Partnership for Integration of Computation into Undergraduate Physics

The materials provided here are instructors' notes, student lab handouts, prelab exercises, template code given to students, and fully working solution code to go along with three lab sessions worth of activities (up to 4 hours each). The implementation here is in Jupyter notebooks. They can be thought of as supplemental materials to go along with our paper, "Computation and Experimentation as Equal Partners in a Modern Physics Lab Exercise," [arXiv:2508.06582](https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.06582), which contains much more detail. The labs involve the use of simulation to generate mock data and visualizations to inform analysis methods for recovering half lives from experimentally measured data. The first exercise does this for a single decaying isotope, the second for a mixture containing isotopes of different half lives. Students will develop the following skills in lab 1: - Simulation of a physical phenomenon with code - Use of simulation to evaluate an analysis procedure - Translation of parameters in simulation to settings in physical instruments - Use of a Geiger Counter - Processing and analyzing data using spreadsheets and [curve.fit](https://curve.fit/) Students will develop knowledge of the following in lab 1: - Theory behind radioactive decay - Implementation of the Monte Carlo technique and interpretation of the outputs - Uncertainty in counting experiments - Radiation safety Students will develop the following additional skills in lab 2: - Use of computation to observe behavior that is difficult or impossible to observe in the real world - Modification of a model based on observations in a previous experiment - Propagation of uncertainty Students will develop the following additional knowledge in lab 2: - Basic understanding of the workings and/or role of a Beryllium Detector (Gas-filled detector), a pre-amplifier, amplifier, and a multi-channel analyzer (MCA) - Use of a Neutron Howitzer