Paper presented at the International Conference Practical Work in Science Education, Copenhagen, 2023 May 1998.
IMPLEMENTING COMPUTER BASED LABWORK IN PHYSICS
Hans Carlsson, Rolf Igglund, Jonte Bernhard
Dep. of Physics, Högskolan Dalarna, S-781 88 Borlänge, Sweden
At Högskolan Dalarna we have a prepatory year in science for students with inadequate training in science. The prepatory year prepares the students for further studies (such as medicine, science, science teaching and engineering) which requires a math and science training from upper secondary school ("Gymnasium"). The courses are on the same level as the correspon-ding courses in Gymnasium. Some years ago the physics department started to implement microcomputer based laboratory in our university level courses. Two years ago we started to use computers in the physics laboratory for the preparatory year. At presently the students do 22 laborations during the physics course, of which one third are computer based. We use PASCO Science Workshop interface with a collection of suitable sensors which enables the students to do real world experiments using computers. Simulation software is used in only one labo-ration. Since the course is at upper secondary school level our laborations and our philosophy can easily be transferred to a secondary school setting. This paper describes our microcomputer based physics laborations and the advantages of using them.