Learning objectives
Not only to provide students with operator concepts and to develop their capability of use these concepts, but also to help them to go on the acquisition of a scientific mentality and an opportune working method. In particular, this course aims at: get through a phenomenological approach to experimental data; acquire a quantitative method of analysis in order to characterize the main and fundamental aspects; work out a physical model of the studied process.
Prerequisites
Basic concepts of error analysis; basic concepts of differential and integral calculus for functions of one or more variables.
Course unit content
<br />1) Data analysis planning an experiment: determination of peculiarities (expecially kinetics) of the system to study, of the physical entity of interest and of the observable one; determination of experimental methodologies suitable to requirements of the system. Example: study of a proton transfer reaction in solution by laser flash photolysis with transient absorption detection. 2) Data analysis acquiring a signal: tricks to eliminate some of the problems that turn up during the acquisition of a transient absorption signal, optimization of vertical and temporal resolution; noise reduction techniques, systematic errors elimination and random error reduction. 3) Data analysis during the elaboration of a signal: determination of different methodologies useful to obtain informations of interest; data fitting; definition of the so called “chi squared” parameter; method of maximum likelihood; chi squared minimization; linear and non linear least squares method (methods of searching parameters space and analitycal methods); Minuit and Matlab; Matlab ODE function to solve differential equations. 4) Data analysis during the interpretation of a signal: development of a kinetc model for a proton transfer reaction in solution; converting a kinetic model in a scheme of computational analysis.
Full programme
- - -
Bibliography
<br />P.R. Bevington Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences – McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York<br />J.R. Taylor Introduzione all’analisi degli errori - Zanichelli, BolognaW.J. Palm III Matlab 6 per l’ingegneria e le scienze – McGraw-Hill, Milano
Teaching methods
<br />
Assessment methods and criteria
- - -
Other information
- - -
