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Alex Winkley

Cold Lab Report


Setup
The cold lab requires a few select materials in order to be completed. First we set up the
super conductor and the power supply unit. Next were the two muli-meters that would enable us
to observe the temperature and voltage being put out by the conductor as the cooling is
occurring. We then wrote a program to read this data into LabView and then be exported from
LabView for further analysis after the data collection was completed (Fig. 1). We then connected
the conductor to the power supply unit using the yellow wires to allow the voltage in and the
black wires to accurately measure the voltage out.

Fig. 1 The code for our program in LabView that we used to collect data.

Data
Here we have a graph of the data put out by our three trials as well as the Curie
Temperature for each trial (Fig. 2).

Alex Winkley

Temperature [K] vs Resistance [Ohms]

16
14

Resistance [Ohms]

12
10
8

Trial 1
Trial 2

6
Trial 3
4
2
0
100

120

140

160

180

200

Temperature [K]
Fig. 2 The graph of our three trials which shows the Curie Temperature for each.

Analysis/Error
In the experiment guide, a Curie Temperature, where the resistance goes to zero, is given
but the Curie Temperature that we found was not consistent with the one given by the
experiment guide. Upon averaging the three temperatures together and finding the correlating
standard deviation, we determined our Curie Temperature to be 116.75 2.098 .
Here we have each individual trial with the correlating standard deviation for each.

Alex Winkley

Trial 1
18
16
Resistance [Ohms]

14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
100

120

140

160

180

200

Temperature [K]

Fig.3 Data and Error Bars for Trial 1.

Trial 2
16
14

Resistance [Ohms]

12
10
8
6
4
2
0
100

110

120

130

140

150

160

170

Temperature [K]

Fig. 4 Data and Error Bars for Trial 2.

180

190

200

Alex Winkley

Trial 3
14

Resistance [Ohms]

12
10
8
6
4
2
0
100

120

140

160

180

200

Temperature [K]

Fig. 5 Data and Error Bars for Trial 3.

In order to find the error associated with all three trials as a whole, we found the average
resistance for each temperature value and calculated the standard deviation for those values. We
used those standard deviations to calculate the error bars for this graph.

Average Trial
16

Resistance [Ohms]

14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
100

120

140

160

Temperature [K]

Fig. 6 Data and Error Bars for Average Trial.

180

200

Alex Winkley
We found the standard deviation for the average trial in our experiment at its max to be
1.737 and at its minimum to be 0.556. There are a couple possible sources for this error.
The most obvious source is external noise from the system we were working in. When we took
the superconductor out of the liquid nitrogen, we let it reheat on the lab table about 1 foot from a
computer. This could have caused the super conductor to be heated by the computer which
would tamper with our results. Another source of error is the room we were working in, in that
there were a lot of people in there, and the resulting combination of everyones body heat could
have affected our results as well. Looking back on this experiment and into the future when
helping other students with this experiment, I would try to limit these factors and make it so that
they try to eliminate as much external noise as possible.

**CHASE GARNETT AND GALEN RICHARD SHOULD RECEIVE AN AD LAB CHECK


FOR E01 AS HE HELPED GUIDE ME THROUGH THE SET-UP AND EXECUTION OF
THE MEASUREMENTS OF THIS EXPERIMENT**

Alex Winkley

Reference List
Leon-Rossano, L. (1997). An inexpensive and easy experiment to measure the electrical
resistance of high-Tc superconductors as a function of temperature. American Journal of
Physics, 65(10). Retrieved April 30, 2015.

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