A SEVEN POINT PARADIGM FOR THE MOTIVATION WITHIN UNGERGRADUATE RESEARCH AND LABORATORY PROJECTS

We present seven motivational elements for learning outside the classroom and illustrate these within the context of a particular undergraduate research project.The majority of this research was actually performed after completion of the required course -motivated solely by the desire of the student to go further with the experiment and learn more about the topic.This delightful circumstance is not without precedence in our department; so we searched for (and found) what we believe are the underlying, common, key motivational elements: (1) genuine interest of the instructor; (2) good instructor-student rapport (the instructor's genuine interest should spread naturally to the student, without the pressures that far too often occur in graduate research); (3) a simple, but adequately accurate, theoretical model of the problem; (4) a "mystery" to be resolved; (5) some "gee-whiz" aspects in the experimental apparatus (such as magnetic levitation devices, lasers, etc.); (6) actual quality in the measurement capability of the instruments; and (7) the capability of "closing the loop" between the experiment and a simple theory.Herein, we illustrate these seven points within the context of a specific project -one that explores many novel aspects of signal loss in optical fiber and in free-space optical links.Signal losses always increase exponentially with length in "cable," whether the cabling is coax, twisted pair, etc., or even optical fiber.In "radio" however, the losses only increase with the square of the length.So that, beyond some length, radio will always win.This "crossover" length depends on the wavelength of the source; and the transmitting and receiving antenna gains.The question then arises -how do we describe the effective "antenna gains" of an infrared LED (or laser) and an infrared detector?A simple means of relating this to the information quoted on typical data sheets is presented and tested experimentally.We also present empirical data on the length dependence of a free-space infrared link; and fiber losses in Erbium-doped-fiber.Many "mysteries" were discovered and resolved in this work; whereas other "mysteries" remain unresolved.In both cases, we note how these illustrate our seven point motivational paradigm.