The Experiments

UW-Madison’s Laboratory Course in Plasmas (Nuclear Engineering-526) is designed to give students hands on experience in creating plasmas, plasma confinement, and diagnostics for characterizing plasmas as well as general laboratory skills like working with high performance vacuum systems, digital data acquisition systems, and electronics. Unlike some lab courses, NE-526 is based on the concept of “advanced discovery learning”. Instead of step by step recipes for what to do in each lab activity, students are given the tools and information they need to investigate the physics available in each experiment. Each experiment has a page below that describes the apparatus, what scientific topic it is used to investigate, and some of the diagnostics that are used.