How many of you were taught a model of transistor behavior, and then sent into the lab to do experiments to confirm this result? How often did a lab supervisor force you to a write up confirming the presented model, even if bad equipment, bad implementation of the tests, sloppy record keeping, noise or other problems made that confirmation problematic?
I didn´t experience that in my west-european university.
It is hard for me to conceive of undergraduate lab courses which don't enter with a strong bias on the models and results. Those courses are not generally intended to uncover new physics, but to provide some confidence that the coursework is based on reality and some exposure to measurement techniques and problems. If this is not how it is done in western Europe, well done to the educators.
The bias which seems endemic in US versions of lab courses is not surprising. The science behind the experiments is not controversial and is generally agreed upon. The experiments are chosen to avoid complexities beyond the theories which are supposed to be within the students grasp (for transistor experiments that means things like room temperature, modest current ranges, modest gains, modest frequencies, low slew rates and so on). But it often means torturing the data into submission when something like a non-opaque potting material shows up in the transistor, exposing photoelectric effects.
Maybe on Belgian Universities don't make, i don't know other spanish universities if they do this, but on my university made this.
This made when at a practical lab had many problems*(almost all students) for obtained the result, so the great majority time ,the supervisor signed the lab part that you had could to do .After when you made the report you had to put of the lab part that hadn't done the theorical valor.
*An example: At practical lab, we had to test a switching power supply of tipology buck , so our group gave us a crushed diy board(Made in University) with the tracks and pads without copper, with tin gobs,etc. I fixed the tracks and the gobs but the board didn't work(too change the IC).
Until i began to suspect the transistor(the reference was hidden among components). When i discovered that the reference transistor didn't match with the documention.
I searched the datasheet and i found that it wasn't a transistor. IT WAS A SCR .
We told to surpervisor lab the problem .And he saw that we couldn't perform the practice by the transistor and remained few time lab. He signed us the lab after we had to put on the report all the theorical data
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