Date: Tue Mar 31 11:07:55 2009 Back to Contents ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author: Zani, Gerald

Subject: Re: LED photoelectric effect apparatus

Post:

Perhaps the vacuum has failed in some the tubes? - J

-----Original Message-----
From: tap-l-owner@lists.ncsu.edu [mailto:tap-l-owner@lists.ncsu.edu] On
Behalf Of John Welch
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 4:46 PM
To: tapl
Subject: [tap-l] LED photoelectric effect apparatus

Hey all -
we're making several homemade PE experiments using LED's, based on the
article by Wayne Garver in the May 2006 Physics Teacher.
For our phototubes, we 'borrowed' two1P39 tubes from our old Pasco PE
experiments, and bought a third one from a surplus distributor. With the

Pasco tubes, we get a nice value for Planck's constant. When we use the
surplus tube with everything else the same, we still get a nice straight

line for our stopping voltage vs frequency graph, but the slope is about

25% too low. When we first had this problem, I sent the tube back and
got a different one from the surplus guy, but the new one he sent had
the same problem. I'm trying to figure out what could cause something
like this. I would expect differences in the coatings to show up as
different values for the work function, but not to effect the slope.
Does anyone have experience with this, or have an idea as to what might
cause this?
Has anyone tried a different kind of phototube or solid state
photodiode?

thanks
-John

--
******************************
John Welch

Cabrillo College Physics Dept.



From tap-l-owner@lists.ncsu.edu Tue Mar 31 11:07:55 2009