Your Course Grade in Electronics Lab

Your course grade will be weighted according to the following scheme:

There will be no final exam in this course. The cutoff for various grades in the course are nominally given as follows. However, the cutoffs can be adjusted down if necessary. We guarantee that the cutoffs for various grades will not be raised above these levels.

If you attend all of the lab sessions, turn in all your work on time, and make an honest effort in this course, you will do very well. If you skip lab, or regularly leave early, not turn in your assignments on time, and let your lab partner do all the work, you will not do well in this class.

Grading of Lab Books

Lab books do not need to be detailed long write-ups. They should however contain enough information for someone to repeat the work in them using only the lab book as a reference. When grading labs, the following elements are important in satisfying this requirement. Labs will be graded out of 100 points, with points taken off for incorrect, incomplete or missing elements.

(0) Prelab: Your prelab work. (10%)
Show you prelab work with the instructor's signature to verify that it was done.

(1) Introduction/Purpose: What are the goals of this lab? (5%)
A three-to-four sentence description of what you will be doing and what you expect to learn from this lab.

(2) Procedure: How did you do this lab? (~10-20%)
This should be a short description of how you set up the lab. It MUST include relevant circuit diagrams. It is also a good place to include the measured values of components that you are using. Finally, this should describe the measurements that you will be making. e.g., ``We will measure the frequency response of the circuit by using a measured input signal and scanning over a frequency range from 1 to 1,000,000 Hz. We will measure the output voltage and the phase difference between the input and the output.'' Do NOT write a novel!

(3) Data and plots: Present your data. (~10-30%)
This section should contain the data that you collected during the lab. It can also contain neat, hand-drawn sketches of the data to help identify where you need to collect additional data points. If there were problems encountered during data collection, mention them here, and describe how they were resolved.

(4-A) Analysis/Discussion: The analysis of your data. (~20-50%)
This section should include computer-generated plots of your data. If possible, you should also overlay theoretical curves on top of your data and comment on where things agree and disagree. For major disagreements, there should be some additional discussion as to why this occured. This section should also contain any calculations that you need to carry out, and if there are theoretical expectations, it should contain the mathematical formulas that are needed (you do not need to derive the formulas).

(4-B) Analysis Questions: Answers to questions in the lab write up. (~<10%)
It is also necessary to answer the various questions that are scattered throughout the lab write-up. These questions are intended to give you guidance on your analysis of your data, and often are questions specifically about your data. Thus, they should be answered (explicitly) in the Analysis/Discussion section of your report. Alternatively, you may put them in a separate section, but if you need to refer to other parts of your lab report in your answers to the Analysis Questions, please do so clearly.

(5) Summary/Conclusions: What did you learn in the lab? (5%)
This section should contain a brief description of what you learned in the lab. It should also summarize how well your lab agreed with expectations. You may also make suggestions for improving your precedure.