American Association of Physics Teachers

SHOP drawings of apparatus for laboratory work and lecture demonstrations in college physics are currently being prepared, with the aid of a grant from the National Science Foundation, by the Apparatus Drawing Project carried out under the joint sponsorship of the American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Institute of Physics. R. G. Marcley, who is in charge of the project, has visited some twenty-five colleges and universities where special pieces of apparatus have been developed, and a number of the resulting drawings, together with descriptive notes, have been published in the American Journal of Physics in slightly abbreviated form to enable physics department personnel to decide whether such apparatus would be useful in their teaching. Adequate information has been included to permit shop construction of the apparatus, and care has been taken to describe special techniques so that students can help in assembling the equipment. Apparatus already described in the Journal (beginning with the January 1960 issue) are a Balmer series spectrum tube, apparatus for the magnetic field of a circular coil, an air suspension gyroscope, resolution of forces apparatus, Bragg diffraction apparatus for microwaves, and two mass spectrometers.