Reichert Award: My Favorite Advanced Laboratory Experiments and Why

As Lab Manager for the UT Dallas Physics Department, I support both teaching and research labs. Prof. Jason Slinker and I have been teaching PML together for over ten years. It started with a piece of equipment not working, and then students needed help with projects. We have evolved complementary roles for both the "fixed" experiments and the projects. Dr. Slinker addresses the stated experiments, bringing the theory to the experiment and report. I address the nuts and bolts of the instrumentation, the observations/insights/methods that make "hands-on" experience so useful. To illustrate this, I will talk about MY two favorite experiments. They are called "Faraday Rotation" and "The Diode Laser".