have

such nature
 References

http://www.niser.ac.in/sps/node/sites/
default/files/basic_page/manual_2016.pdf

Statistics for Nuclear & Particle Physicists

– Louis Lyons (Cambridge Press)

An Introduction to Error Analysis – John

R. Taylor