Physics Experiments with Arduino and Smartphones: (Undergraduate Texts in Physics)

This book on the use of Arduino and Smartphones in physics experiments, with a focus on mechanics, introduces various techniques by way of examples. The main aim is to teach students how to take meaningful measurements and how to interpret them. Each topic is introduced by an experiment. Those at the beginning of the book are rather simple to build and analyze. As the lessons proceed, the experiments become more refined and new techniques are introduced. Rather than providing recipes to be adopted while taking measurements, the need for new concepts is raised by observing the results of an experiment. A formal justification is given only after a concept has been introduced experimentally. The discussion extends beyond the taking of measurements to their meaning in terms of physics, the importance of what is learned from the laws that are derived, and their limits. Stress is placed on the importance of careful design of experiments as to reduce systematic errors and on good practices toavoid common mistakes. Data are always analyzed using computer software. C-like structures are introduced in teaching how to program Arduino, while data collection and analysis is done using Python. Several methods of graphical representation of data are used.

Table of Contents:
1 Physics and Nature.- 2 Units.- 3 Uncertainties.- 4 Statistical analysis of data.- 5 Statistical distributions and their properties.- 6 Establishing a physics law.- 7 Parameters evaluation- 8 Automatic data acquisition.- 9 The Hooke’s law.- 10 Pendulum.- 11 Kinematics.- 12 Free fall.- 13 Wave mechanics.

About the Author :
Giovanni Organtini is a professor of experimental physics at Sapienza University of Rome. He worked on the L3 experiment at LEP, then joined the CMS collaboration at LHC with which the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012. He is also a member of the PADME collaboration aiming at possible detection of dark photons. He served as Director of the Physics Museum in Rome for five years. Giovanni Organtini is among the most recognised experts worldwide in using affordable digital technologies to perform meaningful and precise physics measurements and invented the Schools of Physics with Arduino and Smartphones in Italy. He is very active in physics popularization, also by innovative media like FISICAST: a podcast about physics in Italian, as well as leading successful STEAM projects nationwide.