written by Jeremiah Williams

Plasmas, an ionized gas, are the fourth and most common state of matter in the visible universe.  In addition to providing a wealth of applications from all areas of classical physics, this state of matter plays an important role in many industrial applications and will likely play a key role in future energy sources. Despite this, plasma physics does not often appear in the undergraduate
curriculum. This is particularly true in the advanced lab setting, where most experiments involving plasmas require the use of fairly complicated and complex experimental setups. In this workshop, we present a relatively simple and low cost experiment involving the use of a Langmuir probe, a basic plasma diagnostic that makes use of ideas from the kinetic theory of gases, to introduce the basics of idea of what a plasma is and to measure the electron temperature and density of a plasma.

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Last Modified July 18, 2016

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