Efficiency
Preparation
Come to the Lab prepared. Know the circuits for the Lab exercise and think about how you make the circuit on the breadboard, etc. Make a check list of the data that you need to take. Do not start any lab work before you are comfortable that you know what you are doing.
Consider the lab exercises and how long it would take to do them. Pace yourself in the lab accordingly. Most of the students waste a lot of time at the beginning of the session and rush through in the last hour.
Assemble your circuit on the bread board neatly and try to be as close as possible to the circuit diagram. This helps you debug the circuit easily. Check your circuit throughly before powering up the circuit. Check that your circuit works before taking any data! For example, if you are building an amplifier, the output signal should be proportional to the input signal, vary the input signal amplitude and frequency and see if the output signal follows the input.
If you are not familiar with the use of standard electronics lab equipment, you will also find these helpful:
Take turns, and check your work
One student should assemble the circuit on the board and the second checks the circuit after it is finished. It frequently happens that after taking data for 30 minutes, the students discover that the circuit is not correct. Remember carpenters idiom: "Measure twice, cut once."
Keep your circuit analysis in front of you when you are doing the lab exercise. Compare your measurements with your calculations continuously. Check some of the voltages and currents that you have calculated (but are not asked in the lab exercise handout) to make sure that your circuit behaves correctly. You will soon learn that certain voltages and currents are critical in each circuit as they can give you an indication of what is wrong very fast.
Compare your experimental data with your calculation. Do not wait to do that later. It frequently happens that students come back to the lab as they discover that their data is wrong when they start writing their report.
Recording data
When you take data in the lab, it is very important that you plot the data immediately (before moving to the next lab exercise). In fact, get into the habit of entering your data both in tabular and graphical form as you go through lab exercise. Immediate plotting of data helps in the following:
- You can see if any data point does not follow the general trend of the data (i.e., a point is sticking out of the curve that fits the data). This is a prompt for you to re-examine that point and make sure that you have not made a mistake in getting the data point. Most of the time you cannot find these out-of-place data points from a table.
- You can see if you have enough data to plot a meaningful curve through them. One has to take more data near location when the data changes rapidly or the interpolation between the data points lead to in-correct information.
Neatness
Keep your work bench clean and tidy. Return the cables, wires, etc that you do not need to their specified location before moving to the next lab exercise.
Lab notebooks
Maintain a lab notebook. Students are encouraged to maintain a lab notebook (a technical journal) as is required of engineers in the industry.
Summary
You can do all of the above in one step! Assemble the frame work of your lab report in your journal before coming to the lab. For each exercise include your circuit analysis, a circuit diagram (including location where you will attach multimeter, scope, etc.), experimental set up, and leave space for the data you take in tabular form and space for comparison of calculation with the experimental data, observations, and conclusions. Once you get the hang of it, you will find the information in the lab notebook is basically the first draft of your lab report.