GUNTHER ROLAND: There's a couple of new elements
that we've introduced in the last few years,
one is that the students write a proposal for an experiment
that they want to do and develop themselves.
And for that experiment, they can use any material
that we have in the lab or anything that they
can find at MIT and other labs of former UROP advisors,
or people that they know.
And sometimes we even buy some equipment for them
if it's a particularly interesting proposal
and we think that the equipment can
be used in future experiments.
So that proposal, develop your own experiment
and really see through the whole process,
not starting from a prefabricated experiment,
but coming up with your own, that's
a really unique experience in 8.14.
I think something that is very difficult
to find outside of the lab.
And then we also have included in the last two years
a poster session at the end where the students present
the results of their own experiment
to the other students in the lab, to the staff,
and then to any member of the physics department that
happens to walk past.
So we tried to time that with the physics faculty lunch,
so that the big professors walk past the posters,
and then the students can explain to them
their own experiment, what they found
in that part of the course.
So I think that's really different than that
and what do you do in 8.13 when you start with experiments that
have been done by generations and generations of students
before.
And I think students really like that.