Ning Zhu edited section_Discussion_The_neon_experiment__.tex  over 8 years ago

Commit id: 4760ad7d5e8dfea1f4d026f2c56a41c968cf10a0

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The neon experiment seemed to have some sort of systematic error with the connections. As mentioned above, the first excitation level was suppose to occur around 16.62eV. Our excitation level falls within this range; however, our error is quite large. Since we used a period of 500s, our measurements were not very precise.   The result of our argon experiment is not consistent with the theoretical value within uncertainty. In order to figure out what went wrong, we analyzed our apparatus setup. The accelerating voltage went all the way up to 80V, as expected, in our data files. That shows that the applied voltage is not at fault nor are the multimeters. We debugged the circuit to see if we were overloading any part of the circuit, and nothing seemed to be overloaded. There %There  could be a very small extra resistance from the cables used but that would not have a drastic effect of a 3V difference between the actual energy level and the experimental energy level that we observed. As a result, the only possible explanation seems to be a systematic error caused by the voltage amplification. However, the argon data has a smaller uncertainty, which means the data is more precise, since we used a longer period.  Therefore, %Therefore,  our methods and analysis are correct; however, there seems to be a systematic error with the tube. \textbf{edit %\textbf{edit  based on damage from the high voltage preamp} As %As  for the argon experiment, the data was more precise. has a smaller uncertainty.  For this part of the experiment, we debugged the whole apparatus and replaced all the equipment. In addition, we used a longer period so there would be more data points. Our methods seem to work out quite well for this experiment. Our experimental value seems to lie fairly close to the actual value of the first excitation level for argon.