Carthage College added inquiry-based case study activities to the traditional introductory physics laboratory. Student teams designed, constructed, and executed their own experiments to study real-world phenomena, through which they gained understanding both of physic principles and methods of physics research. Assessment results and student feedback through teacher evaluations indicate that these activities improved student attitudes about physics as well as their ability to solve physics problems relative to previous course offerings that did not include case study.
Measurements of the energy distribution function of primary electrons in a hot filament discharge in a magnetic field have been made. These results show a smooth distribution function which decreases monotonically with increasing energy up to a value approximately equal to the discharge voltage; the shape of the distribution is independent of other discharge parameters. An ionization kinetics model is used to estimate the energetic electron density, which is shown to vary linearly with plasma density, inversely with fill pressure, and decrease with increasing discharge voltage. At the highest plasma densities bulk heating, possibly due to coulomb drag on primary electrons, is observed.
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