Welcome to Visual Physics, a new approach to the laboratory and recitation support for Physics 218. Visual Physics (VP) is being used this semester for 12 sections of Physics 218 and for Physics 208 Honors.

You can read a short VP Vision Statement for visual physics, including a summary of the assessments of its effectiveness that were performed last semester.

This site contains the support materials for your laboratory and recitation portions of Visual Physics.

The Laboratory Manual contains all of the instructions for laboratory experiments of the course. For Physics 218, these experiments utilize a state-of-the-art video system to capture the motion of objects, transfer the video sequence to a PC, and support you in extracting accurate position and time measurements that you will use in an EXCEL spreadsheet to analyze what is happening in the experiment. For Physics 208, these experiments include a number of the classic experiments with which you directly measure the quantization of charge, Coulomb's law of electric force, and the charge/mass ratio of the electron.

Your laboratory reports will be prepared using a WORD Template that is widely used for professional publication of journal articles and conference papers by professionals in most fields of science and engineering. You can find an example (PDF file) of laboratory reports. You will develop skills in technical writing and presentation that will be directly applicable in your following courses and in your work as a professional after you graduate.