The rhythm of things

Time-on-task is an important part of mastering the tools you will use this semester. Rather than staging the various tasks for completing your project sequentially, you’ll work with many of them in parallel. will give you more time to digest the fine points of working with the tools we’ll employ.

Each week you’ll advance the design of your data logger, write Arduino code to communicate with your sensors, further develop your plans for the field work necessary for your project (including the structure of data acquisition code), and address physical infrastructure matters like case construction and PCB fabrication.

We will be meeting face-to-face unless pandemic-related issues force the university to change the mode of instruction. You are required to attend the course for the entire 1 pm - 4:50 pm Friday class period.

After the first week we’ll have a brief report to the class from one of the teams. Topics (which I will assign) might include how a particular sensor works, what an interrupt does, how the I2C data transfer protocol works, and so forth. A report should last at most ten minutes, be carried in at most ten PowerPoint slides, be presented to the class by all the team members, and be suitable for upload to the course web site. (That means proper attribution of sources, and so forth.)

Every week (preferably Tuesday or Wednesday), each team will meet with course staff for 30 minutes to discuss progress, problems, clever ideas, and any other issues that might arise. All members of your team must attend, and must arrive/connect promptly at the scheduled time, without exception. Always bring your hardware and tools to our meetings. We will meet in Loomis 437.

What I require of you

The homework will consist of weekly assignments and also moving your design forward as far (and as fast) as you can. I expect you will spend about six hours at this outside of class every week. You should work with the other members of your team as much as possible, sharing code and design tips as convenient. You should document your progress, your plans, your brilliant realizations, your frustrations, and your concerns in a physical paper notebook. Use your judgment about collaborating on homework assignments: it's OK to work together, but you MUST understand in detail everything you submit. And when you make use of code syou find on GitHub or the Adafruit site, always include comments in your programs identifying the sources of code you've obtained from external sources.

You and your team members will give several reports to the class over the course of the semester. The reports are to be clearly written PowerPoint presentations (with proper attribution of sources) aimed at your audience of fellow students, who will not necessarily know what you mean by, for example, “I2C interface.”

There will be no midterm exams.

In place of a final exam, I will require you and members of your team to generate two documents, with all team members as coauthors:
⚛ A 30 minute PowerPoint presentation describing your project: the measurement(s) you’ve made, and the reasons for so doing; the hardware and software you’ve built to perform these measurements; your fieldwork and calibrations; your analysis and conclusions. Your intended audience comprises your Physics 371 classmates. Presentations are due at the start of class, week 14; you will present during the 14th week of the term.
⚛ A written report of approximately twenty pages, single spaced, describing your measurements and conclusions; this is essentially the same information that you will write into your PowerPoint presentation. However, your report should be aimed at an audience that is outside the university community. For example, if you’ve measured the anomalous transverse accelerations of Amtrak trains, your audience might be the Illinois Department of Transportation. Your report is due in class on week 14.

The grading will be similar to my version of Physics 298owl: if you work hard, are clever, come to all class activities, and do a good job on your homework and reports you will receive at least an A-. But if you miss class, miss conferences with me, fail to hit the milestones listed in the syllabus, or do not do a good job on your reports, I will hammer you.

Your obligations include working in a safe manner: always wearing eye protection if you have to occasion to do any soldering and always washing your hands soon after handling metallic objects such as header pins or solder.

Attendance

You are required to attend each and every one of the course meetings, arriving on time with your laptop computer, charger, notebook, and device hardware. Excused absences will be granted and documented in accordance with University policy as described in Article 1, Part 5 Class Attendance, of the Student Code.

You must file your documentation concerning an excused absence on the Physics Department's Excused absences portal within two weeks of your absence.

Excused absences fall into the following categories as defined by the code:

• • illness
• • emergency beyond the student's control (e.g. an auto accident or death in the family)
• • required attendance at a University event (e.g. varsity athletics)
• • serving as a volunteer emergency worker
• • religious observance or practice: this requires you to file a "request for accommodation for religious observances form." The form must be uploaded to the Excused Absences portal no later than two weeks after the first day of class.

Milestones

There will be no midterm exams. But there are milestones that I ask you to meet, and will consider these when evaluating your work for a grade. Here are the milestones and deadlines:

• •  1a. Modify the Arduino’s blink program so that it blinks the initials (of your English/American name) in Morse code. (Week 1, by end of Friday class)
• •  1b. Install and test a BME680. (Week 1, by end of Friday class)
• •  1c. On your breadboard, install the following devices (in addition to the BME680 and Arduino): LCD (including 10kΩ trimpot), keypad, and microSD breakout. (Week 2, by beginning of Friday class)
• •  1d. Formulate a project plan and division of project responsibilities. (Week 2, by midweek group conference with course staff)
• •  2a. Install, set, and read back a DS3231 real time clock. (Week 2, by end of Friday class)
• •  2b. Install and read back a GPS module. Use it to set the DS3231 real time clock. (Week 2, by end of Friday class)
• •  2c. Write a short text file to your SD card. Copy the file to your laptop, then write a short Python program to read it and display its contents. (Week 2, by end of Friday class)
• •  2d. Finish installing all the parts on your breadboard required for your project’s data logger. (Week 3, by beginning of Friday class)
• •  2e. Register an Autodesk user account, then visit the TinkerCad website. (Week 3, by beginning of Friday class)
• •  3a. Write a single bare-bones program that read all your project circuit’s sensors and writes data to a microSD file. (Week 3, by end of Friday class)
• •  3b. Write a single bare-bones Python data analysis program that generates histograms and plots of environmental data read by your BME680. Calculate means and RMS widths for these quantities. (Week 3, by end of Friday class)
• •  3c. Log in to Autodesk and download EAGLE. (Week 4, by midweek group conference with course staff)
• •  4a. Finish writing a reasonably sophisticated DAQ and use it for a quick field test of your devices. (Week 4, by end of Friday class)
• •  4b. Analyze your field test data, generating the plots and calculations that you expect to appear in your ultimate report. (Week 4, by end of Friday class)
• •  4c. Install breakout boards on your PCB and test it. (Week 5, by midweek group conference with course staff)
• •  5a. Perform a longer set of field tests and run them through your analysis. (Week 5, by beginning of Friday class)
• •  5b. In consultation with course staff, refine your offline analysis. (Week 5, by end of Friday class)
• •  5c. Finish PCB and transition to using it for more field test data; verify that PCBs function as expected. (Week 5, by end of Friday class)
• •  5d. Use TinkerCad to design personalized covers for your PCB cases. (Week 5, by end of Friday class)
• •  5d. Use TinkerCad to design personalized covers for your PCB cases. (Week 5, by end of Friday class)
• •  6a. Take all the data that you think you’ll need for your project. (Week 6, by end of Friday class)
• •  6b. Verify that your data are valid: analyze them. (Week 6, by end of Friday class)
• •  7a. Analyze production data and discuss your conclusions with course staff. (Week 7, by end of Friday class)
• •  7b. Draft a modified run plan if appropriate, take more production data. (Week 8, by midweek group conference with course staff)
• •  8a. Develop a detailed data analysis including cross calibration techniques, and run all your data through it. (Week 8, by end of Friday class)
• •  8b. Write brief outline of a possible project report, discuss with course staff. (Week 8, by end of Friday class)
• •  9-10. Write and submit “nearly final” draft of project report. (Week 10, by start of Friday class)
• •  11-12. Rewrite and submit “final” project report. (Week 12, by start of Friday class)
• •  13-14a. Prepare PowerPoint project presentation. (Week 14, by start of Friday class)
• •  13-14b. Prepare and submit final project report. (Week 14, by start of Friday class)

In place of a final exam, I will require you and members of your team to generate two documents, with all team members as coauthors:
  • A 30 minute PowerPoint presentation describing your project: the measurement(s) you’ve made, and the reasons for so doing; the hardware and software you’ve built to perform these measurements; your fieldwork and calibrations; your analysis and conclusions. Your intended audience comprises your Physics 371 classmates. Presentations are due at the start of class, week 14; you will present during the 14th week of the term.
  • A written report of at least ten pages (single spaced), describing your measurements and conclusions; this is essentially the same information that you will write into your PowerPoint presentation. However, your report should be aimed at an audience that is outside the university community. For example, if you’ve measured the anomalous transverse accelerations of Amtrak trains, your audience might be the Illinois Department of Transportation. Your report is due in stages; see the course calendar for details.

The grading will be similar to Physics 298owl: if you work hard, are clever, come to all class activities, and do a good job on your hardware, software, and reports you will receive at least an A. But if you miss class, miss conferences with me, are late uploading your diary files, or do not do a good job on your project or reports, I will hammer you.

If you miss class for a legitimate reason, you must submit documentation to Kate Shunk in the Undergraduate Physics Office or upload it through the excused absence portal linked to the “Course policies” page on the p371 web site. Take note of the deadlines for submission of your documentation! I will expect you to make up the work you didn't accomplish.

Your obligations include working in a safe manner: always wearing eye protection when soldering and always washing your hands soon after handling metallic objects such as header pins or solder.

Grading

Course components used to calculate your course grade:
  • Short in-class group presentations on technical issues pertaining to your project;
  • Quality and efficiency of your group’s collaborative interaction;
  • Quality of your project hardware and data acquisition work;
  • Quality of your offline analysis software work;
  • Quality of your submitted homework assignments;
  • Compliance with schedule mile markers and deadlines;
  • Project PowerPoint presentation;
  • Project report.

Calculators, smart phones, and network access to irrelevant content

You will be using your laptops during class. During class you are not to access anything that is not directly relevant to the work at hand: no visits to social media sites, or unnecessary logins to your email accounts. I can't enforce this as rigorously as might be appropriate, so please comply as best as you are able.

Academic integrity

You must never submit the work of someone else as your own. Always identify your sources.

It is cheating to receive work from another student and then represent it as your own. It is cheating—and a violation of U.S. copyright law—to give (or sell) course material to someone else who intends to redistribute and/or sell it.

Cheating will be penalized harshly: I will award zero credit for any assignment in which a student is found to have cheated. I will also probably reduce your course grade by two letter grades (so that an A becomes a C), though I reserve the right to issue an F for the entire course to any student who is found to have cheated.

All activities in this course, including documentation submitted for petition for an excused absence, are subject to the Academic Integrity rules as described in Article 1, Part 4, Academic Integrity, of the Student Code.